"Steeeve, Steve!" Bucky yelled between desperate laughs. "Steve, stop it!"

"What, you don't like the way I talk?" After a few too many stove-top s'mores, the "East-coast Employee" had begun to show through Steve. They both knew how it could drive Bucky crazy, especially at 2 a.m. and on sugar. "I'm just gettin' started!"

Bucky was laying down, holding his sides from laughing at this point. Once he got going, it would take a while before his sanity returned. "I work so hard, all day, and what do they pay me? Nuthin'. At the end'a the day, I'm left to return home to my wife and kids with nuthin'. I tell ya, they don't see me."

Bucky finally quit cackling enough to wipe the tears from his eyes and give Steve a playful push. "Whoa!" Steve let go of his accent and his balance as he tumbled off the make-shift mattress he and Bucky had constructed from the couch cushions in Steve's apartment. Just before he fell over the line, Bucky grabbed his forearm and pulled him up.

Steve steadied himself and cleared his throat. "Did you want me to try another one, lad?" His attempt on a British accent was weak at this point, and he knew it.

"No." Bucky chuckled. "You're terrible at that one."

"Yeah, haha." Steve looked down at the plush brown cushions. "Then he slyly slipped his New Yorker back on: "S'pose you're right," and then slid Bucky a little smile. He took a deep breath. Looking up at Bucky, he admitted seriously, "There was an officer, at the funeral. He talked like that."

Bucky held his breath. No, no this would not turn into a night of sorrow, not now. He knew it was still the same weekend of the anniversary of the death Sarah Rogers. And that was why he was there, after all. It was great that Steve was willingly to open up to him right now, but seeing as he had let Steve mope enough on his own, Bucky was to make sure the night did not continue like that. He wasn't there to listen to sob stories; neither of them would make it through like that.

"Rogers, listen." Now that's when Bucky meant business. "We ain't gonna be doin' that tonight. You and me, were having fun tonight."

"Well alright, Buck. What qualifies?"

"I don't know, man." To be honest Bucky truly hadn't thought that far. But he'd do anything in the world with his best friend. "Let's play that, uh, that drawing game!"

Steve smiled mockingly at him. "Buck, you're terrible at that. You make a giraffe look like a mutated non-existent emu."

Bucky almost died right there, tears coming back fast as laughs rose up fast in his chest. "You're so right. I can't even argue." He wiped the tears from his eyes and sat up straight. "Well, why don't we watch something?"

"Like the ceiling?" Steve retorts, turning up towards it. It was true that a ban on manufacturing television and radio equipment for the public had been enacted by the government during the time of war, so not many people had one.

"Or the stars."

"God, Buck, you're such a sap." Steve said, and meant it, but the smile on his face said he didn't mind it. The two bantered back and forth for a while longer, just laying next to each other on the couch cushions on the floor of the quiet apartment complex. Voices got lower and conversations started drifting. Eventually both boys were for quiet for a short time.

"Steve?" Bucky whispered through the dim lighting streaming in from the kitchen. His only response was the staggered snoring coming from the little guy in a white t shirt just a couch cushion away. Bucky watched as the faint outline of Steve's chest rose and fell. He looked so small, his arms thin and void of muscle. He didn't seem strong, not with all his health problems. Many would doubt him. But Bucky knew that Steve Rogers was the strongest guy he had ever met, and one day there would come a moment where everyone else would know that all the power in the world wouldn't be able to shake him.