Outside (in 1930's America), the world has fallen into a definite hush and inside isn't much more than this; there's the creak of the floorboard which Bucky never misses though he's walked Steve's floors a hundred times, and the faint scribbling of a new pencil upon graphite-marked paper as Steve, who's ninety-five pounds of pure spirit, sits with his knees as a desk to the sketchpad which he rests against his thighs. Aside from this, though, there's nothing.
He's drawing again, as he draws every night, and has taken special measures to not, absolutely not, repeat Bucky's face into the paper grain. He's drawing his mother instead, because he fears that he'll forget her face.
It'd been three weeks since her passing and still Bucky insisted that he not go home, as though he had so little faith in Steve's durability that he dares not leave him alone lest a lonely house drive him to madness.
That's what Bucky says, anyway, but Steve knows it's really about the asthma. Distress worsens his condition, and they've sat through multiple 3am's as he coughs and gasps. Small Steve has never mentioned it, but the absence of aplomb upon the expression of his friend proves that Bucky's still just as shaken by the attacks as he had been the first time, and the second time, and the twenty seventh time.
The hallway falls into abysmal dark and Bucky, his beloved buddy, plods into the room wearing a shirt so loose that Steve decides he may as well be rid of it. All of the same, he closes the sketchbook and pushes it under the pillow, because he shouldn't be drawing his mother; it didn't show good coping methods, apparently, but it seemed that any excuse would be taken to stay with him. To not leave.
The bed's almost too small for the both of them, but Steve, tiny Steve whose mouse-like stature leaves little to be desired, fits well between the slight curve of his friend's waist.
They don't look at each other because they don't feel the need, or maybe they feel the need a little too much.
"I got you a date with Jessica's friend. This Friday, at the flicks." Steve opens his mouth to speak, an incredulous glare passing over his features, but he's cut off. "Double date. It'll be fine, c'mon, you gotta start living again. Introduce new women into your life."
"I can find dames just fine, Buck; I don't need your help." Steve sounds so certain that Bucky laughs- actually laughs- and shakes his head as though the very notion is quite so ridiculous that he cannot comprehend the way that the towhead's mind works.
"Oh, yeah? You can? When's the last time you went on a date? One that I didn't set up."
Steve doesn't need to look in order to know that he's smirking, because he can hear it in his voice and it's contagious.
Oh, so contagious.
"We went to Coney Island three weeks ago, didn't we?"
The silence that descends upon them almost washes him with regret. His head falls back, touching the eggshell wall paint, chest rising, falling, rising with unsteady breaths and he's so emaciated that a seeping fear wells within his chest that the pounding of his hear might be visible through his flesh, though to think so is sheer insanity and somewhere within his mind he's aware of that fact.
Bucky snaps the astriction with a rigid chuckle. The bed sinks under his weight when he moves. "Shut up."
"You even won me a stuffed bear."
"Shut up, Steve."
"After a solid eight tries."
"I swear to God."
Their laughs mingle, and the moment is almost magnetic, because Steve's not laughed since the funeral. Not even at Bucky's terrible jokes.
It's a beautiful sound; mighty shame that the home was too empty for anybody else to hear it. All the same, /they/ heard it, and perhaps that would be enough.
Perhaps that'd always be enough.
"You're a punk," mutters Barnes, reaching to yank Steve down against the mattress. Steve still sleeps in a ball, curled around himself to conserve what little heat he manages, and it's probably saved his life- this is the part that Bucky finds saddest.
All the same, with two too-large arms encasing his body like a cocoon, suddenly he can't curl around anything but James Buchanan Barnes, and that's alright, too. That's just as good. Bucky's warm, and he's welcoming, and he feels like home.
Steve tells himself that it's because they're friends, but he's not too sure.
He's not too sure about anything anymore, except for the way that their heartbeats are humming in tune, a little song just for their two pairs of ears, and the fact that Bucky's breaths tickle to top of his head as he pressed just too close into him.
Just. Too. Close.
"Jerk."