"Weighted blankets are supposed to be good for panic attacks," Sam says. "So if you ever feel panicked, you can go the quiet room and use one. Or ten." He adds, after giving Bucky another once over.

"What's a panic attack?" He's been practicing, but his voice still comes out creaky. Hydra had made sure his arm never rusted. They didn't care about his voice.

"Hrm," Sam rubs his goatee, "they're when you get really really scared or apprehensive all of the sudden. Some people say they can feel their death impending, or like they're choking. You get kind of dizzy and trembly. It's a little hard to breathe, and your heart beats like crazy. Your heart might actually start really hurting, some people think they're dying." Sam pauses for a moment, still holding onto his goatee. Bucky wonders if he's afraid someone will take it away if he takes his hand off it. It makes sense. "Also a feeling of detachment from your surroundings, like you, ah, you feel like nothing's really real." He says a few more things that Bucky will be able to recite back perfectly if Sam asks him to report, but Bucky stopped listening. He's thinking.

Steve doesn't look up from his pancakes. "Panic attacks are like drowning but never dying." Sam stops looking at Bucky and starts looking at Steve. It gives Bucky a few moments to gather his words again from where they've scattered through his veins at Steve's words.

"Isn't that –" Bucky stops. Finds the words again. "Isn't that just normal?"

This time both Steve and Sam look at him.

"No." Sam says, "That's not normal."

Steve doesn't say anything.

XxX

Steve shows him the quiet room a little abashedly, as though he's not quite sure Bucky will appreciate the offer.

"It's… nice." Steve says simply. "Quiet." Words were never his strongest suit outside a rousing call to arms. "Back uh, back during the war you used to say I looked like Mrs. Finnigan's little chihuahua, the first few weeks when I was still getting used to my hearing out in the field. When I jumped at all the new sounds. Asked if I would piss myself just like that dog too. You'd get Dum Dum to drop things outside my tent all the time. You were a jerk. Are a jerk." He opens his mouth as if to saying something else but then a muscle jumps in his jaw like a fish on a line and he closes it again.

Bucky examines Steve's posture, the way his hands are carefully not fisted but showing signs of tension in the stiffness of the fingers. There are minute stress lines around the corners of his eyes. Bucky casts his memory back. Not to himself. The last time he saw Steve relax. He had looked down and laughed a little when Sam had called him an idiot.

"Idiot," Bucky says. But softly enough that he can say he was just talking to himself if Steve gets angry. He carefully shifts his face so that his jaw will take any blow first. He can always pop a dislocated jaw back in, and it's less likely to break than his teeth or his cheekbone. He's discovered that his teeth don't grow back.

Steve doesn't hit him. He smiles. Bucky tries to file that away. What worked with Pierce doesn't always work here. So he needs to find out the new rules here. It's hard when he keeps on forgetting and remembering different things.

Steve stands a little taller after Bucky calls him an idiot. Bucky decides against doing it again. Sometimes repeating things can change a good response into a bad one. Even though that doesn't seem to make sense. It's like how sometimes floor tiles will be set so that the first time you step it will remain inactive. And then when you relax and step again it blows you up. You have to be careful all the time.

Steve rummages around in the quiet room while Bucky waits. He's not very good at waiting, but he's good at being quiet. Steve pulls out a purple blanket with unicorns on the edges. Bucky can feel an eyebrow raise without consciously making it move. He can taste something bubbling up at the back of his throat. Almost like a cough. He swallows it back down because he doesn't quite recognize it and therefore it can't be risked. It feels a little weird.

"Yeah," Steve laughs a little, rubbing the back of his neck. "Natasha picked them out. She has kind of a weird sense of humor."

Bucky nods because Steve paused and seemed to expect some kind of response. Steve looks heartened by Bucky's nod. He holds out the blankets. Bucky doesn't touch them. He hasn't been given express permission to. He knows this trick.

"These are for you." Steve says, after a few moments of holding the blankets. "If you want them. They've always been for you." He pauses. "I… don't really like weight. Not even normal blankets. It's too much like – " He stops. "I don't like being enclosed."

Bucky takes the blankets, because Steve said they were for him. He examines them carefully in his hand. With the extra weight they could choke a man out a few seconds faster than with normal blankets. He could also throw them over a target and shoot or beat them to death while they struggled to get out. The extra weight would keep them trapped and confused for an extra few seconds. He looks up. "Who is my target?"

Steve's face goes pale and then red and then very carefully blank. "Nobody Buck. This is just for you. To make you feel good."

Bucky doesn't say anything, because what do you say to that? He just walks inside the room, because he knows that's what he's expected to do and it's better than standing there with Steve any longer.

He stares at Steve for a moment. And then slowly, he reaches out and closes the door. Because Steve keeps looking at him like he's expecting Bucky to know what the hell to do and Bucky doesn't want to have to keep looking at that.

It's so quiet now. He didn't even realize how loud it was until it wasn't anymore.

He can't hear anything except his heartbeat, the gurgle of blood in his veins, acid in his stomach. He never realized how loud his body is. It's very… alive. It's strange to think of all the things happening in his body without his control.

Apparently his ears used to hurt, because now, after a minute (or two? Or three? An hour?) of being in silence they don't hurt so much. This is what not being in pain is like? He's not sure he likes it. It feels too much like being drugged.

He ignores the soft looking chair and lies on the floor. He wraps the blankets around himself, over himself so they press him down into the rug. It feels familiar, like the moments before they froze him or the moments before they wiped him. He shouldn't really remember those times, but things have been coming back more and more since he stopped running away from Steve and Sam. He relaxes, closing his eyes. It's like being back in his chair, metal pressing down on his muscles to make sure he couldn't move. Even though he wouldn't have. Not until they told him he could. Knowing that soon he would go to sleep and then later he would wake up and have a new mission.

He knows he's not supposed to miss that. He knows he's not supposed to miss anything, even if only the familiarity. At least there he knew what was going to happen. He still doesn't know what's going to happen here and he's quietly going (even more) insane with it.

But he's not supposed to miss anything, so he doesn't ask Steve to press him against a wall until his bones creak. He closes his eyes and feels the weight press down until he can feel his skin again.

His heart starts slowing down. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know else to do so he counts them. After a while he tries timing them, because Sam said that panic attacks were associated with increased heart rate. His heart feels normal. He counts 150 beats per minute. Is that normal? He can't remember.

His heart keeps getting slower though. It slows down until Bucky almost can't hear it anymore. It's down to 100 beats per minute when Bucky finally gets up, the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, and leaves.

The bright light makes him freeze. Pierce will be upset that he left. He's going to be punished. They're going to –

"Buck?"

Bucky blinks at him.

Right. Pierce is dead. It doesn't matter if he's upset. They can't do anything to him now.

His heart feels normal again. Everything is sharp and normal again, not soft and drugged like it was in the room.

He's not sure he likes the room. He wants to go back anyway.

"Everything okay?" Sam's voice is as casual as Pierce's used to be when he was angry about something, and Bucky turns towards that like a flower towards the sun. (like something that will die if it doesn't)

Bucky stares at him for a few seconds. "My heart beat too slow."

"What?" Steve starts towards him but Sam touches his arm. Sam doesn't try to grab Steve to hold him back. He doesn't need to. Just a hand lightly touching Steve's arm is enough to keep Steve in line even though Steve could put Sam through a wall without even trying. Bucky is careful to always keep Sam in his sightline whenever they're in the same room.

"What do you mean your heart beat too slow Buck?" Steve asks urgently. Bucky keeps his eye on where Sam's hand is still on Steve's arm and doesn't answer. Soldiers answer to their general, not to fellow soldiers.

"Did you count them?" Sam asks.

Bucky nods.

"How slow were they going?"

"100," Bucky rasps, because he's suddenly acutely aware that he's still wearing he weighted blanket but he knows the weighted blanket is supposed to be kept in the quiet room. He doesn't move. They haven't said anything about it yet. Maybe they haven't noticed, too caught up in his heartbeat. Maybe he can put it back before they notice. He grips a handful of it behind his back so that he can yank it away out of sight the second they turn away from him.

In the moment Steve and Sam take to exchange a look, the blanket is off his shoulders and hidden at the small of his back, where he used to keep his extra gun.

"100 beats per minute is the average for a guy like you." Sam says. "Having a heartbeat higher than that isn't very good for you. What is it usually?"

"160." Bucky replies immediately.

"All the time?"

"Yes." Questions like this he can do. He looks for them to ask him some more but they just glance at each other again.

"That's… " Steve struggles with something in throat. "Not great," he finishes lamely.

Sam lifts his hand off of Steve's arm to smack himself in the face. After he's finished making a face at Steve, Sam turns to Bucky and says, "For a man of your uh," his eyes flash up and down Bucky's body, "physical condition, having a heartbeat of 160 is a sign of some pretty serious stress. It's very bad for your body to be constantly stressed like that. It's like you're in constant fight-or-flight mode."

Bucky nods. Not like, he thinks, but doesn't say anything because Sam doesn't look like he's finished yet.

"I think it'd be good if we –"

"If you keep that up it'll kill you, as surely as a bullet," Steve starts again, cutting Sam off. Steve looks a little more sure of himself now he's talking about dying. Bucky suddenly remembers a little kid who wouldn't stop insisting that it was better to die getting back up than live staying down.

"Oh." Bucky says. Steve's eyes narrow, like he's about to make a speech about how Bucky needs to live, dammit, so Bucky tries again. "My heart is killing me?"

Sam gives Steve a dirty look. "Not exactly. But it's important that we work on some calming exercises. Help you try to gain some sense of safety. Maybe not now, maybe not soon. But one day."

Bucky doesn't say anything to that. He knows the words that Sam is saying but when they come together it's gibberish. Nowhere is safe. There are always people like him out there.

Steve starts to say something else but Sam stops him with a look. "Do you want to go back to the quiet room or stay out here and talk some more?" Sam asks.

He doesn't know what to say when they ask what he wants. Bucky swallows down what do you want me to do. Steve's eyes get so sad when he says that. It makes Bucky angry. He doesn't know why. But he knows that he can't say that and that he can't stay out here, not while Steve is looking like that. Like if Bucky's heart fails he's going to tear out someone else's heart to give it to him. He doesn't know why, he doesn't know a lot of things, but he knows that he has to protect Steve. From everything, but especially from that. Steve doesn't do bad things.

That's my job something inside him says.

"I'll go to the quiet room," Bucky says. He walks back into the room and shuts the door. It's quiet. He counts his heartbeats and tries to figure out if his heart will be the death of him.