He was not going to wake Steve up. He wasn't. He could handle nightmares. Right? Yeah. So no. So long as his nightmares weren't loud enough to wake Steve in the next room, Steve didn't need to know about them.

Bucky stared at the ceiling, willing his heart rate back down. He was safe, wasn't he? His memory might be very patchy, but he just knew certain things, and that he did in fact share the connection with Steve that the museum and Steve's stories indicated was one of them. It was a deep emotional muscle memory of sorts, so strong that it had allowed him to break through 70 years of repeated brainwashing and Hydra programming. Yes. He was safe, even if it was hard to remember sometimes. It was over. He wasn't Hydra's pawn anymore.

He kept remembering snippets of his time with them. Those were going to haunt him forever, weren't they? This wouldn't be the last night that he would be woken by shocked faces seen through windshields moments before their cars exploded (or swerved off the road, oh god, he'd played a role in the death of at least one person he knew and liked, how many more?) playing on loop. This wouldn't be the last time that he would struggle to tolerate medical treatment that he knew he needed because it reminded him of things Hydra had done to him. (That stupid drip. There had been a lot of those with Hydra.)

He wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, was he? The downside of being less sick now, a few days (At least? He thought? Sleeping so much had his sense of time completely messed up.) into treatment was that he wasn't too out of it to notice how sore he was anymore. There was absolutely no way to get comfortable, and shifting positions was painful to impossible with one arm strapped in place to stop the stitches in his chest from pulling and the other shoulder strained and bruised to all hell from being dislocated and him having had to pop it back in himself rather inexpertly. Even with Steve's efforts to help him get in slightly different positions at every opportunity, Bucky ached all over. He needed a hot water bottle or five. Or a pet. Or a warm solid bedfellow. Why was he even thinking that? He'd fallen asleep on top of Steve a couple of times in the past few days, and suddenly he couldn't sleep without him? Ugh. That was pathetic.

He needed a distraction. Would that robot butler be awake? Robots didn't need sleep, right? "Hey, um, hey JARVIS?" He asked softly.

"Yes sir?"

"Did I wake you?"

"I am never asleep. Do you wish me to fetch Captain Rogers or Doctor Banner for you?"

"No, I'm fine, let them sleep. I was just wondering if you had any pictures relating to my life before, you know, all this."

"Certainly sir." A holographic screen came up in front of him and a holographic keyboard appeared by his hand, close enough that he could use it without moving his shoulder, causing his jaw to drop. The future was amazing. "I am pulling up images of 1920s, 30s, and 40s Brooklyn, and anything I can find of the Howling Commandos or members thereof dated any time prior to your disappearance for you and Captain Rogers and prior to then but after joining the army for the other members."

"Thanks."

Steve refrained from throwing a pillow at the wall for the sole reason that he didn't know how enhanced Bucky's hearing might be and didn't want to risk waking him. The poor guy needed all the sleep he could get. He had a lot of healing to do, and it wasn't his fault his best friend was an insomniac.

Well. That was arguable. Steve never slept well without Bucky, and technically it had been Bucky's fault that they'd had to begin sharing a bed way back in 1940 in the first place.

"You appear frustrated by being awake. Would you like me to play soothing music, sir?"

"No, thanks JARVIS, but I don't want to risk waking Bucky."

"Sergeant Barnes has been awake for the past half hour."

"Is he doing okay? You should have told me." Steve sat up quickly.

"He is fine. He is looking at old photos."

"Hey."

Bucky looked away from the screen, showing a photo of the Commandos playing keep-away with Dum-Dum's hat. "Did JARVIS wake you up? I told him I was fine."

"No, I was awake. I declined his offer to put on music because I didn't want to wake you, and he told me you were awake too."

"Were you always an insomniac?" Bucky tried to remember.

"Only after you set my bed on fire, and only when you weren't around." Steve quipped drily.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "You're messing with me."

"Really. We got in the habit of sleeping curled up against each other after you set my bed on fire, and then when you shipped out for the war I discovered that I didn't know how to sleep not curled up against you anymore."

Well, that would explain why he was having trouble sleeping alone too. "I'm guessing we lived together then?"

"Yeah, we had an apartment together for a few years, in Brooklyn. I tried to resist moving in together, but money got tight after our parents died because I was too sickly to work enough to pay all my bills on top of paying for meds, and you were paying off debts left from your father's accident. He'd gotten hurt bad working construction and spent a couple weeks in the hospital before he died, ran up a bill. So we moved in together so we could pool our money for rent and food and stuff. Tiny little place, not much in it. We didn't care though. We had each other and a roof over our heads and food on the table, and we paid our bills, if only barely, and that was better than a lot of people."

Bucky could picture that. At least a little bit. "Did we have a cat?"

Steve sat down on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, kind of. We'd put out a saucer of milk for a stray that hung around, a little tabby, and eventually she decided that she lived with us. Kept the rodents out of our pantry. I always knew when you got home from work, because she would be sleeping on top of me and then suddenly launch herself off to go greet you."

"I remember that. Didn't she drop a mouse in my oatmeal one morning?"

Steve snickered. "Yes, and you shrieked like a little girl."

"I'm going to regret asking, but how exactly did I set your bed on fire?" Bucky hurriedly changed the subject.

"You fished a newfangled portable heater out of some rich guy's trash and attempted to install it under my bed without considering that if he was throwing out an expensive heater in the middle of winter then there was probably something very wrong with it."

"At least I was trying to keep your skinny ass warm!" Bucky protested.

"That does not change the fact that you set my bed on fire." Steve retorted. "Anyhow, you look uncomfortable. Anything I can do?"

"Just sore and achy. It's hard to get comfortable."

"Let's try something, if you're okay with it." Steve moved around to the right side of the bed and pushed the IV pole over left of center behind the headboard. "Budge up." He helped Bucky roll halfway onto his left side and positioned himself behind and underneath so that his friend's back was pressed against his stomach and his arm was loosely around Bucky's waist below the level of his cracked ribs. "How's that feel? Not hurting anything? Different position and human hot water bottle help at all?"

"Yeah. It does help." Bucky blushed a little in the darkness. It felt right, but it was supposed to be wrong, but it felt so good to shift his weight onto different pressure points. "This was normal for us?"

"Well, you were always the big spoon when I was tiny, and after I grew, you curled up and pressed against me instead of wrapping around me."

"We did this in the army." Bucky was skeptical.

"Not on base. And not on purpose. When we were camping out with the Commandos, we'd all sleep close for warmth. We'd go to sleep next to each other but not touching, like everyone else, and apparently first you would curl up in a ball and nestle into my back for warmth, and then a while later I would roll over and wrap around you. That's what whoever had been on guard duty that night would always describe, and that is how we'd always wake up."

"And nobody minded?"

"Not really. They teased us plenty, but you telling them to enjoy their frostbite usually shut them up."

Bucky laughed a little and allowed himself to relax against Steve. This did feel familiar. "...And then Monty actually did get frostnip and Jim pretended like he was gonna cut off his toes and the next night we all ended up like a pile of puppies." It was more of a guess than a memory, but most of his memories were like that lately, so it was probably true.

"Yup. I'm glad you're starting to remember."

"Any of them still around?"

"I'd have to check. I think I heard that Gabe and Frenchie had passed away. And Peggy is in a nursing home with severe Alzheimer's. Went to visit her once, but she forgets that I'm alive and we're in the middle of a conversation every time she so much as looks away, and that hurt enough that I've been too much of a coward to try to track down the others."

"You've never been a coward, Stevie. Always had more balls than brains, like a yappy little dog chasing cars."

"You're a jerk." Steve stifled a yawn.

"And you're a punk." Bucky closed his eyes and soaked up the solid warmth pressed against his back. "Go to sleep."

So yes, portable heaters did exist at the time. I checked. They were a new invention at the time, hence a faulty enough to start a fire one getting fished out of some rich guy's trash. Also I have the head canon that although Bucky doesn't particularly like fire, fire really likes Bucky.

T-30 hours to the Captain America marathon that my Cap and I got tickets to! Meaning Civil War technically tomorrow but doesn't feel like tomorrow because I'm still awake, so Civil War in two sleeps? ...I need to go to sleep but I can't and I'm gonna hate myself for that trying to drag myself out of bed and to the gym in the morning.