Steve had never been the heaviest of sleepers. War certainly hadn't helped encourage it, and neither had dealing with the bizarre events that continually found him now as an Avenger.
The sound of the man in the next room over getting out of bed and hitting the floor, heavy and solid in his motions, startles Steve immediately awake. He pauses sitting up in his bed, knowing that there is always the chance Bucky will arrive in his room in the next moment, weapon in hand, and only giving Steve a few precious seconds to reach the shield leaning against his nightstand.
The seconds tick by on Steve's bedside clock, but there is no sign of Bucky barging into his room tonight. Which leaves the other alternative, which is no more pleasant.
Steve climbed out of bed and gently picked up the shield. Before leaving his bedroom he made sure to lean it up against the wall next to the door. If a confrontation was going to happen, chances are it would have happened already. But it never hurt to be too careful. Steve was always a big fan of being prepared.
All the lights were still off in the apartment when Steve left his room, standing in the hall with the cool hardwood floors under his bare feet. A little light seeped in through the drawn blinds and curtains of the apartment, because honestly, this was New York. True darkness hadn't existed in this city when he first lived here, and that was one of the few comforting things that had remained unchanged in 70 years of absence.
The door to the second bedroom on the hall was open a crack. Bucky never went to bed with it completely open or completely shut. It wasn't a matter of privacy to him. Open gave enemies too much ease of access and completely shut deprived the senses of early warning signs of danger.
There were sounds of items being moved around within, hastily, without care for the noises that were created from the action.
Steve approached the cracked door and gently called out, "Bucky? I'm coming in now."
He entered the room, cautious as always, and quickly scanned the area to find the retired assassin.
Bucky was on his knees, bent over into the bottom of his closet, frantically pulling things aside and digging into a duffel bag he had placed on the floor inside. He wore only a pair of black sweatpants, and from his vantage point Steve's eyes were drawn to the glimmer of his left arm in the scant light trickling in from the street outside.
"Bucky?" Steve stayed where he was as he spoke. Not wanting to startle him until he was sure Bucky knew he was there. Sleepwalking was not beyond the realm of possibility for him. And if waking a normal sleepwalker was dangerous, waking an ex-soldier, ex-KGB assassin, ex-HYDRA experimental human weapon was even more so.
Bucky paused in his search for only a moment, acknowledging Steve's presence. His back and shoulders were raising quickly, air coming in fast but shallow breaths.
Steve could feel the ghost sensation of an asthma attack as soon as he saw it happening. But his lungs continued to inhale and exhale as they were supposed to, and he shook off the sense of being on the wrong end of this situation.
"I can't breathe. Can't breathe," Bucky managed to gasp out. He kept repeating the words as he dug with more fervor into his duffel bag, hand finally seizing upon the item he had been looking for.
He rolled back onto his haunches and placed the black mask over his mouth, taking heavy labored breaths, his eyes pinched shut and his hand coming up as if to clutch at his heart before it found its way back to the floor to brace him instead.
Immediately after getting the mask fixed onto his face, Steve could hear his breaths becoming longer, deeper. That phantom feeling returned as Steve took a deep breath as well, mimicking Bucky's returning rhythm.
Bucky shifted up on his feet, finally turning and meeting Steve's eyes for the first time since he had come through the door. The mild panic that had been settling in was gone, replaced by that peculiar half-guilty half-frustrated look that Steve had gotten accustomed to.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
The answer is short and quick, a small amount of bite to it. Obviously Bucky is not going to be in one of his more emotionally open moods tonight, but Steve is used to that as a possible response to these almost panic attacks that he's been suffering for the past few months.
Steve refused to leave though, and instead took a few more steps forward into the room and sat on the edge of the mattress on the side of the bed facing Bucky and the closet. Bucky stood in front of him for a moment, before turning and getting his back flat against the wall, and sliding down to sit on the floor.
His legs were stretched out in front of him, laying at the angle they happened to fall, as if he suddenly couldn't draw up the strength to move them into a more comfortable position.
And so they sat, the lights outside occasionally shifting, brushing their way across the ceiling as headlights of cars moved by, before disappearing again.
Bucky's breathing had returned to normal, the mask providing a release from whatever fear had taken hold of him in the middle of the night. Steve hoped some day he would speak to him every time this happened, instead of shouldering the majority of these nights himself.
But Steve was also realistic. He knew this would take time, and he didn't even have an idea of how long. Months? Years? Decades?
They had taken 70 years to break him into pieces and reassemble him as they saw fit. Who knew how long it would take to try and put the puzzle back the way it was originally intended.
As Steve watched Bucky, he saw no movement from him whatsoever. No nervous hand clenching as he had seen some of the veterans do down at the VA.
He checked, hoping to catch some minor foot rocking back and forth as he remembered a certain brown haired Brooklyn native being partial to doing during the last five excruciating minutes of church, a lifetime ago. But no luck. Bucky may as well have been carved of stone for all the moving he seemed intent on doing tonight.
Steve waited a few more minutes before standing up, and moving to head back to the hall and to his own bed. Contrary to some super geniuses he knew, Steve Rogers still preferred to get a fairly normal amount of sleep every night at a time most people would consider normal.
As he passes him by, Bucky's hand shoots out and snatches Steve's wrist. Steve doesn't even hesitate, doesn't even make him say anything.
He backs up against the wall as well, letting himself slide down next to Bucky, so close that their shoulders end up pressed against each other, bare flesh to bare flesh.
He listens to the almost imperceptible sound of Bucky's breathing, only made loud enough to hear because it has to pass through the small ventilation slots in the front of the mask. But even so, the sound is soothing.
Steve's head leans back to the wall, and as he has done a handful of times, for a handful of different reasons since Bucky's return, he begins to fade into that strange half awake state before he nods off completely.
One noise breaks him out of his barely begun doze. The sound of the mask detaching from Bucky's face.
"Little easier to breathe, when you're here," he says, as he places the mask to his side, and returns to his statue-like vigil next to Steve.
Steve exhales once softly, almost a chuckle, as his eyes slide shut again. He's feeling pretty confident that an underweight asthmatic blond boy may have said that exact same thing to Bucky once upon another lifetime.
Just a little ficlet I threw together one night. Not beta-ed or anything. But I love these two too much to not at least drabble them something.