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Steve had never seen himself going to prison. For some reason he'd thought that doing the right thing had been some kind of shield he could throw around to protect himself. It's not even that he'd wanted to avoid consequence so much as that he'd never thought through exactly how far the right thing and the law might stray from each other.

None of that really matters, anyway, because the trial is over and Steve is looking at a minimum of two years in minimum security prison. This is his life for the next two years. It puts college on hold and it may stick with him for the rest of his life and he still doesn't think he did a damn thing wrong, but that doesn't make the prospect of being in prison any less daunting. His sentence would have been worse if the judge hadn't had a soft spot for veterans, too. Steve had hated letting his lawyer play that card, but he hadn't had much of a choice.

He's got muscles, at least. As he's going through the intake process, he notices most of the men are smaller than him and a few of them eye him warily. He says nothing to anyone unless he's supposed to, leaving the chatter to a skinny man with a face tattoo and whoever he can manage to pull answers from.

There's a pile of clothes and sheets and toiletries in his arms and as they're led in, the group is split up among the blocks. Steve is in C block, he's told, and his cell mate will be a man named Barnes. It all means nothing to Steve, but he remembers the details, anyway. Everything looks the same in here and he wonders what kind of criminal he'll be sharing a cell with. Enough of the men in here come from unwinnable situations. It's not something Steve would look down his nose at. His neighborhood wasn't exactly a safe suburban haven, either, and he could have easily fallen in with a bad crowd or made the wrong decision and wound up in their shoes. He doesn't let himself forget that. Most of them are minor drug offenders or small time thieves, maybe a few bigger offenders moved here for years of good behavior.

When he finally gets to his cell, the top bunk is made and there are a few personal items strewn about. Steve puts his pile on the bottom bunk and starts to unfold his bedding. He resists the urge to dig through Barnes' things to learn more about him.

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Steve almost says he'd like to see Bucky try. The problem is that he thinks maybe he would like to see Bucky try. Maybe he'd even let him and that's a dangerous thought, because Bucky's done nothing to imply that he's want that and Steve's not going to risk alienating the closest friend he thinks he's got in here.

"'Cause you watched me knock out two or three guys." He smiles, but he doesn't let the sarcastic answer hang too long. Bucky had told him about his nightmares and Steve hadn't wanted to share his own, but this is something he can share.

"My downstairs neighbors had a lot of domestic disputes. Guy got real good at talking the cops out of his apartment when I called them. Got to the point where he convinced them my calls were me using the police to harass him." He sighs. Even thinking about it makes him so angry. "So one night they were screaming at each other again and I heard a crash and I just had enough, so I went downstairs and busted their door in and he--"

Steve has to stop for a moment. Christ, he can still see it all so vividly like it was just this morning.

"He had his hands around her neck. You know... once an abuser chokes their victim, statistically they're a lot more likely to wind up killing them. I just saw red and I knew I had to save her. I guess I hit him harder than I realized, because now he's in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The kicker is that she testified against me at my trial and the calls to the police were used against me, too. They managed to spin this whole narrative about me being obsessed with her."

If there's a little laugh at the end like it's the most ridiculous thing in the world, it's only because it is. He doesn't even like women.

"Jesus Christ," is all he can manage, eyebrows up and lips parted. On the one hand, yeah, Barnes can see about fifteen ways Steve could've handled the situation better — audio records of the abuse, for starters. On the other hand, though, he can't say he wouldn't maybe have done the same exact thing in Steve's shoes, and...

Christ, he's in a wheelchair for life.

Well, if anybody on the planet deserves it...

But it's not his place to absolve or condemn Steve's actions, and he's sure his opinion on the matter in either direction is unwanted. He keeps the rest of his insightful commentary to himself, and can only shake his head as he processes it.

Wow.

"And now you get to do the same damn thing on the inside," Beating up Alex's goons to defend Bucky's honor. How about that. Dark as it is, he sounds more than a little amused. "They're just gonna put you in progressively smaller boxes."

"If I have to let people get hurt to earn my freedom, it ain't worth having." It's as simple as that to Steve. Not everything is black and white to him, but this sure as hell is. When he sees a right and a wrong path, there's no choice to be made. He does the right thing.

He could no more walk away from Bucky surrounded by those guys than anyone else who was about to be hurt by someone else. The fact that Bucky has been nothing but kind to him and that they live in a cell together just makes it all the more personal.

"So what's a guy like you doing in here, Bucky?"

Reaching across the little cell, he grabs the little pillow off the bed so he can prop it under his back. He slouches down against the wall, getting as comfortable as he can be because at least they can talk if he sits down here.

"Second-degree kidnapping," He sighs, like he's quoting scripture. The official title for what he did simplified to three ominous-sounding words, like he's some kind of fucking monster or something. "Would've been first degree since she was under eighteen, but my lawyer got it talked down."

The difference between twenty to life and one to eight years. He still sends the guy Christmas cards - as though his legal fees weren't enough in and of themselves.

"My sister Rebecca's a lot younger than me. She lived with our father and his new girlfriend, it... Wasn't a great place for her. For any of us, but I shipped out before the drinking got too bad." He shouldn't have left her there alone. She was just old enough to be of sound mind, but not old enough in the eyes of the law. Should've had her file for independence, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. "Things got bad for her one night, and she called me. I was still pretty messed up after my discharge. Wasn't thinking about the consequences, I just... picked her up and we took off. He called the cops. Taking a minor across state lines... Would've been an automatic felony."

His father pressed charges. Rebecca moved back in with him for another eight months, and moved back out the day she turned eighteen. No job, no money, no way to support herself. Working for Alex in exchange for sending her enough cash to get by seemed like the right move those first few months. And there it is, his story, stupid as it may be.

Steve is quiet for a minute. They really are two peas in a pod, aren't they?

"Bucky..." His voice is soft and maybe this place wants them to be hardened around the edges, but Steve can't help the empathy and he can't help being soft after that. He never had any siblings, but he thinks he would have done the same in Bucky's shoes.

Part of him wants to ask about Bucky's sister. He wants to know if she's doing okay, but if she isn't, the question will hurt Bucky and Steve doesn't have it in him to do that right now, not when they're both stuck in these shoeboxes feeling raw and exposed to each other.

It's a good thing they'll both have some time to build their armors back up. They'll need it with Alex out there sniffing for weaknesses. Bullies never change. Steve knows what to expect from him.

"You might have to teach me one of those word games." His voice is thick, but he knows they probably both need a change in the topic before it gets worse. Any more personal and they might pull down some walls they can't replace so easily.

Again, there are thousands of better and more appropriate ways to have handled things. Filing for custody, calling the cops, calling CPS, any official channel, but the thing is... He knew they wouldn't grant him custody of her. They'd dredge up the PTSD diagnoses, the fact that he lived in a one bedroom apartment, his income too inadequate to cover two people. Up and snatching up his sister in the middle of the school year and driving to the other side of the country was a terrible, stupid, impulsive decision.

And here he is.

They couldn't have just waited out eight more months?

He barks out an unexpected chuckle at the sudden shift in topic, murmurs, "Appreciate that, by the way."

And follows up with a joke of his own, "I spy something white."

It's the fucking walls.

Steve's problem-solving style is very simple and direct. The idea of figuring out the legal way to do something when he could just do it doesn't even occur to him most of the time and even if it does, he'll find a way to talk himself out of it. It's just how he operates. Direct and to the point.

"A different game, asshole." But he's smiling now despite it all. He's found some sort of kindred spirit in here in Bucky and that's more than worth the trouble. Even outside of prison, Steve just doesn't meet many people he feels like that about. Maybe they've made some mistakes, but they've made them for pretty similar reasons.

He shifts, moving to lie on the ground with his head by the grate, but he yawns before he can manage to speak again.

"What about 20 questions?"

Somehow, he takes being called an asshole as a personal victory, and it gets him grinning like a god damn idiot despite himself. With the expression on his face comes a sort of mirth in his chest, a lightness that coasts over the open wounds like a balm. The cracked and corrugated places within his chest feel filled up as though with helium, and god help him if SHU hasn't made him feel better than he has in months.

Oh, fuck.

He's got it.

Feelings, or at least the stirrings of them. Christ almighty, this is prison, Barnes, not a college dorm. It's got to be a proximity thing, got to be that Steve's good looking and relatively new in a place with the same old faces.

...but if they met on the street and had coffee, arguably he wouldn't kick Steve out of bed for eating crackers.

The yawn is contagious, and in an unconscious mirror, he snatches the pillow from his cot. Settles down with his scalp next to the grate, sprawled on the floor like it's a duvet instead of concrete. He doesn't mind, he's slept on the ground for years.

"Pass, I hate that game." He says dismissively, a little closer than before, eight or so inches off from Steve's ear. "Spend a few years abroad, a few years in prison, you don't even know who's a celebrity anymore. Two truths and a lie?

"No way. I'm a terrible liar. I always lose that game."

Steve can't remember the last time he smiled this much. He can't help it. Bucky makes him feel a little lighter, like maybe things like hope can survive even in a place like this. There are monsters everywhere, but there are good men, too. There's Bucky with his carefully-guarded kindness and his wicked humor refusing to let this place break him.

He's used to being part of a team, but he's also used to feeling lonely in a crowd. People like Steve, but they don't get close to him. Maybe he doesn't let them. Maybe he's scared of losing more people. He doesn't really know.

What he does know is that Bucky terrifies him a little, but he also sends a thrill up Steve's spine. Steve thinks he might be worth clamping down on those instincts to push people away and soldier on. Even if they just soldier on together, that could be okay. Maybe letting Bucky in wouldn't be so bad. They're already halfway there, anyway.

"Fallin' asleep on me, soldier?" His own voice is practically dripping with sleep as he shifts around to get comfortable on the concrete. Sure, there's a cot, but he can hear Bucky better from here.

"Me? Never," He answers flatly, dryly, but he does in fact allow his eyes to close. It's not so bad, really, with someone in speaking distance. Granted he'll probably go stir-crazy by day three regardless, but having someone to drag him out of his own head cuts the pain of SHU in half.

Cuts it to a third with it being Steve, probably.

"How 'bout you just tell me about where you're from," He suggests instead, too lazy to search through his mind's collection of group counseling icebreaker games.

"Brooklyn? You don't want to hear about Brooklyn." His voice is equal parts amused and tired. It's been a hell of a day. He's just glad that Bucky's still in one piece. They both are and they're in this together. Maybe the cells might drive them a little crazy, but they're safe in here. Steve's not really worried about his own safety, though. He's a lot more focused on Bucky's and how he's going to keep Bucky safe going forward.

Maybe it's a little forward to start thinking like he's Bucky security detail without bothering to see what Bucky wants, but Steve's got a one-track mind and he doesn't ask permission to keep people safe. Clearly he doesn't or he wouldn't be in prison, but it's not something he's looking to change about himself.

There's an incredulous silence from the other cell, followed by a scuffling, and then a disbelieving laugh.

"Are you shitting me?" He scoffs, head rolling on concrete toward the vent like he can stare it into submission. "All this god damn time you've been my bunkie and you didn't bother mentioning you were from god damn Brooklyn?"

Maybe it's that his accent's been schooled out to something neutral, or maybe it's the tendency to keep conversations about what's happening on the inside rather than the painful reminders of the outside. Pasts that got them there in the first place, futures that may never be, the uncertainty of the world. Somehow, someway, it's never come up. "I'm from Red Hook."

And that settles it.

He's a goner.

Steve's light little chuckle echoes through the vent like he's shifted just a little closer to it. Neither of them have really talked much about themselves. They've talked a little about serving in the military, but that's different. They haven't talked much about who they are, before and after the military. It seems to be pretty common in here. Who wants to talk about everything they miss or the circumstances that got them stuck in here, right?

"It never came up, but for what it's worth, I'm from Red Hook, too."

He can't help the sleepy smile he throws at the grate.

"Now I'm definitely not going to tell you about it."

Another tired laugh follows it, delirious and just as disbelieving as the first. Jesus Christ, if he didn't know any better — but he does, and this is prison, and he really needs to not let a night in solitary confinement go to his head. He feels ridiculous, light, floating. Feels like he's connected by a little red string that burrows through the cement walls to the guy behind him, an elated notion he tries to pass off on the byproduct of fighting on the same side of something.

Finding a friend in a place like this can feel ten times more profound than it actually is.

If they were on the outside who knows if they'd even look at each other twice? Who knows if they'd get along at all.

Who the hell is Bucky trying to kid?

He can't even school out the note of something (fondness? friendliness? amusement?) from his voice when he finally says, "Go to bed, Rogers, you're killin' me here."

Six more days to go.

For how friendly Steve is, he really doesn't have a lot of close friends. He has a lot of loose friendships, a lot of people who he likes and who like him, but he doesn't open up easily. Not a lot of people really know anything beyond the kind smile that he doesn't really pull out in here.

It's odd for him to want to be closer to Bucky, but he feels himself falling easily into an orbit, anyway. Bucky seems to understand him and he lets Steve see him, too. He thinks it goes beyond the fact that they're both vets to something fundamental that Steve can't quite name. It's not just that they're both from Brooklyn, either, though maybe that's part of how they've managed to understand each other so easily.

He drifts off wondering if he can really hear Bucky's breathing or if he isn't just going crazy.

The days in solitary pass slowly, but aside from the food it isn't a terrible experience. A change of scenery would be nice, but they manage to ping pong games back and forth through the connecting vent between their rooms to stave off the worst of the boredom. He learns more about Steve in the five days he doesn't see Steve's face than he's managed to learn in the few weeks he's been here already. They hash out their apartments growing up, they touch on music, food, would you rather. At one point he almost pisses himself laughing, which he figures is a first for SHU (insanity aside).

It's fine. Good, actually.

They let Steve out about an hour before they do Barnes, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't fret over whether or not Alex had him jumped again the second they were clear. Word travels, though, apparently, and not only do their attackers give them a wide birth but they earn a few terrified looks from some other unsavory characters as well. Alex has done probably the opposite of what he ever intended, and the sour look on his face is a clear indicator.

When he does finally get to scope Steve out from across the lunch room, he feels something abruptly lurch in his chest, a sharp hook, a pang, an ache. Something's shifted since this whole thing went down, something major, something uncomfortably intense that has him reeling back and struggling to contain it before he makes a god damn fool of himself. He hopes, seriously hopes, that after a few days out of solitary it'll pass. Hopes he can chalk it up to having no other form of contact for so long, for feeling fond about having someone back him up, hopes he doesn't have to be one of those sad god damn tragedies that people laugh at in the halls.

Poor Eric had it bad for Jesse, dumb son of a bitch thought they'd work out, except Jesse got out a year before Eric and stopped visiting after two months. Eric doesn't talk about it anymore.

Poor Anibal wanted to fuck T so bad T ended up beating his ass in the shower.

Poor Oz, poor Rick, poor Jaime. This is prison.

He's not gonna be that, he knows better than that, and he's determined to get a handle on himself — so when he fills his tray and searches for a seat, he heads deliberately in the opposite direction of Steve.

Steve is let out before Bucky and he isn't sure if that means Bucky will be out soon, too, or if it means he's leaving Bucky alone to suffer. Being able to talk really had helped a lot. Steve tends to suffer silently, but being left alone with nothing but his thoughts for days at a time isn't exactly his idea of a good time, anyway.

He notices the looks he's getting and he doesn't like it, but he goes along with whatever seems to be seen in him now. If people are afraid of him, he won't abuse that, but he'll be happy to take the space it provides him. There are plenty of people here who he really wouldn't mind being left alone by. Besides, maybe that will help keep Bucky safe for a while, too.

In the cafeteria, he gets a seat with Wilson and a few of the others and they joke about his time in SHU and for a moment he almost forgets to worry about Bucky. Then he looks up and Bucky is there across the room.

Steve can't even help the little smile on his face. He can't remember the last time he'd felt close to someone like that. He knows he's being an idiot. Bucky is attractive and funny and sharp and so very much Steve's type, but Steve knows Bucky probably wouldn't even speak to him outside of prison, let alone be interested in him. Yet Steve already knows that if he was given half a chance just to hook up with Bucky, he'd give the guy service with a smile.

He is so fucked.

After a few minutes, he realizes Bucky's taking an oddly long time to get food, but when he looks around (oblivious to what Sam's telling him), he spots Bucky eating at another table. It seems a little odd for him not to sit with them, but then Steve hasn't been here that long and he doesn't want to ask Sam and draw attention to it in case something is going on, so he holds his tongue and nods along to Sam's story. Any other day and he knows he would have been listening like it was the greatest story in the world, but now he just needs to find a moment alone with Bucky.

Did something happen while they were separated? Did someone threaten him?

The rest of the afternoon, he can't seem to pin Bucky down. He catches sight a few times, but between the other guys pulling his attention, he can't seem to catch up until he makes it back to their cell for lights out.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me." Subtlety has never been Steve's thing.

Sam, by now, is more or less familiar with Bucky's habits. It's out of character enough that even he's got an eyebrow arched, but Bucky's prone to the occasional bout of moodiness and it's easy to chalk this up to that. Especially considering he's just gotten out of solitary confinement, and Sam doesn't know that his time spent there was anything less than a chore.

He spends the rest of the day dodging in odd places; back of the library, smoking side of the yard, anywhere Steve isn't just to force some space between them for a while. Obviously that can't last, not when they share a cell, but any time he can get to put some distance and perspective into this he gladly takes.

He's almost expecting it to go unnoticed, too, but Steve is Steve and he wastes no time with the commentary. He's already on the top bunk by the time Steve arrives, book in hand and glancing over the top of it. God, you attractive son of a bitch.

"Good thing you know better," Barnes comments, a touch wryly because it's easier to play it off that way.

"Yeah." Steve can't quite manage to keep the disappointment from his voice. He's not a good liar and frankly, he doesn't want to be one. "Good thing."

He sits heavily on his own bed and his weight shakes the bunk above him a little. It can't be helped on these rickety beds, but it's not like Steve tries to prevent it, either. For such a large guy, he's usually pretty in control of his weight and it usually doesn't shake Bucky's bunk quite so much.

Really, Steve doesn't know what to think. He's not even sure what he expected. He reaches for his own book, opening it in his lap and staring at the page without reading it.

He'd thought--

He's an idiot. It doesn't matter what he'd thought. Obviously whatever had happened between them through that grate had been a lot more to Steve than it had been to Bucky. Maybe Bucky had just latched on to stay sane, but Steve had felt connected to him in a way that had felt like more than just some momentary consequence of circumstance.

Leaning against the wall, he tips his head back and looks up at the springs under Bucky's mattress. They'd been just as close before, but somehow the mattress feels like a hell of a lot more of a distance than a cement wall had just 24 hours ago.

Fuck.

He catches it. The disappointment that laces Steve's tone is almost as bad as the look on his face, and it shoots straight to Bucky's core in a heartbeat. He's an asshole for doing this, he knows it. An asshole for making Steve feel like that, he's being a bad friend, he knows it. He grits his teeth when Steve's mass jostles the entire damn bed frame, glaring up at the ceiling wordlessly like somehow it's personally to blame.

What's worse, though? That's what he's gotta decide. Is it worse to leave Steve feeling like he did nothing wrong but for whatever reason Bucky's decided they can't be BFFs anymore?

Or is it worse to keep it up, ride out the intensity, let himself go lax, start flirting, make a pass, get shot down two, three times before he ultimately lays it out there flat. Look like an idiot. Put Steve in the awkward position where he's gotta let Bucky down gentle - because he would, wouldn't he? he'd be real kind about it - and then leave Steve feeling awkward in his own god damn bed knowing the guy above him wants to sleep with him.

Living with that every night.
Maybe wondering if he's gotta start looking out for himself in case Bucky-
This is prison. It's not a hard conclusion to jump to.

Maybe just in Bucky's mind. Spiraling out, going too deep. Thinking too hard, too dark, too much.

The first option's the lesser of two evils, and so he keeps his damn mouth shut. The lights go out. He rolls on his side, and the night passes in awkward sleepless silence.

And he intends on doing it again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next week, until whenever the feeling passes and he can be around Steve without his heart doing cartwheels.

Eventually, Steve gives up on pretending to read. He closes the beat up paperback and bends to drop it gently on the cold cement floor next to the bed before shifting around to slip under his scratchy grey blanket.

When he moves, it's slow and careful. For all that he was throwing his weight around earlier, now he's moving with almost impossible care not to disturb the top bunk. He tells himself he's just being polite because Bucky hasn't moved in a while, but if he's honest it's more about not wanting to hear what else Bucky might have to say, but that's silly, because clearly Bucky doesn't want to say anything.

The thing is that Steve's not sure what to expect. If he was still in the army, he'd just press the issue until he could figure it out, but this isn't the army. They're in prison and Steve really doesn't know what Bucky's capable of, much as he'd started to think they understood each other.

Even with this, Steve doesn't regret standing up against those thugs. He'd do it all over again, because he's not about to let some rich bully come in and push anyone around, even if they're a fickle jackass.

An attractive fickle jackass.

Steve sighs loudly.

It's going to be a long night.

It's an incredibly long night. Bucky's out in the morning before Steve even wakes up, and just like the day before he's virtually impossible to pin down until it's time for light's out. He pretends to be asleep long before he actually sleeps, and it's through this method that he manages to dodge Steve for the next three days.

All the way up until they're put on shower duty together. It's a rotational, randomly assigned chore. Not exactly a difficult one, but time consuming as hell. Scrubbing them down, cleaning toilets, replacing safety liners on the shower hooks. It's three or four hours of being in the same room at the same time, no dodging, no excuses, just the painfully awkward silence Bucky can feel creeping up his spine within the first five god damn minutes.

He does his best to ignore it, but even from his hands and knees with a scrub brush in his palm he's keenly aware of every damn shift Steve makes in the stall next to his.

Steve isn't the giving up type, even when common sense might dictate otherwise, so while he doesn't go hunting Bucky down every day, he's still watching him, still looking for opportunities to get answers, but Bucky's really not giving him any.

By the time they're given shower duty together, Steve has dealt with three days of his cellmate stonewalling him and he's at a loss as to how he can fix it. It's almost 45 minutes of scrubbing before he sighs in the stall and falls back into a seated position, glancing at the partition between them.

"So are you ever planning to tell me what I did?"

It's just the two of them in here. At this point, what does he have to lose? It's the most awake and together they've been in days.

The question floods him with an immediate discomfort, a swelling guilt in his chest and his throat. The sound of his brush rustling across the tile stops, and the room goes a bit silent for a couple seconds.

And then he sighs low and quiet, and answers with a monotone sounding, "You didn't do anything."

Resumes scrubbing, rhythmic back and forth, not holding his breath that it'll be the end of that conversation. It feels like such a god damn cop out though, it feels like a whole lot of nothing, that even Bucky's frustrated with his own god damn answer. He pauses for another second to add, "It's just me. I have... stuff."

Going on.

Stuff, Lori.
Thangs.

That's... well, it's certainly an answer. Or rather it's some words masquerading as one and Steve's gut reaction is to immediately call bullshit, except--

"Bucky, did someone threaten you? Did they threaten your sister?" That's it, right? The explanation for what could get a man to go from hot to cold like a switch was flipped. What's Bucky's top priority? What could understandably trump anything else?

The problem is that Steve can't sit back and let Bucky face trouble like that by himself, so if he's facing it, Steve is facing it with him. There's a whole narrative building in his head, because Steve can't quite outgrow those principals no matter how much the world slaps him in the mouth for having them.

(TW: choking, abuse)

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