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“So.”
It takes Phil a solid five seconds to drag his head upward and steady it enough to squint blearily at him.
Damn. It’s worse than he thought.
“Someone told me you’re a little bit,” and he’s quite pointedly interrupted by a sneeze of epic proportions; “under the weather.”
This time, Bucky takes about five full seconds to figure out what the hell Phil says, through how congested he is and how little is words sound like words:
“Depends on the weather.”
Bucky rolls his eyes even though, objectively, it’s a fairly good comeback.
“Why are you still in the office?” Bucky says as he saunters past the doorway toward Phil’s desk, which he’s normally standing next to playing with projections in the air, but no: no, he’s seated behind it leaning heaving on his palms, propped at the elbows.
“There’s literally nothing that absolutely requires you here,” Bucky tells him as he takes a look at the papers Phil’s flicking through; normally, Phil would make a comment about his clearance level, but there’s nothing—well, damn.
“I happen to know that you’ve got about a million sick days piled up, and I also happen to know you have a certain someone at home waiting to take better care of you than these piles of mission reports.”
“Hasn’t kept you from the office, I see,” Phil tries to volley back, but it’s delivered in between hacking coughs, which totally ruins it.
“I’m not on the clock,” Bucky ticks off points by shifting files away from Phil’s immediate reach with each one: “and I’m also on the mend. You’re neither of those things.” He steals three files in a go for that one: “And should be both of them.”
“Did Clint send you?”
Bucky waits for him to make eye contact long enough so he can appropriately process the blank look of fucking obviously painted on his face. Phil sighs as deep as his clogged-up lungs are able to manage.
“I’ve got to get this done,” Phil steels himself rather pathetically, turning back to the single folder still left in front of him, flipping it open. “If we fall behind on this intel—”
“I have questions.” Bucky says it definitively, and Phil’s not focused on him so he doesn’t notice that Bucky’s attention is entirely on Phil himself, not at all on said intel.
“Exactly,” Phil continues to miss the point entirely. “We don’t understand everything you extracted, we have to get on top of it in case any credible threats still exist, universally or to any of our field agents, and—”
“I have literally no questions about the intel.”
Phil stills, like he’s replaying what he thinks he heard—and Bucky’s assuming his ears aren’t the most reliable at this point in being that fucking sick anyway—and trying to make sense of it before he finally looks up.
“What?”
“I have questions,” Bucky reiterates; “about you.”
Phil just stares blankly at him, maybe still doing the whole replay-what-you-hear thing so more, but Bucky’s kind of an impatient sonofabitch, so.
“Okay, I’m just gonna start then.”
He gets a blink in response, so he’s gonna take that as a yes.
“First, do you trust Hill?”
Phil frowns—and good, good: an improvement on the blank-stare-and-blinking. “Of course I trust Hill,” Phil says, almost curt, but he’s squinting, so it might be more a matter of pain because of the very-normal lighting. “How could I—”
“No, that’s fine,” Bucky waves off his extrapolation. “Question two,” and Bucky places palms on Phil’s desk now and leans in a little.
“Do you love Clint?”
And Phil glares, and it’s strong as fuck: there he is.
“Do you even have to ask me that?”
“No, I don’t,” and that’s the truth. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re still here.”
Phil frowns deeper, squints harder. Bucky sighs and rolls his eyes because it’s not even worth trying to hide either reactions. At all.
“If he were as sick as you are, would you want to be at home taking care of him?”
Phil takes a moment to process the question, again, but once it gets through he looks equal parts appalled and exasperated.
“He wouldn’t get sick if he didn’t push himself beyond his limits and keep trying to take missions when he was—”
“Answer the question, Phil,” Bucky says sternly. “Out loud.”
Phil damn near pouts. It’s kind of adorable.
“Of course I would.”
And that’s when Bucky stop leaning in from atop the desk, and takes a seat instead, level with Phil as he leans in just a little, lowers his voice only enough to make it clear this is personal—not too much so Phil won’t be able to make him out with his poor sick plugged-up everything.
“Sometimes?” Bucky says carefully, meaningfully, because it’s a lesson that’s hard to learn and Bucky himself is still learning but he tries, because he knows it’s true:
“Sometimes, we have to let them.”
Phil raises an eyebrow, and it looks like the effort costs him dearly.
“Let them?”
“Take care of us,” Bucky clarifies, but says it like it’s a secret, like it’s something they have to keep under wraps. “Because they love us, and we’re so goddamn lucky they do, and maybe more lucky that we get to love them,” definitely more lucky, in Bucky’s case, because loving Steve is the most important thing, the most important thing.
“And they need to take care of us,” Bucky shores up the point: “they need it to go both ways, and it should go both ways, because that’s how love works.”
And it is. Bucky’s come to realize that, to understand that. He’s working on putting it into practice a little better, too.
“Loving him means letting him love you back,” Bucky sums up; “and maybe we’re both really fuckin’ bad at that,” he eyes Phil pointedly; “but what are we if we don’t try?”
Phil watches him for a long stretch of moments, like he’s trying to figure him out, before he sighs and drops his head to rub his eyes.
“I still don’t know where you get off being all wise and shit,” he says, and Bucky grins, knowing he’s basically won the battle.
“When you figure it out, let me know,” he quips; “I’d be interested in figuring it out.”
“You’re an asshole.”
Bucky shrugs: nothing he doesn’t already know.
“An asshole who’s right.”
Phil sighs, his last line of defense crumbling quick.
“Call Hill, and then I’m taking you home.” Bucky even reaches over for Phil’s phone.
“I can get home on my own—”
“Not according to Clint, and I’m inclined to agree with him,” Bucky takes the liberty of texting Maria’s number; “You’re not standing up for a reason, and it’s the same reason you’re not sitting up straight, plus neither of us trusts you not to get conveniently ‘side-tracked’ by some ‘very pressing’ mission oversight on your way out.” He tosses Phil’s phone back down and stares Phil down on this one:
“We also don’t trust you not to pass the fuck out in the process.”
Phil tries to look angry. He fails.
“So I’m taking you home,” Bucky says as he rises and walks “where you’re going to be smothered with so much love and concern and love and coddling and love you can barely stand it, and you’ll get it all in increasing amounts until it starts to make you feel better, because that’s how this shit works,” Bucky says with more authority than he probably has a right to claim, so he adds: “or so I’m told.”
He leans over Phil’s shoulder and piles up his files, tapping them into neet stacks and setting them aside.
“And bonus, I make literally the best hot toddy in the world,” Bucky narrates as he works; “so maybe I left the recipe and ingredients in your kitchen. Plus, my ma made a fucking magical stew for this sort of thing,” he finishes his stacking and spins Phil around in his chair, standing back pointedly as he continues talking, give Phil ample time to steady himself and get to his feet.
“Wasn’t just my hand in keeping Steve alive through the winter, y’know,” he says, leaning casually against the desk. “But I might have left that, too. And Clint’s been home all this time doing probably nothing at all to prepare for the aforementioned coddling.” He narrows his eyes pointedly. “Nothing. At all.”
“You’re a menace,” Phil says, a little shakily as he stands up. “As in, a total plague on society.”
“I was a brainwashed assassin. If you ever thought you would insult me? You’re sorely mistaken,” and Bucky grabs Phil’s things before Phil himself can go for them; he doesn’t make a motion to, either, like it doesn’t even register, so it’s good that Bucky took the initiative.
“And if you still think you can insult me, you’re sicker than we all thought and I’ll fucking call Hill on the way, as I carry you all bridal-carry and shit down to the garage so you don’t fall over with how much being sick is fucking with your head.”
Phil glares; with some heat, this time. “I say again. You are an asshole.”
“And I say again,” Bucky smirks as he opens the door and ushers Phil through before locking up behind them;
“I’m an asshole who’s right.”
__________________
Bucky’s self-aware enough to know that it’s not just that Steve’s entirely worn him down regarding the whole I’m going to care the shit out of you when you’re sick thing—though that part’s true too, Bucky’s not saying it isn’t. However, sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, having graduated from quilt, which was itself a step closer to normal from two quilts, plus a comforter from the guest bedroom in the beginning—but sitting wrapped in a blanket that he didn’t wrap around himself, sipping tea he didn’t brew for himself—green because antioxidants are good for you, Buck, the box says so—feeling almost boneless and almost perfect, and only almost for the lack of the person who wrapped him in the blanket and gave him the tea next to him on the sofa in the first place: Bucky knows that a big part of the whole thing is that he likes it.
Not that he’ll ever fucking say the words out loud, but then again, Steve doesn’t need him to in order to know it’s true.
“You know what you just did was the definition of ‘hypocrite’, right?” Steve says as he rounds the couch and sets his own cup of tea on the side table before settling into Bucky side, and he’s so much warmer than a blanket, and no. Not just because Steve runs hot.
Another thing Steve knows, even though Bucky won’t say it.
“Technically, I’m officially cleared—” Bucky tries to protest, but it’s half-hearted at best, because Steve’s pressed against him and breathing near his neck and it feels good, so good.
“Agree to fucking disagree,” Steve cuts him off. “Not to mention you fought me tooth and nail when I—”
“Mother-henned the hell out of me?”
“Tried to take care of you.”
“That’s what you don’t get, punk,” Bucky says, kissing the top of his hair and maybe nuzzling a little at the crown of his head; “you don’t have to bend over backwards—”
“I want to bend over backwards—”
“Because you’re always taking care of me.”
Steve stills a little, and turns to face Bucky, chin propped on Bucky’s shoulder and eyes all wide and fucking gorgeous, and Bucky has to reach out and touch, has to fan fingers over Steve’s cheekbone and trace at that plush lower lip with his thumb.
“You don’t even have to try, but then you do, and, and,” Bucky’s throat gets tight, and maybe he’s not as recovered as he thought or something, or...not.
“Just, fuck, you know?”
Steve reaches up to take Bucky’s hand in from his face and lace Bucky’s fingers with his own, lifting them to kiss Bucky’s knuckles.
“I love you,” Steve says, almost solemn; “so goddamn much, and you gotta know that taking care of you is as good as taking care of me.”
“The former being something you’re really good at. The latter being, somehow, something you’re actually really bad at,” Bucky says softly, relishing the attention, and goddamnit, the love. “What a fuckin’ paradox.”
Steve huffs, but then he sits up and starts kissing Bucky’s lips instead of his fingers, and all bets are off, because that’s something Steve’s really good at.
“How about we try something, huh?” Bucky says when they break for air, soft and sweet about it as he reaches and frames Steve’s face. And Steve’s just staring at him, those lashes going on forever, like Bucky’s made of the answers to the universe and the shining in the stars and Bucky’s never going to understand it, but he knows he looks at Steve the same way, so maybe he doesn’t have to.
“Like you not rushing into HYDRA research bunkers and getting slammed in the face with some parasitic toxin shit that nearly killed you?” Steve suggests, and Bucky can’t help but snort a little and pull Steve closer, who comes willingly and settles across Bucky’s lap, leaning against Bucky’s chest with a contented sigh.
“Okay, first? Pot, kettle,” Bucky says carding fingers through Steve’s hair now pressed against his sternum. “Second, I didn’t almost die, it was like a bad cold.”
“Is still like a bad cold,” Steve points out; “because I know better than you to think you’re back to 100%.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” Bucky says indulgently; “but seriously. Serum’s good for some things.”
Steve hums, and sits with his head curled in against Bucky’s chest for a long series of breaths, and Bucky knows he’s just listening to Bucky’s heartbeat, because Bucky’s intimately familiar with what that looks like, from so long ago and no time at all—or else, he knows what it feels like, and what it feels like is the thing that’s painted across Steve’s features, unmistakably.
“I was so fucking scared, Buck,” Steve breathes out, pressing closer, and Bucky reaches up to hold him tighter in response.
“I know,” he leans down and kisses Steve’s temple tenderly. “I know you were, and I know how that feels.”
Steve shivers, at that, and Bucky gets it. Something Steve doesn’t have to say for Bucky to know every layer it’s trying to convey.
“Maybe,” Bucky watches, a little mesmerized by the way his exhales flutter through Steve’s hair; “maybe we should start taking care of each other better,” and Steve shifts against him, making it clear he’s making himself comfortable, planning to stay in place in the long term. And Bucky’s definitely not complaining. “If what we both want is the other to be okay, to be safe, to be—”
“Here,” Steve cuts in, almost desperate, kissing Bucky’s chest through his shirt, press of lips hard and searing to the point where, had he kissed Bucky straight to the skin Bucky doesn’t know how he’d have survived it. “Just here. Always.”
“Sap,” Bucky murmurs, but his chest is so warm and his heart is so full against Steve’s weight, it comes out the fondest thing in the world. And he can feel it, when Steve smiles against him:
“Pot, kettle.”