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“He’s fine, Steve.”
“He’s not fine—” Steve bites out, vicious, damn-near feral from his perch at Bucky’s side, with Bucky’s hand clasped between his own: clammy. Limp.
Steve’s thumb grazes the radial pulse-point and he winces; his own heart thumps quick to match and he’s breathless in trying, but Bucky: Bucky’s chest is gasping up and down, irregular, faint, and oh god, oh god—
“He is going to be fine,” Natasha revises, leaning in, evaluating Bucky’s coloring, but Steve damn near leaps across Bucky’s prone form to fend her off.
And Nat knows when she’s lost a battle against Loverboy and his protective streak, so she offers an eyeroll and a pat to the mothball-y quilt that’s tucked in around Bucky’s legs before she exits.
Steve regrets driving her off, somewhere underneath the terror, the worry: it’s too quiet.
He can hear the rasping in Bucky’s lungs too clearly, now—too loud.
Just like his. Just like then. Just like the way death looked warm and bright behind Steve’s eyes in the cold.
Oh god.
Steve bites his tongue against asking JARVIS to run Bucky’s vitals one more time—the AI is endlessly polite, truly, but after the seventy-ninth summary of Bucky’s elevated but “truly, Captain Rogers, not worrisome by the measure of any statistical norm” readings, Steve thinks a note of weariness had started to creep into his tone—so Steve breathes in deep, trying and failing to calm himself before he gives it up, gives it all up, and slides, ever so slowly, into bed next to Bucky, slips gently behind his body and lifts Bucky’s fevered frame onto Steve’s chest, elevating his torso just so, just like Bucky’d used to do for him, and breathing even, steady, deep so as not to disturb Buck, not to jostle his body, not to stir him too hard.
Steve brings Bucky’s head down upon him, and folds his own arms so that a palm is splayed across either side of Bucky’s chest, rising and falling with his lungs, drawing circles across the pumping of his heart, just like Steve remembers from the deep-haze of the worst days, the long nights that Bucky spent with him, ever-present, ever-watchful, as death flirted with him and Steve struggled to scream he was taken, he was given, he was Bucky’s, so step off.
Bucky, who had held to Steve and traced the lines of his shivering pulse like he could grasp it, and coax it, and give it something real to get tangled in, to get touched by: to anchor to so as never to fall too far.
Steve breathes, shaky at first but wills it smooth as he watches Bucky’s head loll with the inhale: Steve breathes, and draws aching things, painful wants against the squeeze of Bucky’s heart beneath hot skin and Steve prays that he’ll be enough to work the miracle.
Steve prays that he’s enough to fight death for.
He doesn’t know how many minutes drag on, just that they’re heavy things, long things, and he wants to never know the likes of them again because Bucky’s heart’s a heavy thing under his hands, and sometimes the space between his breaths are long, long things, and Steve doesn’t know how Bucky did this so often, so many times, how he came out the other side with a smile and the will to take it again, over and over; Steve doesn’t know, but he can’t take it, he can’t take it—
Steve doesn’t expect the brush of a hand, weak but so present, so real again his own: Steve doesn’t expect it.
But God; God, Steve feels nearly faint when Bucky’s chest shudders under his hand, under his hand beneath Bucky’s hand, and Steve can feel the wild gallop of that pulse all the firmer, all the fiercer for the weight, the reality of Bucky’s hand on his.
Bucky’s hand on his.
“Alright, punk?” Bucky rasps, and his hand is slick with sweat and can’t quite grip, but his thumb hooks around Steve’s wrist and God, Steve could cry for how it lets his heart go wild, lets it shake not all of the fear, or even most of it, but enough to move again, enough to race with actual feeling under Bucky’s ear.
“Yeah,” Steve exhales in a rush. “God, Buck, yeah, I’m,” and Steve heaves a trembling breath as he ducks his head, kisses Bucky’s overheated brow and tucks him in close. “I’m more interested in how you are. Scared the bejeezus out of me,” he tilts into the side of Bucky’s head, whispers there, nudges him playfully with his nose even if it’s just a half-hearted thing when he murmurs: “Jerk.”
Even if Jerk sounds more like it means something else, something more.
More even than it’s ever meant, between them.
“Christ, Stevie,” Bucky lets out a groan as he shifts just so, just enough to be able to see Steve’s face, and Steve tries to stop him, tries to tell him to stay still, to save his strength, that there isn’t a damn thing that needs seeing or saying when what he needs is rest but Bucky’s hand is on Steve’s and for all that he struggles to so much as turn a few inches, Bucky’s hand doesn’t leave.
Bucky’s facing him now, and Steve can’t keep his hand on Bucky’s heartbeat but he can feel it, chest to chest, and he can see it, somehow, in the eyes that are overbright, but clear.
“Ain’t my deathbed,” Bucky rattles out, and that should be enough to invalidate the exasperation that’s still somehow unmistakable beneath the words themselves, but it’s not.
It’s not.
Because his lips, chapped and parted around a panting pace of breath: they’re quirked at the corners; because his eyes are so fucking clear.
So clear.
So why are Steve’s own swimming?
“You,” Steve starts, and he hadn’t realized his throat was so tight until speaking is a trial, until swallowing it hard and he can map out the pump of his blood every time he tries. “You’re,” his voice cracks. “When…”
And Steve doesn’t know how to say it, how to make it plain that Steve remembers what death looks like, feels like, so close, and watching Bucky skim across its surface here, chest heaving and pulse flinching, all flushed and frail-looking, closed-eyed and so fucking far away under the surface of that skin, inside that flailing heart—Steve doesn’t know how to make words fit that kind of fear, that kind of sickness in his chest: Steve doesn’t have those words. Those words were never written, because it was never meant to go this way, to be this way—these roles were never made for reversing, because Steve was never strong like this, and there’s no serum in the goddamned universe that could make the soul of him enough to bear this—
Bucky’s fingertips tighten just slightly, just so around Steve’s knuckles, and Steve meets Bucky’s eyes again, just as the blurring in his own starts to spill out, and Steve’s chest is tight—it’s so tight when Bucky’s heart floods out onto his face, so plain again, so readable like it used to be, so known: Bucky’s hands are still shaky, still too weak to make the journey on their own, but his eyes speak volumes, and Steve thinks that maybe, somehow, he knew this language before he ever learned to speak.
Steve raises their joined hands, reluctant for the selfishness—for taking from Bucky when he’s so very shattered, so spent—and yet so relieved that he can’t help but tremble with the way that Bucky’s fingers twitch, a struggle, but enough to wipe Steve’s tears.
It breaks Steve’s heart.
It’s the only reason he’s got a heart that knows to beat.
“Babe,” Bucky breathes out, and his expression is soft—exhausted, but fond, and there’s a sympathetic shine in his eyes that Steve wants to fall into, to get lost inside. “You haven’t gotten sick since the serum, yeah?”
Steve brings Bucky’s palm to his mouth and kisses the creases, leads Bucky’s hand to cradle his cheek as he exhales, uneven, and shakes his head slow.
“Been around anyone who’s been a little under the weather?” Bucky asks, and his lips are quirking again, full of affection, of an amount of indulgence, a level of care that it’s Steve’s place to be giving, because hell, hell: how is Bucky bedridden and still taking care of Steve, keeping Steve in one piece when all he wants is to shatter?
“I—”
“It’s not like it was,” Bucky murmurs, moves his fingers in the lightest approximation of a stroke against Steve’s face, and Steve damn near whimpers for how much he needs.
“it is nothing like it was, Stevie,” Bucky assures him, runs a slow, whisper-light thumb over the line of Steve’s jaw. “I’m gonna be right as fuckin’ rain, no time at all. Promise.”
Bucky’s mouth curls into the smile that means sunshine, to Steve, that means the world’s worth living in, worth protecting because Bucky lives in it and Bucky deserves the cosmos, Bucky deserves all the love in the whole of existence.
And if there’s any super-power that Steve truly possesses—has always possessed—it is the capacity to love James Buchanan Barnes more than the universe knows how to define.
Steve wraps his arms back around Bucky’s torso, maneuvering him with the utmost care to lie flat while Steve curls around him, head tucked into the crook of Bucky’s neck as he hides there in that warmth, all that life.
“How’d you get sick, anyway?” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s skin, mouthing the words to the line of his throat.
“Hell if I know,” Bucky exhales—still shallow, but stronger somehow, now. Maybe. “All that tongue-wagging on the news about superbugs, must’ve been something to it.”
And Steve needs, suddenly—not suddenly, just always; Steve needs to be closer to Bucky, to the unnatural heat of him, to his fragile, perfect human body, because for all that they are now, they are human, they’re all flesh and heart and blood and Bucky is Steve’s, Bucky is Steve’s flesh and heart and blood, his bones, and the soul in him, and Steve leans in, leans up.
He needs.
“Don’t get too close,” Bucky warns in a mumble, choppy and faint though his eyes glare, serious. “I don’t know if—”
“Shut up,” Steve speaks into the dip beneath Bucky’s mouth. “Just,” and he’s a little hysterical, he’s a little overwhelmed, and he’s so fucking full of what it means that Bucky’s breathing, what it means that Bucky’s breath comes out against his skin.
“Shut up, Bucky,” Steve manages the sentence, but it’s a thick thing in his throat, on his tongue; it’s real heavy. “You never let that stop you, not even when neither one of us had all this on our side,” and Steve runs a hand down Bucky’s firm abs, and Bucky’s strong enough to shiver with it—the good kind of shiver—and Steve’s a sap but damn it all, he could nearly sob with it.
“So I’ll be damned,” Steve says it, low, so that the falter in his voice doesn’t show—even if Bucky hears it, even if Steve knows that Bucky hears it: “I’ll be damned if I let that keep me from…”
And then Steve arches his neck and kisses one corner of Bucky’s mouth. The other.
Licks the seam of Bucky’s lips and tastes sweetness and staleness and illness and warmth.
And Bucky.
God.
“S’like talking to a brick wall, reasoning with you,” Bucky opens his mouth, and if he was aiming to discourage Steve, that was his first mistake: giving Steven Grant Rogers an opening to the thing that he wants.
“Mmm,” Bucky hums, soft and tired but real as Steve does the work and Bucky melts into pure give, pure tactile malleability as Steve worships all that Buck is, all that Bucky means with one mouth on another, with Steve’s lips on Bucky’s, with Steve’s tongue in Bucky’s mouth tracing truth there; abandoning fear, there.
Giving everything.
“Damnit, Stevie,” Bucky sighs between them as Steve pulls back, give Bucky plenty of room to breathe, to settle, to relish and not to overtax his worn lungs, precious things that they are, that he is.
“Besides,” Steve leans in to close his lips around Bucky’s, a quick peck upon the grin with his own smiling mouth once Bucky’s chest stops verging on heaves. Steve rests his forehead on Bucky’s and the way they breathe together is almost as good, almost better than they way that the kiss; almost perfect.
“You’ll take care of me if I catch it.” Steve glances up at Bucky through his lashes as he says it—not a question, it’s not a thing that needs to be asked; and Christ, those eyes are everything, say everything, hold everything.
Steve has to take a moment to just stare, to just stay in the moment, in the gaze, in the now, before he can speak again.
“Just…”
“Hmm?” Bucky eyes are wide, open, trusting.
Steve presses their mouths together once more. He can’t help it.
“No broth, okay?” Steve says softly, a hint, not of playfulness exactly, but of the hope that joy is on the horizon: joy untouched by fear.
Bucky’s eyes take on a sparkle and his mouth curves up, and Steve thinks, yes.
“And no potatoes,” Steve adds, flat and dry, and Bucky’s lips part, and a sound rises, and Steve doesn’t have to be frightened at the harshness of it, at the way it cuts through, because that’s how it’s always been, that’s what the universe sounds like, and Steve doesn’t have to fear this music that sings inside his bones, and has for almost a century: Steve doesn’t have to fear.
Bucky’s laugh is only ever a beautiful thing.
“And no fucking liver, Rogers,” Bucky rasps, shaking more with the laughter than the strain on his lungs, and Steve wishes the two didn’t have to share real estate, but it’s better than nothing, Steve thinks. “I ain’t kidding with that shit.”
“Deal,” Steve grins, and Bucky grins, and it’s more than just “better.”
Steve knows.
And so Steve tucks himself into Bucky’s body, fits every inch of his frame to the lines of Bucky’s limbs and rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder, breathes soft on Bucky’s chest and Steve revels in the way that any hint of tension, any hard lines of discomfort and pain slip from Bucky, inch by inch as he gives beneath, beside Steve’s embrace and just breathes; breathes.
Softer, now. Easy.
“Look at you,” Bucky whispers, and Steve can’t help but grin through the way his chest seizes up gorgeously with how that breath plays through his hair. “Your momma’s son, you are,” and Bucky’s heart beneath Steve’s ear is gentle, steady, contented. “M’feeling better already.”
Truth is: Steve’s feeling better, too.