“You want me to go to the hospital looking this this?!” Steve asks, worked up enough that his lips pull back from his teeth. “Are you crazy? They’ll probably cut me open!”

Maybe that’s not true. He isn’t an alien or anything. He isn’t some sort of monster. He’s just healthy. Then again, it might make sense for the government to have him vivisected so they can find out how to help all sorts of diseases. It would be like that lady with the cancer cells that refuse to die. He doesn’t want to be like that. Helping people is in his nature, but he wants to be alive to do it!

He makes a low whine under his breath and from the other room, Penny does so too. It makes him want to howl, which in turn makes Bucky, blocking his way out of the small bathroom, feel almost dangerous. Or threatening. Steve dashes that thought all together. No way. Not his Buck.

He pulls back instead, posture straight and chin up, defiant in the face of fear.

“I’m not sick. For once in my life— Maybe it’s just a miracle?”