I'm with you till the end of the line
Chapter 1
One might think that he should have gotten used to situations like these by now, but he hadn't and he probably never would. He awoke and flew up like a bolt in the bed. The all too familiar sound of pained hyperventilation was filling the room. Bucky stretched out his hands in the air, searching for his friend's hurting body in the dark. His fingers came in contact with cold, shivering skin and he pulled himself close to the figure.
"It's okay Stevie, just breathe," he said soothingly as he put one hand over the smaller man's chest and the other one between his shoulder blades. He put his mouth right next to his friend's ear and tried to calm him down. "It's okay, just breathe with me," he whispered as softly as he could muster when his own heart was racing at the speed of a train. He had experienced enough of Steve's fits to understand that one day the weak body in his arms was not going to live through one of the sessions. One day his fragile body would fail him and he would die and there was nothing Bucky could do about it. The only thing he could do was to make sure that when that day came Steve would get to take his last painful breath in Bucky's arm. He would make sure that when Steve closed his eyes for ever he would do so in the arms of his best friend, the one who had promised to be with him till the end of the line. And so they sat there for a good half an hour, Steve trying to match Bucky's breath while clinging on to the bed sheets in desperation. And Bucky, trying to keep his calm even though he feared that this might be the night when he loses Steve forever.
His warm breath hit Steve´s cold ear and sent shivers down the smaller man's neck. "Follow my breath Steve, you'll get through this." Bucky could feel Steve's chest fall into a more natural rhythm under his fingertips and heard how the blonde's breath slowed down. When he knew they were out of danger he let his left palm draw comforting circles on Steve's back, but his right hand held its position on his chest just to make sure Steve's lungs continued to work like they should. Bucky couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief and rested his forehead on Steve's bony shoulder. "I thought I had told you to stop scaring me like this," he said with a tired voice.
Steve opened his mouth to answer but Bucky hushed him before he even got the chance to start. "Shhh, don't say anything. Just… just breathe."
Steve managed to pull off a small smile as he let his head fall to the side and rest on top of Bucky's. They sat there for a while, neither of them saying a word but just appreciating the moment. Steve's lungs ached like after a knife stab but he had managed to get through it and he would most likely survive yet another night. Bucky got to relax and let his own heart slow down. And when the heat of the moment had died away they both realized how painfully tired they actually were.
"Will you be alright now?" Bucky broke the silence by asking into the blonde's skin. Steve barely had any power left enough to answer with speech so he simply murmured something incoherent into Bucky's hair which the taller man took as a yes.
"You think you can manage to go back to sleep?" Bucky's question was soon followed with a big yawn. Steve smiled through his doziness and nodded.
Bucky helped his friend down on the bed once more and made sure he was tucked in tightly by the two layers of covers before he himself snuck under his own cover right next to him.
"Thank you Bucks," Steve whispered into the darkness with a hoarse voice to which Bucky smiled slightly.
Bucky stretched out his arm and let his fingers travel through the other man's blonde hair in a soft, compassionate ruffle. "Always kiddo," he answered before he pulled his hand back and slumbered back into sleep.
Strangely enough it had come pretty natural for them to share the same bed. Bucky wanted to make sure he was as close as possible to Steve when he got one of his nightly fits and he was afraid that he might not hear them if Steve slept in his actual bed in the kitchen. And as if that wasn't enough the winters and autumns in Brooklyn could get pretty cold, especially when you lived in an apartment build for the lowest of the low class, the few days that the heating actually worked it was far from good enough to keep Steve from catching any nasty colds during the night. Bucky's room just so happened to be warmer than the kitchen and their combined body heat was a good protection from the cold.
When Bucky first suggested that they should share bed Steve had of course rejected it, claiming that he could go by perfectly on his own but after a nasty pneumonia almost claimed his life one winter even Steve decided that it would be best if they just simply shared bed. Not that any of them actually bothered to be honest. They'd known each other during most of their lives and they'd grown to more than just utterly depend on each other. Most around them would say that they'd become like brothers but that was not true. It was at least not the right word to describe it because brothers don't feel the urge to touch each other or to just listen to each other's voices. Brothers don't wish that they were allowed to trace the other one's lines on his skin with light fingertips. Both Steve and Bucky knew that what they felt for each other was love, that was plain to see. Yet they had yet to realize or maybe just understand the full extent of this love or what it actually meant.