meadowlarklogs | august catch-all

[ He is walking down a long and crowded hallway. That hallway is concrete and steel on one end, it's drywall and hardwood on the other. The people in the crowd don't have faces, at least none that matter. None that mean anything. They have noses and mouths and eyes, but they're blurry and indistinct. They're irrelevant, and motion carries them by.

Except one turns to look at him as it passes, and it says желание. It makes his feet grind to a halt, a bolt of quick shock driving through him, but the person didn't even break stride as they said it. They just keep walking, disappearing into nowhere. He cranes his neck to see them, to try and track them, but they're gone.

Someone on his left peers over as they pass and says, ржавый. He whirls in their direction, but they're too fast. He only gets a glimpse of jawline and shoulder, and then they integrate back into the stream.

And another to his right, семнадцать. Not even enough time to glance before the next word is layered over it, picking up before the last syllable dies. рассвет. ]

Stop.

[ But his mouth isn't moving and his knees are locked up.

печь.

A hand shoots out to snatch at the source of the voice, but when he reels them in it's a familiar face. A terrified woman, he's seen her before. He knows her. She's crying, she grips at his wrist, he lets her go as though she's burning him. ]

Why are you doing this?

[ His legs start moving, but he's not piloting them. They're carrying him down that long hallway toward old wood, and he's watching behind his own eyes. ]

Doing what?

[ At the end of the hall is an open doorway to a small apartment. Clean but old, the wood scuffed and one leg of the kitchen table propped up by a folded stack of newspaper.

He's standing there, one forearm propped against the doorway. A yellow light casts from behind him.

(he's out of his own/old body, hovering like an invisible eye, watching a movie he doesn't remember sitting down for) ]

[ He doesn't know who's saying it anymore; the voices are coming from behind him. Left shoulder, right shoulder, both. Sourceless or stereo.

добросердечный, возвращение, на, родину один, грузовой вагон.

When he exhales he can see his breath fogging in front of him, puffing out like smoke, warmth cutting through the cold he knows distantly that he feels in his lips and in his fingertips and in his toes.

Steve stands in the doorway of a warm looking, inviting home. Behind Bucky's back, the hallway is a room and the room has a chair, and the windows have bars and there's a drain in the center. Two different worlds, merged at a door frame.

His legs are moving but they're not his legs. ]

я хочу пойти домой

[ It's rasped out right before he gets metal fingers around a slender throat.

He is above it and he is within it, but he can't stop it and he knows he can't. It tears at his chest, claws at his ribs, chokes him with the force of want to make this stop, but it won't. It doesn't.

To make matters worse, it isn't even the asset doing it. There's no cold blank expression, he isn't buried under layers of sand trying to dig his way out. It's just him. It's just him, himself. His own mind and his own hands. ]

[ There's only flicker of confusion. The smaller figure remains standing in the doorway, watching you approach, an eyebrow starting to raise and his mouth curving up at one side like he's got something funny to say,

like he's got nothing to be afraid of

eyes go wide as a metal vice wraps around his windpipe, confusion bleeding into shock, betrayal, and finally, finally fear.

Legs kick and fingers struggle for purchase, sliding first across metal before tearing frantically at the front of his shirt, his face already turning red from the exertion and sudden loss of air.

His mouth opens and closes like a dying fish, the sounds that come out strangled and unintelligible. ]

Мне жаль—

[ He can't communicate the way he wants to, the way he needs to. The words are coming out but they're coming out in the wrong language and they're so quiet he can barely hear them himself. ]

Мне жаль, Мне жаль, Мне жаль—

[ Every single one of those expressions is so clear. The warm welcome, the lack of understanding. The hurt, the betrayal, the fear. The goddamn fear.

It's so vivid. Maybe because he has too many memories of choking the life out of someone, maybe because he's done it to Steve so many times, his mind summons it up with ease. It feels so goddamn real, and there's something trying to break out of his chest but it's just him. It's just himself clawing to get out.

A voice in his head that sounds like him says, you were supposed to look out for him.

Steve's back hits the flat of the doorframe, lifted off of his feet to eye level.

You're gonna kill him. There are dog tags around his neck and both hands are flesh and bone, both of them pressing on Steve's windpipe as hard as his grip can manage.

Standing in the row of lab coats is a single woman dressed like a nurse, with pretty lips and no discernable features above them. She says don't worry, sweetheart, you're not gonna remember anyway.

It's time to come home.

And then he's behind his eyes again, he's up close enough to see iris, to watch the life start to fade out.

He doesn't stop.

Some absurd feeling, some dream-logic bullshit, something very utterly surreal begins to plead, just go, just die already so I can stop, please just go-- and he'd never think that in a million years, but it's there right now anyway. ]

[ His plea is granted with a sudden, violent snap of bone, wide gone eyes glazing over in an instant and struggling over. His mouth hangs open, soundless, expression vacant as his head lolls to one side like a broken doll.

This isn't real, he hears himself think clearly, aware all at once--

He's in bed, pulling at a tangle of bedding as he jolts up and awake. ]

Oh, god.

[ That's it, that's all he can think or feel or say. Shocked into absolute disbelief, denial, sudden stillness.

Broken neck. Not even a word. Lips parted. Staring at nothing.

Oh, god.

He doesn't get the chance to finish the thought he feels heavier like this. A sudden jostling of the mattress beneath him rips him from sleep into consciousness, disoriented and breathing too quickly.

He's sweated through his sleeveless shirt. It's in his hair, oil at the root, matting strands together. He's all the way up on one elbow before he registers what happened, what woke him up.

The fact that Steve woke up simultaneously, and how there's no such thing as coincidence here. Not when it comes to sleep.

His elbow drops. He falls heavily back down onto the pillow, and scrubs at his face with one hand. Blocking the ceiling out (blocking the figure in his peripheral vision out) for a second with the pads of his fingers pressing into his eyelids.

Trying to figure out the right way to say I'm sorry I woke you up at three in the morning by dreaming about snapping your neck. Give him a second, his heart's still going way too fast and shame is curling low in his gut. Everything that just happened is still washing through him.

Cracked and raspy with sleep, into the heel of his hand: ]

I'm sorry.

[ It's lame, and that's as far as he gets, but it's a stopgap until he can think clearly. ]

[ There's a split second where his adrenaline spikes at the sudden movement next to him, every muscle in his body prepared instinctively for a fight (a flash of metal, fingers wrapped tight around his throat-- a flash of guilt) before his head grips the reins, chin dropping to his chest as he remains curled forward while Bucky falls back.

Christ.

He swallows. ]

It's okay. [ His voice is low and clear and quick in response to I'm sorry, trying to dismiss it. He shakes his head with a grimace, brow furrowing with a glance at him, or as much as he can see with a hand over half his face. ] You're fine.

[ We're good.

The hand closest to him reaches over to the center of his chest, fingertips touching down first, palm lightly resting against the fabric there. The message carries without the empathy bond.

It's fine.

Just startled him. ]

[ With his fingers pressed against his eyes, he doesn't see it. Doesn't expect it. He doesn't startle in the physical sense, no sharp flinching. It's just surprising, and he has to peel his hand away from his face to figure out what the pressure is.

Probably should have been obvious. It sends something through him he's not sure he deserves right now, a rippling kind of comfort without any need for magic pushing it through.

Beneath Steve's palm, his heart's pounding too hard and too fast. The rise and fall of his chest is controlled to a perfectly to the second, a conscious endeavor.

You're fine. Like this is about him, like it wasn't Steve who just got to experience getting his neck snapped firsthand.

He moves to sit up, slow and faltering, pressing up through his elbows. For a few seconds, all he can really think to do is shake his head.

Shouldn't be fine. ]

I didn't--

[ He starts, then stops again. That part at the end, he wouldn't have even thought it. Maybe Steve doesn't know that last throw-away line of thought before the crack. Distantly, logically, he knows that either way Steve wouldn't hold it against him.

He knows that.

He just.

Isn't so much okay with that, himself. ]

[ Truthfully, he's okay. Will be, once his own chest stops pounding, same as the other times. Had these dreams before. After the helicarrier, waking up in the hospital. A metal hand around his throat, no recognition-- not usually, except in those last seconds before he'd wake up, soaked in sweat like Bucky is now.

Pats his chest just before his arm falls back as Bucky lifts himself up. Folds it back into his lap, chin dipped to his chest and expression tight.

(who's to say it wasn't his own dream they were sharing?)

A beat, and when Bucky doesn't continue: ]

I know.

[ All those parts you're not saying, that you don't need to.

They don't have to talk about it unless you want to. ]

[ His legs swing over the side of the bed so he can plant his feet on the floor. He doesn't make it much farther than that, though, because... well, realistically, where in the hell is he gonna go? It's the middle of the night and this is his bedroom.

He just needs a minute. Drags his hand over his hair like it's gonna do anything to hide the disarray. His chin dips toward his chest as he does it.

Considering.

It's not that he wants to talk about it. He doesn't, he's not gonna put Steve through that sad pitiful rehashing of blamelessness.

But he should probably warn him at least. Admit the reality of the situation and not pretend like it'll go away on its own. ]

It might happen again.

[ He says finally, still passing his palm over the short strands at the back of his head. ]

If it's... proximity causing it. It might happen again.

[ Just so you know. If you want to reconsider their sleeping arrangements of late. Figure something else out. ]

[ He watches his back, a phantom pulse beneath his empty palm, in time with his own, aware of the same thing. Nods slowly with no one to watch.

Another pause, offering back, softly: ]

I can take the couch again.

[ The mattress is better on his back the way it was bothering him after the transformation but it's not like the couch'll kill him, temporary as it's meant to be. They kinda haven't gotten back on top of ordering that spare mattress and bedframe for his alcove-space, what with the million deaths world-wide and all. Not exactly priority.

Wasn't even invited to bunk with him so much as he just collapsed that first night and kept on after that. So kinda remembering that now, too, with a fair amount of guilt, and something murkier running deep.

Can't exactly say I don't mind about the prospect of more dreams like this one. He'd shrug it off if you asked him to, but this ain't doing you any good either--

(and you're not asking)

He swings his legs over the other side, lifting himself up from the mattress with some physical reluctance. ]

Edited 2020-08-15 06:54 (UTC)

[ He starts shaking his head as soon as Steve offers, hand dropping away from his hair and body twisting around to address him. ]

No, hang on--

[ Raspy, but not without staying power. ]

Take the bed. I'll take the couch.

[ Because of your back, and because it was his damn fault anyway.

Maybe it's stupid, the other alternatives that floated by. An I don't care like sharing a goddamn mattress was worth dealing with the stuff Bucky's mind is capable of summoning up and dumping on him. The ridiculous notion that they're playing Benny Hill with furniture if Steve stays in Bucky's bedroom and Bucky takes the couch.

It'd only be for a while, though. Until he was better.

Not like sharing was ever gonna be a permanent thing, right? Not that he minded. Just the nature of how things... work. Just something nobody really questions. ]

Buck--

[ In a familiar tone. A don't be stupid and I will argue with you over this until I'm blue in the face and you regret this friendship tone.

It's your room. He's not kicking you out of it and that's that.

He rounds his way to the dresser and pulls out a dry sleeveless t-shirt, tossing it toward the bed for Bucky.

Lets out a breath, changing the subject before he can say anything else about it, stepping toward the door. ]

I'm gonna go make some of that mushroom coffee stuff.

[ He's pretty sure there's no actual coffee in it.

Leaves the invitation unspoken, and offering Bucky a moment to himself in either case when he goes to close the door behind him.

For what it's worth, he seems like he's recovered quickly, and it's only when he's out of sight that he rubs at his neck absently. ]

Edited 2020-08-15 15:00 (UTC)

[ It shuts him down as intended. He knows the varying inflections of Buck, and which ones can't be reasoned with. His lips press together in an unhappy line, silent after the announcement, unmoving.

Steve goes. Bucky heads to the bathroom to scrub away evidence. Changes into the shirt Steve threw at him.

Can't put a finger on why the hell it is he's more upset with himself about screwing up Steve's sleeping arrangement than the dream itself. Either way, it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth that doesn't fade when he finally emerges to join Steve in the kitchen area.

He posts up on a stool, expression carefully neutral to hide the parts that would have gone cloudy a few incarnations ago.

Everything going on in his still-rusty mind right now can be summarized as: damn it. ]

Edited 2020-08-15 18:07 (UTC)

august catch-all

→ nightmare tropes

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cw for violence and murder all up in this thread

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