“The CIA wants to send an agent to talk to the Winter Soldier,” Natasha told him. “To corroborate some of what they’re getting from other surviving agents in custody.”

She met Steve’s eyes levelly as he tried not to grind his teeth.

“He’s not,” he started to protest. Bucky’s not a prisoner. If anyone should be arrested… He cut the thought off as well as he could. He was trying to be more positive and he didn’t want to put more tally marks on his therapy homework.

“The perception that he is keeps him safe here,” Natasha reminded him. “You know how limited our options are since agents started talking about him.”

Exhaling, Steve deflated a little. It was true and he did know.

“Without you,” she added. “You influence him just by being present.”

Which made sense, considering the circumstances, but didn’t mean he was happy about it. Bucky was affected by Steve’s absence too. “I’ll let Bucky know,” said Steve.

Bucky and Nat were not safe to leave together. To put it very mildly, her presence confused and agitated him. Apparently, neither of them knew exactly what history they had together, but whatever it was wasn’t good. Since Bucky had come in to the Tower, they had met twice and both times had ended with some level of violence.

“I’ll ask Clint to be there,” she promised.

So far, Bucky had warmed to Clint more than any of the other Avengers. He was really the only option.

Bucky’s reaction to the news was a tired sigh and deepening furrow in his forehead. “Most of what I remember isn’t coherent or detailed, Steve.”

Steve knew that, but it still hurt to hear. “But you know things,” he said. “And you know more when you’re prompted.”

Bucky closed his eyes and leaned his weight into Steve’s side. “Yeah. You remember how I work.”

“You’re not a machine. You’re a real person.”

Chuckling weakly, Bucky pressed his chin against Steve’s shoulder. He said, “Easier if I was.”

Steve shook his head, afraid of how Bucky meant that and even more afraid to ask, and turned to put his arms around him.

Much too soon, there were debriefings, assessments, and arguments. Once or twice, Steve genuinely considered petitioning Asgard for asylum. Some of the attempts to debrief Bucky turned out to be outright interrogations Clint had to put a stop to or have JARVIS call Steve to put a stop to and Bucky’s current reality was still… fragile, particularly when he was tired or stressed, which was often. When he shut down, Steve knew it was exhaustion, confusion and fear, but to an interrogator it too often looked like hostility or resistance.

Steve would send Bucky off with whatever gesture of affection he could accept with an audience and hope he’d come back without retreating into being the asset.

They weren’t missions. This wasn’t HYDRA. Steve meant it when he said Bucky was in charge now, but as long as everything was as precarious as it was, Steve had to protect him.

And however frustrated Bucky was, so far as touching each other went, they didn’t go much past first base.

“Eat this,” Bucky demanded.

Steve looked up from the old reports on his tablet and nearly took a sandwich to the nose. “What?” He pulled back and swiped at a drop of what turned out to be mustard.

“Eat this,” Bucky repeated, even less patiently, standing over him.

“Bu-ghuh!” The moment his mouth was open far enough, Bucky took advantage.

“No excuses now, Rogers. This isn’t the Depression. Take a break and eat your fucking lunch.”

In addition to the mustard, the sandwich was beef and cheese with lettuce and tomato. Steve tried not to choke on it.

“So,” said Bucky, falsely conversational. “I can’t help noticing I’m a lot better at taking what you put in my mouth than you are at taking what I try to put in yours.”

“Not helping,” Steve told him, hoarsely, as soon as he could speak.

Both of Bucky’s eyebrows went up. “We could work on that.”

“How about I finish the sandwich?” was Steve’s weak counter-offer. He fought the urge to squirm under Bucky’s looming shadow.

“That’s a start,” Bucky allowed, and retreated. “I’ll bring you another one. What do you want to drink?”

It took a Steve a few seconds to realize the tablet had gone with him.

“I’m going to touch you,” Bucky announced the next time they were naked together touching themselves. He had already come, no prompting or permission required.

Steve was too close to immediately think to protest (he didn’t want to protest) and Bucky’s hand ran down his chest to rest over Steve’s own hand on his leaking dick. There was no direct contact. Possibility alone was enough to push Steve over the edge and that was it. Bucky was a warm weight relaxed against his side, slightly damp and impossibly perfect.

Okay, thought Steve. He repeated it aloud as soon as his breathing slowed. “Okay. We can do this. That was okay.”

“It’s easier once you get the touching boundary out of the way, I think,” said Bucky, languid and pleased.

Wait. What?

The afterglow of orgasm collided with reality like the words were artillery shredding a parachute. Steve twisted for the bedside wastebasket. Don’t think about it!

Rumlow and the Lockbox and first time he’d touched Bucky like that and how many times had Bucky heard that exact phrase that-

Too late.

Even after Steve assured him that it had been the words and not the touch that set it off, Bucky wouldn’t try again for weeks.

“I’m gonna say stuff like that, sometimes,” said Bucky. “All that stuff the Commander said about horses? Basically verbatim from the user manual the Russians put together. They never let me read the thing, of course, and the book’s gone now, but I heard enough of it I could probably write my own copy.”

Steve shot him a look from across the too-large bed. By now, he was fairly sure Bucky didn’t want to be the asset the way HYDRA had made the asset be, but there were moments he wasn’t sure Bucky remembered that.

“I won’t,” Bucky promised. “I’m not interested in another handler and you know the important stuff. Anyway, they tried. I’m here.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened in Ohio?” Steve asked hesitantly. He remember Bucky coming to him incoherent, shaking, and covered in blood. He knew it had been a close call, but the clean up had been especially thorough and the Avengers hadn’t ever had the complete story. If Bucky had shared more information in any of his interviews, they hadn’t shared the resulting intel with the Avengers.

“No,” said Bucky. “Unless the imagining is keeping you up.”

“The only thing keeping me up is your jabbering, jerk,” Steve told him automatically. “Wait, no. I kinda do want to know, but I mostly want to know how sure you are no one has this manual anymore.”

The sheet rustled as Bucky turned on his side to face away from Steve. “Very,” he said. The word came out dark and hard.

“Good,” said Steve. He ached to reach out, but Bucky’s intentional distance preventing him from even trying.

Steve was going crazy. There was no other explanation. He had lost what was left of his mind.

The thing was, Bucky wouldn’t touch him unless they were sleeping. He wouldn’t even touch Steve while they were going to sleep. Worse, the more tightly wound they both were, the more nightmares they had. Bucky had had more violent episodes in the past week than in the previous six weeks all put together.

Starvation was a good word for it.

Steve felt like scum all over again because if this was how he felt after two and half weeks, Bucky had clearly been the exercising all of the asset’s superhuman restraint not to simply jump him and demand physical intimacy. While Steve often felt raw immediately after therapy, he didn’t usually burst into tears at a gentle touch to his shoulder. Clint had looked almost comically taken-aback and pushed him at Natasha for an embarrassingly long hug.

Nat hadn’t appeared too comfortable either.

Steve had to do something. This wasn’t a situation he could solve with punching. How could he convince Bucky that he really meant it when he said he was ready to let Bucky do what he wanted? What they both wanted?

“Holy shit, Rogers!“ Tony Stark blurted upon seeing him.

“Didn’t JARVIS tell you I was here?“ Steve crouched to pick up the clipboard Tony had dropped when Steve had apparently startled him. “I thought you were expecting me.“

Tony’s frown was incredulous. “I wasn’t. That’s not.” He pulled off the protective glasses he had been wearing and squinted at Steve’s bruised neck and bloodshot eyes. “Have you, oh, looked in the mirror today, Cap?”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, but I swear that has nothing to do with why I’m here.”

“Really,” said Tony. “You think maybe it should? I’d offer you an armor to stand guard or something, but that didn’t turn out great for me and Pep. Then again, your boyfriend clearly is a danger to your physical health, so-”

Interrupting, Steve pulled the set of STRIKE-issue magnetic cuffs out of his shield bag and said, “I was hoping you could either improve these or do something to make them a little less… SHIELDRA?” He didn’t have the energy to worry about whether he should be upset by the label Tony had given Bucky.

The question itself appeared to insult Tony. “Can I? Did you seriously just ask me that? Can I?” He took the cuffs. “Tell me you’re planning to use them for your safety. I don’t want to make it easier for him to beat you up.”

“He’s not beating me up,” Steve insisted tiredly. “He woke me up and I triggered him because I forgot...” when we were, what we were, “...to be careful.”

Tony Stark scoffed. “So, he is beating you up, but it isn’t his fault.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Capsicle.”

He started to rub at his face and immediately thought better of it. “Will you do it? Ideally, I’d like them to be relatively comfortable for several hours.” There was no fighting the rising flush. “Ah, comfortable to lie on, too. Not just to wear.”

Tony’s expression softened. “Yeah. Sure. I can do that.”

It was obvious, as soon as he stepped onto the floor and saw Bucky’s face, that the Winter Soldier had found a way to listen in on his conversations again.

“Buck…”

“I know they aren’t for me,” said Bucky, but he didn’t look like he knew.

“They’re not!”

“But. Are they for the asset?”

“No!” Steve only realized he hadn’t said it loudly enough or that Bucky was lost in a memory, when Bucky continued to talk.

“The girls were cuffed to the beds at night. To help them remember, not to stop them escaping.” He was smiling slightly, but it was wrong. “No one ever-”

“Jesus, Bucky, no. No, I’m not cuffing you to the bed. The cuffs are to use on me.”

Bucky stopped and Steve realized what had been so off before. Bucky hadn’t really been looking at him.

He was looking now.

“We’re not cuffing you to the bed,” he announced, focused and intense. “It’s not safe. I’m not safe. You gotta fight back better next time. You can’t count on confusing me.”

This was not a conversation Steve was interested in having for the umpteenth time. “No one is getting cuffed to the bed,” he said, and immediately knew he was turning pink.

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “Punk?”

Well, that’s done it. “...Unless you’re into that?”

The expression dropped off Bucky’s face. “What,” he said, affectless.

Steve winced and fumbled for the words he needed. “Into me, I mean. In them. For you. So, they are for you, but not to use, except, fuck, I mean, to use on me. I-“

Still without discernible emotion, Bucky said, “I’m always into you, Stevie.” He turned away and walked into the bathroom without giving any more clues to what he was thinking or feeling.

Shit.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said aloud. Bucky would hear him, but he could pretend he hadn’t. “I could have thought this out better. I’m more comfortable with letting you do what you want if I know I can’t do anything you don’t want. That’s all. We don’t have to use them. Hell, Tony hasn’t even had a chance to do anything with them yet.”

The silence was long enough that Steve gave up on a response. There was no sound of Bucky doing anything in the bathroom, though, so Steve kept an ear out while he went about the first task that occurred to him and began to set out ingredients for sandwiches. Hot sandwiches. This wasn’t cooking, just assembling. The sandwich press had to be Steve’s favorite small kitchen appliance. Tony Stark had tried to tell him about maybe a dozen other things it could do, including burgers, bagels and small pizzas, but Steve and Bucky were mostly interested in hot sandwiches.

Lettuce was waste of space for them anyway. There weren’t very many calories in lettuce. If they wanted lettuce, they could put it in a salad and get junk calories from the dressing.

Had he heard a noise? No.

Salad. Half a dozen sandwiches was enough. He could make salad. They had some other vegetables. He could add sliced apples and maybe heat up some strips of steak. In the back of the fridge, they still had a most of a block of weird artisan farmer’s cheese made from raw milk with peppercorns. It was probably one of Tony’s attempts to broaden his horizons. It was fine in small quantities.

Apples. He would slice the apples first and they could eat them even without a whole salad.

“He’s had them twenty-two minutes,” said Bucky said from behind him. His voice was quiet but not so horribly flat now. “He is a genius.”

Steve put down the knife in a smooth motion that almost certainly did nothing to hide the fact that he had almost changed his grip on it. “Okay.”

“I don’t want us to be afraid of each other.”

Bucky had definitely noticed.

“Sorry. Stupid reflexes.” Steve tried to relax his neck and shoulders. It didn’t work so well.

“My friend in DC says it’s hard for people to make well-considered decisions when they’re afraid.”

Someday, Steve was going to find out exactly who Bucky’s friend was and thank him. Some of what Bucky repeated made him want to punch the guy, but that wasn’t an usual desire for Steve, so he couldn’t weigh it too heavily against all the good. Bucky didn’t respond nearly as positively to any professionals he had met in the Tower.

“I’m not afraid of you, Bucky. I’m afraid of me.”

“That’s stupid,” said Bucky. He picked up a sandwich and stalked to the corner of the entertainment area to eat it.