Chapter Text
Steve wakes up with tears in his eyes and a deep ache in his chest.
He blinks. It’s dim in the room, and it takes his vision a few moments to adjust. The ceiling’s a pale peach, paint cracking near the corners, stained and flaking in other areas. It looks, he realises, uncannily similar to the ceiling of the tenement he lived in with his ma before she died.
The next thing he registers is there’s someone holding his left hand. He tilts his head to the side. Said person holding his hand is a boy slumped forward on an old wooden chair, the main part of him visible to Steve being the mop of unruly brown hair as he sat with his head pillowed on his other forearm which was resting on Steve’s bed.
Steve frowns, squeezes the boy’s hand. The boy stirs, then lifts his head and blinks up at him sort of blearily.
“Bucky,” Steve says. It comes out as more of a rasp.
“Steve. Steve, you’re awake,” Bucky says, a smile spreading across his face – his face, which is limned with a diffused warm glow round the edges from the yellowish lamplight behind him. Edges which are less sharp than Steve remembers, cheekbones not as pronounced, his mouth soft and relaxed instead of a hardened line. His hair curls over his forehead, longer and wilder than it’s been in forever, it seems. His thumb strokes soothingly over the back of Steve’s hand. Now Steve looks down at his skinny wrist.
He asks, “Am I– am I dead?” The moment he says it, he feels stupid, but that’s the only logical explanation.
“What? No,” Bucky says, incredulous, staring at Steve like he’s gone nuts. “You’re talkin’ nonsense, like you always do when the fever gets to your head.” He touches his wrist to Steve’s clammy forehead. “Seems like it’s broken, anyhow,” he says, satisfied. He passes Steve a chipped mug filled with water. “Now, drink up. I gotta go call your ma, tell her you’re awake.”
His ma?
“Wait,” Steve stops him, “wait, Bucky. Stay a while.”
“Alright,” Bucky says, brow furrowing in consternation, but he sits back down anyway. Steve reaches for his hand, and twines their fingers together. A strange sort of longing claws desperately behind his ribs, keening and devastating in its rawness as he looks at Bucky, focuses on the point of contact between them. His eyes fill with tears, and he grips at Bucky’s hand tighter, never wants to let go. The bone-deep intensity of the feeling is foreign, and disorientating. Though, he feels plenty disorientated already without it. “You okay there, pal?” Bucky asks, squeezing Steve’s hand lightly.
“I thought you were dead,” Steve says, hoarse, as an onslaught of memories flood his head. “God, Bucky, I thought I lost you.” His voice cracks on the last word and the moment he blinks the tears start spilling of their own volition. He sniffles and distantly thinks he should be embarrassed for crying like a baby but it’s Bucky, whole and alive right here in front of him and he feels like his heart might burst.
Bucky’s eyes widen with alarm. He gets up from his chair and squeezes in next to Steve on the tiny rickety bed, holding his small body tight in his arms as it wracks with sobs. “Hey, hey, no,” Bucky soothes, “I’m right here, see? I’m right here. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, I promise.”
Steve presses his wet face into Bucky’s neck and breathes deep. He can smell the aftershave Bucky used to buy on the cheap that somehow still smells amazing on him, at least to Steve, fresh and slightly woodsy, mixed with a scent that’s just Bucky, familiar as going home. Bucky keeps making soothing sounds, fingers carding gently through Steve’s hair as Steve’s tears dampen his shirt.
Eventually Steve calms down enough to pull back, hands coming up to frame Bucky’s face – disbelieving, almost reverent. His eyes rove over Bucky’s features – the straight line of his nose, the curve of his mouth, the gentle divot in his chin. He must’ve lingered too long over Bucky’s eyes like he wants to commit them to memory forever (he thought he had, before, and was horrified at how quick he started to forget the exact shade of blue, or the patterns in their irises; he will die before he lets himself make that mistake again), because Bucky takes hold of his wrists gently, and threads their fingers together.
“I’m fine, Steve. Hell, I thought I’d lose you there, way you were knocked out,” Bucky says. “Must’ve been one hell of a dream you were having.”
Right. He was dreaming. That’s also a logical explanation. Better than Steve’s theory that he died, in any case.
But it had felt so real, and Steve’s no stranger to fever dreams. This one in particular hit him right where it hurt, and settled into the spaces there with haunting intensity.
Steve drops his gaze to their interlocked fingers, his white-knuckled grip. “There was,” he starts. He clears his throat, focuses on putting together an explanation as succinct as possible. The grisly details wouldn’t do either of them any favours. “There was... another war. You were drafted.” He swallows. “I... They gave me this– this serum. Made me bigger. Stronger.” He quirks a wry smile up at Bucky, a half-hearted attempt at levity through self-deprecation, but Bucky’s looking at him intently with no amusement on his face. “We were, well. We were on the same team. There was a mission. On a– on a train, over the Alps, and then you–”
Steve’s breathing quickens, and then Bucky says, “Hey, breathe. Breathe, you’re alright.”
He continues, “You– I couldn’t catch you, and you f-fell. I was too late. It was just half a second, and I was too late. Oh god, Bucky. It felt so real, you don’t even–” He hugs Bucky again, and Bucky presses a kiss into his lank, greasy hair.
“Look at you, always makin’ up crazy things in that noggin of yours. You know, you could write a book, or draw a comic – maybe it’d get published in one of the pulps, now there’s an idea,” Bucky teases gently, voice tender. For once Steve’s so past caring that he’s practically making Bucky coddle him – instead he clings on to it. As long as he has Bucky here with him warm and safe he can’t care about anything else at all.
“You said you had to call my ma,” Steve says. Bucky hums. “What’s today’s date?”
“March 6th. It’s Wednesday. You’ve been barely conscious and half out of your mind for two days. Talkin’ nonsense in your sleep ’n all,” Bucky says. “We were real scared, thought we were gonna lose you, or the fever’d fry your brain something awful. Your ma wanted to stay with you but she couldn’t miss work any longer.”
Everything Bucky said did absolutely nothing to ease Steve’s confusion. “No, I meant–” he shakes his head, “–the, um. What year is it?” He tries to keep his voice level, but there’s really no way a person can ask that question whilst maintaining a façade of normalcy.
Sure enough, Bucky looks at him again, renewed worry showing on his face. “It’s 1935,” he says carefully. “You sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I just. I’m just... y’know. Kinda out of it.”
March 6th, 1935. Steve is sixteen.
So the part where his ma died... that was part of the dream too. It must be.
Steve’s so relieved he’s breathless with it. Or that might just be his lungs, because apparently they still don’t work right. He’s never been so glad about that his whole life.
“I’ll say. Now, drink your water. I’ll go call her, else she’ll have my head.” Bucky ruffles his hair as he stands again. Steve lets him go this time, taking the mug obediently as Bucky heads into the hall to use the telephone.
—
If Steve sits on the leftmost side of their ratty old couch at just the right angle, he can see a sliver of sunrise between the old tenement buildings through the window. In the warmer months he’d sometimes sit out on the fire escape, leaning against the side rail.
Steve loves watching the sunrise because the change is so gradual he doesn’t even notice until he realises in stages that the sky’s considerably lighter, wonders when that happened; first it’s near-black, then a bruised purple, then orange starts peeking through, and before you know it the sun’s high up there. The dawn of a new day is nearly the same every time, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quality of a process with no definitive turning point. Larger than life. It makes him feel tiny, figuratively speaking – not like he needs help with that in the literal sense.
Bucky’s drifting in and out of sleep, head resting on Steve’s bony shoulder, and he swears up and down it’s a perfectly comfortable position. Steve doesn’t believe him for a second, but doesn’t argue about it. This way, Steve gets to alternate between watching the day break between the buildings and measuring its progress by the subtle hints of red-gold warmth that begins to show in Bucky’s hair and the soft curl of his lashes as more light filters in through the window.
He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Bucky for long, has this utterly irrational fear that if he does Bucky might just dissipate into thin air like a mirage.
Steve’s ma comes home at seven thirty-four in the morning and finds them sitting like this, Steve wrapped up in two threadbare blankets, Bucky pressing up along the side of him, maybe drooling in his sleep. Steve knows his ma thinks Bucky Barnes is a real blessing to the Rogers household, steadfast and unwavering, sitting at his bedside through every illness. He’s also pretty much the only one who has any sort of chance at keeping Steve on the straight and narrow, always pulling him out of starting fights. And when he couldn’t do that, he finished them for Steve and afterwards brought him home and gave him a telling-off for being a rash idiot.
Conversely, Steve often thought he might be a bit of a pest to the Barneses, always getting their son into sticky situations, but they doted on him anyhow.
Steve’s ma’s face, like Bucky’s, looks rounder and younger than he expects somehow. Her cheeks are less sallow, her pallor livelier though he’s sure she must be dog-tired, what with tending to his illness and working graveyard shifts at the hospital.
That dream must have done a real number on him, he thinks. His sense of reality seems almost warped. He figures it’ll wear off soon.
When Steve’s ma comes to take his temperature, Bucky wakes, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles the way he’s had a habit of doing since he was a kid. He’s got work at the docks in about an hour, and Steve feels horribly guilty to have deprived him of sleep, knows that it’s demanding, gruelling work, though Bucky waves him off and says he’s completely fine.
Steve’ll bet Bucky’s hardly slept more than three consecutive hours since his illness got more serious, which was probably about a week ago, give or take. He politely refuses Mrs Rogers’ insistent offers to feed him (it’s only right, she says) before he goes, saying he’ll pick up something on the way, but he does down two cups of coffee before he heads out.
Steve’s reluctant to see him go; the horrible twist in his chest returns, though not as violently – a mere shadow of its predecessor, but it makes Steve ache anyway. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him.
A short while after a Bucky goes Steve’s ma starts to fuss, makes him take another dose of medicine to make sure he’s fully recovered even though they really can’t afford to take medicine when it’s not strictly necessary. He tells her so, and she counters by saying, “Would you rather have your fever come back because that’d be even more expensive you know,” as she smooths his hair back and he has to admit she’s right.
He looks at her grey-streaked blonde hair in its neat bun, save for the loose strands around her face, and the crow’s feet starting to come in around her eyes, which are otherwise the same as his, and her nurse’s uniform, and misses her suddenly, viscerally, terribly. He contemplates telling her about his dream, but decides against it when he sees how exhausted she is. She doesn’t need more to worry about, least of all some inconsequential fever dream.
He lets her get to sleep, nocturnal as she had to learn to be because of her job, says goodnight even though it’s morning as he always does because ‘good morning’ just doesn’t make sense.
—
Some nightmares linger in the periphery of the mind’s eye longer than others.
When he’s left sitting in the living room by himself, Steve remembers an odd recurring nightmare he used to have when he was small, around seven or eight. It was, inexplicably, about a bird that liked to eat human flesh. Specifically, Steve’s human flesh. It’d find him wherever he was, pecking away at him little by little, and every time the dream came back he’d find chunks of flesh missing from his body in new places. When he woke up he’d relive the dream and it’d be crystal clear in his head, and he’d realise that the places where the chunks of flesh were missing weren’t even where the damned bird had pecked at the previous time he’d dreamt.
Now, he supposes it was the sort of dream that seemed horrifying when you were asleep and had little to no grasp on reality, but when you woke up you’d realise how nonsensical it had been, albeit strange and arguably unsettling. Then the terror would diffuse and you’d go on with your life like always. As a kid, though, that dream had freaked the hell out of him even when he thought about it in broad daylight. To this day he still doesn’t know what it means, but it used to scare him anyway.
He remembers telling Bucky about it, after the third or fourth time it had happened. They were in Prospect Park on a summer’s day, and Bucky listened with rapt attention and wide eyes, and then he chucked Steve under the chin and teased, “Can’t believe half the things that go on in that noggin of yours. You could write a story and send it in to Weird Tales or something.” At eight or nine, Bucky was already an avid fan of pulps, especially the scary stories, and always seemed to be able to get his hands on some, much to Mrs Barnes’ disapproval.
Then Bucky started to weave wild narratives, building them around the scene that kept showing up in Steve’s nightmares. Steve laughed about it, then, and it suddenly didn’t seem as frightening any longer. How could it be, when Bucky was sprawled on the grass beside him, hands gesticulating excitedly as he spun a story out of it?
And Steve’s not sure, but as far as he remembers, he doesn’t think the nightmare came back to haunt him again anymore after that day.