but...yeah. he's never felt as though he could completely drop his guard with any of them, because he feels...incredibly inferior to people like Otto and Norman because thanks for not understanding different intelligence types, the 1940s
And he's defensive of Steven and can't understand a lot of how Steven thinks, and kind of has the idea that Steven needs to be protected, which ain't healthy and Steven would rightly sock him in the eye over it
And Bucky would sooner chew off his other arm than dump problems on children in general, never mind the lot of actually really damaged kids he's wound up in the vicinity of
Every part of canon shows that with Steve, Bucky is quick to rush in, protect his little buddy, etc., but when it comes time to admit to anything that might indicate Bucky is anything but Steve's Big Protector, he refuses to let it out
The first part of Captain America TFA, Bucky's clearly got to take a minute to catch his breath and sort himself out before being all cocky and full of bravado over going off to war
He goes from being a tortured POW to jumping right back into fighting the exact people who kidnapped and experimented on him because he HAS to follow that little guy from Brooklyn and keep an eye on him and make sure he's okay
He got blown out of the train because even though he just saw his superpowered best friend get shot into the ground, he STILL threw himself between Steve and the guy attacking him
EVERY PART of Bucky is a protector, caregiver, and dedicates every aspect of himself to taking care of other people, and you never, anywhere, see the poor dude let down his walls and ever let on that he's anything but Ready To Go
And somehow this Victorian era cat man shows up, and somehow this guy is...comfortable, and caring, and...maybe if Bucky lets the wall down just a little bit, it'd be okay...?
but shit maybe now that there's a first crack of realizing "oh, fuck, I need to let other people protect too" there's gonna be like...some progress or character development or something
honestly from my own studies and from squinting at his character a little, bucky really DOES show all the signs of having been a parentified child, which...-gestures to a lot of context clues about how shitty his parents were-
yeah, tl;dr, bucky's had a long, hard, shitty ass life, and he is only just now in a place where MAYBE he can start to deal with that, and found someone he trusts to maybe be there while he deals with it without Bucky's brain screaming at him to stop burdening this person
like: “People who were parentified may feel the need to help or rescue other people, choose partners or friends who are a bit helpless and swoop in to ‘fix’ them, become chronically overcommitted or enmeshed, or experience difficulties with implementing boundaries,”
something something the supersoldier serum magnifies whatever you are into a hugely amplified version of that. Good becomes great, bad becomes worse, etc.
Which could be why Bucky was the only Winter Soldier who didn't go batshit insane against his handlers, because even without the brainwashing, he was naturally inclined to be protective. All the washes did was make sure he forgot he SHOULDN'T be protective and helpful towards HYDRA
apologies if Ray decides to emotionally devastate him again later in explaining why she's mad/why she personally would not trust him, even though most of her reactivity is because of troll psych stuff and she'll be more flexible as a slime, she will...not be happy...
because again, in his mind, Children Are Innocent, and she's the way she is because terrible people hurt her until she was that way and it's not her fault, so she shouldn't be held responsible for it
again, much later, when this is patched up as best it can be, bucky is legitimately going to talk to Donnie about his ability to just CUT SOMEONE VERBALLY and tell him to work on using it against bad folks lol
sadly it shall go away with Slime because as slime Donnie doesn't think as much, too much brain power going to form holding, so he just ends up saying what comes to mind.
he's working on it, because Bucky is frankly very protectable, and if everyone is throwing themselves in front of everyone else then no one's flying the plane
cw: emotions, bad childhood, and Bucky's backstory mostly