This follows directly after How Bucky Comes Home and deals which a LJ prompt that I will include below. CW for eating disorders, which I hope to have captured at least baseline accurately.

The candy-sweet taste of coconut is heavy in Bucky's mouth when he realises that nobody told him to eat it. He just did. It's not on his meal plan, when he ate meals - mostly it was a cardboard-tasting nutrient paste and he ate it six times a day from a tube because Rumlow said - and he only ate those because Rumlow said and now Rumlow's dead and nobody is ever gonna tell him to eat again.

He goes three days drinking two glasses of water every hour and feels fine, dizzy and diamond hard and fine, so he makes it a week and then Steve, on his fifth bowl of linguine gremolata with shrimp, says, "Gee, Buck, I'm stuffed. You wanna finish me off?"

Natka giggles and waggles her eyebrows and Bucky takes the bowl and does not laugh and eats when he is told.

The shrimp is plump and juicy and firm; the lemon-garlic-parsley tastes just like the gremolata Mr. Giudicelli in their apartment building used to make; the pasta is a little cold, but there's only a few bites left so he finishes it.

He doesn't feel like a diamond anymore, but he cuddles up with Steve and Natka and watches War Games and feels soft and warm and leaden, like an x-ray vest or a dog. He's not a dog, he's a wolf, he's a diamond, he's a fist.

He's going soft.

That night, after what felt like glorious hours of being spread wide on Steve and filling Natka, lover to them both as he once had been, the other two fall asleep and he slips to the floor and does silent push-ups with his flesh and blood arm, feels the vitality of it, the heft of his muscle and fat and skin, and his stomach lurches.

He doesn't eat for another two weeks, and then Natka makes chicken Kiev like she used to, with mustard and rosemary and garlic, and he eats the tiniest breast with sixteen glasses of water and it tiakes him twice as long as everyone else but they don't notice because he tells them all about being married to Natka and she actually blushes twice and that's more satisfying than the Kiev so he doesn't finish it.

He does push-ups for an hour and then curls up between the two of them because he's empty and worthy of touch again.

Phil makes hotcakes and hashbrowns the next day, with eggs and blueberry syrup, and Bucky pulls on a hoodie and goes for a run even though it's 104 degrees out.

When he gets back, they're all bemoaning their full bellies and Sam lightheartedly cusses out Phil for cooking so well and Phil swears that he can only handle breakfast and Clint backs him up, and Bucky slips by without notice.

Bucky slides a finger along the hot griddle on his way through and a tiny spilled drop of cooked batter sticks to a blistering fingertip.

He sucks on his finger to soothe the burn and accidentally swallows it and immediately drops and starts doing push-ups in the bath-shower combo, icewater pummeling his back and sunburnt ears.

They've been busy, relaxing, catching up on TiVo and NetFlix, occasionally taking down a HYDRA base. They're too tired; Natka often falls facefirst into bed in Steve's shirts and Bucky's sweatpants because she gets to take their clothes because they're her boys, and Steve, specimen that he is, sleeps in plaid boxers and tests Bucky's willpower but he's soft, he's gone soft, he's flabby and weak and unworthy of touch - he looked at an overturned pretzel cart, smelled the butter and salt and yeast today, he was disgusting, fantasizing about slathering a puffy twist of dough in mustard and devouring it - so he dresses in sweatpants and a longsleeved shirt and does push-ups for two hours to make up for it.

One night, after the push-ups, he slips out to the kitchen for ice cubes to put in his water and he ends up eating a tub of Clint's homemade lavender-honey ice cream and then all the Peppridge Farm snickerdoodles and then Natka's borscht and then Steve's pasta and then everything, the fridge is empty, he hasn't eaten in a month and suddenly he's stuffed to the gills and he can't keep it in. He's a balloon. Reaching and surpassing maximum capacity, he pops, spilling a loaf of bread and beef and noodles and sour cream and ice cream and crackers and ice water into the garbage disposal.

He whizzes it all down and nobody knows how bad he was, how he betrayed them, how he was weak, and if nobody knows then it didn't happen so he does another hour of push-ups and falls asleep on the couch watching Orange Is The New Black and nursing his throat with ice chips. In the morning, he goes for a run and comes back at noon and he's sweating, he's gasping, he's redfaced like a drunk, but he's empty and clean and diamond-hard and everything is fine.

He's fine.

He's falling, falling, and there's snow beneath him, white and fluffy, and Steve is saying something, but this isn't that train in Europe (Bucky's tired and he can't think, can barely remember Bucky, let alone Steve) because Steve is telling him to wake up and Natka is holding his hand.

The white fluff is a pillow pile. Bucky is in their bed, Steve on his right, Natka on his left, Sam and Phil at the foot of the bed with Clint clattering in the kitchen, nervously making four sauces at once because lasagna is Bucky's favourite.

"Buck..." Steve is whispering like it's a funeral, but Bucky can feel his own excessive weight - too much, not enough, never enough, never going to make up for all he did, never going to be forgiven - dipping the mattress so he knows he's not dead.

"I've seen some vets just stop eating before," Sam says. "Think they're not worth the rations. Fuck that. I've seen what you've done for these people - good people who love you - and you are worthy of eating when you're hungry and not throwing it up after or exercising until you collapse."

"I'm not - "

"The kitchen sink rotted through. Stomach acid ate the copper pipe," Phil says softly. "Clint fixed it, no damage, but we saw the empty fridge."

Natka is squeezing his hand like he's gonna float away but glaring at him like she wants him to leak out all his helium and says, "Tell us what you need, Yasha." Nothing about her brooks dissention; she is an Easter Island statue, immovable, immutable, stubborn stone.

"I did terrible things," Bucky says, after an eternity of silent minutes. He can't look at Steve; he's let Steve down the worst.

"So? We're soldiers, we're spies. We all do terrible things. We do it so those squishy, defenceless normal people don't have to." Natka slaps him, a lot softer than she could have, a lot softer than she has, and says, "Clint is making lasagna. Four cheese, sausage, red sauce, green sauce lasagna. I know my little ptichka, and him cooking like this means he loves you. He made me stroganoff every time I got shot somewhere essential. If that doesn't prove you're worthy, then I'll make a fucking PowerPoint."

"I let you both down," he whispers, knees drawing up to his chest. The dip beneath him levels out when Steve slips in beside him and buries his face in Bucky's hair, crying silently, like it hurts.

"I already lost you once, Buck. I ain't losin' you again. The end of the line is not here."

Phil beats a stealthy retreat, leaving Sam to hover awkwardly by the door. "I'll come and get you all when Clint's finished."

Natka nods, the only one still holding it together; Bucky's face is buried in Steve's chest and he's crying, ugly rough sounds, fat wet tears, because breaking that promise to Steve is even worse than everything else he's ever done combined. "I'm sorry," he blubbers. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean it."

"We forgive you. We will always forgive you. No matter what you confess to, no matter the decisions you make, we will always forgive you. We will always love you."

Bucky sobs.

In half an hour, Clint, red-eyed and stern, thrusts three Super Soldier portions of lasagna at them and says, "I get it. No one's in charge, so you don't have to do anything they told you to do. I took a fuckin' sabatical after New York, no more ops, no more killing. But those aren't essential. Eating? Essential." He turns on his heel and shuffles off and Bucky makes a note to talk to everyone about New York, because Steve still hasn't shelled out everything.

He takes a bite. Homemade noodle, parmesan-mozzarella-ricotta, noodle, kielbasa-spicy Italian-sweet Italian, noodle, spinach-peas-broccoli-heavy cream, noodle, parmesan-parsley-garlic-pepper. Food.

He keeps chewing and chewing and chewing and it's sludge, it's soup, it's nothing but flavoured spit in his mouth and Steve says "Swallow" in his Captain voice and Bucky swallows and there's no guilt.

He's only following orders.

The prompt reads:

Okay so Bucky is now one of them, but he's still not entirely himself. He still can't shake some things such as food. When he was with hydra, he was told when and where and what and how much to eat. Now that no one is telling him, he can't bring himself to eat anything at all.

Even when he's so hungry and exhausted, he either eats scraps (like a tiny portion of stark's leftovers) or eats like plain rice/bread/ration type, and he does it in hiding. And he cries because he feels like he's broken the rules/betrayed SOMEONE.

He wants to eat. But he can't.

I hope this was a good, if not always happy, read, and I hope you all review.