It took a while for Bucky to finally come to terms with actually being Bucky. After a while, Steve had lost track of the months that spun by, but eventually everything had clicked into place, and the Brooklyn accents were strong in their apartment for the first time since 1943. However, the high of finally having his life together didn't last long for Steve when Bucky's night terrors got worse than ever.
Dr. Banner had described this sudden "hit with a ton of bricks" reaction as the shock of the memories appearing starting to finally wear off. Bucky had already came to grips with the fact that the situations happened, having the occasional shock at three in the morning, but he was just starting to realize that they actually happened. Most of the nightmares were what Bucky described as, "a whole lotta blood comin' out of places I didn't think had blood, and me bein' the one bringin' it forth," but by the strain in his friend's voice, Steve assumed he was given the PG rated version.
It started becoming necessary that they sleep in the same room. Before, Steve wanted to give Bucky some space, or that's what came out of his mouth. He wouldn't admit that he was slightly more concerned for his own safety, just in case the Winter Soldier decided to snap back into mission mode and slit his throat with a straight edge razor in the dead of night. That wasn't a problem anymore, obviously, and Steve was already coming into Bucky's room about five times a night to calm him down anyway.
In retrospect, Steve hadn't thought this one all the way through. Carrying his bed into the second bedroom had been an impulse decision, even though he'd had plenty of time to think about it when he was trying to shove the headboard through the threshold of the door, successfully breaking said door off of its hinges in the process. And anyway, it probably wasn't going to come back to bite him in the ass until later.
Later being something not important right now, since Bucky was having a nightmare so bad his shoulders racked with dead-sounding coughs while his voice box produced screams powered by his very life-force. Steve whipped the covers off, not even hesitating when he heard the tell-tale sound of cotton blend fabric ripping, and ran to Bucky's side. Laying a gentle-yet-firm hand on each shoulder and steadying the ex-assassin's convulsions, Steve slipped into the other bed.
If this hadn't been the situation it was, Steve would have noticed the slight heat traveling down his body and into his boxers at the sensation of Bucky's burning flesh against his own. However, reality being what reality is, he didn't notice the tent in his underwear until after Bucky's breathing had finally stabilized and his screams had shrunk into breathy, desperate pleas that chilled Steve to the bone.
Blood traveled back up to his head and into his cheeks at the realization, and he hopped out of Bucky's bed like it had burned him. Somehow, the sudden imbalance of weight hadn't bothered the sleeping man, as he simply turned over to lay in fetal position upon the sheets. After making sure Bucky was going to stay this way at least for another ten minutes, Steve tiptoed down the hall, into the bathroom, and finally into the shower where the heat drowned away all desire and regret in his system, down, down the drain.
Stepping out of the shower and toweling himself off the best he could, Steve slipped on a new pair of boxers from the dresser in his old bedroom and tried his best to pad into Bucky's bedroom as quietly as he could, but it didn't matter that much when he turned to see Bucky sitting upright in his bed, watching Steve's every move.
The blush returned, but a different kind this time. Good thing darkness covered more than just spontaneous, embarrassing erections that just so happened to rise up at the most inappropriate times.
"You alright, Buck?" Steve whispered the question, still walking as softly as possible, even if both of them were awake. Treading lightly wasn't often a bad idea.
There was a pause. "Yeah," Bucky finally replied, though it was hesitant, unsure. Even though Bucky wasn't going to be blunt about it, Steve knew enough about people to assume that he wasn't remotely 'alright.' However, before his mother hen instincts built up over the past several months could kick in, Steve was on the receiving end of an uncomfortable question now.
"What about you? I heard you takin' a shower just a minute ago. Woke up with some lumber down under, Stevie?" Steve didn't need to be able to see to sense the shit-eating grin plastered on Bucky's face right about now.
The super-soldier decided to pointedly ignore this and crawl back into bed instead, but apparently Bucky took that as a yes, because soft chuckles filled the air between their beds. It was a better alternative to screaming, anyway, so Steve wasn't going to tell him to stop.
He never questioned how Bucky had 'guessed' so well, or why he hadn't asked how Steve got hard in the first place. Steve assumed it was for the best, anyway.
Maybe he'd actually get more than an hour of sleep tonight. Steve hadn't been asleep long enough at a time to actually dream a real dream since he'd first convinced the Winter Soldier to stay with him. That might be wishful thinking on his part, something he was very guilty of at this point, but as he felt his brain starting to slip into the soothing black, Steve didn't particularly care about wishful thinking as long as he could save Bucky.
Liquid as smooth as silk brushed over Steve's skin after the initial sting of a crash landing directly through its hard surface. His face, however, burned where the silk ran its delicate fingers over it. Steve wasn't sure why, right now, but faint images of a familiar face and a burning sky-machine drifted behind his eyelids. He felt like he understood what they meant, but it wasn't quite translating through every part of his brain.
As he descended farther through the satin fluid, it began to turn sour against not only his face, but the rest of his body. Thread became frozen knives stabbing away at his suit and skin with no mercy behind their strikes. He felt like he experienced something much more painful minutes, maybe hours, days, months before. Hell, it could've been years. Steve had been in this state of not-knowing for what felt like a private eternity.
Suddenly, he knew exactly how long he'd been under. He remembered everything; the Helicarriers going down, Bucky – no, Winter Soldier, get it together Steve – punching him relentlessly but suddenly stopping, and falling down, down, down without anything to stop him but the unforgiving Potomac right beneath him. Right now the Potomac was his entire Universe as far as he was concerned, he was so deep.
His lungs burned for oxygen being kept from him. He wanted to fight, but for all that his super-soldier body would do, it wouldn't help him now. Not this time.
As he finally felt the last strands of his consciousness slipping through his fingers and away into the river, Steve focused all of the energy he had left on remembering Brooklyn. Not the city, of course, but the man that had enough energy to power the whole damn thing by himself with just his smile.
The last thing he felt was the knives being thrown aside by two arms, one leather-covered and the other freezing metal, grabbing him and lifting him up. Must be an illusion, or a Kevlar clad angel taking him up to Heaven. His money was on the illusion.
Steve awoke with a start, jolted out of his watery Hell and back into the present, where his chest heaved up and down faster than ever. His hands shook when he reached up to touch his forehead, which was clammy with a thick, sweaty film. (So much for the shower, Steve thought ruefully.) He hadn't felt so drained, battered, and utterly powerless since before Erskine's serum.
Everything from the very top of his forehead to the tips of his toes, even his fingernails, felt so numb, like he was still sinking in the Potomac. When the realization dawned on him of what just happened, Steve had the bitter thought that maybe, just maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that he hadn't really dreamed for over five months.
Something dropped in Steve's stomach, adrenaline levels rising back up again, as he felt something right behind him shift. Turning his body over to meet whatever it was, he found himself nearly bumping noses with Bucky.
The morning light had just started to seep through the blinds on the window just above his bed, and Steve flushed what he assumed was a red richer than the one on his shield. Bucky's flesh arm had been looped around Steve's hips in some sort of comforting gesture, the metal one tucked uncomfortably under his torso. Steve frowned, his eyebrows drooping at what he assumed was Bucky thinking Steve hated the metal arm.
However, the frown disappeared when the super-soldier's eyes locked on to Bucky's face, which was as serene as it had been back in the old days when the heat wasn't coming on and the winter's howl brought the two of them onto the same mattress on the floor. His lips were parted just so, eyebrows not creating that nasty worried crease above the bridge of his nose, and his breathing quiet and slow.
Coming down from the cloud his brain was resting on, Steve put the pieces together. He'd actually fallen asleep last night. After that, it started getting fuzzy. Steve did remember enough of his dream to assume it was the one where he nearly drowned in Potomac. Again. After that near-death experience, he had nightmares for weeks, but Bucky's sudden arrival had distracted him so that he didn't have time to sleep long enough for the night terrors to sneak up on him. His own bad memories took the back-burner so he could help Bucky piece together his good ones.
With a strained smile, Steve grasped the fact that Bucky was the one that calmed him down in his nightmare for once. That realization brought up all sorts of questions, like if Bucky was aware that Steve did the same for him nearly every night – which he probably was – or if Bucky had to hear Steve scream for an hour straight.
One thing was for sure; Bucky had left at some point in the night, because his still-shoulder length locks were damp and smelled like the same shampoo that Steve uses.