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The bedside table is too cluttered.
There’s a book stained by his greasy fingerprints, the evidence of dog-eared pages riddled throughout it even though Steve hates that. A glass and food are shoved beside it, untouched, wax from the lit candle melting onto the edges of the plate. A bowl of water is on top of the book, a washcloth floating just below the surface.
On the bed, the imprint of his head is settled deep into the pillow beside Steve’s own. A chair sits close to the edge and it hasn’t, not once, forgotten the warmth of his body since Steve fell ill.
The room itself is dim and quiet; nighttime again. Mrs. Rogers sleeps for a few precious hours, unable to afford missing work even for her sick child. He understands. No reason for her to risk losing work when it isn’t needed.
Bucky Barnes knows what it is to keep a vigil. It isn’t his first for Steve Rogers and it won’t be the last.
He can’t remember when he last left Steve’s room. He can’t remember the last good night’s sleep he had, either, or when he last had the will to eat. None of that matters. What matters is the stench of sickness hanging heavy in the room, the labored breathing and thready pulse which has grown too faint too often for his liking in the past week.
It’s gotten stronger over the past day or so. Not by much - Steve’s heart is in shitty condition on a good day; his pulse an irregular and too fast pounding in Bucky’s ears - but it’s enough progress that Bucky doesn’t feel quite so lost and hopeless anymore.
Sometime after midnight, he crawls in bed with Steve.
Just for a minute, he tells himself. Just to relieve the ache in his bones. Just to calm the agitation that comes from knowing Steve is sick but still having such a distance between them. He hasn’t gone farther than the chair beside the bed in hours but even that is too far for him when there aren’t any prying eyes to disapprove of the closeness he craves.
Bucky doesn’t mean for it to happen but he ends up burying his nose in the spot just behind Steve’s ear, where his scent always seems to be the cleanest. The sickness in his sweat is still easy to pick up but it isn’t as potent as it was a few days ago and that’s a good sign.
Slowly, he’s getting better.
With Steve pulled against his chest and wrapped up tight in Bucky’s embrace, scent heavy in his lungs with each breath, it’s easy for Bucky to lose himself in the moment. He doesn’t know how long he lays there, drifting, finally content.
“What day is it?” A scratchy, hoarse voice asks and Bucky jerks back, surprised.
Steve turns to him with hazy, unfocused eyes and lips that are far too dry. Now that he’s awake, maybe Bucky can get him to actually drink something instead of relying on ice cubes.
“Sunday,” Bucky answers quietly, running a hand through Steve’s dirty hair. “How do you feel?”
“Cold.” He shivers as he says it and Bucky scoots in closer, tucks the blankets in a little tighter at Steve’s back; hoping his body heat will help. Steve sighs, eyes drifting shut as he lays his head on Bucky’s outstretched arm, half buried underneath the pillow. It looks as if he’s fallen asleep again but then he asks, barely above a mumble, “Did you go?”
Bucky scoffs. “‘Course not,” he says. “What kind of question is that, Stevie? You’ve been on your deathbed all fuckin' week.”
“Always on my deathbed,” Steve replies, reproachful. He opens an eye again to glare at him. “Always seem to get back up again, too. You missed your Calling? You only had one chance, Buck.”
The Calling. The fucking Calling.
A week that he can hardly remember and Steve’s worried about Bucky’s fucking Calling. It shouldn’t be so surprising. The proceedings leading up to Bucky’s sixteenth birthday have always been far more interesting to Steve than they ever were to Bucky. A curious little human wanting to know the ways of werewolves.
Bucky grew up on fairytales like that. He never thought he’d live one and yet...here they are. Here he is, sixteen and in love with his human best friend; sixteen and knowing, to the very marrow of his bones, that Steve is his. That he is Steve’s.
The Calling was supposed to tell him for sure. The visions, they say, are chaotic and indecipherable until the very moment they need to be clear. Visions of the future, of the past, the scent of a mate, the warnings of a path not yet chosen.
Only one chance to know, Steve said, and he was right. Midnight on your sixteenth birthday; that’s when the ceremony can take place. Then and only then can any werewolf who chooses have a chance at tipping the hand of fate.
Most do. Bucky doesn’t.
When it comes between Steve and an inevitable future? He’ll always choose Steve.
“Doesn’t matter, Stevie,” he says, quiet. “It wasn’t that important, anyways.”
“But,” Steve struggles to sit up and meet him eye to eye. Bucky helps him stay upright. “Your mate.”
Buck shrugs. “There was never any guarantee --”
“Bullshit.” Steve breaks off, coughing, and Bucky grabs the glass from the bedside table. He isn’t satisfied until every last drop is gone. Clumsily, Steve wipes his mouth. He says again, “Bullshit. Everyone we talked to said they got a clue. Didn’t you want one? Aren’t you curious?”
Steve is; he’s very curious. Not just about Bucky’s mate, either. He wishes that humans had a Calling, too. He wishes, more than anything, that there was a way to know who he’ll end up with.
Who, if anyone, will love a boy as small and sickly as Steve Rogers?
They haven’t talked about it but Bucky knows it like he knows everything else about Steve.
“You need to rest,” he says, instead of answering the question. “Go back to sleep.”
Tired as he is, Steve doesn’t even put up a token protest.
Bucky's glad; the truth isn’t something he can tell Steve, not right now. The truth is that he isn’t curious at all. There's no reason to be, not when his Chosen is right here in his arms, still half-clutched in Death’s grip and fighting his way out.
It doesn't matter what the Calling has to say. Bucky has been in love with Steve since before he even knew what love was and in the end, that's what counts. If Steve isn’t his true mate, he doesn’t want to know.
He’s already made his choice.