Wretched
Despite the increased brightness of the days and the reappearance of his hot coffee, Steve was still finding himself belaboured by the biting city air. It had carved a space out in his lungs and settled there, bleeding through until it seemed his pale skin was nothing more than a deathly chill that clung to him like a shroud. His body, shuddering and bending shamefully under the dangerous assault, frustrated the efforts of his mind, and there had been days where Steve sensed he was close to freezing over completely. To freeze would be to die—he knew it, even though he stubbornly maintained that it was just a particularly harsh season.
It had actually been two harsh seasons. Last winter, which was by all measures more severe than this one, Steve had spent a whole month watching the world—or at least the block—through the window, never allowed to move from the bed that was Bucky’s-turned-Steve’s. It had happened out of the blue, although that was only because Steve had refused to recognize the warning signs. He had just wanted socks. The scuffed wood flooring of their rooms was always a shock to his system, and that morning he’d awoken with holes in the heels of his socks where they’d already been darned ten times over. Bucky had left in the morning to take a girl to lunch and the dance hall, all month he had been running where Steve couldn’t follow, and so his socks were left defenseless.
Steve had always been a little punk, so of course he decided to rifle through Bucky’s things for a warm and hopefully fully functional pair of socks. He had chalked up the rapid palpitations of his heart and ringing in his head to some bizarre manifestation of guilt for entering Bucky’s space—stupid really, because the personal boundaries between Bucky and Steve had never been rigid and had maybe just never been at all. Still, he made it to the drawer and was near fainting with the anticipation of warm toes, soft woolen quarry clutched in his hand, before he felt the distant pain of his head colliding with the unforgivingly frigid floor.
When he woke it was to a throbbing skull and chest tight with the need to breathe and the impossibility of breathing enough, and to Bucky sitting slumped over himself in a rickety chair by his own bed, shivering while Steve tried to move under the heap of what looked like every blanket or warm item of clothing they owned. Steve woke up in that bed, after Bucky had presumably found him there on the floor and called a doctor who confirmed what they already knew, that Steve was only getting worse and it might not get better, and had decided all on his own that that was where Steve would stay, and protest as he might Steve couldn’t actually command his body well enough to make it leave the bed let alone Bucky’s room.
Bucky had insisted it was only because that bed was furthest away from the window and the door, tucked into a corner of their apartment with a fireplace standing guard in between, and Steve didn’t doubt that Bucky cared about those things, but he also knew that Bucky wasn’t leaving their rooms anymore except for work and that that meant it was worse than he wanted to believe. Steve had taken to watching Bucky that winter because he couldn’t watch much else and because he was scared. In the moments when Bucky thought Steve couldn’t see him, moments when he seemed to think Steve was asleep or focused on another sketch of the world beyond the window, or the moments when he paced the living room late at night, forgetting that the door to his-now-Steve’s room was open enough to see his face in the dappled firelight, in those moments his blustering jokes and relentless teasing gave way to a gravity too heavy for his frame. In those moments, Steve saw the anger that was otherwise bubbling just under the surface harden the lines of Bucky’s body into something tense and resentful, braced against a future that he couldn’t stop any better than Steve.
And if Bucky ever kept a tense all-night vigil when Steve seemed particularly in danger, or if Steve ever clutched at Bucky’s hand a little too tightly when he was struggling to take his next breath, then that was fine. Bucky never brought it up, and Steve didn’t think about it, and when the earth began to thaw, the chill that wracked Steve’s sharp frame seemed to subside with it. Even so, Bucky wouldn’t let Steve leave the apartment until he agreed to “just wear the damned coat Rogers, you wanna kill me?”
That had been last year, and Steve and Bucky both had somewhat forgotten about the potential dangers of winter when the bulk of the season passed without more than a cough and a runny nose. It seemed to Steve like Bucky must have been keeping back the worst of the season through some sheer power of will, either that or Steve had been too preoccupied with Bucky’s being drafted to allow his own body to fail, because with Buck being gone winter had reached out through the biting edge of its death rattle and caught hold of Steve, and it only seemed to be clutching tighter. Now, shivering once again on the cold wood floors of their rooms, staring out the window at the overcast day and remembering how freezing the store where he had managed to get work restocking shelves got, he bent just a little. Steve would wear the damn coat.
It had been a struggle to get anybody to hire him in this state, nothing more than a walking skeleton, his appearance distressingly at odds with the fiery spirit that thrashed within his frame—or would have, if it had not been so wholly devoted to keeping him moving. Strangely enough, his haggard appearance paired with some desperation that must have unwillingly bled into his voice had finally convinced a store owner to let him spend his evening hours restocking the shelves. The allowance had been made with a large and unwelcome dose of pity, which had Steve gnashing his teeth internally and wishing for Bucky, who for all he had seen of the absolute worst of Steve’s poor health had somehow never stooped low enough to pity him. It was lucky that Steve only had to start restocking late in the day, when hardly any customers were in the store, because having the young woman behind the register stare while he struggled to move boxes as if she were contemplating whether to laugh at his difficulty or offer to take them herself was almost enough to make him suck up his pride and ask for help.
That night, wheezing and nearly bent double with the effort of shifting bags of flour from the pallet to the shelf, Steve had to wipe the sweat off his forehead with one oversized coat sleeve. When he did he caught a whiff of machine oil underlaid with maple syrup and just a little god awful bay rum aftershave, and it was just so much of Bucky that he had to lean on the shelf to steady himself against a sudden dizziness that for once had nothing to do with his lungs. It was over a month now since Steve had seen Bucky off, and he hadn’t heard anything from him since. That wasn’t exactly Bucky’s fault—it had been Steve who had raged in the weeks leading up to the date to report to training, raged about how it was unfair that Bucky didn’t have a choice, unfair that Steve couldn’t go with him, until he finally started raging about how by all rights it should be Steve leaving Bucky. It was hard to bring himself to write to Bucky, over there doing god knows what, when Steve knew that he couldn’t do a thing for him. What good could he do here for anybody, let alone Bucky, when he could barely stand to put bags on shelves for his own sake? What good were words on paper when he couldn’t be there?
That train of thought could have continued on for the rest of the night if Steve hadn’t been interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. Rogers?”
Steve turned, and found himself faced with a vaguely familiar older man with sparse white hair and oval glasses perched on his nose. “Yes sir, what can I do for you?”
The man looked pleased at his affirmation, and subtly shifted so that he was blocking Steve’s view of the register and the curious young cashier. “I’m Dr. Abraham Erskine. I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No, but I’ve had reason to be doing work in the army recruiting office around the block, and they certainly know you there.” Steve could feel himself flush, remembering the countless times—before and after Bucky was drafted—that he had gone to the recruiting office and tried to make them at least consider him for enlistment. “I have a rather unique proposition for you.”
It sounded crazy, and impossible, and Steve told him as much. He said he knew how it sounded, but he could prove it, could show Steve just how close they were to making it work before he committed to anything. If it was true, then Steve had to wonder why all this work, all the time and money and resources, were going towards making humans into weapons instead of advancing medicine, or even working out how to feed more people. Erskine just smiled at that, said war was a more immediate threat on the country. It made some sort of sense, but it didn’t sit quite right with Steve and it felt almost like an insult. When Steve still didn’t jump to say yes Erskine pressed a card into his hand and told him to, “Just call if you change your mind, Mr. Rogers. We’d be glad to have you.”
The last half of Steve’s shift felt more difficult than the first, though he hardly knew how that was possible. Still, he was somehow all the more aware of the shaking in his arms and the rattling of his breath as he nodded a goodbye at the owner and started walking home, pulling the damn coat as tightly around him as he could. All the way home Dr. Erskine’s proposition was running through Steve’s head. The man had used the right phrases—duty, honor, serving your country, protecting people—but Steve wasn’t dumb, as much as the number of times he’d gotten a broken nose would suggest that he had something of idiocy in him. Everything Erskine had said seemed designed to appeal to him, and he didn’t need Bucky by his side to tell him that that was suspicious in its own right. It sounded too good to be true. He decided to leave the card in the pocket of the coat and bring it out in the morning, wishing more than a little that he had Bucky’s scientific knowledge at his disposal to tell him whether he thought this idea was even a little bit feasible. Of course, if Bucky had been there, it was more likely that they’d be talking about whether or not it would be safe, and Steve wasn’t even remotely under the impression that it was.
He hadn’t even begun to sort out what he was going to do about Erskine’s plan when he found himself face to face with his apartment door, and the shivers wracking his frame from the walk in the chilled night air told him that he wouldn’t be taking the issue up again until he was somewhat warm. He opened the door, determined to go put on a pair of long wool socks and every shirt he owned, and was stalled by the sight of a piece of tan paper sitting just behind the mail slot. He picked it up and closed the door, reading over the paper—a telegram, he could tell now—as he moved towards his room.
STEVE ROGERS 569 LEAMAN PLACE =
SHIPPING SICILY STOP WRITE JAMES HUNDRED SEVENTH=
BUCKY=
Steve read the telegram, and then read it again, and then he slapped it down on the kitchen table and wished that the fireplace was already set alight. His breathing was becoming more erratic by the second—he thought he had time, time to figure out what he could do or time to get over himself and just write his best friend a single damn letter—and it took a herculean amount of strength to clamp down on the panic-like feeling that was trying to claw its way through his chest. Once his breathing was coming more smoothly and the world wasn’t swimming in taunting loops before his eyes, Steve reached over and pulled the phone off its hook by the fridge. The click of the line connecting sounded like a promise.
“Hi, I’m Steve Rogers. I’m calling for Dr. Erskine.”