I'm Here | ✓

19 - Confessions

I don't think I've ever felt this human before.

Steve is the first to look away, blushing hard but still grinning like an idiot. He drops my hand, and I debate mentally if I'm ever going to wash it again. That warm happy feeling inside remains, floating around in my chest, and I fold my hands neatly under the blanket.

"I don't know about you, but I'm starving," Steve says, rolling over to reach for the tray. "I call dibs on the chicken."

"Whaat?" I complain jokingly. "Can I at least have one piece?"

He hands me the spaghetti plate and takes the chicken for himself. "Only if you promise not to tell anyone about that," he says, referring to our hand-holding seconds earlier.

I grab a fork and start twisting the noodles around it. "You say that like I have many people to talk to. Are you embarrassed, Rogers?" He looks up at me and blushes harder, scrunching his nose in a grin. He doesn't answer and chooses to dig into his chicken instead.

We're both finished in minutes, despite the huge quantity of food. I guess that's what the serum does. We don't speak except to casually glance over at each other and laugh at how ravenously we're eating. Steve, ever so polite, stacks his plates neatly back on the tray when he's done, and then we're sitting in silence again.

I shook my head. "Didja ever think life would get this crazy?"

Steve laughed. "Never in a million years. Aliens, robots, gods... remember when it was just me and you?"

"That's what I was thinking about." I glanced over at him in all seriousness. "Can we ever get that back? Just the two of us?"

"That's all it is now, right?"

"I guess that's true."

It was silent for a moment as Steve hesitated like he wanted to say something else. He didn't look me in the eyes and his face scrunched up as he tried to find the words.

"Hey, Buck, what was that?" He said quietly.

The hand-holding. That took me off guard. I didn't know how to answer. I didn't know, but it felt good.

"I doubt myself a lot. You've seen it. I've got nightmares, ghosts, I hallucinate. I just want one thing that I can trust, you know?" I fiddle with a loose string on the hospital blanket to avoid looking at Steve for his reaction. Getting a bit choked up, I continue. "I always thought you and I had something, Steve, then everything turned upside down and I don't know what's real now."

Shit. Shit. He knows I fancy him now.

"What do you mean, 'something'?"

I shrugged to try to mask my inability to explain. "I don't know, our... friendship, I guess... it was different."

"Well, yeah, cause I was 16 and skinny and reckless as sin, and you always had to come to bail me out."

How is he so clueless? "No, I mean, I thought... you know what, never mind."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. It's probably better this way."

Steve inhaled lightly to my right. "You don't mean... you didn't have a crush on me?"

"No. Yes. Maybe." I sighed. "I don't know, to be honest. I don't remember much. I only know the feeling in my chest when we held hands just a minute ago."

Steve let the words sink in. I still didn't look at him. I probably just lost my best friend, my fire, my almost. 70 years under Hydra apparently couldn't teach me to keep my damn mouth shut. You're an idiot, James.

"You're the only one I brought into this life. I wouldn't have wanted anyone else."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I feel the same way, I guess. Ever since we were kids, I felt something I couldn't identify, and that made me scared, made me crazy. You could get killed for looking at another man wrong back then. And now..." he laughed. "That's all changed. People are accepted now. Do you still want what you think we had?"

"More than anything," I whispered quietly, relieved and still a bit anxious. My heart beats wildly in my chest.

"Then let's be something more."

He tilts his left hand back over to me, and I grip it tightly. We just look up at the ceiling, contemplating. Wow. I never thought we'd get here. I really hope this isn't confession hour, because then I'd have to tell him about the time I kissed him at the fire, or the time I kissed his neck when he had his first panic attack, or that when I used to hold his hand, it wasn't entirely to ground him from coughing fits. I was selfish, and that little spark in my chest tells me I still might be, just a little, for wanting Steve to myself.