THE SOLDIER & THE SHIELD, stucky

02

THE SMELL OF THE CLOSET had mostly been that of must.

Bucky thought he might have caught a whiff of his best friend, the one he remembered, skinny Steve. But in the morning, engulfed in Steve's presence—his warmth, his drool, his early-morning grumbling—Bucky knew he'd only gotten a face full of the scent of aging fabric.

This was here, this was now, this was real.

They hadn't moved all night. Although Bucky's good arm was beyond the point of being asleep and it burned with the worst kind of pins and needles he'd ever felt, he didn't care. He had slept soundly through the night with Steve nestled into his neck and draped across his chest. It was something he never would have asked for, only because he never would have realized how much he needed it.

"...time is it?" Steve mumbled, rolling his cramped neck.

Bucky craned his neck to look at the clock on the other side of the bed. "Ten, I think."

"It's too bright." Steve sniffled and dropped his head back into Bucky's neck. "You sleep all right?"

"Yeah." A smile painted itself across his face that he couldn't seem to wipe off. "Yeah, actually. I don't think I dreamt at all. No nightmares, no dreams. Just..."

"Sleep," Steve said, smiling against Bucky's skin. "I'm glad."

They laid in silence for several minutes as Steve floated between consciousness and sleep before he finally rolled off from his human pillow to stretch, accompanying it with a mighty groan. Bucky stretched out his right arm slowly and cringed at the pain that shot up into his shoulder and across his chest as he regained blood flow.

"How's that hand?" Steve inquired, still lazily massaging the sleep from his eyes.

"Pretty all right," Bucky said as he investigated the areas that had been bleeding just a few hours before. They were hardly scabs now, itchy but not painful.

"Coffee?" Steve sighed as he pried himself from the warmth he'd been completely engulfed in. Bucky didn't answer, only continued to study the palm of his human hand. "Is that a no?"

"Oh—Uh..." Bucky shook his head, unsure of where his mind had gone. "No, yeah, sure. Coffee, yeah. Sounds good. Sorry."

Steve nodded with a tight-lipped smile and a furrowed brow before he turned away. He was worried and it was obvious but Bucky wasn't sure how to ease his mind. He wasn't even sure how to ease his own mind. He was just starting to get it back. It was confusing to be lying comfortably in a bed that he'd just shared with Steve, still basking in his familiar warmth.

He was bewildered by the concept of not waking up in a cold sweat, confused by his surroundings; or standing over Steve's sleeping body in the dead of night, loaded pistol in hand. He had slept soundly for the first time in months and it was completely foreign to him. He guessed that there hadn't been any petrified sleep-talking or violent night terrors because he didn't remember Steve waking him up at any point or stirring at all. Bucky was confused and overwhelmed with the warmth and emotion pumping through him but he could certainly get used to it.

It was all so different from the life he had become accustomed to. Yet he knew that this was how it was supposed to be. He knew that this was who he was.

By the time Bucky had finally swung his legs over the edge of the bed, Steve was back with two steaming cups of coffee. Bucky took the mug graciously and clutched it between his hands. He smiled down into the dark liquid as his eyes fell out of focus.

"What is it?" Steve silently took a seat on the bed next to Bucky, worried that he was slipping away again.

It happened sometimes. Bucky would be sitting in the living room or in the middle of a conversation and suddenly his face would blank out. Often when he came out of it he would be angry, trembling, or mumbling, not always in English. He usually spoke Russian, but other times it was Romanian, Japanese, or a number of other language that Steve had yet to identify.