fossilised | It's AU time

All of those tears called for some tater tots even if it wasn't Wednesday. Steve put them in the oven spread out on a cookie sheet and then plopped back down beside Bucky with one extended, the foot actually resting on Bucky's thigh as if they had known each other forever and touching wasn't taboo between American men, and the other curled up to give him a surface to work on.

He didn't need to look at Bucky anymore, he had the picture of him in his mind, but he did keep glancing up from time to time as they returned to their questioning game.

Shredded potato nuggets, deep fried with ketchup rounded out the evening and though Steve had not quite finished his work, he turned the tablet towards Bucky just as the other man was looking for wherever his arm had gotten to so he could return to his own apartment.

"I think you'll get me an A," Steve said, laying the prize on Bucky rather than his own skill. "Did I do you justice?"

Whatever Bucky's response, that portrait did get Steve an A and the teacher told him that it was obvious he'd found his muse. Either that or Steve was just s master, capable of shining light through the eyes of s bit of smudged charcoal on paper.

That picture was both beautiful and terrible to Bucky. It was so perfectly drawn, and it seemed to bring out a beauty in his face that he couldn't recognise himself. But it also reminded him of how far he had come from the man he used to be, his expression more muted, his eyes haunted, his hair long. At least it was only a neck up portrait. But he couldn't deny the skill, and he said as much in a reverent tone before he left.

The next three days passed with just text messaging and the occasional hi in the hallway, Steve busy with his projects and work, but it felt good. Companionable, the way they kept in touch. Buoyed by the success of making a friend, Bucky found the energy to unpack the rest of his boxes and actually make his apartment somewhat sorted out. And weirdly he got a call from Mrs. Johnson saying she forgot to tell him that there was a one month grace period on rent and so he didn't have to worry about paying this month - he had no idea that Steve had talked to her and explained he was a vet down on his luck.

Alas for Steve, though, all good things come to an end, and by day four he would be pretty damn sick. That cold that the delivery guy had seemed to hit like a truck, which meant he would surely be happy to have a knock at his door. He probably wouldn't be expecting it to be Loren, the quiet and enigmatically handsome young man from the bookshop cafe down the road.

Steve was covered in splotches, pale with rosy cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. He'd just come from the bathroom where he'd bundled up to sit on the toilet as the hot water ran. He sniffled as he pulled open the door, expecting Natalia of all people because she tended to have a sixth sense about when he was sick, but instead... Steve blinked up at a man he would never call friend but whom he was certainly friendly with.

"Loren?" What was he doing here? He had no idea that the man Nat was dating was Loren's brother and he had a perfectly reasonable excuse to be here. He felt too sick addled to really say anything other than the man's name since he was almost immediately overcome with a wheezing coughing fit.

It was not his most attractive moment, that was for sure. Wearing a towel around his shoulders, a baggy tshirt and boxers, hair all over the place, there was no mistaking his sickness.

He hid behind the door with a frown.

"Probably contagious."

Loren tended not to socialise with the people his brother socialised with, and they hardly looked at all alike, so Steve could be forgiven for not knowing that they were brothers. At least legally, if not by blood. Loren had been adopted by Thor's family when he was ten after being taken from a bad situation, it had left him with certain psychological issues, but he had bonded very well with Thor and Thor still doted over Loren when he was allowed to do so. Which wasn't that often.

All Loren wanted in life were his books, his intellectual pursuits, and not to have to socialise with the majority of people who were annoying as all hell. Still, every so often he ventured out, such as now, when he had a good reason to do so.

He held a small parcel in one hand and a thermos flask in the other.

"I have a strong immune system," he said in his slightly lilting Nordic accent, a match for Thor's. "I won't stay long. This thermos had been left on your doorstep, and I was asked to deliver this parcel by Natalia. She apologises for being unable to do it herself, but she will be out of town for two weeks visiting Norway with Thor."

Loren so very rarely spoke that Steve had no idea that his accent matched Thor's. Steve's eyes, red and puffy that they were, widened. How had he never known? Loren had been part of his almost daily routine for a year now! They'd barely exchanged words, he knew Steve's order and generally had it ready by the time he moved up in the line. Sometimes he gave him an extra pastry if he came by at the end of the day, but mostly he just read as he prepared coffee for people that knew very little about it.

"Sorry she roped you into cat-sitting," Steve said, throat on fire and gravelly. He opened the door, standing aside for a moment before he rushed to gather up the used tissue pile by the couch and wash his hands. "But Norway? That's exciting. You didn't want to go to visit your family with them?"

Steve knew a lot about Thor, mostly jovially and through shouted communication while building furniture for Bucky. His parents lived in Oslo with a summer house in Tromso. He had a brother who worked with books and lived in Queens like he did. Nat told him last week about the vacation-- he'd just completely forgotten.

Bucky had been taking up a lot of his time.

Loren preferred to stay in his little comfort zone of the book shop, which only sold coffee because it didn't pay enough to stay open otherwise. He liked Steve, as much as he liked any of his patrons, because the man was polite and never forced conversation when it wasn't wanted. It's why he had agreed to come here today and do this errand.

Stepping inside, though, that wasn't what he wanted to do.

Still, he did it, settling himself on the edge of the couch to look up at Steve, intensely green eyes bright in the evening light. He held up both the package and the thermos, which had a post-it note stuck to it with a really bad cartoon of a monkey wrapped in a blanket on it.

"I have better things to do with my time than fly such a distance just for a weekend of tedious conversation and personal questions."

He wasn't very sociable.

"I am certain that Thor will be sure to regale me of the trip when he returns, I shall not miss out."

The package and the note made him smile, after taking it carefully to avoid touching Loren. He'd always just assumed that Loren was a barista, not the owner of his favorite little shop, but that was again due to the lack of conversation they tended to have. Steve was a friendly sort but he was never pushy with it. Loren just seemed like that cool guy thst sad so untouchable he had an ice wall around him.

And now he was on his sofa. With a thermos.

Steve felt badly not offering him a drink but he also didn't want to inject the flu into him so instead he mentioned bottled water should Loren like some, and carefully unwrapped the monkey paper.

Yes. He was going to keep it. He'd spread it out in his sketch book and glue it into place.

It would look really out of place in his sketch book next to all the amazing pieces of art, considering how badly it was drawn. But inside the thermos would be chicken noodle soup, and inside the package would be a large fleecy sweater with a knitted picture of a bald eagle on the front in red, white, and blue. One of the most hideous sweaters ever.

Loren wrinkled his nose at the sight of it, who would ever think that was a good present?

"Well, I have discharged my duties in informing you of Natalia's absence, and delivering packages left carelessly on your doorstep. I assume I shall see you in the shop before too long."

He stood up once more, socialising just wasn't his strong suit, though he didn't quite intend to be rude.

Wasn't this from Nat? The eagle sweater seemed to show otherwise and Steve almost didn't say anything further to this man. He was quick to stand up with him, the box falling to the floor as Steve held the sweater close, and sniffled along the way to see him out.

"I owe you," he said, just before a coughing fit started that left Steve groaning as if his entire life had just ended. Everything hurt and he had no intention of burdening Loren with that as he clung to the doorknob and willed his chest to work long enough for him to say his goodbyes.

He'd grown very pale in the meantime, the splotches faded away into the white skin, his dark circles making him look like a recovering heroin user.

"Can you see yourself out...?" he finally wheezed, weak and wobbling. He needed to crawl back into bed.

With the sweater.

Loren thought it was from Nat, because that's who had given it to him to hand over, but it wasn't. She had just been the person who had gone out to do the buying in the store, Bucky not quite up to making it out of the apartment. The two of them had met three days previously and bonded almost immediately over their shared need to see a sightline to the door.

Bucky didn't trust her like he did Steve, but he liked her enough to have asked her to do that for him, and she liked him enough in return to do it. Not that Loren knew or cared about any of this, just nodding awkwardly before he showed himself out.

It would be another few hours before a text came through from Bucky.

FROM: Bucky
TO: Steve

Haven't heard any coughing for a while, pal. Checking you haven't up and died on me.

Steve had been half dozing and delirious when he got the text and for a little while, he just stared at it as if it wasn’t real. He was completely medicated on the vast array of over the counter cold and flu remedies he bought each time anything went on sale and was pretty dead to the world when he punched in a few letters to text Bucky back that didn’t make a lick of sense.

He sighed, frozen and sweating, and pushed the phone under the pillow to get to later.

It was true though. He hadn’t coughed in awhile, not because he was feeling better so much as it had settled like lead in his lungs and wasn;t the sort of thing that coughing was going to bring up. He was suddenly very sorry that Natalia had gone on vacation. He didn’t begrudge her the fun, but he was pretty sure that he was moving from flu to pneumonia and he wasn’t doing well enoughto put himself into the back of a cab to get to the doctor.

Two hours later, no further word from Steve in cryptic phrases or otherwise and the telltale lights of an ambulance painted Bucky’s apartment in red and blue. Steve hadn’t been sure what to do and called 911. He couldn’t bother Bucky with this, after all. He knew he was afraid to leave the building.

Bucky had made his mind up that if Steve hadn't got back to him within the next three hours, he'd head down there and make sure the other man was okay. He'd only known him a few short weeks and already he was stupidly attached, a friend where he had no others, and he remembered Steve saying how often he got sick. Maybe the dumb sweater had offended him rather than made him smile, or the chicken noodle soup had been disgusting?

But then the bright flare of ambulance lights flickered in his apartment and he felt a sinking in his gut.

For once not even thinking about his own fear, he launched himself down the stairs and into Steve's apartment to see the younger man being loaded onto a gurney with an oxygen mask over his mouth and EMTs saying kind things to him.

"Jesus... Steve, are you okay? No, dumb question, don't try to talk. Hey, uh-- I'm his neighbour, he doesn't have any family. I'll grab some of his stuff, can I come in the ambulance? Is he-- he's going to be okay, right?"

“Two minutes,” one of the EMTs told Bucky and the other assured him that Steve was going to be all right, but he needed fluids and IV medication. If Steve even noticed Bucky through those long blinks, it was hard to tell, but at least Bucky would get a chance to see his gift had been well taken, considering it was in the bed that Steve had been lifted from.

The ride through crowded New York Streets to the closeby hospital took a very long time. The EMT in the back of the wagon kept trying to get Steve to focus on him and smiled the whole while, the ambulance shaking him back and forth. He moved like a pro around the crowded space, explaining the things he was doing as he went.

Inside the hospital, they were walked through the ER where children laid their heads on their mothers’ laps for ear infections, people sneezed, and one guy sat with a towel wrapped around his head and his hand. That looked messy. They set Steve up in a room and dimmed the lights after a curly haired doctor with glasses and a quick, efficient way about him gave the expected diagnosis. Pre-stage pneumonia and told Bucky that he’d been all right by morning.

All of that was fine until Steve finally started to do better, the sludge in his lungs coming back up again with some coughing as the congestion broke apart. He gasped a little after he was finished spitting out the mucus and blinked at a set of eyes he hadn’t expected to be beside him. “Um… Hi…?”

Bucky had raced around the apartment as the EMTs talked to him, grabbing Steve's dumb fuzzy sweater, some sneakers, a coat, and a pair of loose pants because he figured the poor guy wouldn't want to come back from the hospital wearing nothing but his sleep stuff in bare feet. He hadn't had chance to freak out as he rode in the ambulance, too focused on Steve, though the strain of it had begun to sink in by the time they got to the hospital.

He fucking hated hospitals.

The smell, the sounds, the way the doctors all talked in that slightly patronising way that was meant to be kind. But he kept himself in the present by focusing on Steve almost obsessively, so he was right there to help support him in a seated position until he could spit the mucus out.

"Hey."

Smooth.

"You're in hospital."

With trembling hand, Steve pressed his fingertips against his eyes and then looked back up at Bucky. His eyes were always so vibrant, more now than usual given his surroundings and the dark circles still around them. It brought the blue out more than it ought to have done. A kindness filled them and below that, a gentleness to the smile. “I figured that out,” he said with a chuckle, that turned onto a cough. “You didn’t need to come in person to apologize for the sweater,” he had to tease.

He didn’t mention the drawing. He loved that drawing. It was amazing. Deputy Monkey in a blanket? If he ever made it big, he was going to use that for his logo. Or paste it inside every back cover. Maybe he was going a little overboard with that, but he couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky to have a friend like Bucky.

Steve eased himself back and pulled up the thin blanket. “Tell me that I get to go home? I hate being here,” he echoed Bucky’s thoughts. The drip bag with the glucose solution was only halfway gone, though. There was no way he’d be discharged before tomorrow.

It was both a good and a bad thing that Steve was awake and cognisant now. Good, because it proved the doctors hadn't been lying when they said he would be okay. And bad, because now he didn't have to be so stressed about Steve, it was a hell of a lot harder to hold off his own panic about being here. His smile was small and tight as he shook his head.

"Not until the morning. They said you have pre-pneumonia, it'll probably develop over the next few days, but they're sending you away with a bunch of antibiotics and medicine so you'll be fine in a couple of weeks."

He fidgeted, the fingers of his right hand playing with the glove that covered up the plastic of his left hand.

"You should'a called me, you dumb idiot. I'm right upstairs, you think I wouldn't want to come and help out the dumbass who gets pneumonia a month before Christmas."

Mentally ticking a tally count of every single time he'd had pneumonia before, Steve had let his eyelids close only to catch the edge in Bucky's voice. He knew that the other man had done a very brave thing coming here with him but he also knew that he had to go home before he completely freaked himself out.

"Why don't you go home? Give me my phone and I'll call for an Uber," Steve said, more than willing to be generous. He couldn't believe that Bucky had come with him-- Hed need to think about that for awhile. It meant more to him than Nat because it was harder for Bucky to think outside of the apartment building.

At least the Uber would be private.

"If they let me come home tomorrow, I might need to take you up on that offer to call you. I'm probably going to be stuck in bed and Nat's in Norway." It took him some time to wheeze the words out.

Tense and stressed he might be, but Bucky shook his head immediately and without even having to think about it. Even if Steve hadn't quickly become the most important person in his life - and wasn't that a sad fact, when a new friend became that important - but he had been in the army such a long time that 'no man left behind' was practically imprinted on his brain.

"Shut up, Steve," he said, mock growling as he sunk lower in his seat. "If you suggest me leaving when you've got pneumonia again, I'm gonna have to punch you and then I'll be in trouble for punching a patient. I'll make sure you get home okay, and then I'll kip on your couch until you're doing better. I can do the housework and shit, no problem."

His deep blue eyes challenged Steve to argue with him. There was no pity there, no obligation, just concern. "You're my friend; and that means that I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal. Got it?"

"So... To Grand Central?" he joked, poorly. Grand Central was a terminus for most of the trains in the city after all! He was still pleased at his joke, though the look he gave Bucky was a bit of blushing awe. He felt a little silly, so weak and in need of comfort, but he appreciated it just the same. Bucky had been thankful when he helped out and Steve told himself to at least reciprocate so that his friend didn't feel so bad.

He turned to keep Bucky in view. This could be just another room, minus the medical equipment and the frail young man laying in that bed with the guard rails.

"Thanks, Buck." He knew he needed to say more but it was difficult to find the words. There were a lot of things rolling around on his tongue and he couldn't get just one line of thought to stick enough to say anything of real worth. "For... For everything. I mean it. Thank you so much. I don't like being alone in here anyway and-- I really owe you now. You and Loren. I'm going to end up owing everyone by the end of this."

"I'm pretty sure I told you to shut up," he mumbled, not wanting all the gratitude. He'd come with a sick guy to hospital, that was surely something that any decent person should do, and he didn't need to be owed for it. Especially not when he already owed Steve a hell of a lot, even things he didn't know about like tattling to Mrs. Johnson about his potential rent issues.

He settled back in the slightly lumpy chair that was provided for visitors and tried to look as though he was fine and this whole situation was no big deal for him. He could freak out on his own time when Steve was asleep again.

"Get to sleep, I'll wake you when the bag is empty and you can go home."

The same Doctor came in from before about five hours later, but he looked more frazzled than the last time and didn't bother to shoo out Bucky despite visiting hours being over for the last two hours. He checked the sleeping man's vitals, told his attending nurse to burn his pager and groaned when he heard the call for Doctor Banner over the PA system.

He didn't say a word about what it might be about but he left Bucky with some of Steve's perscriptions and told him that he would have one of his colleagues comes in to discharge Steve in a few hours.

At least Bucky would have the bathroom to hide in if things got to be too much.

Just after nine in the morning, Steve was put in a wheel chair and sent on his way with more medication that someone his size should be on. The chatty young nurse that wheeled him out obviously was flirting with Bucky even if Bucky didn't seem to care much about it.

Even Steve seemed better. Still sick and wheezing but not deathly like he had the night before. He might let himself lean on Bucky on the way home in the back of the cab.

This had become a matter of endurance for Bucky. The long hours where Steve slept took him back to weeks spent in a hospital himself, of agony and bright lights and blood that seemed to permeate his every waking second. It made him retreat into himself for the defensive mechanisms he'd cultivated during his time as a POW, maintaining a calm facade only because he wasn't even really present any longer.

He got the medications, he got Steve into the back of a cab, and he got them up to Steve's apartment all without saying anything. Mouth clamped tightly shut, but otherwise seeming to be handling it okay.

He let Steve lean on him, he took it slow up the stairs, and then he eventually got Steve settled on his couch back in his little living area. Only then did he sink down himself next to Steve, just for a second, though, before he was on his feet again and into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water which he held out just as silently as before.

Steve was on his inhaler when Bucky started to his backs and forths, taking slow puffs as he watched the man prowl. He hadn't dealt with anyone with PTSD before, though his life drawing classmates sometimes told him about model drawing where war vets and amputees came in to share their stories and have their bodies displayed for the class. Steve didn't have any connection to that himself, so he stayed quiet for a long time before he lightly patted the seat beside him.

"If this is too forward," he said, ignore it. "But do you think I could borrow you as a space heater? I'll rent a movie from Amazon as payment. Awesome Friend's choice."

He was already looking like that monkey from the drawing, bundled up to his ears in soft blankets. It would be stupid for Bucky to decline the offer, but it would also give him a way out if he wanted. Especially when Steve mentioned going to get some rest himself, just take the key to let himself back in.

There. No strings attached.

Bucky remained where he was with the glass held out to Steve, his brow furrowed as if slowly and desperately trying to figure out where he was and what was going on. It took him a good thirty seconds before he finally lowered his arm and sank back down beside Steve to offer himself as the space heater he had been asked for.

"Where am I?"

Low and soft, ever so slightly broken.

This whole situation seemed very fractured right then, with Steve looking as if he were half in an apartment and half in a desert. He hated his mind, he hated that the beep of hospital machines still rang in his head even though they weren't even in the hospital any more.

"I want to help you."

Tell him that he can be useful and do that much.

Struggling to remove a hand from the blankets, Steve took the glass and sat it aside immediately. "You're with me," he said with concern in his voice. He couldn't help the guilt from slipping into his voice. He did this to Bucky. His sickness had forced the other man's loyalty and now he managed to hurt him. God. He felt so sickened by that. "We're in Brooklyn. And this is my apartment. You liked the watercolor. Remember?"

Steve kept his distance. He wasn't going to curl up with someone thst probably needed to flee. He leaned back against the arm rest instead, unsure of how guarded in all of this he was supposed to be. It hurt his head. It made the space behind his eyes pulse.

"You've been helping me out already, Buck. You got me water and we were maybe going to watch a movie. I just wanted the company but I understand if you don't. You must be really tired and hungry."

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