Chapter 4
The next week, Steve came home from work to find that two letters had been dropped through the mail slot on their front door. He bent down to pick them up, cringing as the motion sent pain shooting through his back. It was always particularly painful at the end of a long shift, a testament to the childhood scoliosis that had never quite straightened itself out, but he did his best to ignore it as he gathered up the envelopes and started flipping through them.
The letter on top appeared to be a bill from the doctor who’d been stopping by intermittently throughout the week. Steve moved to sit at the kitchen table as he tore into it and couldn’t help but wince when he saw the number inside. He’d known it would be high - the last time they’d brought a doctor over for a house call had been during a particularly bad bout of Steve’s pneumonia in ‘39, and even though he’d been laid up for a month afterwards, he still remembered all the extra shifts Bucky had had to take to afford it, the way he came home every day practically bent double with exhaustion, the way he worked until he was so run ragged he ended up almost as sick as Steve. He just hadn’t quite anticipated how high it would be.
Steve shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position for his aching back. Facing the prospect of returning that favor Bucky had given him years ago, he genuinely wasn’t sure he could do it. In the moment, though, it had hardly mattered; it had seemed like the only option, the most logical next step in Steve’s mission to get Bucky feeling better at absolutely any cost.
Bucky had been delirious with fever, curled up in as small a ball as he could manage under the blankets of his bed with a towel over the pillow and a bucket within arm’s reach. When Steve brought in the doctor, the mere sight of his white coat left Bucky wide-eyed and panicking, and Steve had to make quick use of the carefully placed bucket when panic manifested in uncontrollable nausea. Bucky brought back up the tiny amount of fluid Steve had managed to force into him and then some, heaving emptily over the edge of the bed while Steve could do nothing more than whisper to him, try to calm him down however he could. Several long minutes passed before Bucky was able to sit up and breathe somewhat evenly again. Even then, Steve had refused to leave his side, clutching his hand and murmuring reassurances as the doctor poked and prodded at his injured left shoulder.
Once the doctor was finally able to get to work, it didn’t take long for him to confirm what Steve already feared; Bucky’s untended injuries had gone infected, leaving him in pain and sick besides. He’d recommended penicillin, and Steve had immediately agreed to pay for it in spite of the amount it would add to an already sure-to-be hefty bill. Even now, staring down the consequences of that desperation, it was hard to regret his decision. Bucky had done the same for him countless times. Hell, even if Bucky hadn’t done the same, Steve wouldn’t regret his choice - over the course of the week, he’d been finding that there was just something so uniquely torturous about seeing Bucky in pain.
Steve turned the bill facedown on the table, vowing to deal with it later, and reached for the other envelope. This one was addressed to Bucky in neat cursive handwriting, and Steve couldn’t help but smile when he noticed the name on the return address - Winifred Barnes. He’d been an honorary member of the Barnes family for as long as he could remember, and he looked forward to hearing from Bucky’s mother almost as much as he would have looked forward to hearing from his own. Still, the letter was addressed to Bucky, and Steve figured it was only fair that Bucky be the one to open it. Leaving the bill on the table, he got up and made his way over to the closed door of Bucky’s room.
“Bucky?” He knocked gently on the door before pushing it open a crack and letting the early-evening sunlight that was streaming into their living area also permeate the small bedroom. He fully expected to see Bucky curled up in bed, as he had been for most of the week since he’d arrived home - or maybe, if he was really lucky, he’d find him sitting propped against the headboard, awake and feeling well enough to talk for at least a few minutes. But Steve stepped through the doorway into an empty room.
“Buck? Are you okay? Where are you?” Steve quickly ducked out of Bucky’s room to cast another glance around the rest of the apartment, for once glad that they were only able to afford such a small place. It, too, seemed empty, and the sight of it had Steve’s heart racing - for Bucky, of course, but also for himself. He’d only just begun to remember what it was like to have someone sharing space with him, to come home every day and know that he wouldn’t have to spend his evenings completely alone.
Steve stood staring into their empty living area from Bucky’s doorway, chest feeling tighter than it had since his last asthma attack, until he saw a shadow move past the window, disrupting the patch of light flooding into the apartment from past the fire escape outside. Breathing a sigh of relief, he rushed over to the window, wasting no time tucking the letter into the pocket of the work apron still tied around his chest so that he could let himself out onto the rickety metal landing.
“Bucky.” It wasn’t a question this time. Steve knew he’d be out there, knew it before he even stepped out himself and caught sight of Bucky sitting with his back against the outer wall of their building and his feet dangling over the street below. It was one of Bucky’s favorite spots; he’d gravitate towards it when he got off work in the summers on days when it was still light out and he had time to grab a beer before heading outside to watch the sunset. Even in the winters, when the short days and inevitably expensive flareups of Steve’s various illnesses kept Bucky working from the dark hours of the morning until the even darker hours of the evening, he’d still sometimes duck outside and bask in the snow before coming back in to teasingly poke Steve with his icy fingers. Finding him out here now was so predictable, so unmistakably Bucky, that Steve found himself smiling a little as he crouched to take a seat beside him.
“Hey,” Steve said, taking in Bucky’s face where the evening light met it. Not for the first time since Bucky’s return, he was struck by how much older his best friend looked now. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, really, no visible lines of age or new wrinkles on his face - it was just something about the way his eyes were set, a little more shadowed and sunken than they’d been before the war. It hurt Steve’s heart a little to look at it, that reminder of all the growing up they’d had to do without each other. “What’re you doing out here?”
Bucky shrugged slowly in response, not turning to look at Steve, still gazing out over the busy street beneath them. “Just… just looking,” he said quietly. His voice was still a little gravelly from the week spent being sick as his body fought through the infection in his arm, but it was finally lucid, and the sound of it only widened Steve’s smile. “Always liked the view out here.”
Steve turned so he could see what Bucky was seeing. To a casual observer, the view beyond their apartment was maybe nothing special; a thin alley more often than not packed with honking cars and rows of trash bins close to overflowing, surrounded on all sides by other buildings essentially identical to theirs, crumbling red brick and rusted fire escapes climbing all the way up the sides. But the air was clear up here, as clear as it could ever be in New York City, and if you angled yourself just right you got a perfect view of the sun as it set between the buildings a few blocks over.
“Yeah,” Steve said, tilting his head so the colors of the sunset were in full view. “I know what you mean.”
Bucky nodded, eyes still fixated on a point somewhere above the neighboring building’s roof. “It feels... weird. Being back, I mean.”
Steve smiled sadly at him. “Weird how?”
“I dunno,” Bucky sighed. “I mean, my whole life, New York was all I ever knew, right? And then it was all I thought about, when - when I -” Bucky’s voice stumbled to a halt, his shoulders shrinking in on themselves a little. Almost unconsciously, he wrapped his right arm across his chest, fingers curling against the empty space at his left side before his arm slid back down to rest in his lap.
“When you what, Buck?” Steve forced himself to ask.
Bucky shook his head quickly, dropping his gaze from the skyline to his knees, which Steve realized were trembling a little. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I just - for a little while there, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again, is all. But now I’m here, and it feels… different. Dunno how to explain it, really. A lot’s just… changed.”
Steve couldn’t help but agree. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking it, hadn’t thought it every time he’d laid eyes on Bucky this week only to find some strange and hollowed-out creature staring back at him. But he couldn’t say that, not when Bucky had just gotten back on his feet, not when he still looked so fragile that Steve was terrified of making the wrong move and accidentally sending him falling apart again.
So he said, “I know. It has. But we’re both still here, right? That’s gotta at least count for something.”
Bucky finally looked at him then, and the light of the setting sun caught his eyes just right, making them shine like he was looking at something really special. Steve had to remind himself how to breathe.
“Yeah. We are.” He gave Steve a long look, like there was something else he wanted to say but couldn’t quite find the words. “I just - I wanted to thank you, I guess,” he managed after a moment. “For taking care of me. Know I’ve been in rough shape. You didn’t have to do all that for me.”
Steve couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Buck, I told you a hundred times not to worry about it. I always wanna be there for you, y’know? I -”
He made himself stop before words could keep spilling out, faster than his brain had time to censor them. He wasn’t sure what he’d been about to say, but he had a feeling it ran deeper than simple reassurances, deep enough to leave him taken aback even though he wasn’t quite sure what the sentiment was.
“I don’t mind,” he finished. “I’ve been looking after myself these past few years. No reason thinking I can’t help look after you sometimes, too.”
Bucky’s face fell slightly before smoothing over again. “Yeah. Looks like you’ve been doing alright for yourself.” His gaze, undercut by something strangely mournful, almost envious, seemed stuck on Steve's work apron.
“‘Course I am,” Steve said, a little confused by the sadness lingering in Bucky’s face. “I can take care of myself, you know. Not just gonna fall apart if someone breathes on me wrong.”
Bucky nodded, but didn’t reply. There had been a time when that prolonged silence would have annoyed Steve, but there was something still so oddly sad in Bucky’s face that he decided not to push it.
After a moment, though, Bucky seemed to pull himself together. He put on a smile - one of the painfully false ones he always mustered when he was trying to put on a brave face, stretched wide and just a little too thin. “Hey, what’s that? Got a secret pen pal you’re not telling me about?”
Steve turned to see Bucky staring meaningfully down at the envelope he’d left sticking out of the pocket of his apron. He quickly drew it out and handed it over, grateful in spite of himself for the change of course.
“No, you jerk. That’s for you. Found it on the way in, was looking for you so I could give it to you.”
“Huh.” Bucky’s eyes traced over the writing on the front of the envelope, lingering on the Indiana return address. He didn’t open it, just kept turning it over in his hand, contemplating. “Funny, isn’t it? Always thought we’d be the ones to move away. Used to talk about it all the time, taking you somewhere where there’s sun and clean air.”
Steve nodded in agreement. Privately, though, he thought Bucky might be the one who needed some sunlight and fresh air now. The darker the evening got, the worse he looked, pale and still unmistakably sick despite his every effort to appear otherwise.
“New York is home though, right?” Steve tried, hoping to bring some life back into that tired face. “I mean, where else are you gonna get a view like this?”
He expected agreement - Bucky loved New York, had loved his old job and nights out dancing and the all-too-ordinary view from their corner of the fire escape. But all he got in response was a shrug.
“Do they know?” Bucky asked softly, running his thumb over the handwriting on the front of the envelope. “About…”
He pressed his lips together, seemingly unable to finish the thought, but Steve saw the way his eyes unconsciously flicked towards his stump shoulder and back again. It didn’t take much to fill in the gaps.
“Yeah. Yeah, I let ‘em know,” Steve said. “All the telegrams about you got sent here for some reason, so I passed them on, soon as I read them. Guess they messed up their records, still thought your family lived here.”
Bucky shook his head slightly, still staring down at the letter in his lap. “Wasn’t a mistake.”
He’d spoken so quietly Steve almost thought he misheard him. “What?”
“The, uh. The telegrams. Wasn’t a mistake they got sent here instead of Indiana. I didn’t exactly tell them my family moved addresses.” Bucky looked away from the letter and found Steve’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I just, I thought, if anything happened to me… I didn’t want you to have to wait around wondering about it. Didn’t want you to never find out, think I just up and left you or something. Or - or maybe I just - I didn’t want you to forget about me. I dunno.”
Bucky’s voice fractured a little over the last few words. He was looking at Steve with a shining earnestness, like there was something he wasn’t quite saying but that he was dying for Steve to understand nonetheless. “Thought about you all the time when I was over there. Worried about you, sometimes, figured you must be getting into tons of trouble without me here to pull you out of it. Mostly… mostly just thought about you, though. Every time things got…” he took a deep breath. “Every time things got bad, it was always you I thought about. Every time.”
Steve suddenly had to swallow past a lump in his throat. “Buck,” he managed. “You gotta know I’d never just - forget about you. Don’t even think I could if I tried. You mean too much to me for that. Always have.”
Bucky smiled softly at him then. Not one of those wide, fake ones - a real one, the kind that never failed to send Steve’s heart swelling with a fondness so deep he could hardly comprehend it. And maybe the words hadn’t been exactly the ones Steve had wanted to say, maybe they didn’t quite capture the storm of feelings too strong for definition floating around in his chest - but he’d made Bucky smile, and that in itself felt like enough.
“C’mon,” Steve said after a second, after he’d stared at that smile for so long his chest was starting to physically ache. He wasn’t sure how long he could sit there gazing at Bucky’s face before all those swirling feelings inside him nudged him into doing something he might regret.
“It’s a Friday night. Let’s do something.”
Bucky looked a little taken aback, so Steve softened his suggestion a little. “Nothing serious. Just a walk or something. We could… head down to the theater, see what movies are playing? Or check out Rita’s diner, see if they’re serving milkshakes?” He made the last suggestion with a conspiratorial glint in his eye, having known Bucky’s kryptonite about as long as he’d known Bucky himself. He had a notorious sweet tooth, and Steve had learned early on that if he ever wanted Bucky to do something, all he needed to do was literally sweeten the pot and Bucky was toast.
Bucky hesitated for a moment, and Steve’s stomach dropped, wondering if maybe, somehow, the war had taken this from Bucky too. But then Bucky seemed to pull himself together and looked at him with eyes that were almost as mischievous as his own. “I dunno, Stevie, are you buying?”
Steve snorted. “‘Course I am. Why d’you think I even bothered getting a job if not to ply you with milkshakes?”
“Well, in that case, I’m in. What are we waiting for?”
And Steve laughed, really laughed in a way he didn’t think he had since before Bucky had left for the war. Maybe Bucky still looked a little guarded, a little sad in some way that Steve couldn't quite define as he looked down at the letter from his mother and buried it, still unopened, in his pocket - but there was just something special about this, the easy pleasure of of living and doing and being together simply because it felt so much better, so much more right than being apart. This, Steve thought, might be the best feeling in the world.
In the end, they made it all of three blocks.
Steve knew something was wrong the moment they stepped out onto the busy street in front of their apartment. Bucky had been holding himself together, talking and laughing and seeming almost happy as they made their way down the stairs, but that all changed once the relative quiet of the inside of their building was replaced by the chaotic world of honking cars and hurried pedestrians outside. When the noise and claustrophobic press of the darkening New York streets hit them full force, Bucky immediately tensed up, his muscles wound so tight Steve could see him shaking out of the corner of his eye.
“You alright?” Steve murmured as they pointed their feet in the direction of the diner. He didn’t want to make a scene, didn’t want to make Bucky feel any more exposed than he already surely felt, but something in Bucky’s posture, rigid to the point of breaking, wasn’t boding well.
Bucky nodded jerkily. “Yeah, I’m -”
A car horn blared, and Bucky flinched with his entire body, bringing his arm up to cover his head as though he was bracing for impact.
“Buck.” Steve cast a nervous glance around at the people hurrying past them, a few of whom didn’t bother to hide their disapproving looks at the two of them for stopping in the middle of the busy, rush-hour sidewalk. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Bucky nodded. His face was ghostly white, and sweat had broken out on his upper lip. “I’m fine. Sorry. Let’s - let’s go.”
Against his better judgement, Steve reluctantly agreed. As they pressed on, he hovered as near to Bucky as he could, imagining that he could shield Bucky from at least some of the overwhelming noise and traffic with his own body.
It wasn’t enough, though - nothing about him ever seemed to be enough, Steve thought bitterly. Bucky was clearly on high alert, the tension in his limbs only coiling tighter the further they got from their apartment. Every time they passed someone on the sidewalk, he pressed himself a little closer to Steve, repeating the gesture until they were practically glued together at the arm. Their closeness didn’t give him a lot of room to maneuver, and he paid the price when a high-heeled woman squeezed past his other side, brushing against him as she went. Bucky went rigid, freezing up with his eyes wide and his face rapidly draining of blood. He stopped just in time for a burly man following a little too close behind them to collide with him full-force.
“Hey! Watch it!” The man spun around to yell at them before hurrying on his way. Bucky didn’t even seem to hear him - physically, he was right next to Steve, but his eyes were far away, lost somewhere Steve couldn’t follow.
“Bucky. Hey, Buck. Where are you? Can you - can you look at me?”
Bucky just stood there, stuck in that thousand-yard stare. Slowly, his chest began to heave.
“Okay,” Steve said worriedly, eyeing the still-busy street around them. “It’s fine. You’re fine. We just gotta move. Let’s go this way, alright?”
Steve cautiously took Bucky’s arm, expecting resistance, but Bucky barely even reacted. He at least forced his feet to cooperate and stumbled along as Steve pulled him into an alleyway just off the busy sidewalk.
“Bucky? Can you hear me?” Steve helped Bucky lean up against the wall of the alley. Bucky’s breathing was harsh and shallow, and his eyes still seemed distant and lost in fog.
“You gotta breathe, pal.” Steve pressed his hand against Bucky’s chest in the vague hope that it might ground him, might bring him back to reality. He could feel Bucky’s heartbeat through his shirt, a rapid, fluttering rhythm like a caged animal scrabbling for escape. Steve increased the pressure of his hand slightly, as though holding Bucky down might keep him from flying apart.
“There’s - there’s too many of them,” Bucky’s muttered, the words punctuated by desperate, shallow heaves for air. “They’re hiding. In the snow. We gotta - we gotta move, they’re gonna -”
“Bucky.” Steve guided Bucky’s face down so that he could look him in the eye. “You’re safe. I-I don’t know where your head’s at, but you’re with me. I promise.”
Bucky blinked at him, confusion showing in his eyes as he clearly tried to separate Steve’s face from whatever memory he was trapped in. “They’re gonna take me and I can’t - please, god, I can’t - I can’t go back -”
“No no no. It’s fine. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. Not while I’m here, alright?”
Steve watched helplessly as tears began welling up in Bucky’s eyes. His breath was still coming too fast, but the panicked confusion in his face was giving way to something closer to desperation. He reached out to Steve, finding his waist and clutching a fistful of his shirt in his shaking hand.
“Yeah,” Steve murmured, taking the gesture as an invitation to step closer. He slipped his free hand behind Bucky’s back, the other still offering what he hoped was comforting pressure against Bucky’s chest. “I’ve got you, Buck. I’ve got you.”
They stood there for a few long minutes, trembling against each other. Bucky kept his head bowed while he blinked away tears and took deep, shaky breaths, his posture so guarded that Steve might not have known he was falling apart if it weren’t for the desperate, shaking hand still clinging to his shirt for dear life.
“Are you back with me?” Steve asked tentatively, once Bucky seemed able to fill his lungs without too much of a fight. Bucky grunted, finally prying his hand loose from Steve in order to wipe his eyes, then to rub at his forehead like it hurt.
“Buck? Can you tell me where you are?”
Bucky sighed quietly. “I’m fine. I-I’m in New York. I’m fine.”
“Yeah. You’re okay.” Steve gently ran his hand back and forth across Bucky’s back.
“Can - can we go home?”
Steve did his best to put on a smile. “‘Course, Buck. Whatever you need. Are you… do you think you’re gonna be okay to walk?”
Bucky nodded with grim determination, but Steve could see a tense muscle jumping at his temple, the hypervigilance in his eyes and the way his fist was clenched like he was gearing up for a fight.
He could hardly stand it. This was Bucky, his best friend, run ragged and clearly fighting with every ounce of strength he had just to keep himself from falling apart. Steve was struck, not for the first time, by the sheer unfairness of it all. Ever since Bucky’s draft notice had shown up on their doorstep, Steve had seethed about it, how unfair it was that Bucky was going off to fight what he thought was the good fight while he was stuck at home doing nothing. But that sentiment was quickly dissipating; now, it just seemed so unfair that Bucky, his Bucky, was having to fight this fight at all.
Before they moved to duck out of the alley and start the walk home, some part of Steve decided he couldn’t stand it anymore. He used the hand still wrapped around Bucky’s back to pull him closer, winding his other arm around him to wrap him in a quick, definitive hug. He wasn’t sure why, exactly - in that moment, Steve had just wanted nothing more than to hold him. Bucky tensed up a little when he moved, and Steve worried for a moment that he’d made a terrible call. But then, so quickly he almost missed it, Bucky reached up to hug him back.
They both broke away too quickly, like neither of them wanted to show the weakness of being the last one left clinging to the other. Steve still felt the absence, though, once Bucky was no longer in his arms. He wondered briefly if Bucky felt the same - but Bucky’s face was shuttered again, closed-off, and Steve couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
They set off for the apartment in silence.
“Do you want dinner? I can make something, I don’t mind.”
“No.”
“Are you sure? You need to eat.”
“No, Steve.”
“Can I just -”
“Please.” Bucky stood in the doorway to his room, dark and empty against the soft light of their living room. He gave Steve a long look, one that told him as clearly as anything could that the conversation was over.
“Okay,” Steve said softly. Bucky stepped into his room, and the door clicked shut.
“Buck?” Steve knocked at his door later that night. “I’m gonna leave a plate for you, alright?”
“Okay.” Bucky’s voice sounded raw, muffled. Steve set a plate of food down in front of his closed door and beat a reluctant retreat.
Steve dreamed about Bucky.
It was deathly cold, snowing. The atmosphere felt just the way Steve had imagined it when he looked at newspaper photos of troops near the German border with their shoulders bent against the cold, helmets painted white to blend in with the rising snow. The setting was all wrong, though. Instead of some bombed-out building in Europe, he was in their apartment, staring at the frosted-over window overlooking the fire escape. Bucky sat outside, barely more than a silhouette through the foggy glass. Steve tried to speak, tried to call out to him, to get him to come in. The shadowy figure outside didn’t respond, though, just kept his back turned and his eyes on the slowly falling snow.
Steve was abruptly pulled from the dream in the middle of the night. He’d awoken to muffled footsteps in the hallway, to a body stumbling into the wall before righting itself and continuing on in the direction of the bathroom.
“Bucky?” Still groggy, Steve did his best to shake himself awake as he rolled out of bed and made his way down the hallway, sidestepping the plate still sitting outside Bucky’s door. The bathroom door was closed, but Steve could hear noises coming from inside. His ears weren’t quite good enough to tell whether they were hiccups or tiny, barely suppressed sobs.
“What’s going on?” Steve asked through the closed door. He didn’t get a response. Inside, the hiccups were morphing into retches, and Steve heard liquid splashing against water. He winced.
“It’s alright, Buck.” He leaned into the door, pressing against it with his forehead, then with the flat of his palm, wanting nothing more than for it to swing open under his touch - but it stayed locked tight. “I’m here.”
Something shifted inside the bathroom, and Steve hurriedly stepped back, ready to give Bucky space once he opened the door.
“Steve…”
Instead of swinging open, the door rattled a little, like someone had leaned against it. Steve could hear Bucky using it to support himself as he slid down to sit on the floor.
“Yep. Right here.” Steve cautiously stepped closer. He could see the shadow marking the place where Bucky was sitting, blocking the light spilling out from the crack under the door. Slowly, he got to his knees, then maneuvered himself so he was sitting with his back to the door, mere inches from where Bucky’s back was resting against the other side. “I know you’re still not feeling good. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Bucky cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just - nightmare. Real bad.”
Steve sighed, tilting his head back to rest against the door. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Even through the door, he could hear the way his question made Bucky’s breath catch in his throat.
“I don’t...” Bucky said shakily. “I don't know if I can.”
Steve reminded himself to be patient. It took a herculean effort, but he did it. “That’s okay,” he whispered. “I wanna help you, Buck. I just…” He took a deep breath. “I only wish I knew how.”
Bucky didn’t say anything. In the resounding silence, Steve felt his chest getting tight. Here he was, only inches from the person he knew best in the world - so why did he feel so alone?
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve noticed a slight shift of movement. He looked down to see Bucky’s hand reaching under the door, fingers just barely curling towards him. Taking a deep breath, he extended his hand in return, covering Bucky’s fingers with his own - then slowly, carefully intertwining them. Bucky gently squeezed his hand.
I love you, Buck. The thought sprang to Steve’s mind, fully formed. It was on the tip of his tongue before he even had time to process it, and it took every ounce of his willpower to hold it in. I love you.
Steve didn’t know, really, where it came from. It almost didn’t make sense. Nothing seemed to, anymore; around them, New York was still moving on without them, too fast for either of them to keep up. There was a war happening a world away, though it still seemed to loom over them no matter how many miles they were from the actual front. This, though - the two of them sitting here together - felt inevitable. Like everything Steve had ever felt for Bucky, every moment he’d spent worried for him during his deployment, every desperate way he’d tried to heal him afterwards, finally had a name. Steve still didn’t understand it, still couldn’t quite comprehend just how deep those feelings ran - but the longer he reveled in it, the more he realized that maybe it did make sense. Maybe it was the only thing that did anymore.
Steve held onto Bucky, and Bucky held onto Steve, and they waited for morning together.