imfollowinghim | eighteen ✪ voice & spam

[Hello, Barge. Did you think you were done with coma announcements today?

You were wrong.]

Helena's in a coma. [Which explains why she wasn't at Basic this morning, at least. Bucky had checked on her right after and found her sleeping in her room, so now here we are.]

I'm not bringing her to the infirmary, but I'll keep an eye on her until she wakes up.

[He lets out a tired sigh, and though you can't see it, he's definitely running his hands through his hair, digging his fingernails into his scalp.]

Are we missing anyone else?

[Open Spam]

[This has not been a good week.

Of course, it's not really the worst week he's ever had, so he sort of feels stupid for being irritated by it. This could be worse. This could be a lot worse, but it's still hard to get excited about yelling at people in the pouring rain in the CES while they run up and down a hill at five in the morning when you've gotten maybe an hour or two of sleep the night before, especially when you know you don't have to.

He's not at war anymore. He knows that.

But his nightmares are getting worse, not better. Instead of the familiar blend of memories and horrible possibilities, he wakes up feeling terrified beyond belief, and with no memory as to why. It's bad enough some nights that he spends the rest of it awake and miserable in his own room so he's not keeping Steve up (even though he knows his friend probably isn't sleeping), and sometimes, he's been in the CES running for hours before his "recruits" are up and out of bed.

And he feels cold all the time, even huddled in his Commandos jacket and one of the flannel shirts Stiles got him, plus a t-shirt, no matter where he is on the Barge.

Maybe he's just getting sick.

Whatever's happening, he does his best to just ignore it. If he focuses on the task at hand, he can get through this the way he's gotten through everything, even though on Monday, he calls Lydia Oswalt (a kid who'd been killed by shrapnel not ten minutes after they'd gotten off the landing craft in Anzio) when he's yelling at her to keep up, and then he can't remember the name of a movie he's seen sixteen times on Tuesday, and he has an entire conversation with Mason before realizing wait, he's not Dernier.

They're caught out in a thunderstorm during Basic on Wednesday, and when lightning strikes a little too close to where they are, for a good ten seconds, he's back in Italy, because that's not lightning, it's a shell, and if they don't take cover, they're all getting blown to hell.

Bucky realizes where he is and who he's with moments later, and it leaves him shaky and uncomfortable, so the session gets cut short, and he hauls himself back to Steve's room to borrow his shower, since the water actually stays one temperature.

He's distant and strange for most of the rest of the day, and while he doesn't try to avoid anyone who was there this morning, he doesn't make an effort to seek them out, either.]

[ooc: Bucky's door to the bridge related symptoms are starting to rear their head more noticeably. Right now, he's mostly having night terrors and suffering from general confusion, which means he's often starting to look like he's having something similar to a bad PTSD flashback or just suffering from memory loss, so consider this a blanket warning for something that might come up in his threads. Feel free to encounter him whenever, whenever, and old/new cr, multiples and fuzzy time are all appreciated. c:]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Bucky had been trying - unsuccessfully - to nap, because he knows he's exhausted and it's hard not to think maybe this increased jumpiness and confusion is coming from lack of sleep. The bottom bunk is just as uncomfortable as ever, but he feels bad crashing at Steve's all the time when he all too often wakes up screaming, flailing or both, and since it's barely lunch time, this just seemed to make more sense.

Except he couldn't turn his brain off enough to even doze, so he's thumbing through a beat up paperback copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth when Stiles knocks. The knock makes him think it's not Steve - they mostly come and go between each other's rooms without announcing it's happening - and it probably rules out Ben, too, but it could be a lot of other people.

So he hoists himself off the bunk, answers the door, and is more or less pleasantly surprised to see Stiles there.

More or less meaning he doesn't want this to be about what happened this morning, but there's a good shot it is.]

Hey. [He takes a step back for Stiles to step in if he wants to, holding the door.]

[Stiles is all too familiar with waking up screaming and flailing, though it happens a lot less these days than it did back home and even the first couple months on the Barge. He still has nightmares, but they've slowly begun to dissipate in intensity if not frequency. He's not sure he's okay with that or not.

The only door he never bothers knocking on before entering a room is Scott's. The two of them have never bothered with formality -- much like Steve and Bucky.

He offers Bucky a small smile when the man opens the door and he steps inside the room, rubbing the back of his neck. He tends to struggle with the ways that he worries about people -- he doesn't generally know the right words to say or what to do. He just tends to hover and try to crack jokes to break the tension even if the worry is clear on his face to everyone who knows him well.]

Hey. What's up?

[Bucky closes the door behind him and reaches into his jacket pocket for some gum. He unwraps it and pops it into his mouth before responding, because for some reason, this has always calmed him down a little when things get too tough to deal with on the front lines.

And this isn't the front lines, but he's still more stressed out here than he ever was back home.]

Nothing much. [He can definitely guess why Stiles is here, but for the time being, he's playing it cool and not calling attention to it, because he really doesn't want to talk about what happened to him back there.]

How about you?

[Stiles is familiar with nervous habits, even if he tends to just move more when he's anxious. But he still recognizes it for what it is when Bucky pops a stick of gum into his mouth. Plus it's a memory he still has -- of being on the front lines and using gun as a way to soothe himself even if the memories aren't his. Even if it wasn't he who needed soothing.

He offers Bucky a faint smile because he doesn't want to make the anxiety worse. He doesn't want him to feel cornered. He wants to help.]

I'm all right. Nothing really going on with Stiles. [He's not subtle, Bucky.]