It’s hard to objectively determine how long he’s been ill. It feels like forever, like all he’s ever known is this. Hot and sweating skin. The sickness burbling and crackling in his lungs. The bruised feeling of his chest when he coughs, weakly at first to try and keep from breaking a rib, and then even more weakly later, when he doesn’t have the energy in him to cough hard at all.
He sleeps, which is to say he lapses in and out of fever dreams, never quite asleep, never quite awake. Bucky’d put him on the living room couch so he could be propped up - lying down in bed only lasted about five minutes before he started choking and drowning in his own mucus, and he was too weak to sit back up without help. They’d tried it once, and they’d only got about ten minutes’ worth of rest at a time. At least that’s what Bucky’d said, or what Steve thinks Bucky’d said. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t, anymore, and things were all starting to blur together at the edges.
He closes his eyes, and Bucky’s wiping his fevered brow down with a cool wet washcloth, humming a tune absently. He opens them, and Bucky’s feeding him a spoonful of some medicine that probably would taste awful if he was able to taste anything at all. He swallows and closes his eyes and when he opens them again, it’s dark. Bucky’s sitting above him sniffling and shivering. Maybe it’s just the low light, but he looks sick as a dog. He’s dimly aware that Bucky had been saying something to him, but whatever it was couldn’t be as important as Bucky neglecting his own health in favour of Steve’s.
“How long have you been…?” Steve manages to croak out at him, alarmed, before dissolving into a coughing fit.
“Since the first day we met,” Bucky rasps out. From the angle, Steve belatedly realizes that he’s sitting in Bucky’s lap, propped up with his head tilted back to open up his airway. It makes it easier for him to breathe.
Steve struggles to understand. He’d been sick for that long? They’d met well over fifteen years ago, in kindergarten! How had he never noticed? Maybe it was because he was too busy being sick himself, maybe Bucky was just good at hiding it…”Why didn’t you tell me, you jerk?” he asks, and the effort it takes him to speak causes him to break out into a fresh fine sweat.
Bucky shudders beneath him. Steve curses internally, knowing Bucky no doubt caught this exact bug from him, fever, chills, and all. His voice is low and quiet when he replies. “I didn’t want you to know, Stevie. Thought it might make things…thought you might not want to be around me, anymore.”
Steve struggles both to find breath and to stay calm. Bucky’d always been the one to take care of him, and now he’d gone and given Bucky his pneumonia.
“Buck, no. I always -” he coughs, and Bucky sits him up enough to fit a hand between them, rubbing a worried circle in between his shoulder blades. “- always want to be around you, I just wish you’d have trusted me enough to tell me,” he wheezes out. “You gotta know I’ve felt the same, since we were kids.”
He can feel Bucky tense up underneath him, his voice growing cautious. “What are you talking about, Stevie.”
“You jerk, you’re telling me you had no idea? Y’ always take such good care of me - I wish I could do it for you half as good, Buck,” he pleads, his lungs seizing up for another coughing fit again. He feels drunk, dizzy, just thinking about caring for Bucky for a change. “Don’t ever want anything to happen to ya - don’t know what I’d do without you. No matter what, I ain’t gonna leave you, Buck, I promise you that.”
He leans back, settling himself with his head tipped back on Bucky’s shoulder, and that’s when Bucky kisses him. At first, he thinks it’s a dream, and then he thinks maybe he’s stopped breathing. Yes, that must be it, he’s stopped breathing and Bucky is trying to resuscitate him. It feels like explosions are going off in his chest, his heart, his head. He’s dying. This is what it feels like to die, he thinks distantly: falling into a glorious swoon, warm and safe and comfortable wrapped in your best friend’s arms, his lips on yours. No pain, no struggling for breath, no fear, just love. Angels sing, the skies open up, and he feels like he could just fly happily right off the earth.
“Buck,” he murmurs against the softest, sweetest pair of lips on all of heaven and earth, “are we dead?”
Bucky pulls back, shocked into laughter. “The hell kind of question is that, Rogers? I ain’t dead and neither are you. Now,” he smirks roguishly, “I may’ve been told before that kissing me is like heaven, but Christ, Stevie-doll, this is the first time someone thinks kissin’ me about killed ‘em.”
He leans in for another kiss, even softer and gentler than before. “‘M tellin’ ya, you punk, if that’s you’re reaction to me tellin’ ya I’ve been in love with you since we were kids, then I’m not sure how to feel.”
Steve blinks in confusion. “You aren’t sick?”
His eyebrows raise, and he snorts. “Only sick with worry, dollface, that you ain’t gettin’ much better. Hush, you gotta relax and let the meds kick in. We can talk about this later, or maybe we’ll never talk about it again. Can always write it off as a horrible nightmare.”
“I don’t. I don’t wanna forget. Buck. Ain’t you gonna get sick, kissing me?” he chokes out.
“No more than I usually am sick over you, sweetheart,” he murmurs against his temple, tipping his head back to rest against his shoulder. Steve can feel his lips curved up into a smile. “Quiet, now, you gotta get your rest.”
