Chapter Text
Bucky is confused. Not an uncommon occurrence.
It was the second week in November and there were Christmas things everywhere.
He hadn’t paid much attention to the holidays when operating as the Winter Soldier. He slept through them more often than not. If he wasn’t on ice, he was exploiting people’s celebrations for his missions under Hydra’s orders. However, none of his recon for those missions, prepared him to see holiday decorations popping up all over Manhattan almost immediately after Halloween. In his days back in Brooklyn, decorating didn’t start until well into December.
The earliness is certainly the biggest surprise initially, but the quantity also seems wrong. It isn’t just a handful of ornaments, a festoon here, or a wreath there. No, there are lights everywhere. Literally, everywhere. Like in bathrooms. And electric Santa and cartoon elves. Even the coffee shops had gotten seasonal menus and cups. Why did coffee shops need different cups for one holiday even if that holiday seemed to have expanded to two whole months?
Then there is the noise. Christmas music, barely recognizable as such, has become omnipresent. Just the constant press of it would be annoying. That so much of it seems to be badly written love songs, with a splash of something holiday related, just makes it more jarring. Adding bells to a brazen demand for presents hardly counts as Christmas music in Bucky’s opinion.
The absolute worst though is the smell. His heightened senses pick up traces of it everywhere. Fake peppermint and artificial cinnamon make him nauseous. The commercial pine-tree scent though practically has him gagging.
As the Winter Soldier, none of it would have bothered him, of course. He would have noted it dispassionately as part of observing his surroundings but it wouldn’t have effected him in the slightest. He wouldn’t have had any feelings about it one way or the other unless it could have impeded or assisted his mission. He certainly wouldn’t have had feelings about it. Now, though Bucky can’t ignore it. He can’t block out the lights and sounds and smells. They invade his senses, feeling like they are burrowing into his eyes and ears and nose.
The weather starts to develop a bite to it that he finds surprisingly pleasant. Everyone is starting to wear jackets and scarves but he’s comfortable in his long-sleeve shirts and gloves. He doesn’t stand out and he’s not hot. It would be the ideal weather for him to walk around in. He barely leaves the Tower. Still, even the short, heavily supervised excursions where he’s allowed outside leave him feeling completely overwhelmed. It causes him to go from rarely leaving the Tower of his own volition to practically hiding in it.
When decorations start to go up in the Tower a couple weeks later, it feels like his home is being invaded. He pictures a virus spreading and contaminating everything. From the articles he’d read, he isn’t far wrong. Without trying, he’d stumbled on numerous editorials blasting the rise of commercialism and accusing corporate greed of ruining the holidays. Several of the writers are people he was generally loath to agree with, but he thinks they may actually have a point here. Whatever is behind, what Christmas has become, he hates it. He doesn’t hate easily any more but this he hates.
Steve starts to get that concerned look on his face once Bucky practically barricades himself in their apartment. Bucky hates that Steve is worried but he feels safe in the apartment. He’s sure that Christmas won’t invade here. Whatever madness has taken over the rest of the world, Steve shares his 1940’s sensibilities. It should be at least a month until he even thinks of Christmas.
Or so Bucky truly believed. Maybe Steve had changed. Maybe the virus that was modern Christmas had infected him. Because a good week before Thanksgiving a ceramic figurine shaped like a sack of presents with a teddy bear, candy canes, and a nutcracker appears in their apartment. Bucky reacts without thinking. He hurls the offensive ornament against the floor-to-ceiling window that makes up the north face of their living room. It’s some special Stark composite, stronger than normal structural glass. It had been designed to withstand a missile strike. So, despite Bucky’s best efforts to throw the blasted thing through the glass, he fails. The window remains intact. Of course, the figurine had not been designed with super soldiers, weapons-grade prosthetic arms, or next generation building materials in mind. While it is still in the suite, much to Bucky’s disgust, it is no longer recognizable, which brings Bucky only a modicum of satisfaction. For good measure he goes over and stomps on the remains of the thing that had invaded his space with it’s cheap faux festiveness a couple of times. Sneering down at the remains on the carpet, he gives the scattered fragments an additional kick more to vent his frustration than anything else.
“Uh…Buck?”
Bucky turns and Steve is standing in the kitchen doorway looking confused and very very concerned. Bucky’s first thought is to wonder how he’d failed to realize that, of course, Steve is in the apartment. He always knows where Steve is. The punk never moved with any kind of stealth within the Tower. He is almost as bad as Tony and the blond Alien thunder god in that regard. Also, the…thing…had to have come from somewhere. Clearly, Steve had brought it home, meaning that Steve had to be home. Bucky feels betrayed that Steve had brought something like that into the apartment without talking to him first. Then he is hit with a wave of regret. Steve had brought it home, which meant Steve had liked it. He had destroyed something of Steve’s. He’d placed his own discomfort ahead of Steve’s feelings. Steve who’d done so much for him. Steve who forgave Bucky so much, and would likely forgive him for this too, even though he shouldn’t. Shame curls in Bucky’s gut. He bolts and locks himself in his room.
Steve is right on his heels, knocking on the door urgently. “Bucky? Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
The walls are thick but not sound-proof to serum-heightened senses. Bucky can hear Jarvis assuring Steve that while Bucky’s respiration is slightly elevated he is unharmed and while he appears mildly upset there is no indication of severe distress. “Thanks, Jarvis buddy,” Bucky says quietly enough that Steve won’t hear it.
Jarvis doesn’t acknowledge Bucky’s comment but asks Bucky if he would like for Dr. Brown to be fetched. Steve is shifting restlessly from foot to foot outside the door but stops and holds his breath. Bucky shakes his head. Then says a loud, so Steve can hear him, “no need to bug her.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, Buck,” Steve says quietly from the other side of the door. When Bucky doesn’t respond. “I think you should talk to someone. I’d feel better if you did.”
Bucky hesitates. If he were a good person, if he were any kind of person really, he’d open the door and just talk to Steve. He’d rather punch a hole in the window and scale down the building than do that though, even knowing that the National Guard and half the law enforcement on the East Coast would be mobilized withing minutes if he did that.
“Sargeant Barnes,” Jarvis chimes in, “if I may suggest a call to Dr. Brown instead then. Her contract includes being available as needed and a call will put Captain Rogers at ease. I can cease monitoring you while the line is active so you’ll have privacy.”
Bucky sighs. “It’s really not worth bothering the Doctor over.” Even as he says it though he knows it’s no use. If Jarvis is siding with Steve, it’s a lost cause.
“Please, Bucky!” Steve pleads and Bucky caves.
Steve leaves the suite to avoid accidentally overhearing anything.
“Sergeant Barnes, should I send Dr. Brown the video of the interaction in the living room before I connect Dr. Brown and disconnect?”
Bucky appreciates Jarvis’s word choice. “Interaction” is hardly the most accurate way to describe it but it has way fewer connotations than the alternatives. He also appreciates that Jarvis is trying to spare him from having to find words to explain what had happened. Grateful for Jarvis, Bucky consents and then waits. He paces the floor as he waits.
It takes four minutes and thirty-eight seconds before Dr. Brown’s voice fills his room from the ceiling. “Forgive me for asking this, but it’s too ingrained in me from my training not to, Bucky are you feeling like you might be a threat to yourself or others?”
What the heck? “No!”
“I just watched you obliterate a decoration in your apartment. That level of extreme rage is concerning. Particularly with your history and skill set. Are you hiding in your room currently because you’re still feeling extreme anger?”
Geez. “No.”
It’s odd having her disembodied voice in his room. It doesn’t feel at all like talking to Jarvis. He doesn’t particularly like it. But then he doesn’t particularly like any of this. And he was the one who refused to ask her to come to the Tower. So, he sits on the floor with his back in his favorite corner and waits for her to pry out that he hates the glut of Christmas everything that plagues the City.
“It’s hard to read your facial expression from the angle of the video and your face is almost impossible to read anyway. However, when you saw Steve, your body language seemed to shift slightly. Did your emotions move away from rage at that time?”
Ugh! She was going to ask him what he was feeling next. It’s understandable. He hates it. He is almost tempted to offer her something more than a monosyllabic response to try to derail her but can’t bring himself to do it. “Yes,” he says gruffly.
“Is there anything else in the apartment that you feel like breaking?”
He answers reflexively. “Of course not.”
The pause is the first one in the conversation. It’s no longer than usual but it felt like it has a different weight when he’s sitting alone in his room.
“So that particular item caused you to become angry?”
Bucky grinds his teeth, but whether it’s for the question or because he’s remembering the ugly ceramic blob he couldn’t say. “Yes,” he snaps out.
It’s a shorter pause this time. “Did the ceramic ornament do something in particular to you?”
Something about the wording feels odd in Bucky’s brain. How would a Christmas decoration, however ugly and offensive, do anything to him. It had been inanimate. He’s tempted to exercise his privilege of asking her to explain her questions. However, it would likely drag out this conversation longer and that’s the last thing that he wants.
“I didn’t want that damn thing in my home!”
Dr. Brown’s next question comes only a beat later. “Why?”
It all slips out then. The building swell of hatred for the barrage of Christmas everything. The fact that it’s seeped into every aspect of every day outside of their apartment becoming inescapable. How he just can’t stand it and that having it invade his only refuge had been too much.
When he finally winds down, Dr. Brown doesn’t speak immediately. He knows she won’t tell him he was overreacting. She wouldn’t invalidate his feelings that way even though he knows he had in fact overreacted. He is almost curious what she will say instead though. Speculating about it keeps him from having to dwell on having just gone on an unhinged rant about Christmas.
“I’m pleased to hear that you destroyed the statue then.”
What? Was this some piss poor attempt at reverse psychology? She should know better than that. Bucky has no intention of taking that bait. He glares and makes sure that the camera captures it.
“For someone else, lashing out like that might be extremely unhealthy. Concerningly so, actually. Given your limited ability to express yourself, or give any outwards signs of your emotions though, I can’t see it as wholly negative. In the past your response to being overwhelmed has simply been to shut down. Or to run. This time, you acted to protect your own comfort.”
Bucky could point out that he had been running for weeks now. He’d been hiding in the Tower and then the apartment. He’d only lashed out when he’d been backed into a corner and his final sanctuary had been breached.
“Of course, it would have been better if you’d raised this issue in one of our sessions and we could have worked to unpack it before you got to the point of an explosive outburst.”
What is she playing at? Bucky has a hard time crediting that she thought this is somehow a good thing.
“But I lost control. I can’t lose control.”
“Of course you are going to lose control sometimes. You are human. A certain amount of control is always going to be necessary for you. But it doesn’t need to be perfect control all of the time. There is such at thing as too controlled. Too contained. Balance is going to be important. And figuring out ways you can safely be out of control is going to be part of that.”
“I could have hurt somebody,” Bucky insists.
“Who?” she presses. “Alone in the apartment, how could you have hurt anyone. You didn’t put yourself or anyone else in danger.”
If the glass had broken, an object of that size falling several stories would have killed someone below. Rationally, Bucky knows that it would never have been able to penetrate the glass. He supposes he’d known that even in his flare of temper.
If she isn’t trying to help him reestablish control so that he’ll no longer be a threat, what even is the purpose of this conversation.
“So, what now?” he demands.
“For now, we address the immediate problem. We can work on the whole Christmas issue at your next session.” Bucky isn’t sure where this is going. It feels like a shoe was about to drop. “Why exactly did you retreat to your room Bucky?”
He groans.
It takes an hour and it feels like being dragged over broken glass. Bucky is actually in a position to make the comparison and it doesn’t feel the least hyperbolic. Dr. Brown had gone relatively easy on him about acknowledging his embarrassment and regret. She’d offered leading questions. However, once they were past the what and on to the what now part of it, she’d made him find his own way.
The immediate problem is explaining himself to Steve. He’d locked himself in his room to avoid that. His actions mean that a conversation is necessary and Bucky is regretting his actions even more now. If he’d talked with Dr. Brown earlier, he probably could have avoided having to talk to Steve now.
Dr. Brown outright rejects Bucky’s request to talk to Steve on his behalf. When he suggests having Jarvis explain it, she’d nixes that plan too. He’s tempted to do it anyway, until she points out that while Steve wouldn’t express it, he’d likely feel hurt hearing it from a third-party and would worry that Bucky was hiding something if they didn’t talk about it directly. Steve may well have follow-up questions, but if an intermediary is used, he’ll assume that such questions aren’t welcome. The only concessions that she’s willing to make are that he can write a note if he really wants to or that she will listen and give him feedback on what he plans on saying.
Ultimately, he drops the note idea but takes her up on the practice. Most of their remaining time is spent working through what he will say to Steve until they are both satisfied. By the time they disconnect Bucky is drained. He lays flat on his back staring at the ceiling. He knows Jarvis is monitoring him again, but he isn’t ready to talk even to the AI yet. It takes twenty-two minutes and fifty-one seconds before he feels composed enough to get off the floor. Jarvis still doesn’t say anything.
Bucky exits his room, his eyes immediately drift to the spot on the carpet where the thing had been. There is no trace of it, except a couple slivers of ceramic. Steve must have cleaned it up hastily as he retreated from the suite. Bucky goes to the kitchen. It looks like Steve had been making sandwiches before Bucky had interrupted him. The bread is still on the counter.
Bucky makes a sandwich for himself and eats it. It doesn’t make him feel any better. He sighs. “Jarvis?”
“How can I be of assistance Sergeant Barnes?”
“Where’s Steve?”
“Captain Rogers is currently at the lobby coffee kiosk, not drinking a cup of peppermint tea.”
He notices that Jarvis uncharacteristically doesn’t make any suggestions. Bucky believes it’s a sign of kindness, but it would have been easier if Jarvis had done his usual thing and anticipated his next ask. Instead, Bucky has to form the request himself. “Can you…tell him I want to talk.” He doesn’t want to talk but it’s the right thing to say. He had wanted to say to tell him that the coast was clear. Steve would have understood and come up immediately just the same. Still, it isn’t fair to put the onus on Steve like that. Bucky had caused this situation and Bucky needs to express himself like a not entirely dysfunctional, just really close to it person. If he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings with Steve, he needs to not make a big scene about them in the first place. It is as good a motive as anything to try to find the whole balance of control thing Dr. Brown had mentioned.
Bucky waits in the living room. It takes effort not to pace. Steve comes up immediately, of course.
“Uh, Hi Buck. You, uh, feeling better?”
Bucky’s instinct is to ignore the questions. He knows that’s rude though. Even if Steve will forgive him. So, he nods before getting into what he has to say. Bucky starts with the most important part. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have broken your statue.”
As expected, Steve rushes to forgive him and assure him that he really doesn’t care. That it’s no big deal. Bucky smashes down the urge to cut him off so he can finish what he needs to say. Part of being sorry is listening and letting Steve get his feelings out too. Dr. Brown had been explicit about that. Bucky winces a little when Steve explains that it was actually a cookie jar and he’d bought it because it reminded him of the ones they used to sell in the five and dime. Bucky tells himself that it really doesn’t make what he’d done any worse. When Steve trails off with puppy-dog eyes and remorse, Bucky resumes what he practiced.
“I’ve been getting overwhelmed by all the Christmas decoration. It’s a lot and I was overstimulated. That is why I reacted the way I did. I’d been hiding in the apartment because the Christmas decorations everywhere have been too much.”
He’d wanted to say he’d over-reacted. Dr. Brown had argued with him. They’d settled on this.
“Oh, god Bucky. I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot. I saw that you were withdrawing and brought that jar to try and cheer you up. I thought it was cheerful.”
He wishes Steve had asked first. The irony of that is not lost on Bucky. The last thing he wants though is Steve beating himself up. The final bit of what he’d practiced seems applicable now though. “I should have communicated what I was feeling properly. I’ll try to do better next time.”
Steve gives him a watery smile. Before he could say anything else that might make Bucky have to find more words, Bucky rushes out, “cookies or sandwiches?”
The chagrined look on Steve’s face suggests that Bucky was correct and Steve was going to say something else that would’ve required a response he hadn’t prepared for. Instead, with a more genuine boyish smile, he suggests, “both?”
Steve puts together turkey sandwiches, while Bucky starts in on a batch of kolaches.