Prompt Post 1

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At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.

Update, April 22, 2014:
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Fill: Baby, You Shouldn't Be Alive [2/7?]

[twinkats]

The first time it happened with Bucky, Bucky had been certain that he’d imagined it. It was a few years after they’d become friends, after Steve’s mom ended up in the hospital sick and dying. In those days Bucky would come over and take care of Steve, especially during the winter time when Steve would catch a cold, or even if it came around, the flu.

This time it’d been the flu, and for the first time since he was five Steve was in a really bad state. He had a fever that refused to be broken, muttered gibberish in fever dreams, hallucinated his dad home from work yelling vitriol at him.

(his father had been dead for almost eight years)

Steve was cold and clammy and hot all at once. There was a permanent trashcan set next to Steve’s bed as he threw up any solid food he’d been given, and often even the soups and water that Bucky practically forced down his throat to stave off dehydration.

He should be in a hospital, Bucky knew. Steve should be holed up in a bed on so many drugs to keep him alive and boost his immune system, except Steve was poor as dirt and still paying his own ma’s medical bills and Bucky was poor as dirt too, unable to buy anything more than soup and water and some basic cold medicine. Unable to do anything except watch Steve die.

“B-Bucky…” Steve muttered in his fever dreams. He muttered Bucky a lot as days went on when he wasn’t having conversations with his ma who wasn’t there, or his dad who was long buried in the ground. Bucky sat beside him, stroke his haired, worked a wet cloth across Steve’s brow.

“I’m here Steve,” he’d say back. “I’ve got you Stevie.”

They weren’t all each other had left. Bucky still had his own ma and dad back at their apartment, but it wasn’t like they noticed his absences as much as he would like. It wasn’t like they’d notice the days to months he’d be gone taking care of Steve and working on the docks to make money because Steve couldn’t anymore.

Steve smiled, wheezed, “Love you, Buck.” They said silly stupid things like that a lot. Bucky thought nothing of it, they were just two boys, brothers practically. It wasn’t like Steve was pretty like a girl, he was pretty, but he was no dame, and Steve, well, any pretty girl walked by Steve and he’d get all tongue-tied and twisted up.

“Yeah, Stevie, I know,” Bucky said back. “With you ‘till the end of the line.”

“‘Till the end of the line,” Steve muttered. Bucky curled himself around Steve, buried his face into Steve’s fevered skin. He didn’t cry, although it was a near thing. Steve was the best pal a guy could ask for, the best guy in the world. He made Bucky feel like a better man some days (because Bucky knew he was nothing compared to Steve who had such something in him, and it drew Bucky in like a moth to the flame) and there was nothing Bucky could do to save him. This wasn’t a fight in a back alley. This wasn’t something Bucky could fix.

He felt like he was drowning.

At some point, Bucky drifted off. When he woke up Steve’s fever was gone. His skin wasn’t blistering hot. Bucky pulled himself back.

“Steve?” he asked, placed his hand across Steve’s lips. Steve was so sick he wheezed with every breath, but right now Bucky couldn’t hear a damn thing. There was no faint touch of breath across the back of his palm. “Steve?” Bucky asked, again. He shook Steve’s shoulder.

Steve wasn’t breathing. Steve wasn’t feverish. For one terrifying moment Bucky thought Steve was dead, that it finally happened, that he let Steve die. Except then Steve shifted, and breath hit Bucky’s hand.

“M’sleepin,” Steve mumbled and Bucky breathed a sigh of relief. Steve wasn’t dead. He was cold but not dead.

“Your fevers broken,” Bucky said. “Stevie your fevers broken.”

“S’great,” Steve mumbled. “Now lemme sleep.”

Bucky’s lips twitched, he smiled, muttered, “Sure thing,” and slipped out of the bed.

(Bucky never forgot that first terrifying moment when he thought Steve had died, never forgot how cold Steve felt, and how there was no breath and no response, and later, when Steve got better, Bucky noticed how much time it took for him to be back on his feet, to be back to a little nuisance who got into fights in back alleys, and it left him a little bit baffled)