Steve's Baby

chapter 23

 Bucky's playing with his toys in the living room. It's been a few days since the monster scare, and daddy and Sammy have taken him to talk to Bruce, and he was really nice, so Bucky isn't scared anymore.

 He's in the middle of lining up his dinosaurs to stomp on his hotwheel cars when he hears muffled talking in the kitchen.

 He sneaks quietly to the doorway, trying to listen.

 "But he hasn't been big at all this whole time, Sam! He's only been little and now he's starting to go even littler sometimes! What if he's never big again? Do you think there's something wrong?"

 "I don't know. I don't know how frequently he would be big or little before HYDRA. But he's been through severe trauma, and maybe he's just not ready. Maybe we should just try to wait a bit longer. He may be staying little to cope with 70 years of torture. How often do you think they let him be little? Probably not much since they needed him to kill for them. I can't tell you if there's something wrong, because I don't know. Let's just wait a bit longer, maybe another week, and if he still doesn't get big then we can see what we can do."

 Bucky backs away from the doorway, trying to stay quiet. Daddy and Sammy are talking about him not being big. Are they mad at him? What does seeing what they can do mean? Are they going to put him in the chair to make him big like HYDRA did?

 He tries to play with his toys some more and ignore the muffled talking he can still hear. Soon daddy and Sammy come in the room, acting like nothing is wrong. Daddy has his bottle. Sammy picks him up.

 "Hey, baby boy. It's getting late. I think it's about bedtime." Sammy says.

 They both sit with him on the couch and Sammy holds Bucky and feeds him his bottle. Bucky doesn't get how they can be plotting against him but still sit here and act like everything is normal. He decides to just do the same, act like everything is normal and that he doesn't know what they're up to.

 He finishes his bottle and daddy changes his diaper, he's already had his bath so he has his comfy pajamas on. He tries to convince daddy and Sammy to let him sleep with them through tears and pleading, but they say he needs to sleep in his crib. At least they agree to cuddle him on the couch until he falls asleep before putting him in his crib, after some more tears. So he sleepily cuddles on their laps, thinking about how to try to be big before he falls asleep.

☆

 Bucky wakes up still little. He wants to get big so daddy and Sammy won't put him in the chair, but he can't. He will just have to fake it. If he can convince them he's big, even for just a day, maybe they will be happy.

 He sits up, looking around his room through the bars of his crib. He spits out his paci, but misses it immediately. So he puts it back in his mouth. This will be harder than he thought.

 He stands up and starts to climb out of the crib. He makes it over the bar and falls on his butt on the floor. It wasn't a high fall, and it didn't hurt, but he gets scared anyway and cries only a little bit, before pulling himself together. Only babies cry and he needs to be big.

 He gets up and goes to his dresser. He digs through the drawers and tries to look for clothes that don't look like they're for babies. It's hard but he finds a plain black shirt and plain gray joggers.

 He struggles out of his footie pajamas. He doesn't remember zippers being so hard... he finally gets them off, and puts on the fresh clothes, or tries to. The shirt takes a few tries to get his arms and head to all go in the right holes, and getting both legs into the separate pant legs. But finally he's dressed!

 "Bucky bear?" Daddy says from the doorway. Bucky jumps a little. He didn't know he was there.

 "What are you doing? How are you out of your crib?" Daddy asks.