this was a major pain to write- I started off on my laptop, but then the cord gave out so I couldn't charge it anymore; I sent it to my phone and wrote some more on there before giving up and sending it to my iPad. As such, this was all written in various places, including trucks, my bed, my kitchen floor, a forest, and a bathtub.

.

The first time Steve has an asthma attack, a really bad one, you think you're going to die. Because Steve is gasping for air in a way that's worse than the pained coughs when he gets kicked in the stomach or ribs during fights, and that's bad enough, it's horrible. But when that happens, it's a person who's done it and you can make them regret it. This is just from the air, his ma tells you later, the cold air, and you can't make the air regret this, can't fight it off for Steve.

So you think you're going to die, because you honestly think Steve is going to drop dead right there next to you and you think you'll probably drop with him when he does.

You're less than a block from the Rogers' place, so you do the only thing you can think of- you run there, half carrying Steve. Mrs. Rogers is cooking dinner, and when you bang in through the door shouting for her she's by her son's side in an instant.

She coaches Steve to breathe, just breathe, and tells you to boil water, bringing Steve over to it to inhale the steam. And (far too slowly) his gasping turns to long, deep breaths, until he's coughing weakly and his ma puts him to bed, exhausted.

You're exhausted too, and you realize you haven't been breathing right, either. Mrs. Rogers and you sit on the couch together, staring blankly at the floor, the walls, your own hands.

"What was that?" you ask eventually, and you sound younger than your nine years, you sound scared. You are scared, you're terrified, because since you met a scrawny little blonde kid with a smart mouth and no fear, it's like you've grown another limb or maybe something even more vital; you don't know what you'd do without it. Without Steve.

Mrs. Rogers is quiet for a moment before explaining, "I think it was an asthma attack. I'll have to bring him to work with me, have one of the doctors look him over, but- I think that's what it was. James, what happened?" She catches your eye, serious but kind.

"We were just walkin', runnin' a little 'cause it's cold, and he just started coughin', then he wasn't breathing right all of a sudden. I- I didn't know what to do, so we came home."

"You did exactly as you should have, James. Thank you." Mrs. Rogers puts her hand over yours.

"Is it gonna happen again? Steve is gonna be okay, right?"

Her smile is a bit shaky, but still as strong as ever. "It probably will happen again, but Steve will be alright, just as he always is." And oh, you love this woman, almost as much as you love your own mother because she doesn't sound reassuring, or like she's trying to convince herself. Her son's body just tried to choke him to death and she states he'll be alright like it's a fact.

You remember when you first met Steve, when you jumped into a fight you had no business being in to protect a tiny kid who you didn't know, and how once you did, you decided to always be there to help him win fights. As you sit next to Mrs. Rogers, sitting in the quiet and listening to Steve's slightly labored, but steady, breathing coming from his open bedroom door, you decide this is just another thing you'll always be there to help him fight against.

.

Winter turns to Spring turns to Summer turns to Fall and back again and again like the never ending turn of the hands of a clock and before you know it you and Steve are almost grown up, voices settling into deeper tones and beginning to gain height over the girls.

Well, you gain height- Steve grows some, but his thin bones don't stretch as fast as the rest of you, and he mournfully declares he doesn't think he'll ever get tall. You envy the grace he's been able to keep every time you trip over your own legs, hit your head on something that never used to be that low, you swear, gesture with newly-long arms and hit yourself in the goddamn face.

Steve is there to laugh at you, every time, because he's always with you. He's there to hear the voice cracks that you suffer through bravely, there for the aches in your bones as they stretch, there to see the hair grow out of your skin.

He's there when you realize you should be noticing girls a hell of a lot more than you do. Of course he is, because you realize when you catch yourself watching him, blonde hair catching the sun of a New York summer, sweat making his too-big shirt stick to his back as you sit on your back steps, his cheeks flushed from heat and the breath catches in your throat and you think, oh, fuck.

.

The last of winter is melting to make way for spring, the snow gone to puddles and the chill in the wind nearly gone, heavy coats traded in for lighter ones, the promise of summer chasing away all of the lingering effects of the last few cold months.

All, except for the last winter-cold-turned-pneumonia stricken boy- or, man, now, more like, you suppose; for all Steve is skinny and tiny and you could carry him with one arm, have on a couple occasions when he's too sick to move himself, he is a man, all grown up- in your bed, shivering and wheezing.

Steve is asleep, so you are not. With his asthma, breathing is hard enough for him without the added strain of all the gunk currently in his lungs, so you gotta make sure he keeps breathing. Just one more time, then again, until morning comes and he wakes up to cough and shiver still but do it awake.

It's these nights, the ones when you sit at your own bedside and watch over Steve's breathing, his fever, his heartbeat- it's these nights where you curse God, (even if you're not so sure you really believe in him, but Steve does and that's good enough) for giving Steve a broken body, one that no matter what will never match who he is inside, while He gave a strong body to you.

Every time you don't get sick when Steve does, finish a fight that Steve couldn't win himself, work a fucking job that you know Steve hates himself for not being able to work, every single time you do something Steve's body won't let him, you curse the God Steve insists is there for not making it the other way.

Steve inhales shakily, then slowly wheezes out, the gunk in his lungs rattling. He doesn't draw another breath for a long moment, and you reach forward to shake his shoulder gently. He breathes as he wakes, cracking open an eye to see what woke him.

"Bucky?" his voice is weak, but not as weak as it had been, and the fevers gone down enough that he knows what's going on around him. He's getting better. Slowly, but you'll take it.

"Hey, Stevie, go back to sleep. It ain't morning yet."

Steve tries to sit up, but the blankets slip and the shivering instantly gets worse. Without a thought, you move into the bed, slide under the blankets, pulling him against your chest. He's warm, too warm, but you know he feels like it's the dead of winter. You would give him much more than your own body heat to fix that, but it's all you have to give. His chest against yours heaves and you can feel the thump of his faulty heart with your own.

Sometimes, you just can't understand how your heart, steady and strong, doesn't make up for Steve's own uneven pulse. If you could, you would cut it out of your chest to give it to him. It's his already, anyways. If you can share body heat, why can't you share a heartbeat?

But in the same way you breathing even to show him how during his asthma attacks doesn't make his lungs work any better, you can't make him healthier just by not being sick. Even if you think, sometimes, that you're really just one person in two bodies, those bodies are different and separate and Steve's will never be as strong as yours, though he is the strong one, really, of the two of you.

"Don't wanna sleep anymore." Steve mutters against you, and the shivering has calmed some so you let him out of your grip a bit.

"Sleep is good, ya know. It'll make you feel better." There are so few things that do, you wish Steve would just take the one thing that will at this moment.

He just huffs a laugh, or maybe a cough, and says, "I've been sleeping mosta the damn winter, Buck, I'm not tired anymore."

Which is a bold faced lie, but you let it be because when he asks, "did you sleep at all?", and you say, "some," Steve doesn't call your bluff.

"You should get some more, don't you gotta work?" He says instead.

You do, and you'll be exhausted and lightheaded from lack of food, using any extra money you have on heat and medicine, and the other men you work with with give you concerned looks but not say anything. There's one guy whose kid has polio, another who lost his brother to TB. Nearly everyone else has seen a loved one in a sickbed at one point or another, of some disease or injury. They get it. So they won't say a word.

"Yeah, but I'm good."

Steve huffs in exasperation, or maybe coughs. "I'm not going back to sleep, so you might as well." He won't leave it until you do as he insists, you know this. Steve is ten times more stubborn that you are, and you're pretty damn stubborn.

You settle in, Steve still held against you- for warmth, because he's still shaking, no other reason- and say, "you have to rest. Don't have to sleep, just rest." And he nods against your body, his breathing still strained and fever too high and all the good in his heart can't make it beat proper, just like no amount of sleep will keep this all from happening again next winter, but for now you can hold his tiny bones against you and give him the heat that means you're alive, and feel his which means the same.

You fall asleep counting breaths and heartbeats, asking God after every single one, one more, then just one more again.

They both keep going, through the rest of the night and the last days of spring, and you think that if that's all God is willing to do for Steve, it's enough for you.

.

You get shipped overseas and no one is there to make sure the breaths keep coming from Steve's faulty lungs, and you can only hope that no one lets him join up, no matter how many times he tries. Because he'll keep trying, you know he will, and at the end of the war you need Steve to be back home waiting for you- because you are getting home, won't let the alternative be an option- and if you let yourself imagine, even for a second, him over here coughing into the mud or, fuck, on his own fucking blood, you don't know how you'll keep moving forward. The thought of Steve in the dirt that was more mud from all the blood spilled into it is worse than every single time you've found him lying in an alley, pushed together into a big bunch of worry and fear, sitting in your stomach like a stone.

But then it's HYDRA and capture and that damn fucking table, and it's just your name rank number name rank number name rank number name rank number over and over and over and it's Steve's face behind your eyes and it's pain and you can't fucking die on this fucking table because Steve needs you to come back so-

you breathe. You breath and mutter the same thing over and over no matter what they do, no matter what the hell is in the needles they put in your veins or how deep the scalpels dig in, but when they start with the electricity you can't form words anymore so you just scream for hours and hours and you don't think about anything because if you think then you'll realize you're not gonna make it off this table, you're going to die strapped down to it but you promised Steve you wouldn't die, he's right there when you close your eyes and he keeps reminding you to keep your word you promised me you wouldn't die, Buck so you're not gonna die I'm not gonna die.

Then Steve is there, big and strong and healthy and rescuing you, and its about then that you decide you must have died after all.

The next few hours are more blur than anything else. You remember fire and a man who pulled off his face, remember marching and not falling over, and you're pretty sure that at some point you apologize to Steve for dying.

(Gabe tells you later that was when Steve decided they had gotten far enough away and made them stop for the night, tells you that Steve sat you down and hadn't left your side until you woke up the next morning and you knew what was going on again)

It's... you can't wrap your head around it, though, what's gone and happened- been done to- Steve since you last laid eyes on him. You have to look up to see him and when you try to throw your arm around his shoulders like you always have, you end up wrapping an arm more or less around his waist. Now you're the small broken one and maybe God is real because Steve's body isn't going to fail him, you wont need to stay up and watch to make sure his chest keeps rising and falling anymore.

You wonder, then, if there was any point left to you at all, if Steve didn't need taking care of. Your body aches and you have too many scars and something just feels off inside you, but then Steve looks at you like he always did as a scrawny little punk, looking up to you even though now he has to look down, and you ignore everything new and bad and different because Steve is here and going to go start a fight he might not be able to finish, no matter how big he's got. And you know this, you know what to do, because Steve will always start things and you will always be there to finish them.

.

You march behind Steve and sleep in shifts, and each and every one of the freed men has some kind of injury, they are all walking wounded, so you don't say anything about how your chest and side are all one giant bruise that feels like it goes all the way down to your lungs, sharp when you breathe in and blazing when you try to lie on it.

It's not that hard to ignore, because- because Steve is here, looking like every soldier on every propaganda poster ever printed for this damn war, leading the ragtag group of men he's freed and they're following him, because people can finally see who Steve is on the inside without having to look past thin bones wrapped in pale skin with exactly no muscle in-between.
You'd almost be able to believe that it isn't Steve, with how different he looks; except, even with the men treating him as their commander, calling him Captain and Cap'n and Cap, he still looks to you before anyone else, still knows what you're about to do before you even start to think of doing it, reacts to your movements with his own matching ones- and even if he's in a different body, it's still Steve in all the ways you know. All the ways that count.

And because it's Steve, he notices pretty quick that your pathetic sleep on the hard ground on the first night fucked up your ribs, making them go from healing all the way back to fucking agony- not that it's not anything you can't deal with, 'cause you can, you just gotta hold your gun at a certain angle against your chest, just can't breathe too deep. Simple. You've been dealing with this kinda thing since you got here, and back in Brooklyn, even. You aren't the worst one off- you can deal.

But, it's Steve, and, yeah, he notices.

"You're hurt," he accuses you the next day, after you had all been marching (calling it marching is a kindness because half these guys can't walk straight and the others are limping, no one is even attempting to look like the heroes they'll be called back at base camp, POW's escaped from HYDRA, fought their way out with fists and then stolen Nazi guns) for all of an hour. Your body is screaming at you to slow down, but you can keep going another few hours no problem before you have to start worrying about passing out from the pain.

Since you were acquainted with that lab table, your tolerance for pain has gone up.

"I'm fine, Steve."

"Nah, I know how you walk when you're tryin' to hide busted ribs. You're hurt."

"I'm fine, Jesus Christ."

Steve doesn't bother acknowledging that, only walks over to Dugan, having a few quiet words. Dugan disappears for a moment, then comes back with a serious look under his large mustache.

"Captain, there are more than a couple men who are pretty banged up. It'd do them good to take a break," he says loudly. You roll your eyes. "It'd be a shame to lose men right after rescuing them."

They call halt, and fuck if anyone even attempts to put up a protest- they're behind enemy lines, for godsake, no one knows they're even alive, but they're all just so fucking tired.

You sit in the dirt, lean against Steve, and breathe.

.

When you get back to base camp, after you raise a cheer for Captain America and for the first time you manage to make everyone else see what you see in Steve, you sit on your cot, stare at nothing. They told you to go to medical, but you're fine, you are, and you don't want any doctors near you right now, you just don't. You just want everyone to forget you're here, and so far your wish has come true.

Steve comes in eventually, probably after a debriefing on the whole one-man HYDRA base take down and rescue mission, and sits next to you, stares at the same nothing you are.

"I thought you were dead," he says after a while, and it's even more broken sounding than it was the first time. You can't bring yourself to say I thought you were smaller.

"Thought I was, too." You sigh out. "I made myself hold on, no matter what they did, I refused to die. I wasn't gonna. Then you show up... didn't seem like it could be real. Thought I must've died after all."

"But you didn't, Buck, you didn't, and you're not gonna."

"Steve," you say, because this is war, a war that's ripping an entire continent apart as steadily as the mines and gunfire and desperate, constant fear rip the men fighting it apart.

"They're sending everyone that was in the HYDRA base back to London," he interrupts, "They wanna get a look at the tech we managed to bring out, debrief them. Then figure out where everyone goes from there."

"I'm going back to the trenches, Steve." If you let the medics near you long enough for an exam, they might well send you home. But you're not gonna say that, and you aren't gonna give them the chance.

A small smile appears on his face, and he says, "maybe."

"You're gonna go and do something stupid, aren't you?" You say, because you've known what he was going to try and do since you woke up and realized it wasn't all just a dream.

Steve laughs, his smile pulling wide, and you are suddenly struck with how fucking beautiful he is, still, you forget to breathe for a moment. You've been thinking handsome since first seeing this new Steve, but, no, he's beautiful too, as beautiful as he was since you were kids.

He smiles at you like this is the happiest he's ever been in his life, sitting here on a hard cot next to you in a war camp far, far, from Brooklyn, and he asks you, "If you had to pick the men you'd want with you while you did a lot of really stupid, dangerous things to take down HYDRA, who would you pick?"

.

There's a disconnect in the thought that Steve has more of a chance of living to see thirty now (as a soldier fighting on the front lines, regularly taking on HYDRA with just a goddamn shield, star on his chest like a fucking bullseye) than he did before (as a skinny asthmatic with a curve in his spine and bad heart and worse health, always getting sick, pneumonia and bronchitis too many times to count, fevers that turned his body into a battleground until he'd go delirious with it).

Sometimes you're so thankful for the serum that's made him into Captain America, made him strong and healthy and heal faster besides, thankful for the way his heart beats steady and his lungs draw enough air, thankful that you don't have to worry about finding him beaten dead in an alley for his smart mouth and stupid, stupid desire to do the right thing.

But sometimes- sometimes you look over at him, his uniform caked in mud and splattered with blood, golden hair turned dark with ash and dirt, and in this body a gun fits perfect in his hand (just a weapon held by another weapon)- and you miss the skinny, sickly kid he used to be so much you can't breathe from the memories running through your head, sitting on your heart; Mrs. Rogers, her hair the same gold as her son's, sitting with you and teaching you how to treat everything from scrapes and bruises to open wounds, the dangers of high fevers and how to handle them; a skinny boy, skin pale as milk because he hasn't seen sunlight in weeks, lying still, so still, as they wait for the priest; that same boy, later, still alive, miraculously still alive, starting yet another fight he couldn't win because he wanted to leave some kind of mark on the world before the next sickness caught up to him, even if that mark was only a quickly-faded bruise.

There are more memories, so many more, your entire life is just memories of Steve it seems, and in many of them he is reasonably healthy, reasonably safe, and usually happy. Almost always happy. But when you look at Captain America like this, covered in death, you can only remember how he's spent his life never expecting to live for much longer. He could now, he could live through this damn war and get married and have a life, but you think sometimes that maybe that hasn't occurred to him yet.

You're not gonna make it through this war, you don't think. It had been stubbornness that kept you alive long enough to be pulled off Zola's table, and luck after. But Steve'll live, and he oughta know that.

"You're gonna make it, you know," you tell him one day when it's only the two of you, between missions and the others have gone off to find a place with booze and possibly some women, with any luck.

Steve looks up from the maps he'd been scanning for no particular reason. "Hm?"

"You're gonna make it. Through the war, I mean. And after. You ain't gonna die young from a fever or somethin'. Not anymore." And you were right, it hadn't occurred to him yet. You can tell from the way he blinks at you.

He blinks a couple more times before saying, "I guess you're right."

"So, what're you gonna do after the war?"

"Uh." He says.

"Oh, c'mon, Steve, you've gotta have thought about it." There isn't a single man in this war, on either side, that hasn't fantasied about going home.

Steve shrugs. "I haven't really thought too hard about it. I guess we'll go back to Brooklyn."

We'll, he says, like there is no other version of this story, like they are impossible to separate. We'll.

"And- Carter?"

"What about her?"

You give him a long look. "How do you think she'd feel about being so far from home?"

Steve is staring at you like you've suddenly starting speaking German. "What do you mean, far from home?"

"Brooklyn. You said you'll go back to Brooklyn, but don't you think Carter will wanna go back to England?"

"Bucky. What the fuck are you talking about."

"Well usually wives live with their husbands, and its hard to do that when they live on different sides of the ocean." You explain, slow and tense, trying not to shout.

He stares at you for a long time before getting up and moving towards you. "You think I want to marry Peggy?"

"You have a picture of her in your compass, Steve. You love her."

"Yeah, well, its not like I need a picture of you, when I wanna see your face I can just look up." His chin is stuck out, stubborn, but he won't make eye contact with you. Your mouth is dry, your chest is tight, and your head is swimming.

"Steve?"

"Sure, I love Peggy. But when the war is over, when we win, you and me are goin' back to Brooklyn." His smile is small and bashful. "You're it for me, Buck. Til the end of the line, and you're the only stop."

You wonder if this is what Steve feels like when he has an asthma attack- when he used to have asthma attacks. Steve's smile falls into worry, stepping forward further to put a hand on your shoulder. You reach out to grasp his.

"Steve, what do you mean?" You gasp, beg, demand.

He never answers, just ducks his head and presses his lips to your own, in a short, hard kiss, before retreating a step or two.

Steve clears his throat. "That's what I mean."

"What- but- for how long?!" Steve's face falls a bit, and you realize that question came out sharper than you had intended. It sounded like an accusation.

Before he can answer, you take the two steps forward to replace the ones Steve put between you two, reaching up with both hands to cradle his jaw in between the palms of your hands, and moving forward even more to kiss him properly this time.

You keep it slow and sweet, sucking his top lip in between your own and groaning when he does the same to your bottom lip before nipping at it gently. This is everything you've wanted since you were thirteen years old and damn if you're not gonna savor every last bit of it.

It has to end, eventually, though. You have to pull away because Steve can go longer without breathing than you can these days, and he seems content to kiss you until he passes out from lack of oxygen. You keep your eyes closed while you breathe, and when you open them, Steve is watching you.

"Why?" you ask, meaning so many different things. Why didn't you tell me, why did you tell me now, why did you kiss me, why do you even want to. Steve is like the goddamn sun, and you aren't even anything as important as the moon; maybe once you were something but now all you are is the mudcaked boots and blood stained uniforms, the bodies you have made, the lead in the bullets in your rifle.

Steve only shrugs. "'Cause I love you, and I'm in love with you, and I have been for a while. And... well, you know better than anyone, I spent a lot of my life making peace with not living all that long. But now- now I probably will. Its like I just realized I got a second chance at living, and I'm not gonna waste it being afraid. I'm in love with you, Buck, and I just wanted you to know that."

"Oh," you say, "I love you too.

.

You are careful not to act differently with Steve around the Commandos; it turns out, you already acted like a man in love when you were around Steve, because you realize you don't have to act any differently than you did before. You would worry about that more, but the day after Steve kisses you, Dernier smiles at you and says something in cheerful, rapid French. Gabe smirks but doesn't translate.

Morita gives Gabe a curious look, and he translates the French into a series of abrupt hand motions and facial movements. Morita apparently understands, because he chuckles and pats you on the back. By this time, they've attracted Dum Dum and Monty, who look on curiously as Jim tells you he's glad you and his Captain are fucking.

Well, no, he says, "Glad to hear you and Cap can stop with the pining", and the other men laugh good naturally.

Later, you will lie in the dark next to Steve and say, "I never thought it was wrong, loving you like I do. How could I? There ain't nothing wrong with loving you, even if we're both men. I know lotsa people don't think that way though. I didn't think..."

Steve will know what you mean. That you didn't think, never thought, that you could have this, have Steve's kisses in the dark and acceptance of them in the light and even though they're in a war that you still don't truly think you'll make it out of, there is happiness, and there is hope.

You think, maybe, you can survive on it just long enough to win the war and go home.

.

You fall, and that is that. You were right. You were never meant to go back home.

But Steve was also right. Because you live.

.

Living is a matter of perspective, though, so maybe saying you don't die is more accurate, in the end.

You don't die.

But Steve does.

And when they tell him, so does Bucky.