fossilised | For Steve

Pitiful. Steve hated these attacks. He could have had it hours ago when Bucky was asleep, but no...no, he's putting his poor friend out. "Sorry," he wheezed, being ushered to the bathroom. He sat almost demurely on the closed toilet seat, hunched over to try to keep from another bad round of coughing. Five hours of sketching, nothing. A little bit of cold on his back from the window and--

He didn't even get the thought out before his entire body shook again with a deep, mucousy cough. He did his best to unbutton his shirt with more apologies but in the end, Bucky would be getting him into the bathtub in whatever state of undress he termed it necissary to let the hot water run over skin that turned from pale to bright pink instantly.

At least the coughing stopped by then, but Bucky was as soaked as he was (did he remember how often they use to make a game of standing in the shower half dressed?) and that meant that the shirt around his arm was plastered down.

It was hard to hide it that was, and Steve made a little bit of a tug on his elbow to pull up the edge of the cuff.

The sort of prosthetic that the Soviet branch of HYDRA had given him had been far ahead of its time, when prosthetic limbs were still more often made of wood and barely resembled the actual missing appendage at all. But they had not been the deep science division for nothing, and they had made sure only the best had been crafted for their new pet project. So Steve would be forgiven for not realising the flash of bright metal that revealed itself when he tugged up the cuff was actually his arm and not some kind of armour.

Bucky knocked Steve's hand away, though not roughly, and concentrated on getting him in a position which would alleviate the most pressure on his lungs.

"Deep breaths, don't speak."

Somehow he could remember giving that order a thousand times in the past, and he had a vague memory that Steve never obeyed. The one time he had obeyed, he had been so bad he almost died.

There were more important things to do than breathe. Well, breathing was how he was going to be able to form words but other than that, he'd rather work on forming those words instead of getting air into his lungs. "Buck... Bucky are you.. Is that armor?" He couldn't help himself, his hand again finding that solid piece of metal. "Are you like a knight now?"

His laughter triggered another cough and Steve tried to turn his face far away, huddling into the corner of the ornate bath tub as the shower sprayed down on them both. He hated looking so weak. He hated being so weak.

Especially because this didn't really feel exactly like he was with Bucky. There were no soft jokes or singing and conversation of any real sort. And up close like this, in better light, Bucky looked older. A few years...maybe five? Steve's critical eye hadn't changed even if he was battling an attack.

"No."

Bucky gave Steve a stern glare as he forced himself into a new coughing attack. He was quite prepared to reach out and render Steve unconscious until he had his breathing under control, because he did not want to sit here and watch someone he felt an odd protectiveness towards expire under a stream of hot water.

If it would get him to stop asking questions, however, he would take off his shirt and gloves. The segmented metal arm with the Soviet star boldly emblazoned on the shoulder did look like armour, but it was too articulated and moved with too much fluidity. And then there was the scarring, a spiderweb of white lines snaking out from that shoulder that told a story much more loquacious than Bucky's words managed.

"Lost my arm falling from the train, Soviets gave me a new one."

Steve was forced into an uncomfortable silence as he settled down on the edge of the tub, head against the wall and tilted up as he watched Bucky undress. Despite the symbol of communism, despite the scarring, Steve thought the arm was beautiful. "You really are from the future, huh?"

He'd already believed his best friend hours ago, but he couldn't help himself. He placed his hands on his own bare knees, stripped down to his underwear like a kid, and worked on breathing, as Bucky had asked so kindly -- or succinctly really -- for him to do. His eyelids closed as he stilled himself and the airways to his lungs opened again.

It had as much to do with the steam as the calm.

After he was no longer coughing, the water still running hot and feeling good on chilled skin, Steve pushed the damp blond from his eyes and squinted one cornflower blue up at his friend. "It doesn't hurt, does it?"

Bucky had to think about how to answer that. Of course it hurt. HYDRA had made the arm so it connected to his nerve endings for greater range of movement and response, and that meant his nerves were constantly connected to wiring in an unnatural way. The weight of the vibranium alloy was excessive, always tugging at his shoulder. But these were old hurts, and ones he had learned to ignore a long time ago.

"No, it doesn't hurt."

He leaned forward to play the fingers of his metal hand, cold, against Steve's chest to help massage the mucus out in order to make sure he breathed more easily.

"I think I want to stay with you."

Weird. It was the first time he had used the word 'want' in so long, and yet it was true.

Water had collected in Steve's eyelashes, making them look dewy or as if he had been crying. There was no redness to his eyes, however, the only pink at all was the splotches of skin that the hot water had delightfully and calmingly scalded. Steve inhaled a little abruptly at the touch, not because of the touch itself but because the metal hadn't conducted any (or at least not most) of the heat around them and the little gasp was followed by a prickle of gooseflesh across all of Steve's bare skin.

It was the words that surprised Steve most of all and he imagined all of those girls he had ever watched step out with Buck or take a twirl on the dance floor Lindy Hopping their way to good night kisses saw this same look or heard these same words come out of Bucky's mouth. Maybe a situation like this had even happened once, a girl and a boy standing on a rainy street corner, soaked and panting from trying to dash between the puddles when a trolley came by to splash them both well and good. The boy would lean in. The girl would say that she wanted to stay with him. There would be this romantic kiss--

And that was all in Steve's lonely little head.

His chin dropped and he tried to smile despite the flush that creeped over him, splotching up even more skin.

"'Course you can stay with me," he responded softly. "Was never a question, Buck."

Bucky wasn't so sure why he had made this decision. He had run from the other Steve Rogers, ran as far and fast as he could manage to go, but now he needed to stay. Perhaps it was some hidden part of him that would never give up being the guy that came to protect Steve when he needed it most, stop him killing himself with his stupid bravery that wasn't quite matched by the ability of his body. The Steve in the future didn't need that, he could take care of himself, and he had new friends to help him do it.

He nodded, expression still neutral and level, but something softened around his eyes.

"Do you want to be Captain America?"

If that was what he wanted, then Bucky would find a way to make it happen, because Steve shouldn't be denied his future just because of a selfish and confused man out of time. He could help him, and he could make sure his past self died on that train.

It was a loaded question and Steve knew it as he slowly lifted a hand to set it over the metal fingers massaging life back into his body. "I don't want you to die," he said, because even if this Bucky was here with him now, there was another Bucky, his Bucky, that was out there. Alone. In the mud. Waiting. "I want to save our country. I don't need to be... That guy. That Captain. But I do want to serve, Buck. Maybe we can find you and stop it from happening--"

He'd have two Buckys then. Was that selfish? One would be charming and funny and leave him for some pretty girl to have lots of babies with. One...one might stay with him, sad and somber, and Steve could be enough for him. Or he'd make sure he got better somehow and find him a pretty girl to love and marry and have babies with too.

It was possible. Nothing could be irreparably broken, right? Not if taken care of properly.

"You know things. Right? You know when there are big moves. You know history. We can actually stop some bad stuff from happening. And I don't have to... I don't have to lose either of you."

I don't want to kill anyone any more. That was the promise he made to himself, the first true want even before he decided to voice a wish to stay with Steve, but he would break that promise when it came to himself. Steve was a fool if he thought he could ever let the two Buckys anywhere near one another, because this one would immediately kill the other without hesitation. It would be a mercy killing, of that he had no doubt.

But he didn't need to voice that, he wasn't so stupid as to think that Steve would still take him out to Europe if he did.

"You can't go to the front lines like this, you need Erskine and his technology."

He had to be Captain America, not just because that symbol became a part of his identity, but because Steve was in no shape like this to ever go to the front lines and survive.

"Then we find him." He had to admit, he was a little excited about the prospect of being something more than this skinny, scrawny man who would likely die in his late thirties because he was too weak to get through more than a dozen or so more winters. He glanced down at his hand still lingering over Bucky's and removed it before his friend thought he was being inappropriate. He could keep that whole...everything..to himself. He planned on it anyway because God hated people like him and if he repressed it far enough, maybe it wouldn't matter.

His own sense of morality and justice probably should be taken out on himself, but Steve was sure he had that sick part of him under control...even if it manifested in sickness of the lungs and body. God couldn't be hidden from. Church taught him that.

He cleared his throat, both to test his lungs and to signal that he was going to stand back up.

"But not today. Do you know when Captain America saved you from HYDRA the first time? That should tell us how long we have." Truthfully, though, They only had about a month.

Captain America was going to have to do a lot of skipping in his own history to make it to Europe in time.

It might not even have the same intended effect if they did it this way. Before, Captain America had nearly a whole year to permeate the consciousness of the public, he made appearances right across the states and got more and more popular as he went. Comics and movies were made about his character, all sorts of propaganda to help fuel the war effort. When he turned out to be a real hero on top of that, it cemented him in the eyes of the people.

But one guy with muscles who happened to rescue a bunch of other guys? That wasn't Captain America, that was just a well-trained government soldier. There was nothing that could be done about that, though, no way to fix it.

"It was Steve," he said, voice uncharacteristically breaking a bit. He could see it in his mind's eye, a clear memory from the murky depths of his mind. "Steve came for me, not the Captain, and it was Steve that saved me. That's why I followed him, he was still the same even under the muscles."

Steve could feel his teeth working. His jaw was clenched but his teeth were grinding away, back and forth, and he swallowed what tasted like bile. This poor man-- He'd come back here for what? For a scrawny little kid from Brooklyn that couldn't manage one walk across the city on a cool spring night? Whose fate had been damaged and then sealed by Bucky's return to him?

This wasn't what happened last time. Steve found this doctor himself, he underwent the procedure himself, he became a hero himself. He didn't hate this version of his best friend from taking that from him so much as he was sorrowful that he couldn't be the Steve with the muscles to ride into town and save the day.

"I don't think you know what it's like for me," Steve said after a moment or two, once he could get his jaw moving again properly. "You saved me," he stressed. You came for me. And that's why I've been following you around ever since. I'm not the hero here, Buck. Maybe... You're suppose to be that guy this time."

Bucky lacked the memories currently to explain why that was all wrong, but he knew it down to his soul. He wasn't the hero. He had never been the hero, and he had done too much now to ever make him the hero in the future. He knew Steve was the hero, had always been, but how to explain that without knowing why he knew?

"No, it has to be you. You're Captain America, not me, not anyone else."

He pushed himself up and out of the bath finally to go and grab a couple of towels, holding one out to Steve to take before he even thought of drying himself.

"We'll track down Erskine, make it happen."

Steve was left nodding and quiet, wrapping the towel fully around himself because he could. He felt a little ridiculous, trying to imagine what it must be like to be Bucky's size, and chalked it all up as fantasy. But it wasn't. He'd seen the photograph. There were probably more in that book of Bucky's but Steve wasn't going to go digging.

He headed back out to the sofa, dressing after removing his wet underwear in his only other pair of pajamas before he sat down again. His hair wsas still wet but it was warm enough in here that he wouldn't catch a cold. The picture he had drawn was left out on the table and golden light was already filling the beautiful room Bucky had purchased for them for the next two nights.

He took the blanket that he had been meaning to give Bucky and pulled it over himself instead, huddled up on the sofa.

"You'll come with me, right? We can do the most good if we're together, Buck."

"Yeah."

Bucky hesitated only a second before he reached down and plucked up Steve, blanket and all, into his arms as though the man weighed absolutely nothing at all; which, with the serum enhancing his already trained muscles, he may as well have done. He carried the Steve-blanket-bundle through to the bedroom and put him down on the bed.

"I won't leave you, I'll protect you."

And that apparently started now. No asthmatic idiot with a weak immune system was going to be taking the couch, he would have the bed with the full duvet and pillows. Whether he was the Soldier or Bucky, once he had an objective then he pursued it with dogged determination, it didn't matter if that was getting a date with some pretty red-head or killing a diplomat from half a mile away.

Steve wasn't a pretty redhead. He wasn't a diplomat. There was no one here to date or to kill, just Steve Rogers with damp hair being carried to bed by some hulking version of his best friend who happened to be from the future, was incredible rich, had a metal arm and was saying things that made him feel as if lightning would strike him down.

Though he never ran away from a fight, he almost wanted to just let go of this one and be protected and cared for. He could protect and care for himself, of course, but come on. This slippery slope to sin was just so warm and so easy.

Steve freed his arms and sat up after Bucky tucked him tightly into the sheets, having to squirm to do so. He tried scowling but with that face, scowling just didn't work.

"I can walk, okay? My legs work fine. You should have-- Next time just say I should take the bed. It's plenty big for both of us anyway."

Plenty big enough for both of them seemed to be an invitation. It actually soothed Bucky to hear it for a few reasons. The Soldier in him knew that he had been given an order to take the bed, and Steve was blond haired and blue eyed just like all his other handlers, so he wanted to obey. The bits of Bucky in him wanted to be close in case Steve had another relapse in the night. And both sides of him wanted to remain by his target, his friend.

So he discarded the towel, leaving him naked as the day he was born, and slipped beneath the sheets without another word to flop down beside Steve. His own skin was warm, a contrast to the always cool poor circulation of Steve, and he shifted to press his body to Steve's to lend him some of that heat.

"Go to sleep. We'll look for Erskine tomorrow."

He will protect Steve, he will give him the future he deserves, one where he doesn't crash a plane and miss out on his life with Peggy as a hero, one where his best friend actually stays dead and good memories can be preserved.

Sleep was suddenly the very last thing going through Steve's head at the moment, even as Bucky told him that his life could very well change tomorrow just as soon as he let sleep take him. How could that happen, though, when there was a still somewhat damp man pressed against his body as if he belonged there?

Bucky and he shared a bed when Steve was bad off, or when his apartment couldn't get warm enough and Steve was too stubborn to slink over to the Barnes' when they already shared so much with him and putting them out another meal or more sheets to be cleaned just went above and beyond what he could accept. When that happened, they slept back to back as any men might do in close quarters and only touched accidentally, one or the other sliding away unless Steve was shivering...and then again, once he stopped.

The rules of male friends were not as complicated as they could be in the future, but it was enough to know that Bucky shouldn't be with him like this and that he should not take advantage of his friend, obviously ailing and not knowing what he was doing, like this.

"Buck, you don't..." He found the fight sinking out of him, mostly because he was so warm and so comforting. Steve's own yawn cut him off and he sighed into a silk encased pillow, hair sticking out everywhere. "Uh...just remember it's me, okay?" He didn't want to be strangled in his sleep.

Perhaps there had been a time when Bucky knew the proprieties of how two men should behave, but that had been hammered out of him a long time ago. Even before the Soldier, men stuck in the horrors of frontline warfare often forgot the niceties and shame that came with nudity. In freezing temperatures, you huddled together or you didn't survive, and people stopped judging. As the Soldier, he hadn't even been human, so his nakedness was not a thing to comment on. He had been used for warmth before, ordered to strip, why should this be any different.

"No sudden movements."

He would try to remember, and he thought Steve would be mostly safe, but only if he made sure to keep his movements to a minimum so as not to trigger his reflexes. His arms, one flesh and one metal, wound around Steve properly to hold him in a cocoon of warmth. Innocent.

"Go to sleep."

Steve squirmed just a little bit until Bucky's arms found a comfortable spot against him. He would only need to suffer one night of this, he told himself. One night, he could enjoy it for what it was and then move on again. So he thought. So he hoped. At least he didn't stay conscious long at all and a soft, wheezing breath that signaled he was asleep was followed by a more even, unarrested breathing of clear lungs.

Steve wrapped his arms around those holding him and the breath on the back of his neck gave him a heavenly sort of protection that he really hoped he wouldn't need in the morning.

It would be relatively easy finding Dr. Erskine, however. He wasn't listed in a phone book but the recruitment center in Queens knew him well. They mentioned a barrack in New Jersey, which of course, was unlisted. Steve thanked the clerk anyway. "That's the place," Steve said, cheeks rosier than usual and fully dressed with a good and filling breakfast in him. "That's where we go!"

He had jotted the information down next to the sketch he had done of Bucky and was already casting around for his suspenders and shoes.

"Think we can hitch a ride?"

Bucky hadn't slept during the night, he had been too oddly conscious of Steve in his arms and the subtle rise and fall of his chest. He had spent those hours digging for memories instead, for clues as to who he was, who Steve was, and why it felt so natural to protect him. Of course he knew what he had read at the museum already, but it was very different reading about something to actually feeling it.

"We'll take a car."

He gathered his belongings into his backpack, he wasn't about to leave anything here in case they didn't return that night, and slung it over his back. He wasn't going to trust random strangers to get a ride from, who knew if they were actually spies undercover? It was excessive, perhaps, but a paranoia that served him well until now.

"I can drive." Not something he could do before, now he thought about it, they hadn't the money for that sort of thing. It was the army that had taught him to drive and ride a motorcycle, same with Steve. "C'mon, let's go, pal." The term of endearment slipped out accidentally, leaving him blinking at himself in surprise.

Best to move on.

He slipped out of the door and down to the street, choosing a random car and easily breaking the lock by pulling hard enough on the door handle.

"Get in."

"Woah! Hey, Buck, this isn't ours!" Steve wanted to find Erskine, he wanted to meet his destiny and find Bucky and help this Bucky and save the day, but they could do it without being thieves. "The person who has this car might need it for his wife and kids. Or his job. If we take it, we might be condemning s man simply for our convenience!"

It was better not to ask Steve Rogers to do illegal things unless those illegal things were unavoidable or the law was a bad one that did more harm than good.

Thou shalt not steal, however, was one of God's great commandments and that was for a reason. The harm stealing caused to others was a sin.

So no. All 95 pounds of Steve Rogers was holding his ground and not getting in that car.

Bucky scowled over at Steve and half considered just picking him up and putting him in the car, but that might draw attention to what they were doing and get the cops involved. He would rather not have to run from the authorities today if possible.

"Then we'll bring it back later."

He had never returned any vehicle that he had stolen and he didn't intend to start now, but if it would get Steve in the car...

"We have to get to Erskine and I'm not hitching lifts, get in."

Though Steve didn’t look so sure, if they were going to return the car later, it would probably be all right. “And you’ll leave him some money for the gas we use to,” Steve said before he climbed inside. It was rare for him to be inside of a car like this. The leather under his hands was pretty remarkable and he found himself putting down the window as soon as they hit the tunnel and shot off into New Jersey from the island of Manhattan.

With the wind in his hair, the sun warming the day, Steve looked happy. It was easy to believe that this was the guy from last night, wheezing and forced into a steam bath because he could hardly breathe. If Bucky remembered anything that was good about his friendship with Steve Rogers, it should be days like this when it was just them, when they were off on some adventure with a blue sky above them and the promise of freedom from their otherwise hard lives.

“Camp Lehigh,” Steve was saying for the third time, feeling a mixture of confusion and excitement in his stomach as he turned to look at Bucky. “I’ve never really heard of it. I thought everyone did basic training at one of the forts, you know?” But this was not just a regular training facility. Even Steve could sense that as they got closer. It didn’t look like anything out of the film reels to advertise enlistment.

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