Bucky is restless and beginning to look a bit gaunt when he gets home. It's nearly 2 in the morning. Steve feels eyes boring into him as he quietly slips out of his shoes and tries to pretend either of them really believe that Bucky's asleep.
"Busy day?" Bucky's voice is rough. He sounds thirsty. Steve brings him some water without being asked and sits down beside him on the bed. Bucky holds the glass in his remaining hand, but he doesn't drink. His metal arm has finally been cinched tightly into a sling against his chest. It doesn't work anymore and he knows Bucky's shoulder is probably still aching from the weight.
"I had to try." Steve says honestly, meeting Bucky's tired eyes in the darkness.
Neither of them speaks for a few minutes.
"Steve..."
Bucky is the first to break the silence, as usual.
"Please. Don't leave me alone again. ...Not now." There's a desperation, a pleading note, that Steve hasn't heard since Bucky left the Winter Soldier behind. Something inside him twists. "I can't do this on my own."
Neither of them acknowledges that he has been far from alone. Word travels fast.
The other Avengers have been nearby. They both know what he means.
"You don't have to." Steve does his best to be the strong one, though that was always Bucky's speciality. He isn't even sure he has enough strength for himself right now; let alone enough to go around. "I'm sorry…"
Bucky's head comes to rest on his shoulder and he looks so weary, like he's just been holding himself together all day, trying to make it to the end. Steve gently touches the hair that's brushing against his face, and hopes it's soothing. He's never been very good at this.
"You're all I've got left from… before." Bucky says softly. "I always hoped I'd have family with me when-"
He doesn't finish. Neither of them wants to be the first to say it out loud.
"Worry about that later." Steve pats his arm, as reassuringly as he can manage. "A lot later. We're gonna get you through this and out the other side, good as new."
"Steve-"
"I won't leave… but I won't stop trying, either."
"Steve."
Bucky raises his head and locks onto his eyes, daring him to try to look away.
"...Just don't. Don't do this to yourself... or me. You think it's hard for you to accept? How do you think I feel?"
Steve can't answer that. He can suddenly barely breathe.
"I don't wanna die any more than I ever did… " Bucky swallows roughly, pushing back a tired whimper, "...but it's gonna happen. Lying about it doesn't change that."
"Maybe… maybe not. You came back from certain death at least a couple of times already, Buck. Can't a guy hope for one more?"
Steve smiles at him, and it is the saddest thing Bucky thinks he has ever seen in his life. He tries to smile back, but the strength just isn't there.
Bucky sighs, leaning hard into Steve's shoulder for support.
"You are a stubborn little punk, Rogers."
He says it affectionately. He appreciates knowing that, even if it's pointless, Steve still cares enough to try the impossible on his behalf. This is Steve's core: what makes him the man he is. It's comforting in an annoying sort of way.
"And you're a pushy jerk, Barnes." Steve gently ruffles his hair. It's a testament to how bone-tired Bucky must be that he barely even twitches in response. "Get some sleep."
"You quit disappearing on me, and I just might." Bucky mutters, reluctantly raising his head to drain the neglected glass in one massive gulp and set it aside. To Steve's relief, he doesn't choke on it.
Steve curls up beside his friend in silence, ignoring the muted chill of the metal limb against his back. He feels the mattress dip heavily as Bucky eases himself down behind him. Human fingers catch a handful of his t-shirt and latch on tight.
Steve can't decide if he wants to smile or cry. He closes his eyes and tries to relax.
It doesn't work... but he tries.
Bucky is too tired to notice if his friend's breathing is artificially even; if he doesn't snore like he usually would. Steve is here and that's what matters. He'll worry about details in the morning.
Steve lies awake for a long time, just listening to the sound of Bucky breathing. It's oddly comforting that the sound is deep, and steady, and even. He'd been half afraid it would wheeze or…
… or stop.
He resists the urge to shudder at that thought.
He wonders vaguely if this is what it was like for Bucky - 95 years and another life ago- when his friend sat vigil over him through the neverending parade of illnesses that little Steve from Brooklyn had suffered. Between Asthma, heart murmurs, a bout of Scarlet Fever, and getting flattened by a plethora of colds and flu; Steve had spent more of his childhood wheezing, feverish and miserable, lying flat on his back on a dirty old mattress… really than he had doing anything else.
He wonders if Bucky felt the way he does now - helpless and useless- in that dark, musty, Brooklyn apartment… If he too was scared to death that his best friend was going to snuff out in the night.
He wonders for the first time how often Bucky actually slept when he stayed over, and how many nights he just laid awake instead, and watched for the continued rise and fall of a fragile bird chest under a thin blanket.
The image settles heavily over Steve and soaks into his skin; an ache that refuses to leave him. He isn't sure he could move just now, even if he wanted to.
He doesn't care if there's not quite enough room for both of them in Bucky's narrow bed.
Right now he doesn't care where he sleeps... or if he sleeps. His bed, Bucky's bed; it's all one and the same. He'd sleep in a shoebox at this point if it would help his friend get the rest he needs.
