Steve's hands burned red under the faucet's pulsing stream of chemically treated water, and yet the chill from the night before remained so thick inside of his body that his bones shuddered and creaked with the freezing ache.

If he stared at himself in the mirror for longer than a few seconds, he looked like his mother had those last few months – sick, sad, disappearing from sight. Her spitting image.

He had never told her. Not about the dizziness or the attacks of nausea that had never seemed to end. Not about the doctor appointment he'd gone off to while Mrs. Ramirez from next door had sat with her ("Just off to the store, Ma"), not about the follow up tests ("late shift at work, I'm so sorry"), not about the bruises splattered across his body that hadn't gone away as quickly as they should have or the bleed that had taken forever to stop whenever he'd nick himself with his razor ("Daydreaming again, Steven?"). Not about the after-breakfast call and the diagnosis and the long, slow walk home that had taken too long and been too numb to be covered up with any other excuse but ("It's just … it's hard sometimes, remembering that I'm losing you").

He prayed, still, for her forgiveness in putting off SHIELD's treatments to take care of her, for what little time he had had left with her. For letting her go off to God thinking that it had been the stress of work and his grief in her illness that had been making him so tired. He didn't regret it – Lord help him, he couldn't – but sometimes, when the nights got too quiet and even the sharp, steady beeping of the machines became nothing more than muffled white noise, he couldn't stop himself from wondering if she had let herself fade away faster, stopped fighting so hard, thinking she was sparing him.

"…Steve?" Bucky's voice was hesitant, thin, from the other side of the door. The other side of the room.

His reflection snapped back into the image of his own pale face. Her eyes had been darker than his. Happier, even fading.

"I'm fine." He killed the faucet with a twist of the handle, shaking out his already cooling hands and grabbing the hand towel resting on the edge of the sink. In the crook of his elbow, his IV pulled.

"…I know that." The response was given in the same tentative tone.

I'm not mad at you, Steve silently snarled, grabbing for the pole. Stop with the kicked puppy act already. I'm not mad.

He wasn't.

Yesterday had been … embarrassing wasn't the right word. Mortifying. His weight strewed across Bucky's shoulders, fingers trying to shred Bucky's shirt as his body fought against itself, against him. In SHIELD, the first go around before his spectacularly failed remission, he'd never lost himself like he had yesterday. Vomited, sure, but never-

Bucky walking in on that, not listening to Steve's begging for him to leave, staying with him even when whatever part of his body had finally won, had felt … destroying.

No matter how comforting the hand on his thigh had felt, no matter the reassuring words that had made the heat of his tears sting a little less on his face, Steve hadn't wanted Bucky to see him like that.

Sighing again, he turned and opened the door.

Bucky's eyes were immediately glued to him.

"I," Steve said slowly, struggling to keep the scowl from his face. "Am not. Mad at you."

"I know," the other man answered quietly, fidgeting a little. A flash of a wince traveled across his face, gone before Steve could confirm it had been there at all. "I heard ya the first eighty-million times you said it. I'm still sorry."

"Yeah, well don't be." He kicked at his pole a little as he moved back toward his bed, his gut twinging slightly with each jarring step. Not an hour ago, the doctor (after scolding him on not taking his medicine and threatening to have the nurses aid him if it happened again), had informed him that some pain was to be expected, and that it should wear off slowly throughout the day. She'd also pulled him from the new drug, though he'd only gone through two treatments with it, unhappy with something on his chart that he hadn't asked after. He didn't care.

"Sorry," Bucky snapped back, and then immediately cringed in distaste. "No, wait. That was supposed to be sarcastic. Sor-ry."

Steve's fingers dug into the padding of the bed as hard as he could manage. "Oh my God, Bucky-."

"Should you be saying the Lord's name like that? Ain't you some saint-like Catholic schoolboy?" It was more of a taunt than a legitimate question; Steve's fingers were starting to hurt. "Sure actin' pretty bitchy for someone who ain't mad, Stevie."

"Barnes, I'm gonna crack you in your damn mouth if you don't shut up-."

"That make ya feel better?" A creak of metal and plastic had Steve looking over his shoulder – Bucky was pushing himself away from his pillows, bracing his weight on his arm to swing his legs over the edge of his bed. Again, another wince flew across his face, but the sudden fury rushing across Steve's back blinded his budding instinct to care. "Hittin' me? Want me to sit still for ya? Lean into it? Make it easy?"

"You're makin' it pretty hard not to want to," Steve growled. His arm twitched, more from the effort in contracting his muscles than from the desire to follow the thought, and a brief glance showed that his knuckles had gone white.

Bucky's chin jutted out, defiant, daring, lips twisting up in an ugly not-smirk. "Hell, punk. I think ya do want to."

For the faintest fraction of a second, Steve's mind indulged in playing out the scenario. Of taking the bundled, soulless emotions of yesterday – grabbing the echoes of them that he held now and reigniting them – and sending them into his fist, and sending his fist into Bucky's eager face. The image came with the sound effect of thud that wasn't real; hits like that were almost silent, the only noise coming from the smack of flesh and the body that moved. His mind showed that too; Bucky falling back onto the bed, maybe hitting the wall – he wouldn't have the best balance with only one arm Christ.

What the hell are you doing, Rogers?

His fingers unclenched from the bed in an agonizing wave of fatigue, the immediate burn from the release just as hot as it had been from the water from the sink. "Stop," he choked out. "I don't-."

Hit Bucky?

"Son of a bitch." The other man blinked at his exclamation, his lips trembling back down into a tilted flat line. The loss of the taunting smirk crumbled the remaining towers of Steve's ire like cold water to freshly heated metal. "Son of a bitch."

They'd played rounds and rounds of their endless game of questions – Steve knew more facts about James Barnes than he knew about himself.

There wasn't an ounce of real judgment on Bucky's now uncertain face at all.

Just a look he was all-too familiar with from his own face, years before. ("Stay down?" I just buried my mother. "You don't hit that hard." She's nothing but a cold lifeless corpse in the ground, covered in dirt. "I could do this all day.")

Steve's feet stumbled backward, stepping away from Bucky without consciously meaning to.

"I don't." The tingling exhaustion from his fingers traveled up to his shoulders, dousing him, but all Steve felt was … defeat. Almost an echo of yesterday. He shook his head enough to jar himself. "Damn it, Bucky," he forced out, earnest. "I don't want to hit you."

"Then what do you want?" The demand was desperate, so soft it sounded more pitiful than imploring, and it knotted uncomfortably underneath Steve's ribs. How can I fix this? Bucky wasn't asking, but Steve could hear it, clear as anything. Tell me what to do to make it better. How can I show you I'm sorry?

A knock at the door silenced them both before another word could find its way between them. Bucky flinched at the suddenness of it, and this time, this time, the wince of pain was a noticeable attack across his pale features. The knot grew larger.

"What?" Bucky shouted out before Steve could call him on it. He didn't look away, his eyebrows lifting in challenge even as his expression remained uncertain.

Say something, Steve urged himself, but Bucky's eyes were more grey than blue. Like a storm, swirling around him. He hadn't noticed before.

"Am I interrupting something?" It was Doctor Wilson.

Bucky looked away, and the storm was gone.

Steve licked his lips, wetting the painful cracks in old habit. "No." He turned toward the man lingering in the doorway, trying to school his features into something that could pass as believable. "It's nothing."

The doctor just cocked his head, a knowing smirk spreading across his face that seemed uncharacteristically hesitating. "Uh-huh." He stepped into the room completely. "Right. Well, usually I'd be all for letting this "nothing" continue-."

"Sam." Bucky bit out warningly, tight.

"-but I actually stopped by because I need to discuss something James. If he wants, you can stay while we talk?"

Steve's stomach dropped at the words, and without meaning to, he blurted out, "Is something wrong?" before he could process that he probably shouldn't.

("Mrs. Rogers, we have the results from your test. Would you prefer for your son to leave the room while we discuss them?")

"Nothing's wrong." His gaze moved back to his soulmate of their own accord, and found himself witness as Bucky sucked his own bottom lip between his teeth, worrying the edge of it in gentle movements – a nervous tick, another thing he hadn't noticed. But his face was morphed into an annoyed scowl, deeper and more angry than the look that had been on his face when he'd taunted Steve to take a swing, and he was all but shooting fire at Wilson. "Steve's got plans though, Doc. He was just on his way to go see Banner, weren't ya, Stevie?"

("Steven, sweetheart, could you give us a moment?")

There was a pounding, low and encompassing and never completely gone, radiating from the center of Steve's head. Bucky spared him a glance, fleeting, but long enough for him to see swirling bravado and the same unkilled doubt, and, because Steve was aware of it, the apprehension for another burst of pain lurking at the corners.

He didn't want to hit Bucky. He wasn't mad at Bucky.

Steve's mouth gained a bitter taste as he threw a sheepish smile at Doctor Wilson, grabbing his IV pole. "Yeah, sorry," he offered, trying to make it genuine as he stepped around the other man. "I'm trying to get him to appreciate the gardens a bit more, thought maybe more sun on the flowers would help. I'm sure that Bucky'll catch me up if there's anything I need to know." He paused, his gut pulling a bit again. He didn't look back at either of them. "Right, Bucky?"

"Yeah, pal, I'll tell ya."

When he was younger, in the years between his father's arrest, his own subsequent displacement, and Betty's welcoming acceptance of him as a friend, Bruce had had dreams that were worse than nightmares.

They were ones in which he would wake up, and everything that had happened just … hadn't. He'd wake up to the sight of sunlight streaming into his childhood bedroom, to the smell of pancakes wafting in from under his door, to the sound of his mother's beautiful humming coming from down the hallway, interrupted only by her calling him to come out for breakfast. He'd felt every second that had gone by, felt every fiber of his carpet beneath his feet, experienced the stomach-churning excitement of racing from his room and toward her waiting arms and loving smile-

Every single time, he would wake up before he reached her – would actually wake up, to a dark room and heavy shoulders and a feeling of emptiness in his chest.

They were called "false awakenings" – dreams so vivid that they convinced the dreamer that they were, in fact, reality – left their victims disoriented in their wake, with no other souvenir than a sense of loss. He hadn't had any in a year and half.

But when Bruce woke up to the morning light and the sight of Tony sitting in the same visitor's chair that he had been in yesterday, frowning down at the phone in his hand as he typed something out, for a moment, he was in one again.

"I thought you couldn't come in today." Bruce's words rasped as his dry throat erupted in a protesting burn (pain. Pain meant that he was awake. For real awake). He coughed as Tony jerked, startled at his interruption of the silence, reaching for the capped cup of water faithfully at his side.

"Um," the billionaire said dumbly, blinking as if it was Bruce's presence in the hospital room that was a surprise. There were the beginning signs of bags under his eyes, as if he hadn't gotten a lot of sleep but tried to chase off the fatigue with coffee, that were poorly hidden by shadow his hat casted across his face. "Hey."

Bruce raised his eyebrows in response as he gulped three soothingly aching swallows from the plastic straw of his cup before pulling it away. "Hey. Meetings?" He prompted, his throat still sore but his voice fuller.

Tony blinked again, though this time his dark eyes grew clearer at the movement instead of more confused. He waved his hand – the one holding the phone – about dismissively, making a noise between his lips that would have probably been rude if it had been a word. "One of the bigger company guys is flying in, and things got pushed around in response, so … I thought I'd just come here. I mean, I can't stay long-." As if on cue, the phone in his hand audibly vibrated, and Bruce watched as he shot it a disgruntled look. "-But I just … I've only been here for like, an hour. Maybe."

"Doing what, watching me sleep?" Bruce demanded, incredulous. He pushed himself up a bit, pressing on the button of the bed as he did to raise its top higher as well. He felt the ridiculous threat of a blush warming beneath his cheeks at the notion. "What are you, Edward Cullen?"

Tony, who had been looking uneasy at the revelation and Bruce's initial reaction, barked out astonished laughter at the reference.

"Edward Cullen snuck into a teenage girl's bedroom through her second-story window – I walked through your open door. Which I closed, by the way, you're welcome. Also, not my fault you were sleeping," Tony quipped back, the chair creaking slightly as he leaned back into it. There was a smirk on his face, and the bill of his hat did nothing to hide the mischievous gleam seeping into his tired eyes. "Twilight fan, really? Really really?"

Bruce rolled his eyes at the other man's amusement, wincing as a slap of a headache protested the action. "Yes, really really. Don't hate, it was a fun read. At least until the last book with the whole … baby thing or whatever." It had been something to do in the hours he'd spent secluded in the corner of the treatment room, trying to keep his mind off of the needles in his arm, of how much he hated himself, of how angry he'd been at Betty for putting him there. He didn't say it. "And obviously you're a fan too, sitting there, watching me sleep. That had to have been boring for you. I'm sure there were other more important things you could have been doing." Like not wasting your time here with me.

"Well, Edward is my middle name," he purred, and then laughed again "And of course there were other things to do. Stark Industries is bigger than what people think it is, you know? We work on many different things that don't even have SI's name attached to them, and it's my job to oversee every single one. Just so happens that right now, I'm overseeing Stark Center. Very important to our image, especially after Af-." His mouth clicked shut, humor draining quickly from his face. Bruce heard the word anyway.

(Sickly deathbed patient he may be, Bruce was still living in Stark Center. When the current Stark had been kidnapped by terrorists during a convoy attack, everyone in the hospital had heard of it – the younger kids downstairs had actually made "Come Back Soon!" pictures for him. When Tony had been rescued and returned four months ago, there'd been gossip, mellow "approved for the ill" parties – more pictures from the kids that had had brighter colors than the first. Bruce didn't need to hack into a file on Tony Stark; the 24-hour news cycle was more than enough).

Another vibration from Tony's phone cut them both off from any possible subject changes. "For fuck's sake," Tony grumbled, jerking it up to his face as his thumb zapped out a response to whatever was said. "I'm the co-CEO, I shouldn't have to answer everything. There are other people in the company who can answer the same damn questions and who are more accessible oh my God-"

A timid, gentle knock against Bruce's door sliced through Tony's ramblings – they both jumped at the sound, turning toward it as the door creaked open.

"Bruce?" A hairless head poked through the gap. "Are you awa- oh."

Steve stood in the doorway, awkward and pulling at the hem of his shirt. If the bags under Tony's eyes had been noticeable, Steve's were downright his most defining feature, their color making his already large blue eyes impossibly bigger. And, Bruce noted, his brow twitching, the misery in them that much more apparent.

"Steve?" He questioned, concern blossoming in his chest.

"I'm sorry," his friend whispered, his face changing lightly with the blush that Bruce had denied for himself earlier. "I didn't realize you had company. I can go-."

"Steve?" Tony cracked out like thunder. The chair scraped along the floor, and when Bruce looked over, he saw that Tony was standing up, beaming with much the same smile he'd worn for Bruce at the beginning of yesterday. "Like, Steve Steve? Platonic Steve? Bruce, is this your platonic Steve? Hi! No, don't be ludicrous, get in here."

Bruce watched as Steve crossed through the door, expression a mix of wary and confused as Tony all but bounded up to him, reaching for his hand. "Awesome, I was wondering if I was going to get to meet you. So this is what happens when someone's soulmate meets their soulmate's other soulmate, huh? You're shorter than I expected, like – short. Very petite. Sort of tiny."

For a second, something in Steve's face shifted. "Excuse me?"

"Strong grip, though." Tony blanched, and Bruce found himself smiling. "Wow, ow, okay, you're defensive on your size, got it, Mighty Mouse. I won't-." The phone vibrated again, and Tony dropped Steve's hand to check it.

His face went drastically pale.

"Tony?" Bruce asked, alarmed, and even Steve's hand twitched forward, as if ready to catch him should he fall. "What's wrong?"

The dark-haired man shook his head, dropping his phone into his pocket, and his smile became so fake that it almost looked plastic. "Hey, nothing. Apparently the meeting is back on track and now I'm late. Go figure. I gotta book it." He reached out, tapping Steve swiftly on the forehead. "Once you've caught up, Mighty Mouse, or got some sleep, which you clearly need, keep your mouth shut. And you." Tony then rounded quickly, facing Bruce, face falling for just a second. "I'll be back tomorrow," he said solemnly, and then winked, smiling again. "Bella."

He was out the door without waiting for a retort.

"Okay."

Bruce blinked, looking from the door and back to Steve, who still stood there, pole in hand. The look from before was gone, replaced with the same exhaustion that he had walked into the room with.

"Okay," Steve repeated, and looked at him. "We're going to talk about … all of that. We are. Because that was Tony Stark, in your room, and I want to talk with you about that because you probably need to talk, but … I told Doctor Wilson that I wanted to take you into the gardens, but I don't. I don't want to go out there, and I don't want … I don't..."

Bruce saw it, then. The growing tremble in Steve's arms, the increasing lock of tenseness in his thin shoulders. The way his face was beginning to crumple, like a cracked porcelain doll losing tiny fragments of her face to each jostle of her base. Tony had just been here, joking about Twilight, and then he'd disappeared, looking shaken for reasons Bruce didn't know, wasn't really awake enough to work out. But Steve was still standing in front of him.

"Hey," he murmured gently, reaching one hand as he used the other to scoot himself over on the bed. "Steve, come here. Come up here."

Steve inched toward him, the tires on his pole squeaking lowly behind him. "You know those days where you just wake up and you're just … trying to walk through mud?" He whispered, distraught. "And you're surrounded by fog and you can't even see which direction is the right way to go to get out? And you're tired, and you're angry at everything, but at the same time you're not? And it sucks because you were fine yesterday and the ground was firm and the sun was out but today…"

"Is a Bad Day." Bruce grabbed Steve's hand, carefully helping him up on to the bed, mindful of the tubing a needle trapped beneath Steve's skin. His friend panted heavily against his side as they settled, though whether it was from the effort or the approaching break or both, would never really be determined. He flipped the blankets to cover them both. "No courtyard today, if that's okay. I kind of just want to stay in bed. If it's not too weird. Can we do that?"

Steve trembled against him, burrowing in – Bruce said nothing about the wetness he felt against his neck – but nodded.

"Thank you."

"Your case worker is supposed to be by within ten business days to officially talk about it. So in more like two weeks, with how these guys work."

Bucky said nothing, staring out the window as a nurse maneuvered her way around the doctor to access his IV.

"I just thought you might want a head's up that it was a thing."

The appearance of Dilaudid through the tube was a cool, numbing rush. Her hand touched his arm briefly, probably meant to be reassuring, before she disappeared again.

"James?" Sam pressed easily.

He was already beginning to float. He was safe to answer if he was floating.

"Thank you."