#54321 method

“The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.” John Muir

5 Things You Can See

“You see me?” Steve asks softly.

“Your eyes,” you whisper. It’s harder to get the words out than it should be. Your heart is crashing against your ribs. 

Objectively, there is nothing to fear right now. You are in bed with half your heart holding you loose and warm while the other half clanks productively in the kitchen. 

Tendrils of icy fear creep through your muscles. Your breath is coming faster than you’d like. 

It’s Saturday. No work (unless they get called away), no errands, no appointments, nowhere to be and nothing to actively worry about.

“What else?” Steve asks softly. It’s a nudge, rather than a shove. His senses are scientifically heightened; of course he knows you’re about to spill over into an attack. So Steve does what Steve does best: leads.

“Your lips are...really pink this morning.”

Said lips curl into a smile he reserves for only you and one other person. 

“Must still be blushing from what they did to you last night. What else?”

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Watch the rise and fall of Steve’s chest. He notices your focus and exaggerates his breathing to make it slower and easy to follow.

“Your...muscles...flex...nicely when you do that.”

“Can flex something else for you after breakfast if you want. What else?”

Your stomach clenches as a fresh wave of worry blossoms in your chest, baseless, and you have to fight to follow his lead. Steve links his fingers in yours, leaning down to stay in your line of sight even when your chin dips in shame. His shaggy, too-long bangs hang in front of his eyes, curtains against the sky.

“You...need a haircut.”

He laughs aloud, and his smile shines through his darkened beard. He was blonder when you first met, his hair almost as golden as the sun, but he’s gone nearly full brunette now, and you wonder if spending decades on ice, locked away from the sun, may have somehow changed his hair color irrevocably.

“I like your hair darker.” The words come out a little easier this time, and something in your chest begins to unlock. You grip his hand as the anchor it is and continue to match his breathing.

“Knew you could do it,” he murmurs, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Praise from Cap is nothing to be scoffed at, and you brighten a little. “What’s next?"

…

It was the damn news again. You knew not to watch it, especially in the evening, but you’d been bombarded on all sides today, and when you’d come home, Bucky had been cleaning with the television on in the background for something to chase away the silence. He had a tendency to put on a random channel, not paying attention to what was playing, and he’d forgotten to switch it off before you’d arrived. 

You didn’t notice you were even absorbing headline after headline until you had begun to sweat, felt suddenly cold from head to toe. Bucky took one look at your white face and trembling fingers and had immediately shut the television off amidst numerous apologies.

“You see me, doll?” he asks. He keeps an arm’s distance at first, unsure if touching would help or not. You hold your hand out, swallow hard, and force your eyes up to his. You nod, breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. 

You know this one will be hard; you’ve wanted nothing but to crawl into a blanket cave, buttressed by a couple of super soldiers, and go non-verbal and comatose for the rest of forever.

“Count for me, babe, then we’ll set you up your very own hobbit hole, I promise.”

He startles a cough of laughter out of you, and your lungs unlock suddenly. His grin of relief melts your frozen toes just a little.

“The daisies Steve brought home last night. The diamond pattern on the deck of cards. Steve’s photography magazine. Too many cushions on the couch. Again.”

“Nice try distracting me,” he murmurs, linking his fingers with yours. “You got one more, kid, come on. What else?”

“Spinach between your front teeth,” you manage. The part of you that wants to laugh wars with the piece of your brain still shrilling that everything is wrong, we need to run, something is so, so WRONG…

“What’s next?” he asks softly. He can see the struggle in your expression, feels the tension in your grip, so he keeps his words low and simple.

“My shoes are too tight,” you say, toeing them off. The relief is immediate, the floor balm against your throbbing feet. “Floor is sooo...cold…”

“What else?”

“You’ve been chewing your nails again.”

“Guilty,” he admits. “Last one. You can do this.” 

“You turned the heat on,” you finally manage, letting your breath out slowly. “Thank you.”

He raises his eyebrows, holding his other arm wide, and you are relieved to find you can physically accept his offer. His arms engulf you, one warm and one chilled, and you press your ear to his chest.

“What’s next?” he whispers.

“You,” you murmur, taking in all the sounds of him: heartbeat steady and a little faster than the average person, the calming whir of gears in his arm, the air whooshing in and out of his lungs, his contented hum as you lean into his embrace.

You stand together for what will hopefully be an eternity. He doesn’t prompt you this time, lets you soak in and wind down. Soon enough, you know he’ll take you over to the couch, break out the lotion, and minister to your very sore feet, but not yet.

Gotta get through this part first. Finish what you start, even if you need help doing it. 

Might as well be the household motto.

“Traffic outside,” you say, then you detect a familiar jingling outside the door.

“Steve’s home.”

In under a minute, you’re engulfed in a mass of flannel, cotton, strong limbs, and warmth. God, the two of them are just...furnaces.

“What’s next?” Bucky says, reminding you and alerting Steve. “You’re almost there, doll.”

You inhale deeply against the neck of Bucky’s Henley, then exhale as another fifty pounds of stress drain from your feet into the frigid wooden floorboards. 

“You switched fabric softeners. The other one was better.”

“This one was on sale,” Steve says, suppressing a smile. “What else?” 

“You took a shower before you came home,” you say, turning to Steve. You take in his damp hair as the aroma of deodorant and soap waft around you. “Hard workout?”

He nods, eyes searching your face. His head dips, but he waits for you, never one to cross boundaries. You press your lips to his, a long, soothing kiss that deepens only for a moment, just at the end.

“What’s next?” he asks, his face pink, shining in a way it only does for you and Bucky. 

“You’re still chewing Wrigley’s. Gum is gross, Steve,” you say, but you don’t mind. Double-mint is far from the worst thing Steve could taste like, and, really, it’s pretty refreshing. 

“Ya bring enough for the class, punk?” Bucky says, reaching for the pair of you. You think he’s going for Steve’s shirt pocket where he stashes his pack of gum, but Bucky lifts you from the floor, bridal style, and deposits you on the sofa before going off in search of your favorite lotion.

Steve follows, carefully plucking a few cushions from the sofa and settling on one end. You wriggle, with a little help, until you’re pressed against his side, one of his arms diagonal across your torso. 

“I gotcha,” he says, kissing the crown of your head. “You settled?”

You wriggle a little more, finding the perfect angle to wedge your shoulder under his armpit. Bucky slips silently back into the room and takes his place at the other end of the couch, popping the lotion bottle open with a snap.

“Yeah,” you sigh, tipping your head back against Steve’s chest. “I’m settled.” ...

Steve rarely lets anyone see his need for grounding. He feels it will shake their trust in his leadership skills or some other holding-himself-to-a-higher-standard-than-everyone-else thing that he’s working through with the therapist you and Bucky finally convinced him to see. It’s taken a while for him to finally feel comfortable enough to share his breakdowns, but you still see him struggle with it, still have to soothe his apologies afterwards. 

This is one area you and Bucky take care never to tease him about. Hard enough to get him to open up; god help all three of you if Steve ever got it in his head that he was a burden of any sort. You’d literally never hear of it again.

“You see me?” Bucky asks, his hands on either side of Steve’s face. Steve is sandwiched between the two of you on the couch, his eyes closed tight. He’s locked away in his memory, and Bucky gently bumps Steve’s forehead with his own. “Come back to me, Steve. You see me?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice dragging up from somewhere deep in his gut. His eyes are stormy when they open, dark and wretched, his brow furrowed, and you long to smooth those lines away. “Yeah, Buck, I see your ugly mug.”

Bucky smiles, and the light that shines from his eyes is enough to remove a few wrinkles from Steve’s forehead. Steve goes slowly through his sight list, eyes moving carefully around the room. You flash him a particularly warm smile when he lists your cobalt shirt that you picked specifically to echo Bucky’s old army coat. 

You join them for Steve’s next set, as Steve, too, has a preference for your hair, though he prefers to tangle his fingers in it, rather than bury his face.

“What’s next?” you ask. He closes his eyes, struggling to control his breathing. He leans against Bucky’s chest first, pressing his ear to Bucky’s sternum and holding himself still for a fifteen count. He listens to Bucky’s heartbeat, counting the pace, assuring himself that the rhythm is steady and strong and still going.

“Your heart.”

He turns to you next, eyelashes damp and dark against his cheeks, eyes still closed, and you gently guide his ear to your own chest. His shoulders tremble under your arm as you hold him tightly, your cheek pressed to the crown of his head. Steve breathes in, holds it, breathes out, holds it. 

I’m still here, you think, but you let your heartbeat do the talking for now.

“Your heart.”

The first time he did this, you wondered if he could hear said heart breaking. 

He straightens between the two of you, leaning against the sofa cushions and tilting his head back. He reaches a hand to each of you, tangling his long fingers with yours and Bucky’s as he listens.

Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty this time. 

Steve was in the ice for decades, and you’ve become convinced in your time together that not all of that time frozen was completely unconscious. Steve hates the cold, will wear three layers to bed under a sheet and two blankets. And after sixty-odd years with no pulse, his is always the last beat he listens for.

“My heart,” he murmurs, pulling you both tight against his sides.

“Love you,” you say, your words muffled against his shoulder, but you know he hears them. “What’s next?”

...

For some reason, things you often thought of as triggers for people who have seen combat don’t always affect Bucky. Loud noises will startle him, but they don’t send him spiraling as they used to. Violent movies and television are easily avoidable but not usually triggering.

No, for Bucky, scent is the worst trigger. Conversely, it’s also the step in his routine  that brings him back to the present as little else can.

You’re reaching for your drink orders when your phone buzzes a distinctive pattern, and your stomach drops.

Having already paid, you feel only a little rude when you snatch the drinks and tray from the startled barista and high-tail it out the door. The park sits across the street, and your eyes track across the open field. You spot Steve and Bucky on a bench just across the way, and though you move as quickly as you’re able, they’ve already gone through sight, touch, and sound by the time you reach them. 

Steve reaches out, deftly slipping the coffee from your hands just before you drop the tray as you reach for Bucky. He pulls you down across his lap, burying his face in your hair without a word. He inhales as deep as he’s able, holds his breath for a five count, then lets it out slowly.

You circle his shoulders as best you can, letting him repeat his ritual as many times as he needs. 

You bought this conditioner accidentally once, months ago. You’d meant to grab the bottle next to it, something green and clean smelling, but you’d grabbed apple blossom instead. 

Though you never really cared for smelling like any sort of food or flower, you didn’t want to incur one of Steve’s lectures on being wasteful, so you figured you’d give it a try, and if you hated it, you could always sneak it out of the apartment when he wasn’t paying attention.

But the look on Bucky’s face that first night, his eyes wide and glassy, made you second-guess your decision, Steve’s frugal wrath be damned. You worried you’d triggered him somehow, but he shook his head, pulled you onto his lap (much like now), and inhaled until his lungs couldn’t hold anymore.

“Useta go up to my uncle’s orchard outside of the city a couple of times a year,” he murmured, his lips tickling the sensitive spot just behind your ear. “The smell on the blossoms in the air was always what I thought heaven would smell like.”

He nuzzled his face against your neck, and you’d leaned in, wrapping your arms tightly. Your hair fell around the two of you in a warm curtain.

“Heaven,” he said again, his lungs expanding with another inhale. “You smell like heaven.”

He’d made a show of sniffing you over after that, sending both of you into fits of giggles that had eventually enticed Steve from the living room to see “what the ruckus” was all about. The idea of changing conditioners never again crossed your mind.

“I smell heaven,” Bucky says, pressing his face against the side of your neck. Beside you, Steve pops the lid from your chai tea and apple cider. 

“They get the caramel sauce right this time?” he asks you. “What else, Buck?”

You untangle gently from Bucky’s grasp and slide down to the bench next to him, still pressed against his side. The fall afternoon is growing cooler, and he wraps his arm around you, accepting the cup from Steve. He holds it under his nose, letting the steam drift and curl around his face as your drink perfumes the safe space the three of you have created.

“Fall Drink,” he breathes out, carefully handing the cup over. Even on the final tremors of his anxiety, he still remembers how you feel about first sips. Your smile as you nudge the cup back towards him mirrors the one beginning to curl at the corners of his lips. 

“Thanks, babe,” he murmurs, taking a long drink of the scalding liquid. He closes his eyes, and you can imagine the soothing rush of warmth spreading down his chest. He exhales slowly, and you can’t help but smooth your thumb over the fragile skin beneath his eyes, smudged dark and tired.

Steve watches carefully, his arm circling Bucky’s broad back beneath yours, his free hand resting on Bucky’s knee.

“What’s next, pal?” ...

“The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.” John Muir

4 Things You Can Touch

“Need...help,” Bucky manages. You’re by his side and hitting the speed dial on your phone for Steve in one fluid, practiced motion. 

“You see me?” 

At the sound of your voice, Bucky automatically turns his eyes to yours, and your heart clenches at the fear you see there. You stay the mandatory distance away, just shy of arm's length. 

“Let me come to you,” he told you, back at the beginning. “Wait for me, let me make the choice.” And that’s really the thing for Bucky: making that choice that he was always denied.

He stands before you now, rigid, his pupils blown wide as his eyes flick around the room. He lists his five visuals automatically, mechanically, barely taking a breath. You hold up a hand, both a reminder to pace himself and also an offer to start the next set.

He raises trembling fingers, catching your hand in his flesh one, the gears whirring frantically in his metal arm. You accept his grip but stand your ground. He has to make the moves, has to make the decisions in this situation, in order to find solid ground again. His palm presses against yours, sweaty and a little too cool. Of the three of you, Bucky tends to run the hottest, so for his hand to be this chilled, he’s reading high on the stress meter.

He gently flexes his hold on your hand, twining shaking fingers with your steady ones, switching his grip as he closes his eyes, focusing on the warmth of your skin, the familiar fit of your hand in his.

“It feels right no matter how I hold it,” he told you once, the little curl lifting the corners of his lips.

“What else,” you say, just loud enough for the sound to reach his ears. Calm, soft, steady, that’s what he needs right now. Even the click of the front door as it opens is muffled, Steve closing it with deliberate care as he returns from an abbreviated run.

“Buck, it’s me,” Steve says clearly, his voice low and soothing. He moves into the room with audible, measured steps, taking care to make his presence known in the least jarring way possible. 

Bucky’s head turns in Steve’s direction, jaw tense under his trimmed beard, and he slowly turns his mechanical hand palm-up. Steve moves to him, slides his palm over Bucky’s proffered one until they grip each other’s forearms. 

Steve stops short of embracing him. He rests a warm, solid hand on your lower back. You can see the sadness in his eyes as he watches his oldest love struggle against his inner demons, see the urge in his rigid posture to simply wrap Bucky up and hold him until the attack passes.

“What else?” Steve murmurs. Bucky takes a shuddering breath and leans in. You meet him halfway, and he runs his cheek slowly over your hair, back and forth.

“Silk,” he whispers, and your heart cracks. You press your head up a little, let him know you’ve got him, and Steve flexes his fingers on Bucky’s arm from pinky to thumb, his grip steady and firm on the metal plates.

“What else?”

Bucky nuzzles his face in your hair one last time, then turns to Steve. Their cheeks meet, and you wonder if your heart can physically burst. Bucky’s rigid shoulders fall slack as his face scrubs over Steve’s thick bristles. 

You both give Steve grief about the lumberjack beard he still sports, but the truth is that you and Bucky have come to rely on the scratchy face carpet as much as you do on your other tactile pleasures. There’s something soothing about stroking Steve’s beard, scritching through the hairs, even occasionally nibbling (which Steve finds baffling but doesn’t comment on). 

Bucky presses his face hard against Steve’s, his long brown hair tickling against Steve’s nose. They stand frozen as Bucky holds his breath. You count in your head, waiting for the moment to pass. A five count, then Bucky exhales, long and slow.

“Scrubby.” 

Steve grins, pressing his lips to the corner of Bucky’s jaw. “Kept it extra scrubby this week just for you, pal.”

Bucky turns to place a trembling kiss on your forehead, and you gently bump his nose with yours.

“What’s next, babe?”

...