“You should be at work, Buck. I told you, I don’t need looking after.”
Smiling, Bucky sat himself down in the chair he’d dragged to beside their bed and whacked him lightly on the shoulder with his newspaper.
“And I told you they gave me the day off. What else am I supposed to do with it, go wandering around town on my own?”
Steve gave him a look, eyes narrowed, unconvinced. Bucky gave him one right back, with puppy-dog eyes and a little bit of a pout.
“Sweetheart, please. I just wanna spend some time with you, while I’ve got it.”
There was a moment where Steve regarded him carefully, and for that brief second Bucky was sure that he’d been rumbled, that Steve had caught on to his being a little economical with the truth, in saying he’d been given the day off. He had been given the day off — he’d just also been given every other day off, too. He’d been given the rest of his life off from that particular job. Nothing personal, the boss’d said, just ain’t got the money to keep everybody on anymore. Bucky held Steve’s gaze with the most convincing mask of innocence he could muster, trying to ignore the tension in his chest.
“Fine,” Steve said eventually, and the smile that cracked across Bucky’s face was more than partly out of relief. “But I’m serious. I don’t need looking after. I’m alright, now.”
Bucky looked at him, at his bird-narrow shoulders shrouded in their thickest but still threadbare blanket, at the pallor lingering in his white face, the hollowness of his cheeks, the shadows under his eyes. Neither of them had slept properly for nearly the past two weeks, with how sick he’d been. Bones aching too badly to lie still, sweating with fever heat one minute and shivering cold the next, coughing so hard his throat bled, and shaking, always shaking. He was getting better, now, but that didn’t mean he was alright.
Stubborn little sonuvabitch, though. Had to give him that. Bucky fixed his grin where it had started, just slightly, to slip.
“Whatever you say, Stevie.”
—
“I told you,” Steve rasped out, hoarse and hunched over, in between coughs that rattled every bone in him. “I don’t need—”
“Steve.”
Bucky reached for him. Not that he could do anything to ease the coughing, but to lay a hand on his back, at least, soothe him — but Steve shrugged him off, the gesture made violent by the shudder of his shoulders with every wheeze and hack. He shook his head firmly, waved Bucky away, and bent double held his breath until the spasming in his chest began, gradually, to subside. Underneath the exhaustion and the inescapable, instinctual feeling of panic that came with being unable to breathe, Steve was angry. He was supposed to be getting better.
“I don’t—” His voice wouldn’t rise above a whisper, and when he sat back the room tilted and faded out of focus. It didn’t right itself, so he closed his eyes instead.
Bucky’s palm was cool against his forehead. Smoothing back his hair, stroking his brow with his thumb. Steve let him. He was too tired not to.
“Let me look after you, baby.” His spoke softly, coaxing, anxious. As if he were speaking to a stubborn child. Steve shook his head. Bucky laid a hand over one of his own. “Please. Just for a little while.”
Steve’s throat burned. He needed water, if he was going to be able to speak properly, but to ask for it would be giving in, letting Bucky get his way. He lay quiet for a moment, felt Bucky following a gentle curve from his temple to his cheek with the back of his knuckles.
“Alright,” he croaked, at last. “Alright. But—”
“Yeah?”
“You should know what you’re signing up for. If you’re gonna insist on being my nurse, you’re gonna be… my goddamn nurse. You gotta do everything I say.”
Bucky laughed, softly, in relief. “Okay.”
“I mean it. I’m gonna… make you regret ever… treating me like a fuckin’ invalid. Okay?” His voice was even fainter now. Bucky was leaning in close to hear him.
“Okay, sweetheart. It’s a deal.”
Steve lay an unsteady hand over Bucky’s wrist, where he was still cupping his face. “Would you get me some water, then, nurse?”
“Sure thing, darlin’.” As he gently pulled his arm from Steve’s grip Bucky kissed him on the forehead, like he was paying him off, or distracting him. It reminded him of when he’d fall asleep with his head on his sketchbook and Bucky would ease it away from him, so carefully, replace it with a pillow, doing his best not to let it wake him. And it always would, but Steve always pretended it didn’t.
He didn’t open his eyes till Bucky had left to fetch the water. His chest ached, and the back of his throat tasted like blood.
—
“While you’re at it, you could take a look at that leak in the ceiling.”
“I don’t think nurses usually do household repairs, Steve.”
It had been a day since he’d agreed to let Bucky look after him, and Steve had spent almost every waking minute of it holding good to his promise that he’d make the most of it. He’d sent him out to get Cola twice that morning alone, and the bookshelf in the bedroom had been thoroughly alphabetised, under his supervision.
“This one should. Think of it as preventative care. Could be that leak that gave me this damn cold.”
Bucky huffed out a laugh to disguise the prompt stab of guilt he felt at that. He knew Steve wasn’t being serious, but he had a point. Even if the leaky ceiling hadn’t directly caused his most recent bout of sickness — more than a cold, it was always more than a cold — it could hardly have helped.
“You’re right.” He took one of the dining chairs and dragged it across to stand under the crack in the ceiling for a closer look. Steve watched from where he was cocooned in blankets on the sofa, raising his eyebrows slowly. “I’ll get on it.”
—
The thing was, Bucky was too good. There was nothing Steve could seem to ask of him that he’d balk at, or refuse, or even really complain about. Not that he could think of anything truly outlandish, and he didn’t want to make him do anything genuinely terrible, but even when he demanded stupid things like toast at two in the morning when he couldn’t sleep, or decided the kitchen press needed rearranging just because, or made Bucky change the channel on the radio six times in three minutes — he did it. Sometimes with a laugh or a stupid comment, but no sighing or groaning or moaning, not ever. He’d just up and see to whatever Steve asked of him, with little more out of his mouth than an okay, darlin’.
Eventually Steve started to feel bad for asking — but it was outweighed by determination. The whole exercise was futile if Bucky damn well enjoyed it. Then he’d have no argument for not letting him do it again. Unless he was getting sick of it, secretly, and just not letting on — but he’d never known Buck to be that good an actor.
“I don’t know how to make pancakes,” Bucky told him when Steve asked for them, but he was already getting up out of his chair, heading for the kitchen.
“A nurse worth his salt oughta know how to make pancakes.”
He shook his head, fondly, smiling that mouth-half-open smile of his as he took a pan down from the cupboard. “Stevie, you got queer ideas about what nurses oughta know.”
“And coffee. With milk.”
Bucky ducked to check the little refrigerator. “Ain’t got milk.”
“How were you gonna make pancakes without any milk?”
“I don’t know.” Bucky looked at him pointedly. “I told you I don’t know how.”
Steve raised an eyebrow mildly, and returned to his book. It was so hard not to smile, to keep the affection brimming up inside of him from spilling over. How was it possible to love someone this much? “Well,” he cleared his throat. “You’d better figure it out. ’cus I want ’em. And you agreed, you gotta—”
“I know, I know.” Bucky shut the fridge, exhaled just softly enough to not quite count as a sigh. When Steve looked at him again, he looked so tired. He almost took it back. Almost told him it didn’t matter, he didn’t care about pancakes, didn’t care about the stupid deal, almost asked him to just come sit together and get a little rest for himself. But Bucky was too quick for him. “Gotta do everything you say. I ain’t forgotten. Let me go put a shirt on and I’ll run right out and get the milk.”
As he passed by, Bucky paused to smooth back Steve’s hair from his brow, and kiss him there. Steve tipped his face up towards his warmth like a flower to the sun. “But if these pancakes turn out awful, you got nobody to blame but yourself, boyo.”
The pancakes were pretty awful. Most of them either burnt or still raw and soft in the middle, and Bucky could barely even scrape the first couple of attempts off the bottom of the pan. Steve endeavoured to eat them anyway, grimacing at every other bite, and Bucky watched and laughed till he had tears in his eyes. “You stubborn little fucker,” he called him, resting his brow on his hand and watching as Steve searched in vain for the most edible parts of the pancakes. “That bull head of your is gonna be the death of you, Steve, I swear.”
“I reckon you made them like this on purpose,” Steve told him, finally giving up and putting down his fork. “So I wouldn’t ask you to do it again.”
“Nope,” Bucky insisted, smiling still like he didn’t know how to stop. “This is just as good as I can cook.”
“Your mother should’ve taught you better.”
“My mother,” Bucky stood to take Steve’s plate to the sink. “Thought I’d marry a nice girl who’d make my pancakes for me. Which I might’ve, if I hadn’t wound up stuck with you instead.” He pointed the fork in Steve’s direction. “So it is, really, all your own fault.”
A sudden shiver had Steve feeling cold; he wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. The coffee was alright, at least. “No, that’d be your mother’s fault.”
Bucky snorted. “You watch how you talk about my mother, Steven Rogers.”
“I’m very fond of your mother,” Steve said lightly. “Just a shame about her son—”
“Hey!” Bucky flicked the dishtowel at him, from too far away to actually hit. “She did her best with me.”
“Yeah.” Steve couldn’t help but smile then, and only managed to half hide it behind his hand. “I guess you’re alright.”
—
His started to get worse again on Sunday morning, early. Woke up to a coughing fit at three that wouldn’t stop; he was spitting blood into his handkerchief by half past four. Whenever he had the breath for it he promised Bucky over and over that it was alright, not to panic, it was just his throat got a little torn up from the coughing, that was all. Bucky didn’t think it sounded alright, but he couldn’t bear to argue with him like this. He helped him take sips of cold milk from a tin mug to try to soothe it, rubbed his back, spoke to him softly.
By the time the sun was rising and nine o’clock was drifting towards them, he’d managed to get a couple of hours of half-sleep, and was growing restless.
“We oughta get up,” he mumbled, though he was still under the blankets, eyes barely open. “We’ll be late for Mass.”
“Steve,” Bucky made a soft sound, gently incredulous. “You ain’t going anywhere just now.”
“But it’s Sunday.” Steve frowned at him groggily. “You always make sure we go to Mass on Sunday.”
Bucky rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb. “Not when you’re sick, sweetheart.”
“I’m not—”
“Stevie. Please.” Bucky took Steve’s hand between both of his own. “Don’t fight with me. We can miss it just this once. Look, I’ll say an Ave for you. Maybe even sing a couple of hymns.”
Steve closed his eyes again, only because it was costing him too much to keep them open. “You can’t sing worth a damn,” he argued, softly.
Bucky laughed, sounding like if he didn’t, he’d cry. Sounding like he almost was anyway. He kissed Steve’s brow and stayed there, hiding his face in his hair.
—
On Monday morning he kissed Steve’s cheek as usual and told him he’d be home soon. When he was back within half an hour with a bag of groceries under his arm, Steve didn’t ask why he wasn’t at work. Just looked at him for a moment from where the covers were pulled up to his chin, then mumbled, “Fix me a coffee, would you, doll?”
Bucky smiled as he hung up his jacket on the back of the bedroom door. “Still on that nurse thing, are you?”
“Mhmm.”
He came back with the coffee, sat himself down on the bed and lifted Steve’s feet into his lap.
“You got the paper?” Steve asked, blinking at him sleepily.
“Yep.”
“Would you read me the headlines?”
Bucky lifted the paper from the bedside cabinet and turned it over a few times. “Nothing but bad news, baby.”
“Read ’em anyway,” Steve told him, settling down into the pillows. “I wanna listen to your voice.”
—
“Buck?” he asked that night, as Bucky sat reading by the dim lamp light; he’d thought Steve was asleep already. “Would you do something for me?”
“Sure, sweetheart.”
“Come get in here with me.”
Bucky looked at him, small and alone in their rickety double bed.
“You sure you won’t sleep better with the space to yourself?”
“Bucky.” Steve held his gaze, clear and fixed through the night-time glow. “I’m five foot nothing and this bed’s a double. Get in.”
So he got in and put his arm around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve laid his head on his chest, and tucked a hand in between the buttons of his pyjama shirt to feel his stomach rise as he breathed.
“And Bucky?” he murmured, in the dark, eyes closed. Bucky rubbed his cheek against his hair, squeezed his shoulder.
“Mm?”
“Kiss me goodnight.”
—
Bucky was in the kitchen hunting for something to fix for supper when he heard Steve start up coughing again in the bedroom, loud enough to wake the goddamn dead. He left what he was doing and ran to him without a second thought.
“Buck—”
He was on his knees by the side of the bed in half an instant. Steve reached for him, and Bucky took both of his hands in his own. “What is it, baby? What d’you need?”
Steve shook his head, wheezing softly as he fought to bring his breath back under control. “No, it’s okay.”
“Anything, Steve, just say.”
He closed his eyes a moment, wrestled as steady a breath as he could into his treacherous lungs.
“It’s okay. I...” He looked to Bucky again, and smiling gently, squeezed his fingers. “I was only going to ask you to hold my hand.”
—
The sicker he got the easier his requests became. Would you fetch me a blanket, would you open the curtains, would you read to me a little. Bucky obliged as cheerfully as he could, and fixed him cups of milky tea and glasses of cold milk and bowls of warm soup, things that wouldn’t hurt his ruined throat too much, bolstered Steve up with pillows against the headboard so he could drink. Even though it hurt him to speak — Bucky could tell by the rasp in his voice, the tension in his face — and even though Bucky would do everything for him without needing to be asked, Steve made sure to ask anyway, doggedly soldiering on with his promise. No one could say he wasn’t determined. And no one, no one could accuse Steve Rogers of not being a man of his word.
Days drifted past like that. Sometimes Steve slept for hours upon hours, barely moving, and Bucky would watch keenly for the rise and fall of his chest, just — just to be sure. More often than not, though, he couldn’t get to sleep all night for the coughing. It was miserably familiar, waking in the dark to the sounds of him suffering. He started to worry it wouldn’t ever stop.
He started to wish he could ask Steve for a favour of his own. There was only one thing he wanted from him, only one thing in the world.
Get better, he thought, wished, pleaded silently as he watched Steve drift to sleep finally, finally, after several long, brutal hours of battling just to breathe. Get better.
He touched the faded cover of the Bible sitting by the bed, still there from their makeshift Mass the Sunday just gone. To whom would his mother have prayed, he tried to remember, when he’d been sick as a child? To whom would Sarah, when it had been her keeping vigil at Steve’s bedside? His mind went to St. Jude, but he couldn’t bear to think of Steve as a hopeless cause.
—
“Steve,” Bucky said, as gently as he could, as he blotted blood from the corner of Steve’s mouth after a particularly bad coughing fit. “I think we should—”
“No,” Steve wheezed, taking the handkerchief from him and pressing it harder against his lips. “We are not calling a doctor, Bucky.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
“I told you. It’s just the coughing, scratches my throat.”
“Steve—”
Even ashen and haggard as he was, the look Steve gave Bucky was firm and unflinching. “Even if we could afford a doctor, which we can’t,” he said, screwing the handkerchief up in his fist, “We wouldn’t be able to afford medicine, anyway. What’d be the damn point?”
“It might help.”
“It wouldn’t.”
“Please.”
“Bucky.” Steve reached for him, combed his fingers into his hair, touched his cheek with his palm. “Do something for me.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Don’t ask again.”
—
Another day drifted past, and Steve was sleeping more than ever. Bucky clung to the idea that it was a good sign, that it was better for him to be asleep than to be awake and coughing. He was frightened, though. Steve was ill all the time, but he hadn’t been this ill for this long since they were kids. Watching over him in the streetlamp glow, Bucky thought of St. Jude again. He thought of Jesus laying hands on the sick and raising them to walk again. He thought of Steve’s mother lingering behind after church, asking the Father to pray for his body that wouldn’t seem to heal, his lungs that wouldn’t work right, his weak limbs and fragile bones.
He murmured a Hail Mary just to be on the safe side.
—
“Take me outside.”
It was the first thing Steve had said in the past twelve hours, and it woke Bucky where he’d been dozing in the chair by the bed. He lifted his head a little jerkily, shook it, rubbed his eyes.
“Sorry. What?”
Steve put his hand out and Bucky put his own into it.
“Take me outside,” he said again, “Please.”
Bucky frowned, swallowed down a yawn. He glanced at the window; the curtains were drawn, but it had to be daytime, by the light leaking through. Late afternoon, he reckoned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“You gotta do everything I say,” Steve reminded him, struggling to sit up a little. “We agreed.”
“Oh, I know, but Steve…”
“I just want to sit on the stairs,” he insisted, in that tone of voice he used to make it clear he wasn’t taking no for an answer. “We can take a blanket. Now help me up.”
So Bucky did. He scooped Steve up in his arms like a bride and for once wasn’t met with any arguing, just Steve’s fingers laced at the back of his neck and his cheek against his shoulder. They sat on the stairs with the door left open. It was a warm, still evening, Bucky sitting just in his shirtsleeves, while Steve shivered beside him even bundled up in all the covers off their bed. They watched the sun sink behind the skyline, watched the last of its rays glint bright through the gaps in between the buildings across from theirs. Brooklyn’s beauty right on their doorstep.
“You’re cold,” Bucky worried, trying to rub a little heat into Steve’s shoulders.
“I’m alright,” Steve said, softly.
“I think we should go back inside, sweetheart.”
“Not yet. Let me sit a little longer.”
Bucky exhaled steadily, tried to brush his anxiety aside. He wanted to turn and kiss Steve’s brow — it would be so easy, with him so close, but he thought of all the windows in all the houses rising up around them, and didn’t. “Alright. Just a little while, though.”
—
Steve was almost asleep again when Bucky carried him back inside, too close to it to protest. It was practically dark by then anyway, little left to look at. But he was just awake enough to cling when Bucky tried to lower him into the bed, to get his fingers in the front of his shirt and hold on.
“Stay,” he murmured, “Stay here with me.”
“I am,” Bucky told him patiently, covering his hand with his own to carefully pry it off his shirt. “I gotta put you down first so I can get in.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Steve let go. Bucky kept hold of his hand as he settled onto the mattress at his side, rearranged the blankets a little so he wasn’t quite so tightly swaddled.
“You okay?” he asked, kissing the back of Steve’s hand. His skin was still cool, and he was so still where he lay, just breathing. Bucky pushed down the worry that tried to flutter up like birds inside his chest. “Need anything before I put the light out?”
Steve shook his head a fraction, then changed his mind. Quietly: “Kiss me.”
Bucky bent his head and kissed his brow. He’d burst a blood vessel in his left eye from coughing so hard; Bucky kissed his eyelids, felt the tickle of his lashes. He kissed each cheek, felt the slightest scratch where stubble was just starting to grow in. Kissed his mouth last, and felt him part his lips to meet him. He could taste the sickness bitter on Steve’s breath, but he didn’t mind. Bucky kissed him softly, slowly, for as long as he could — then lay back and rubbed circles into his chest as he coughed weakly.
When he was breathing evenly enough to speak, he whispered, “I love you.”
Bucky felt that fear tighten its grip on his chest again. They hardly ever said it. Not because they didn’t feel it, but because they knew it so well it didn’t need to be said. It was just understood. Hearing it now, Steve’s voice so faint, it scared him. Bucky pulled him a little closer, put his mouth to his temple. “I know.”
—
Hours later, in the dark, when he couldn’t sleep with worry: “I love you, too.”
—
“You don’t make a half-bad nurse. Y’know that, Barnes?”
Steve hadn’t had the voice to speak for almost two days, had barely moved, in fact, and Bucky could’ve cried to hear his voice again now.
“You think?” He set down the cup of tea he’d been helping Steve take sips from and smoothed back his hair.
“Yeah. You ain’t too bad.”
“Gee.” Bucky was smiling, couldn’t seem to stop, despite the lump in his throat, the thickness of his voice. “Thanks.”
Steve smiled back at him, lips paper pale, and touched his cheek.
“I got one more favour to ask you, though.”
Bucky was looking at him with all the love in the world. Anything, he thought, ask me for anything. Ask me to bring you the moon. “Another one, huh?”
“Just a little one, though.”
“Just a little one? Alright, darlin’. What is it?”
“Bucky. Sweetheart. Would you marry me?”