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always thinking about super soldier/healing factor body horror. bones healing wrong within minutes, skin forming over glass and shrapnel. when steve rogers stops the helicopter with his bare hands, his sternum splits and his rib cage splays as his bones give up before his muscles do. sometimes it's less destructive just to leave the bullet inside. how can you perform surgery on someone who heals faster than you can cut? chronic pain is a wicked side effect of an accelerated healing factor as your body is constantly mending and moving everything, everything, everything at a rapid pace. sure the viruses don't affect you, but does your body eliminate them before you can spread them to everyone else? you are always hungry, you are always wired; some days you feel too much, other days you can hardly feel anything at all. everyone knows the metabolism is faster but you'll also run out of air long before anyone else... and just how much can you recover from? maybe your body is more resilient, but your mind isn't necessarily. unless it is, and you're no longer you. just how much pain can you actually take? 'cause you can feel it all. the serum speeds up natural processes; it fixes things but it does not prevent them. it doesn't save you. there are many, many things that it is not a mercy to survive.

no but Steve checking out during a mission and no one realizing because it's normal by now. Sometimes Steve goes quiet on the comms and they've gone on enough missions to know he's not chatty. No one questing why Steve skipped on clean up because, well, he's Cap, he is usually the one ordering it, so he must have had a good reason. No big deal.

Then a newly cleared Bucky suits up with the Avengers for the first time, expecting it to go relatively smoothly since they've been doing this for over 3 years now.

Fuck was he wrong.

No bc exactly, and Bucky already knows what's happening, because it happened sometimes during the war, too. The way Steve would check out-- go distant, eyes glazing over, unmoving, unseeing, unhearing. Like everything overloaded at once, and he just... went away. He'd always done that. Gone away in his head when things got too loud, either literally, or somewhere inside of him. But during the war, it got worse, and now? Oh god.

It's Bucky's first mission back, and of course it's something fucking ridiculous. Giant mechanical cows, because some idiot wanted a farm themed apocalypse, and really, the universe has got to be playing a joke on Bucky by now, because he's getting really fucking sick of this shit. He's ruminating on that as he slices another mechanical cow's head off to a rather horrible sounding moo, and it's only afterwards that he realizes he hasn't heard Steve say anything for a while.

"Anyone heard anything from Cap lately?" he asks into his comms, walking briskly around the... wiry cow carcass. Eugh.

"Nah, not in a minute. Last I saw him, he was heading south towards that library to stop the cows from getting civilians in there," Clint says. The sound of an arrow being fired thwips through the comm.

Bucky frowns. Steve's usually pretty vocal on missions-- doling out directions and strategy.

"No? Anyone seen him?" he asks, watching as a couple more cows explode in the distant via Tony's reactors.

"No, why?" Comes Natasha's voice. "You need him? He doesn't normally talk during missions."

And shit, what? Bucky knew that the others had missed a thing or twenty about Steve, but this was unacceptable. This was dangerous.

"Yes, he does," he snaps, already starting to jog toward the main street and over towards the library. "Shit."

"What? What's happening?" Tony asks, sounding out of breath.

"Steve-- fuck. This isn't-- if he's quiet, it ain't good," Bucky says, trying to keep his temper in check, because being angry when he gets to Steve is far from a good idea. "You guys coulda stood to pay more fucking attention."

Natasha says something else over the comm, but Bucky isn't listening anymore as he finally spots Steve, staring blankly down at a cow carcass. His eyes look distant, his hair is bloody. He's swaying a little, clearly a little off balance. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Bucky jogs over, slowing when he gets close and stopping about a foot away. He'd learned very early on that touching Steve when he's dissociating usually ends in a black eye and a very panicked Steve. Well. More panicked than he already will be when Bucky manages to bring him back to earth.

"Steve?" He keeps his voice even, but firm. "Steve, it's Bucky, pal, you're okay. Can you hear me?"

Steve looks up, eyebrows furrowing. Bucky inches closer.

"Steve, do you know where you are right now?"

Steve looks around, eyebrows still pinched. He nods, slowly, like he's moving through syrup, then he shakes his head, looking down at his hands, moving his fingers before pinching the bridge of his nose. Fuck. He's really out of it.

"That's okay, pal," Bucky says, moving close enough to touch if Steve needs it. "That's okay, just focus for a moment. My voice, the wind. Can you hear the wind?"

Steve doesn't look up, but eventually, he nods.

"Good, that's good. Wind, my voice... what else?"

"Um." Good. He's talking. That's good. "Cows-- fuck."

Bucky sees the moment Steve comes back to himself-- or at least, back to the moment. He kneels down when Steve slumps to the ground, teeth chattering. He's staring at his hands again. Yep. Nope. No more mission for him.

"I'ma need a med evac at the library. Stat," he says into his comm, before switching himself to mute. He hears Sam give an affirmative, then firmly tunes them out. "Steve, look at me."

Steve does. Well. He looks at Bucky's chin, which is close enough. Steve never did like looking at him in the eyes. That, at least, was normal.

"Can you take my hands?"

Bucky reaches out and Steve tentatively takes them. Bucky smiles at him and starts to squeeze. Steve always liked the squeezes.

"Feel that?" Steve nods. "Good. Focus on that. We're gonna get out of here in a moment, but for now, just feel your skin on mine. Focus on right here, right now. Just our skin, okay?"

"Just our skin," Steve echoes, and Bucky offers him a smile and another squeeze.

It takes longer than Bucky would prefer for evac to show up and by the time he gets Steve on the jet, he's looking a little clearer, if not pretty shaken. It's going to take Bucky a while to help him come down completely, but he's definitely going to have some words with the team later. How the hell had they missed this? How the hell had they missed so much with Steve?

Steve stares out the window, hands pressed between his knees. He's still shaking, and his complacency with leaving the mission is concerning, but Bucky doesn't mind rolling with the punches as they come.

Eventually, Steve reaches out for him and Bucky holds him close. At least he's here now. At least Steve has someone to see him again. He deserves that, at the very least.

i saw somewhere once a post that said "if tony stark was still alive he'd love making fun of john walker in steve's honor" and yeah i absolutely think that is true. and tony would be the most upset out of everyone, actually

if you were to zoom inside my brain Inside Out style you'd just hear "Peter Parker here to pick up a passport please" on a loop

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE