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Steve’s favorite part of the day is sunrise. There are always birds flying by his window, playing in the flowers by his room, no matter how bad the weather. Even on a cloudy day, even if it’s pouring, the birds will always stop by to sing Steve awake, then stick around a little while to make sure he has a good time. It’s the best part of his experience, really.
Today, he blinks awake to the sound of squeaky wheels rolling into his room. A nurse pulls the separating curtain shut, but gives Steve a small smile and a soft hello.
Maybe he’s going to have a roommate; God knows everyone else in this ward had a roommate. Steve was almost hoping he’d never get one. The nurses and doctors liked to pair people with similar people, and in Steve’s case, and apparently this person’s case, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
He’s in the ‘lost’ section.
Steve’s been in and out of hospitals since he was seventeen. None of the orderlies could figure out what was wrong with him aside from the fact that the asthma, the jaundice, the heart murmur, and overall frailness were symptoms of something bigger.
It stunted his growth, so he still looks a lot like the skinny, sickly boy he was five years ago.
“Steve?” someone asks, jarring him from his thoughts. Steve turns to find the nurse eyeing him with a small, crisp smile, her hands tucked away in her pockets like they always are whenever she comes to see Steve. “Would you like to meet your neighbor?”
Steve nods. “Yeah, sure,” he says, brushing his fingers through his hair. He knows he could never look presentable, not with the little cave in his chest or the bags under his eyes, but he can try. She draws the curtain back, giving him one more nod, before turning her smile onto the guy next to him.
He follows her gaze and damn, he’s kind of handsome. Steve feels a pang for the guy, but knows it’s useless. His mother cried enough for him to be a martyr and it still didn’t make him any less sick.
“Hey,” the guy says, blinking those pretty greenish blue eyes at Steve. “’m Bucky,” he murmurs in way of introduction.
“I’m Steve,” Steve replies.
They regard each other in awkward silence, and Steve knows Bucky’s eyes reach the tubes gathered about Steve’s wrist when he sucks in a harsh breath. “Jesus, kid, you all right?”
Steve just laughs. “Are you?”
It gets him a small smile, and Bucky rests his head back as the nurse goes about hooking him up to various machines Steve doesn’t care enough to learn their names. She pats his knee and gives Steve a wink before leaving the room, giving her usual, “press the red button on your remote if you need anything,” in parting.
Realistically, Steve knows that it’s got to be more than just him and Bucky that have the type of cancer that Steve and Bucky have. He knows because he’s seen the papers, and he knows because this guy’s got a little spot on the back of his hand, like Steve has on the arch of his hip. Realistically, he knows that he shouldn’t blame it on anything cosmic, or on a government manufactured virus to purge itself of the citizens deemed unfit.
Realistically, he knows that he’s probably not getting out of here, but he tries to focus on the positive. So, he turns and gives his roommate a wide smile.
“So, Bucky, what’s your story?” he asks, genuinely curious.
Bucky raises his eyebrows, quirking a tiny, confused smile. “My story?” he asks, brushing his fingers through his hair. “What story?”
Steve just shrugs. “You know, like you, dude. Everyone’s got a story.”
“What’s yours then, beansprout?” Bucky asks, this time definitely smirking. Steve just rolls his eyes and snuggles back into his pillows, ignoring the stale smell of medication filling the room.
“I, uh,” he starts. Then blushes, and decides that this guy might as well hear it because he’s probably here for the same reason, right? “I’m from DUMBO.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“You get around?” Bucky asks, still eyeing him.
Steve just shrugs. “A bit.”
“That why you’re here?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t blame him,” Steve says, sighing and rolling onto his side to give Bucky his full attention. “I mean, monogamy’s going out of style and all that, I get it. I just didn’t want to be a part of it.” Well, he didn’t want to be a part of it, but Howard had absolutely no objections to abject and prominent promiscuity, and Steve didn’t have any objections to his lack of objections. Maybe he should’ve. “He’s still around though, so I guess it’s not all bad.”
Except Dum Dum’s gone; Gabe, Jim, Tim, Jacques, all of them. Steve’s almost there too, but he’s not. Surprisingly, he might add, because he was already the frailest of the bunch. He’s told the doctors that the asthma has always been there, that the only thing new was the jaundice and the spots and the constant dizziness and the vomiting.
A man came to ask him for a statement on his disease. Steve just laughed and said he’d like to die in peace, thanks.
“Mine’s not,” Bucky says, frowning a little. “Thank God.”
Steve blinks up at him, before rolling over so his back is to Bucky and presses his face into the pillows. Then, he giggles a little and reaches towards his nightstand, retrieving the little cassette player and pushing in a Stones tape.
Soft music fills the room, swirls around him and hugs him close, and he feels like he can breathe easier, even though it’s an illusion. He smiles and hums along with the lyrics, taps his toes and whistles to the guitar, bangs his head as much as he can without getting dizzy, and sighs backwards into the pillows until he’s swallowed whole.
“You, my friend, need to come with me to a concert next weekend,” Steve says, laughing a little. God, he’d kill for a joint, for some whiskey and a beach with his back pressed up against a burly chest, big arms wrapped around his middle. “I heard The Smiths are going to be in town.”
“They’d let us out?”
“They would if I can convince Peggy and Doctor Phillips to, and Peggy’s sweet to me.” Truthfully, Doctor Carter isn’t sweet to him at all, but she thinks that even those with gay cancer deserve a hit at life. Steve likes that about her; she doesn’t give a shit what the public thinks, and lives by her morals. It’s a nice quality.
“You sure you can walk, pal? You’re lookin’ pretty thin-”
“I can fucking walk, jerk.”
He rolls around to give Bucky his best glare, even going as far as to maneuver around his wires and tubes and reaching for the IV stand to prove it to this asshole. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Steve does feel a little dizzy, but he blinks it away and ignores the way Bucky looks about ready to jump to his side of the room and help him up, if necessary.
Steve doesn’t need it; he smiles when he successfully gets on his two feet and takes five confident steps to stand at Bucky’s bedside. “How’s that for not walking?” he asks, sneering a little.
Bucky groans and reaches up to flick at Steve’s belly. “You’re a punk, Stevie.”
“You love it.”
“Do not.”
“Do to.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Steve grins and pats Bucky’s elbow before crossing the room to perch on the edge of his bed. Truthfully, he’s actually feeling a lot better than usual. Maybe he’s well enough to go down the hall to the impromptu cafeteria they’ve built for the special wing; hell, he knows he’s well enough. Grinning, he balls up a piece of paper from a notepad on his table and tosses it across the room at Bucky.
“Hey,” he says.
“What now?”
“Wanna go to the cafeteria? My treat.”
“I can’t carry you if you fall.”
Steve just snorts. “Well, I’ll make damn sure to carry you if you do.”
Bucky rolls his eyes, but grins a little nonetheless. Then he pushes himself to his elbows and fixates Steve with a mock glare. “You just gonna stand around, or are you going to help me untangle myself from all of these tubes?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
He laughs a little before bringing his hands down Bucky’s chest, following the main line until it twists and sags off his hip. He plucks it from the hook on the side of the bed and wraps it around a rung on the IV and medication stand on the side of Bucky’s bed before offering a hand up.
“Ready?” he asks, smiling a little when Bucky wraps his fingers around his palm.
Bucky rolls his eyes but lets himself be helped up nonetheless. “You fuckin’ know it, punk.”
“Oh my God, this is fuckin’ good.”
Steve grins across the table at where Bucky’s practically performing fellatio on his pudding pack. They couldn’t scrounge up any spoons, but the lady manning the counter was nice enough to give them a grilled cheese each with a pack of vanilla pudding, but no spoons. Steve thinks it’s a little ironic; no spoons, no name, food but no term.
A lot of things are getting pretty ironic these days, but Steve doesn’t dwell on them too long. He likes to live with the knowledge of waking up with birds chirping at his window and a fucking rainbow coming out of his ass because he’s managed to kick this thing to the curb for the last five years.
“Fuck,” Bucky moans.
Steve giggles again and takes a bite out of his sandwich, almost moaning at the taste of cheese, real, actual, unprocessed cheese. Well, probably those packs that Kraft sells, but Steve’s not complaining. He finishes it all and doesn’t even feel the slightest bit nauseous. He glances over at Bucky and finds that he’s staring daggers at Steve’s pudding, but hasn’t touched his food.
He rolls his eyes and pushes it over. “Don’t go too nuts, Buck.”
“I’ll eat what I damn well want, punk.”
Steve sighs, but smiles a little. “Jerk.”
They finish up in the corner of the lunch room, tucked away from everyone else as they talk about music and, well, stuff in general. Turns out Bucky’s big on Led Zeppelin and rock music, but he’s a total geek for Cher.
“Really?” he asks, tilting his head. “Isn’t she a little, I don’t know, mellow for you?”
Bucky just frowns at him before flicking a bit of pudding at him. “She wears thongs and spandex on stage, dude. I don’t think that really counts as ‘mellow’.” Steve just harrumphs and wipes away as much of the gunk as he can, grimacing a bit with each peal of Bucky’s contagious laughter.
“Whatever,” Steve replies.
They hang around a little while longer, mostly just telling each other fart jokes and exchanging favorite everythings until Bucky grins and heaves out of his chair, then grabs Steve around his bicep. He’s about to ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing, but the words are caught in his throat when Bucky leans down and plants a kiss on his mouth, right there in the middle of a cafeteria in a goddamn hospital.
When Bucky pulls away, he looks smug.
Steve, however, feels like he’s blushing all over. “What the hell?” he asks, more bemused than angry.
Bucky just rolls his eyes and wraps an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “We don’t got much time now, do we?” he asks. When Steve neglects to provide an answer, he just goes on. “Well, I like you, so I kissed you. It’s not rocket science, beansprout.”
He’s got a point, Steve supposes. But still, he folds his arms across his chest and harrumphs. “You’re supposed to ask before you do that sort of thing, asshat.”
“Well, wanna do it again?” Bucky asks in lieu of an apology.
“God yes,” Steve replies, in lieu of a demand for an apology.
So they do it again, and then they run, or rather they stumble over each other’s feet and the tubes and wires sticking out of their bodies until they find the escape to the roof and go to sit on the ledge. Bucky takes Steve’s hand and entwines their fingers together, his thumb rubbing soft circles over Steve’s knuckles.
There aren’t any birds here, as opposed to at sunrise. Steve squints at the setting sun, watches the pinks and oranges slowly haze off into gentler blues, dim into beautiful purples. He leans into Bucky’s side, just about ready to pass out, when he feels the telltale drop of his stomach before he’s scrambling away and leaning over the edge of the building, uncaring that he just emptied his guts all over the bushes at the entrance.
Bucky’s hand rubs and pats at his back, stays there even when he’s finishes and pushes away from the edge so he doesn’t have to see his mess. Bucky gives him this worried look, and Steve decides he hates it, so he wipes his mouth on his forearm and tucks himself against Bucky’s chest.
“Don’t mention it,” he says, knowing full well that he might not make it all the way back to their room.
As it turns out, he does. But just barely. Bucky has to keep an arm wrapped around Steve’s waist as they stumble, well, Steve stumbles, Bucky follows, back to their room. He has a wide chest and strong arms wrapped around him, but they’re too thinned out, too mottled and sickly tinged. He tries not to stare at the spot on the back of Bucky’s hand but he knows he fails. He stares so intently he finds the beginnings of another in the soft patch of skin that stretches between his index finger and his thumb, and he weakly holds up Bucky’s hand to see it.
When Bucky doesn’t respond, Steve turns to stare at him, then he feels chill against his back and peers over his shoulder.
“What is it?” he asks, when he can’t see anything.
Bucky just stares at him for a moment too long before gathering him up in his arms again and leading him down the hall until he shoves through their door and drops Steve face first on his bed, fingers unknotting the thin gown bound between his shoulder blades.
“Jesus, Stevie,” he says. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“What?” Steve just keeps asking back. He doesn’t even know when Bucky presses the button, just that he had to have pressed it for the nurses to come in. It’s utter chaos, and it feels like hundreds of people are shouting in tandem, screeches of codes blue and purple, someone batting Bucky’s nice hands from his skin and the cold touch of something metal and sterile sliding down his spine.
Finally, Peggy comes into the room and asks him how he’s feeling.
“Fine,” Steve says. “Confused, and a little dizzy, but fine. Why?”
She doesn’t give him any answers either, but he can hear the sound of a camera’s shutter snapping shut, worried murmurs and scrambling footsteps. Steve rolls his face away from the pillows to glance over at Bucky’s bed, which has a very white faced, very wide eyed looking Bucky sitting at the edge.
“What is it?” he mouths.
Bucky just shakes his head in response.
Steve turns his head the other direction, finding Peggy staring at him with something like concern, sadness, and frustration wrapped into one tight expression. Steve tries to ask again, but she just lifts one manicured finger to his lips and bends down to kiss his cheek.
When she pulls away, she’s smiling, but it’s too soft to really count as anything other than bad news. Steve wrinkles his nose and prepares for the worst.
“You’ve got more lesions, Steve,” she murmurs, sliding her hand up to card through his hair. “All over your lower back, and climbing up to your shoulders. I don’t know how they got there so quickly.” She hiccups and breathes deep, like she’s grounding herself. “It’s progressing, Steve.”
And, well, isn’t that just the worst kind of news?
Steve smiles though, genuinely, and reaches up to slip his fingers between Peggy’s. He sees a spot on his thumb, but ignores it when he rubs his fingertips over the back of Peggy’s hand. “Hey,” he murmurs, still smiling just because he can. “Hey, c’mon Peggy, look at me.”
She looks at him, but her eyes are too watery.
“It’s all right,” he says, and means it. “It sucks, but I’ve made my peace, y’know? But I’ve got a question.”
Peggy’s forehead crumples with curiosity, then she tilts her head and nods. “Anything,” she tells him.
“Will I be around next week?” he asks. It’s the only question, really, that matters anymore. Her fingers twitch in his hand, pretty red nails stark against his pale skin. “’cause I was going to take Bucky to that concert I’ve been telling you about.”
At that, she giggles a little. “I don’t understand why you like The Smiths, Steve, I really don’t. You could listen to The Cure and get the same experience with a better singer.”
“You speak blasphemous words, Doctor Carter,” he replies, smirking. “The Smiths are amazing, Peggy, I’d love to take you with if you want.”
She sighs, her smile fading back into that weak sad thing. “Of course I want to, darling.” She glances up from his eyes, behind him at where Bucky’s sitting on his bed. “You’re okay with that, James?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she says, looking at Bucky first, then back down at Steve. “It’s a date.”
It’s six days after that that the machines go nuts, then silent a few moments later.
Bucky was trying to keep a clear head, he really was; it’s not like he knew Steve long enough to have formed feelings about him. Except, he had, formed feelings that is. The doctors had been coming in a lot, day to day, asking if Steve needed anything, then checking Bucky for anymore spots. Whenever they find none, Bucky feels a little betrayed for some reason, like he should be there right with Steve when all of this goes down.
But he isn’t; rather, he wasn’t.
They take his body in the morning, but Bucky heard him staggering to the bathroom to go puke up food he hadn’t eaten. Bucky got up to rub his back and card his fingers through his hair. Then he brushed his teeth and gave him a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth before bringing him back to his bed.
Steve insisted on staying up, said he wanted to write a couple things.
It was a list.
At the top corner of the sheet Steve’s written his name in elegant artist’s scrawl, and Bucky smiles a little at his obvious carelessness in penmanship. He reads on, finding his own name written just below Steve’s, followed by the words, “next of kin.”
Bucky knows Steve didn’t have much in life; Howard bought him almost everything he owns, and Steve didn’t want anything to do with it after he found out that he was sick. So, written in the list below their names, the first item is a request to burn anything Howard Stark had bought for him. The second thing under that is his wish that Bucky could do it, because he’d do it right.
Then, it says that any and all of his Smiths records can go directly to Margaret Carter, with a little note scrawled beside it reading, “just give them a shot, Peggy, you’ll love them.”
Bucky swallows and reads on, tracing Steve’s words with the tips of his fingers. Among his final requests, he says he wants to leave Bucky his apartment in DUMBO, and any and all of his books. He leaves his “measly assets” to the hospital in thanks of the care they provided him. He leaves the last love he can give to Bucky and Peggy.
Says he wishes he could’ve had another year to fall in love with Bucky like people do.
It’s painful to read through the note, with the faint rasp of Steve’s soft voice warming the room through the words he didn’t speak but left behind nonetheless. Bucky finishes the letter, then reads it once more, then again, before grabbing his IV and a couple bottles of pills and searching for Peggy.
She’s not hard to find, if he’s being completely honest. She’s in the waiting room closest to their room, her head cradled in her hands and her legs draped carelessly over the seat next to the one she’s settled in. Bucky flops down across from her and hands her the note without speaking a word, watches her read it. Her eyes were red as it was, but by the time she finishes and buries her face again, she’s crying.
“Hey,” Bucky murmurs, hesitantly reaching over to pat her knee. “C’mon, Peggy, let’s go back to our-er, my room.”
She nods, but does nothing to stand, so Bucky just sits down in the seat beside hers and wraps an arm around her shoulders. Skinny arms, but not skinny enough, wrap around his waist and pull close. The smell of pine and roses fills his nose when she presses her face to his chest, not pencil shavings and peppermint and sickness.
He rubs her back and kisses the crown of her head before pulling away and making his way back to his room.
The last thing on the list was that Bucky go to the concert on his own. “Don’t skip it on my account,” was his exact phrasing.
So, Bucky packs. He takes all of the medicines he’s supposed to and brushes his hair, ignoring the patches that fall off and litter the floor. He finds his finest flannel shirt and his ratty ACDC shirt and a pair of baggy, holey jeans, and dresses himself in them, then digs for a cap to hide the small purple spot Steve found a couple days before on the back of his neck.
If he looks at himself in the mirror like this, he can’t tell that he’s sick with a terminal disease. He just looks a little thin to the naked eye, perhaps like he might have a cold, but otherwise as normal as anyone else on the streets.
He tells the woman at the front desk that he’ll be back sometime tomorrow, after the concert, and that he has a couple hundred dollars to get a hotel room. She just gives him a worried look before calling a cab for him and telling him to wait in the lobby until it arrives.
He directs the man through Manhattan, over the bridge into Brooklyn and to the strip that Steve told Bucky his apartment was in.
“It’s the only red and yellow house on the block, Buck,” he’d said. “It’s hard to miss.”
When he finds it, he gives the guy a twenty and tells him to keep the change. Then he walks up the steps, and pushes open the door, finding a small hallway and the narrow staircase that Steve had instructed would be there. He climbs the stairs, searching out the out of place hollowed out hunk of wood, before spotting it.
“It’s in a piece of birch. The key has a pretty purple ribbon on top of it,” Steve informed him.
He grabs the key and makes his way to 2E. The door looks like something Steve would’ve picked for himself; lavender, and oddly fitting despite the dark décor in the rest of the building. He puts the key into the lock, gives a quick twist of his wrist, and pushes through, finding the floors littered with undone laundry and remnants of another person’s presence.
“Howard still hasn’t picked up his things,” Steve had said. “I don’t want to see them when I get back.”
Bucky bends to pick up the clothes that are at least two sizes too big for Steve and tosses them in a garbage back he finds under the sink. Then he goes to work picking up Steve’s clothes, sorting the fancier, obviously more expensive ones from the too small hand-me-downs concentrated around the one bedroom in the apartment.
He’ll keep them, he supposes; maybe Steve would’ve wanted to keep them.
Once he finally has the place cleaned up as per Steve’s request, he collapses on the couch, breathing through his mouth and chasing the little spots that form in his vision. It’s odd, how Steve’s smell and his stuff is still here, but Steve himself isn’t. By odd, Bucky means terrible and he would trade all of his stuff, all of Steve’s stuff, himself even if Steve could just be here.
He knows he can’t. He can hear Steve giggling in his ear. “You can’t just off yourself, punk,” he would’ve said. Bucky’s tempted to grin and do just the opposite, just like he’s been doing this past week.
He doesn’t though, instead he buries his face in the pillows and wills himself to think about anything, everything but Steve lying cold in a morgue. He doesn’t succeed.
Even his dreams, later that night, are out to remind him of his loss.
So he stays awake, until he can feel bags forming under his eyes and the sun rises. Steve’s really got a great view from here; the soft blues and greens of the morning sky, the birds flying past the window as though they’re saying hello to Bucky when no one else is here to. He smiles a little, but it’s too sad to really count.
Steve’s tiny clothes, as it turns out, fit Bucky’s new tiny body. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, at the way his hipbones protrude like knives from his middle. He lifts his shirt, staring at the spot forming just under his nipple, at the ribs visible even when he doesn’t suck in. He used to be all muscle and suntanned skin. He used to have a healthy flush all over.
Even his face is different; his stubble’s gone from the chemicals swimming in his veins, eyebrows too, mostly. His eyes are the same, but they’re not framed by the thick lashes he grew up being told made him look as handsome as the guys on the movie screens.
He misses being told he’s handsome; Steve told him so, a couple days ago.
“You look like that Michael Douglas, you know? All brooding and tough, like you’re going to kill a guy ‘cause he called me a slut. It’s hot as hell, Buck.”
Or, “You’ve got real nice eyes. I feel like I could drown in them.”
Or, “If we weren’t sick and if I could still feel my dick, I’d love you if you’d fuck me.” Then, “I’d love you anyways, if we had more time.” Then, “Can I love you, Bucky?” Then, “Fuck that, I love you, Bucky.”
Or, “next of kin.”
Or, “I wish I could’ve had another year to fall in love with you like people do.”
Or, “I heard The Smiths are in town.”
Or countless other things that should’ve been said but never were. Bucky knows that his soft, “I’d love you too,” wasn’t anything compared to Steve’s, “I love you,” or his various other endearments, but Bucky knows he returned them in full, whether spoken or unspoken, and that Steve knew when he’d give that Bucky that little smile and ask if he wanted to watch the birds by their window.
Funny thing, whenever Bucky sat with him, they’d never show up.
He walks out of the bathroom and pulls on his own clothes from last night before taking a cab back across the bridge and into the city. The concert was supposed to be at Madison Square Garden, or so Steve had told him, so he goes there and finds a crowd already piling up by the doors. Still, when Bucky pushes through, people part for him, and he buys two tickets.
The concert is good, but it isn’t great. The atmosphere is fun, but Bucky doesn’t jump along with them, sing along with them. Girls and guys alike hit on him, but he brushes them off because he knows better than to fall in love.
At least he did, before Steve.
He goes back to the hospital and learns that Peggy’s at home. She took a sick day, is what the nurse at the front desk told him. She also tells him that the funeral’s already paid for in full, and that all Peggy asks is that Bucky stands in with her as his husband.
He agrees without hesitation.
So it happens. Bucky stands in as quietly as he can, but he’s been crying for the better part of the day, and he knows it’s obvious that he has. Distant cousins pat his cheek and wish him the best, that they’re sorry for his loss and sorry for his illness. Bucky doesn’t know if they’re referring to Steve or his health when they say, “his illness,” with a grimace.
So the dirt is lain down, and flowers are scattered. Bucky and Peggy throw theirs in last, together, and signal the gravediggers to throw the dirt onto the coffin, together.
Then, the crowd starts to disperse, murmuring goodbyes and good lucks to Bucky as they go. Even Peggy leaves, pulling her scarf snug around her neck and kissing Bucky’s cheek before patting his shoulder and making her way back to the parking lot.
Bucky, for his part, just sits in front of the grave, uncaring if it’s pouring rain on his shoulders, uncaring that he’s sniffing and that if he even catches a cold he’s a goner. He traces his thumb over the gravestone, something Steve had requested he’d wanted it to read, along with the little carving of two toy soldiers holding hands right in the middle.
Honestly, Bucky thought it was a weird idea when he first read the note. Now, it’s oddly fitting.
“Memories linger of a little angel, Heaven sent, who brightened our lives but for a brief, fleeting moment,” Bucky says to no one. It was something Peggy had said when she was reading to Steve a few days after Bucky was admitted. Steve just said that he liked it a lot, and smirked a bit when Bucky said that of course he would, he looks enough like a little angel that he could be one.
Sometimes words should never be heard; sometimes if they’re unheard, events can be avoided.
Bucky thumbs at the carving, the left being Steve. He can tell from the short stature and the wicked curved smile. The soldier on the right is different; one arm wings freely, but the left arm is hesitant, as though held back.
He rubs at his own shoulder, all but immobilized by his disease, and thinks he knows who the other soldier is.
All in all, three days later, he’s admitted to the hospital, and another day after that Peggy comes by his room to tell him that his legs and shoulders are almost completely covered. She cries, and Bucky forces a smile, tells her that she has to be careful now that Bucky and Steve aren’t going to be there for her.
She smiles back and tells him she’ll try, but no promises.
He tells her that it's all he asks for, and not twenty minutes later he faints to the sound of wailing machinery and shouting from down the hall. He smiles a little bit before he loses all feeling, and lets the darkness dancing behind his lids overtake him.
The last thing he sees is a curved red smile and a blond head nestled in his arms.
And he’s happy.