"You need sleep," Wanda says to him. Bucky knows what she's offering. A little twist of fingers and some glowing red mist will send a PTSD-ridden Avenger right into dreamland. "You've been watching him for hours. They'll wake you up if there are any changes."

"No, thank you," he tells her. He appreciates the kindness she's shown him but he's had enough people in his head for several lifetimes. He can feel her gaze on him as he watches the slow rise and fall of Steve's chest as he lies in the hospital bed.

"I know how much he means to you, but–"

"No, you don't," Bucky snaps, cutting her off. He regrets it immediately.

"Don't mind him," Sam pipes up from where he has been dozing in a chair on the other side of Steve's bed. "He's refusing Midol."

Bucky ignores him. "I'm sorry," he tells Wanda sincerely, looking up into her eyes. She's young, but he can tell those eyes have seen way too much.

"Already forgiven," she says with a small smile. "Sam, could we have a minute alone please?"

"Gladly," Wilson says, sighing and pushing himself off of the seat. "But I hope you don't expect to drag his heavy ass with me." He nods over to Steve.

Bucky bites back the urge to tell him to just "get the fuck out." He's always tried to use proper language around women. It's how he was raised.

Instead, he just glares at Wilson until the door closes behind him and then decides to stare intently at the cup of cheap hospital coffee in his hands. Anywhere but Wanda, who's about to have some sort of talk with him that requires privacy.

It's not that he doesn't like Wanda. In fact, he admires her fiery spirit and feels a certain protectiveness over her. Bucky just isn't too fond of one-on-one conversations with anyone besides Steve and on occasion a drunk Natasha. They tend to involve either stilted attempts at small talk or stilted attempts at deeper, more emotional talk.

"I heard what that agent said to you," Wanda confesses quietly.

Bucky feels cold all over like he's being re-frozen after another unstable outburst and a fresh memory wipe. He rotates Styrofoam coffee cup in his hands a few times before taking a deep sip, focusing on the heat sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach. It doesn't make him feel any warmer.

"That was all bullshit," he says, slipping up on his language. Before he can apologize, Wanda waves him off. "You know how HYDRA is."

"All too well," she says sadly.

"Shit, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking." He needs to just keep his damn mouth shut. He's no good at talking to people anymore. Not like he used to be.

"You should tell him," Wanda says, and Bucky isn't sure which horrible topic change he prefers.

"It wasn't bullshit," she adds. "I could see it in your face. Even before this…" she manifests a little ball of that power that can tear down both buildings and minds, "I was always good at reading people."

Bucky stares intently at the coffee cup in his hands again. It's bitter and grainy, but so much better than anything he gulped down in the war, or while living with Steve in their crappy little cubicle of an apartment in Brooklyn when their heater wasn't working. Especially if Steve was the one who brewed it. It's nothing like Stark's, of course, who's probably been serving them that fifty-dollar-per-bag cat shit coffee because that's what "classy" folks these days drink. God only knows why.

Bucky stares and stares… maybe Wanda will think he's having a moment and forgot what they were talking about and she'll just leave him to his crumbling sanity.

She doesn't.

She reaches down toward him and he immediately jerks away, sending his hot coffee tumbling through the air and down towards his lap.

Only it never reaches his legs, or thank god, his junk, because Wanda's lightening-fast reflexes freeze the cup and the spilling liquid mid-fall, righting the mess with her mind and sending it to land straight-up on the little tray table next to Steve's bed.

"I'm sorry," Wanda blurts out, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture until she seems to realize that in her case it is quite a threatening gesture and puts them behind her back. She takes a few quick steps away from Bucky.

"I wasn't going to go into your head, I would never… I just find physical touch comforting, and-"

"Hey, hey, it's alright," Bucky says, trying to reassure himself as much as he's trying to reassure her. "My mistake."

Wanda wasn't attacking him, she wasn't going to try to brainwash him. She was probably just going to put a hand on his shoulder or something.

Bucky stands up, berating himself for the guilty, wide-eyed look on her face. He steps forward slowly at first, but once he realizes that Wanda's not afraid of him he moves more assertively and wraps his arms around her.

"I do, too," he tells her, referring to the comfort of another human being touching you in a way that's not aggressive or violative. "I'm sorry," Bucky whispers into her hair. "You know I trust you."

Wanda pulls away and doesn't press the matter further, instead bringing back one of the other uncomfortable topics.

"You need to tell him."

Bucky finds something to stare at again, his boots, this time. There's blood spatter on them and Bucky's not sure if it's Steve's or the HYDRA agent's or even his own. He vaguely recalls butterfly bandages being applied to his forehead and gauze or tissue being stuck up his nose, all in Steve's hospital room. Bucky remained rooted to the chair, eyes on his best friend, refusing the doctor's orders to follow the nurses to the room they had set up for him. Knowing that there was no way they could physically move him without some sort of sedative, they let him stay.

Bucky kicks at one of the pristine white floor tiles, smearing blood across it. "You didn't grow up with him," he mumbles to the floor. "Church every Sunday, prayers every night. 'God bless fucking America,'" Bucky says sourly.

"You haven't been inside his head," Wanda says gently, with the tiniest hint of smugness. Bucky finally looks up at her.

"What are you talking about?"

"I can't tell you exactly, without betraying his trust. But ask him about Sokovia, when I was with HYDRA. What he saw when I made the Avengers…" Wanda looks down and twirls one of her many rings. "When I made them feel true fear. Ask him to tell you what I saw."

Bucky looks down at Steve, his squeaky-clean, God-fearing American hero. There's no way in hell he returns even a fraction of Bucky's feelings. If Bucky came clean, he'd lose the only thing keeping him from flying apart at the seams.

"Look, Wanda, I know you're trying to help, but we've fought wars together. Sometimes on the same team, sometimes not."

"Trust me, you two are on the same team," Wanda says, and Bucky's jaw drops. She's picking up on American metaphors rather quickly. Probably thanks to Scott.

He clears his throat awkwardly and tries to recompose himself. If he was ever really composed at any point in the conversation.

"What I'm trying to say is that there's a million and one ways you could have interpreted me being a part of a scary vision, that's all."

"I misinterpreted nothing," Wanda tells him with a small smile. She's looking at him the way she looks at those kittens in the videos on the internet that Scott makes them watch all too often in an attempt to "catch Steve and Bucky up on the times." He wishes a cat playing the piano was the most significant thing to have happened since World War II.

"You just have to trust me," Wanda says. "And tell him."

She nods goodbye and turns to leave when Bucky grabs her by the wrist gently with his human arm.

"Thank you." He means it, even if he's not sure he'll take her advice.

"You're welcome, Sergeant Barnes. I'll leave you to mope now."

"Brat," he teases as she steps out the door, talking more and more like Barton every day.

"And it's Bucky!" he shouts through the now closed door. He knows she calls him Sergeant out of respect, but it fucks with his mind sometimes. James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant Barnes, the Winter Soldier, the asset… he's Bucky , he tells himself.

Sam strolls through the door as Bucky repeats it in his head. Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes… only it's Steve's voice he hears it in. Gentle, reassuring. Loving?

Have there been signs? Has Steve had those sorts of inclinations and Bucky hadn't even noticed?

"Good talk?" comes that gratingly cheery voice, and then a horrible, stomach-churning thought claws its way into Bucky's mind. "You're gonna wear a hole in the floor, and I don't think our insurance‒"

"How can you be so nonchalant about this right now? Steve could be dying," Bucky scolds, his fear boiling over into anger. This guy is the man who replaced Bucky as Steve's right-hand man while James Barnes was presumed KIA?

"He's not dying," Sam says with that same composed tone he's been using since they arrived at the hospital.

Bucky sits down at the bottom corner of Steve's bed, wringing his metal hand in the scratchy blanket and wrapping his human hand‒the hand that can still feel , around Steve's covered ankle.

"Where were you?" Bucky asks, staring at his best friend but directing his question at Wilson. "Where the hell were you when this happened?"

"I had my own problems," Sam says defensively. "I'm not Cap's bodyguard. He's a soldier, and a mighty good one if you haven't noticed."

"A reckless one," Bucky adds.

They sit in tense silence for a minute before Wilson speaks up again. "You're not the only one who's got his back, you know." His voice turns bitter and sad. "You're not the one who spent years searching for a ghost, waking him up in the middle of the night while he screamed for someone he wasn't even sure existed anymore."

Bucky doesn't respond, guilt tearing at his chest. He ran. He remembered who Steve Rogers was and he ran. To keep him safe. At least that's what he tells himself.

"I was there. That whole time." Sam adds more softly. "But he's always been with you."