#so here's this.

[sleepysoftsnz]

The Part of Me That Ain't Around I'm Always Talking To (I'll Love You 'Til My Lungs Give Out) || sam//bucky

Sam comes down with the flu after a mission. He dreams about Riley — about everything they were, and everything he lost.

For the first time, he isn't alone.

--

Canon; set about a year after T/FATWS in the late spring. Is this just a character study of Sam Wilson and his past relationship with Riley through the framework of a sickfic? Mmm yeah, maybe. Probably.

Features lots of tenderness from Bucky, fever dreams/flashbacks, multiple characters sneezing, Sarah Wilson being a really good sister, and clumsily navigating grief. Check the content warnings, because this is heavier on the whump than what I normally write/the flashbacks take place when Sam was in the Air Force and witnessing a lot of violence.

Title is from All Your’n by Tyler Childers because it reminds me of Sam and Riley.

~15k words under the cut. CW for general references to war/violence/gore, references to a canonical character death, discussions of grief/loss, past internalized homophobia, referenced past homophobia (flashbacks take place during Don't Ask Don't Tell), references to smoking, one or two references to using drinking to cope, emeto (one instance on page but it's not described). Minors DNI.

These days, Sam isn't much of a praying man. At least not in the way his dad taught him to be.

In the Wilson household, prayer was as much a part of growing up as the Spanish moss, as the frogs and the boats and the summers that were so humid they could drown you. It greeted Sam in the morning at the breakfast table, with his mom murmuring blessings over him and Sarah, then again at dinner as his dad said grace over their meal, then late at night as they all gathered in the family room before bed and took turns bringing their daily anxieties to God.

Those three times every day, it happened together, but prayer, Paul Wilson always said, took place between you and the Lord. Anyone else just happened to be there to witness it.

Sam used to think that was true.

He shivers, chills tearing through his body, ripping at the bruises he picked up in a forest north of Ottawa. It's been an hour since they got back to his apartment, a little less since he let Bucky hold him steady beneath a scalding shower to wash the blood and dirt and cold off, and still, the rain ghosts over his skin — a constant lashing, needles to his eyes and face, whiting out the world. Hiding Bucky until his shouts tore through the comms in a storm of static.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut and waits. When the thud of a cabinet being closed echoes from the kitchen, he lets out a silent breath.

He burrows deeper into his pillow and sucks in a sniffle. The air crackles along his sinuses, whistling over swollen membranes, his nerves bristling hot. He presses a handful of tissues from the box beside his pillow under his nose as tears prick the corners of his eyes.

"Huh! — huh'IDT'shhueh!" The sneeze shudders through him, tearing at his shredded throat and throwing a punch in the recesses of his face. He pinches his nose, squeezing it right at the bridge before his breath can catch again.

It's prolonging the inevitable more than a real solution, but still — it's better than nothing.

He gazes past his darkened bedroom window into the evening shadows.

Bet you're laughing at me now. Calling me a dumbass like I don't already know it.

Growing up, prayer never felt like something to question any more than he might question why his parents sent him to school or fed him vegetables or told him to match his socks. Even when he had to scramble for something to say, it was a routine worn into his bones, no different than his morning runs or evenings spent out on the boat.

And then Afghanistan happened. Children lay in the sand with their guts spilling out like the beads he and Sarah used to strain to catch every year at Mardi Gras, tangled heaps of intestines darkening to black beneath the sun, and … well, there wasn't any reason to keep talking to someone who looked down on the world and let that happen.

Still, sometimes when he's isn't paying attention — jogging down the same route he's taken every day since he moved to DC, listening to a meteorologist ramble about the heat wave expected to hit the city, caught at the edge of sleep — he slips into a one-sided conversation.

"Bless you." Bucky pads into the bedroom, his feet silent on the floor. His sweatpants hang low around his hips, and he cradles a steaming mug against his chest. He lifts it toward Sam. "Made you tea."

"Thangks." Congestion rounds out the edges of the word, wearing down the embers of Sam's voice deep in his chest. He clears his throat, grimacing at the gritty feeling that scrapes along his tonsils, and sniffles into his tissues. "Dunno if I'll drink it all … kinda feel like I mbight fall asleep."

"Yeah?" Bucky sets the mug on the nightstand beside Sam's thermometer, a glass of water, and a bottle of NyQuil. He sits on the edge of the bed, one leg up and one leg down, dog tags clinking together over his gray henley. Shadows gather below his eyes, and a bruise blooms in soft shades of lavender over his right cheekbone. "You should get some rest."

Sam lowers the tissues from his face and peers up at him through one half-open eye. "You wanna yell at me first? Give mbe the whole 'you should've stayed home' spiel?"

Bucky's mouth twitches with a smile. "Well, if you're asking for it …"

"Huh'TCHiuuhh! Hih … Hh'DTZschhoo!" Sam shivers, then groans into his tissue. He dabs underneath his nostrils and grimaces. "Think I have the flu."

"Kinda figured. Colds don't usually give you a fever of a hundred and two."

Sam yawns. Tears gather along his waterline, his eyes throbbing with fatigue even as he lets them close. "Yeah, but … the rain …"

"That's an old wives' tale. Even I know that."

Another chill rolls through Sam's shoulders. He curls into Bucky's leg, pressing his forehead against his hip. "You never know."

Bucky hums a sound of assent and runs his fingers along Sam's temple. Only a few hours after ex-HYDRA agents surrounded him out in those woods, his touch is gentle, a barely there pressure, the same soft way he touches Alpine's face in the morning.

Sam shivers in closer to him.

You would've loved him.

He's been running his proverbial mouth like this all day, his tongue loosened by the fever, maybe, or the adrenaline of watching a dozen men swarm Bucky — a handful of words tossed out into the rain, and now, left to drift into the darkness as his body sinks closer to sleep.

Probably, that's okay.

"You need to remember that you're talking to someone who loves you," Paul Wilson always said, over and over across the span of Sam's life, little page markers to flag important moments from his childhood right up until just before his father's passing: the first day of kindergarten, after he came home with a black eye; the time in fifth grade when Paul got into a boating accident; Sam's high school graduation; the day his mom ended up in the hospital with a stroke; the summer he came home from college and started kicking around the idea of enlisting, even before either of his parents passed and sealed it for him.

"Ain't so different from talking to me or your mama," Paul said. "You don't need the right words, just as long as you know he's there with a listening ear for you."

He always made it sound simple. Easy, like whispering a secret to a friend.

Maybe it never really was so different from the kind of praying Sam does now.

Bucky thumbs the side of Sam's lip, right where he tucked a kiss this morning before they headed out to the airbase. "I'll save the spiel for tomorrow," he whispers. "You're falling asleep on me."

Sam smiles against his hand. His eyelashes whisper over Bucky's skin.

Wish you could see us now, Red.

**

Sam hangs at the edge of sleep, in that twilight place with enough awareness that, when the shadows unfurl before him, he knows better — knows to skirt their edges, to not get too close. Slip by without sinking into the past.

But the fever coats his neurons, makes him clumsy in his own head, and the past plays out in technicolor flashes before him anyway. He's in his body there on the cot at Bagram Air Base, but also not, memories tangling like weeds with what he has yet to live.

Riley's form crackles along the edges in a way that isn't right, isn't real, so present the roots of Sam's teeth ache as the taller man stands in the entrance to Sam's room. His fist thuds against the side of the doorframe — only once, nearly silent, though a muscle tics in his jaw.

"What the hell were you thinking out there, Birdie," he murmurs. It isn't so much a question as it is an expression of exhaustion, his voice a husk of its normal self, skin streaked in dirt and ash, eyes empty as he watches the toe of his boot draw a half circle on the floor.

Sam grunts a dismissive sound and leans his head back against the wall. Shivers creep across his skin, ghosts of the adrenaline that's kept him upright for the past three days and some change. As they begin to make their exit, they leave in their wake a dull ache through his whole body, the pang of bruised ribs over his right lung, a throbbing behind his cheeks and in his ears he's ignored too long. Above it all, everything glimmers a little too bright, glossed over in that way things get when he's running a fever on no sleep.

Riley's boots scuff across the plywood floor. The desk chair beside the bed squeaks beneath his weight. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and waits for Sam to meet his eyes.

When Sam doesn't, he kicks their boots together.

"Wilson." His voice is quiet, graveled with fatigue. "Listen to me, you dumbass. You nearly got yourself killed out there. What the fuck was that?"

"Fuck off, Red," Sam mutters, then grimaces. His own voice is shot to hell, smoldering ash that makes his throat spasm when he swallows. A new box of tissues sits on the bed beside him, but he muffles a cough in the sleeve of his jacket instead. "That rocket missed me by a mile."

"Yeah, thanks to me." Riley presses the tips of his fingers over his eyelids as his mouth drops into a yawn. "You're welcome, by the way."

Sam coughs again and scrubs a hand over his face. Three months. Three months he's been here, running combat rescue missions with Riley as autumn darkened into winter and snow fell across the sand. It's nothing — barely time to blink, to get your feet under yourself, to notice the days and nights racing past in a world of fire and bullets and blood.

There is so much blood. It never stops flowing, no matter what he does.

Some things never change, do they?

"Hey." Riley's hand settles on Sam's shoulder. Even with dirt still streaking his face, a cut bisecting his left eyebrow, and a burn beginning to bubble under his left cheekbone, his eyes flicker with something softer. It smooths the edges of his voice as his fingers tighten on Sam. "You good?"

Sam blinks at Riley's hand. Something smolders inside his chest, the first real feeling he's had in days sparking through the numbness coating his synapses. It's been there since they met at basic all those months ago — a steady burn now, once as hot and fast and ragged on his nerves all at once like skinning a knee on summer-warm concrete, the flame so quick to catch when that crooked smile and voice that could never quite hide its Southern drawl stepped into his world.

In another life, it could be … something. Not the sort of thing they could take out around town, but still a named tension between them. Saturday mornings spent curled beneath each other's sheets. Drunk kisses traded on the boat or in the back of Riley's pickup truck. Fingers brushing up against each other in the corner of a bar where the shadows cover everything black, not quite holding each other's hands, but nearly just.

But here? Here, there is nothing — just that fire, eating away at empty air. Three months, and already, he's so much less Sam and so much more an empty body with a face he no longer recognizes, void of interests or desires or needs. Here, there is only endless sand and snow washed in red, the blue sky broken by brittle screams.

A prickle at the back of Sam's nose breaks through his consciousness. He wrenches sideways a second before his breath snags.

"HDT'CHiuhhh!" The sneeze hits him like twin fists behind the ribs and between his ears. Gritting his teeth, he pinches his nose in his fingers as his lungs tremble through another inhale. The muck in his head pounds against his eardrums and through his face, seeping warm and thick against his hand.

"G'bless you." The chair squeaks, and there's the soft shfft of a tissue being pulled from the box. Riley nudges his knee up against Sam's. "Told you you should've gone to med earlier."

Sam takes the tissue with his free hand and gives his nose a tentative blow. Still, the pressure in his sinuses boils, flaming along his occipital nerves and deep into his cheeks. He cups the tissue closer to his face as his breath staggers, then curls into himself with a ragged, "hDT'ZSHHuehh!"

This time, instead of a blessing, Riley offers the soft contact of his palm against Sam's forehead.

"Shit, Sammy." He turns his hand, presses the back of it to Sam's cheek, his skin blessedly cool against Sam's. "You're sick as a dog."

Sam shoves the tissue under his septum, then crumples it in his fist. He tucks his arms tight over his chest again as a shiver ripples through him. "'S'probably just a sinus infection."

"No shit. You've been snoring like a fuckin' chainsaw for … god, it's gotta be close to three weeks by now." Riley leans back in his chair and kicks his legs out, his body stretching to nearly fill the tiny room, all muscle and sweat and freckled skin. "They give you anything for it?"

"Didn't mention it." Sam sniffles, the air bristling through the back of his nose and deep into his head. His breath gives a quiet shiver, and he rubs the heel of his hand into his eye. "Don't think I was runnin' a fever yet when they checked me out."

A smile slips over Riley's lips. He knocks his leg against Sam's. "Kinda think you've been running a fever since Sunday with the way you've been flying."

"ih'DTzhhuueh! hdT'chishhoo!" The sneezes, caught against Sam's palm, snatch any argument he could toss back at Riley. He grips his side with his free hand, pressing over his ribs as his lungs spasm. Congestion squeaks between his ears, and he swallows back a groan as the corners of his eyes flush hot and gritty.

Riley frowns at him, his expression watery behind the sheen of tears. "You should get some sleep," he says.

Sam shrugs and rips a tissue from the box. When he rubs his nose into it, the skin around his nostrils stings, chapped from the wind whipping his face and weeks of white-knuckling his way through this cold he can't seem to shake.

For a moment, he drifts, feels himself caught up in that wind again, flying beside Riley, rising in the crystal blue as they looked down on the wreck of bodies below them: so many of them strewn across the snow, tangled in the rib cages of bombed-out Humvees. From above, they nearly looked like the little porcelain dolls Sarah played with when they were kids. Every night, she tucked them into the tiny wooden beds she'd glued together from sticks and acorns, even after too many adventures in the yard left them chipped or limbless.

Bile burns at the back of Sam's throat. He presses his palm over his eyes, as if the darkness of his hand against the light will block everything out. Instead, the colors burn brighter, a flame on the backs of his eyes, cooked into his retinas forever. He leans forward, presses his forehead against his knees, forces his lungs to expand and collapse.

In a year, this will seem like nothing. In a year, I will beg for tonight.

God, I never stop begging for it all back, even the worst days.

He swallows.

"Wasn't trying to run myself into the ground," he mutters, uncurling his spine, his elbow on his knee. "You know I wouldn't have gone if it weren't … if it wasn't gonna be …"

There is no way to finish the sentence — to put to words the carnage they were warned they would find, that still snatches his breath now here in the quiet of his shitty plywood-walled room anyway.

"Yeah, I know." Riley thumbs the side of his nose, blinks twice, his auburn eyelashes flickering gold in the dim lamplight. His fingers twine together over his chest the way they do when he prays — knuckles straining under his skin, right thumb rubbing little circles over the mole on his left. "I'm glad you were there to see it with me."

Sam coughs through a laugh. "You're fucked up, man."

"Yeah, probably so."

Another breath of stale air burns through Sam's nostrils. Pressing along the bridge of his nose sends a pulse through his head, but he does it anyway, massaging his sinuses through his tissue. Come morning, he'll have to drag himself back out into the snow and biting wind, see if they'll give him antibiotics and a few days to lie low and sleep this shit off. Which isn't really fair, not when there's someone's father or sister or baby bleeding out in the middle of nowhere.

He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes again.

I can't do this by myself, man.

"Hey, Sammy?" Riley's voice is low, dusky as the fatigue they've pushed off for days wells up like an overdue tide around them.

"Mm."

For a moment, Riley's quiet, save for the soft, rhythmic scrape of his boot on the floor dragging back and forth. He does this after long missions as the two of them fight sleep in Sam's room, trying to snatch a few more moments of quiet as the nightmares circle closer — scuffs it back and forth like he's trying to sand straight through the plywood. Probably would, if he sat there long enough.

"You think everyone feels like this?" he asks.

"I dunno." Sam sniffles, swipes his wilted tissue under his nose. "Think a lot of guys get numb. Stop feeling anything just so they can get through it."

"So why's it still hitting us so hard?"

Sam cracks one eye open. "We've only been here three months, Red. That's nothing."

Riley's thumbs press together, his head bowing over them, fingers still tangled together. His elbows rest on his knees as he watches his boot work away at the floor. "Don't think I wanna get numb."

"So don't."

"It ain't that simple." He tips his head up a little, just enough to look at Sam. The light bulb overhead darkens his green eyes to a glossy shade of black like the marbles the kids just outside the air base toss across the sand. "Can I tell you something stupid?"

"Always."

His dog tags whisper against each other, framed in the taut angles of his chest and arms as he rubs the pads of his thumbs together and blinks back down at the floor. "I started talkin' to my mom instead of praying. You know, just — just thinkin' about what I would say to her, I guess. Picturing conversations I'd like to have." The corner of his mouth carves a soft little parenthesis into the side of his face. "Think she's a better listener than God anyway. At least she doesn't have any kind of say in who lives or dies over here, you know?"

Sam's teeth sink into the inside of his cheek. He hugs his arms across his chest and tenses through a shiver. "Yeah, man. I know."

"'S'just … I dunno." A shadow coils around Riley's throat, flickering as he swallows. "It's stupid, but sometimes I — I mean, when we're on the phone, I can't actually say any of this shit. It ain't fair to her. But when I'm just thinkin' about it, I can … I can say anything I want. Tell her about all the bodies we see. The people we can't save."

"Does it help?"

"I dunno. Seems better than nothing." Riley's boot stills on the floor. He slips his dog tags over his head and winds the chain around his fingers, eyes on his skin as it blushes purple beneath the metal. "You got someone like that? Someone who listens?"

You; it'll always be you.

"My sister, probably. I mean, I haven't tried, but … if I did." Sam muffles a cough in the collar of his jacket. Something gritty coats his tonsils, even when he tries to swallow it back. "I tried writing some of it down — not to send to her, just to get it out of my head, but it just …"

"It's too much, ain't it?"

Sam grunts and coughs again. A loose thread hangs from the edge of his left sleeve, and he picks at it, his fingers shaking as he gives it a tug. "To tell you the truth, I think you're the only one who's ever gonna get it."

Riley nods. "Think you might be the same for me, too." He closes his fist around his dog tags, knuckles bulging a little, squeezing tight enough to leave his name imprinted on his skin. "Mom's great, but she's not — I'm never really gonna tell her any of this shit. She's never gonna know, and neither will the rest of them. It's just you and me with this … this thing. A secret we're gonna have to carry forever."

"Yeah, well." The thread rips free from Sam's sleeve. His eyes flicker up to meet Riley's. "At least we got each other."

"Damn right." Riley yawns again. He drops his dog tags on his thigh and scrubs his palm over his scalp, his buzz cut springing up around his fingers. In the low light, it's the color of rust — shadowed, softened. "Shit, I'm tired."

Sam pushes his wrist against his nose. "So quit running your mouth at me and go to bed."

"You first." Riley slings his tags back over his neck. He pushes himself up from the chair and gives Sam's boot another nudge. "Get some meds tomorrow so you can kick this shit, okay? Don't need you flying into a rocket and leaving me to deal with this on my own."

Sam sniffs out a laugh. "You know I'd come back and haunt you."

"You better, 'cause I'm not doing this on my own."

God damn you, Red.

Riley pats Sam's leg — just once, but his touch is warm and weighty through Sam's pants, a tether to here and now when the fever and fatigue pull at the edge of his consciousness, thirsting to return to the gore of the past seventy-some-odd hours.

Riley's lips tug up on one side in half a smile, all warm sunlight, even in the tiny box of a bedroom. "We're taking this shit to the grave together, Birdie."

**

The scent of menthol pricks along Sam's sinuses, sharp like Newports out on the tarmac, smoke heavy in his lungs, the sun a flame just beginning to lick the horizon.

A groan croaks from his throat as he skims the surface of consciousness, caught in that watery place between lucid thought and dreams. Something sticky holds his eyelids together, and pressure throbs through his face and deep into his skull, an invisible fist clenched around his brain. When he tries to inhale through his nose, his sinuses give a dull squeak, swollen flesh grinding together without moving any air, and he coughs.

"Shh." The sheets shift beside him. "Just gonna give you some Vicks. You're — hih! — snff. You've been pretty restless."

Sam's fingers graze something warm — the solid muscle of a thigh or hip.

"Bad idea," he mumbles. His voice wells up from his stomach, a tide that can't quite reach the shore, his syllables low and liquid in his mouth.

Bucky sniffles, a damp, irritated sound that crackles through the quiet of the bedroom. "Well, you sleep like shit without it … get so damn stuffed up …"

The sheets wilt away, and goose bumps fall across Sam, little flurries dotting his skin from his neck down to his chest. The hem of his shirt is peeled back, tugged up around his neck. He grimaces.

"Sorry." Metal fingers settle over Sam's stomach, flushed warm like the ceramic of a coffee mug, like bicycles left out in the grass on summer afternoons. "I'll put it back in — snff! — in a second. Just gotta get this on your ch-chest —"

The tail-end of his sentence crumbles away into a soft gasp. His muscles wind tight against Sam as his fingers slip away. There's the soft shfft of a tissue being pulled from the box, and his breath shudders again. "hih — hpt! hpt'Chih! hpt'Chiuh! h'Tchiuh!"

The corner of Sam's mouth twitches.

Gonna sneeze his damn head off, same way you always did.

"Fuck. Sorry." Bucky sniffles and clears his throat. The press of warm vibranium settles back over Sam's skin, a blanket to his aching ribs and sore stomach. "It's gonna be cold."

Sam grunts and sinks deeper into the pillows.

Bucky's fingers slide over Sam's chest, slick with the medicated ointment. Beneath his touch, Sam's nerves prickle hot, the end of a match blistering under a flame.

And then the cold hits.

His breath hisses through his teeth. It's a punch to his lungs, an ice pack on a bruise, as overwhelmingly frigid as the bags of frozen peas his mom used to pack against his ankle when he fell playing football in the yard with the neighbor's kids. Cold showers on even colder days when his teeth wouldn't stop chattering. Skin on bare skin, searching for a warmth they couldn't find out in the crimson snow.

"Sorry," Bucky murmurs again. He smooths his palm across Sam's sternum, bites back another trio of sneezes, cups the metal of his other hand closer like he can force the heat back inside.

The hem of Sam's shirt falls back around his waist. Fingers tuck the sheets around his shoulders. Plastic scrapes on plastic, then wood, the soft thud of something being set on the nightstand.

The mattress dips as Bucky settles under the sheets and curls against Sam's side. His right arm drapes over Sam's chest, and he burrows his face into Sam's neck, his breath gusting hot, even when he has to sniffle again.

"Y'okay?" he murmurs.

Sam hums a low sound and shivers into him. With his eyes closed, Bucky's body is an endless expanse, warm and soft, and he nuzzles his cheek into it.

A kiss whispers against his temple, prickly against his fever-sensitive skin. "Go back to sleep," Bucky whispers.

Despite the shivers creeping across his skin, exhaustion wraps around his muscles and mind, an anchor pulling him down into a bottomless sea, and he lets himself sink into the darkness.

**

"Heads up."

Something hollow glances off Sam's shoulder. He exhales a voiceless grunt and cracks his eyelids open, sunlight and fatigue washing the family room in streaky lines of light. He blinks, then blinks again and rubs his eyes, scrubbing tears and something gritty from their corners.

With a heavy sniffle, he squints toward the floor. The offending object — an unopened box of tissues — rests on its side beneath Sarah's coffee table.

"Rise and shine, Birdie." Riley slides around the arm of the couch, a second box of fresh tissues tucked under his arm, and collapses onto the cushion. Red halos bloom around the mossy green of his irises as a smile settles sideways on his lips. "That's my bed you're sleeping on."

"'S'my sister's couch, dumbass." Sam sniffles again and shifts beneath his throw blanket. His voice scrapes low in his throat, brittle like bones buried deep under dry sand. He shoves his left foot against Riley's thigh. "Gimme the tissues before I start sneezing again."

A cough rumbles low in Riley's chest. He flaps a hand at the box under the table. "All yours."

"Fuck you," Sam says, though the corner of his mouth curls up.

He slides off the couch, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, dog tags skittering against his t-shirt, and crouches to fish for the box. The congestion in his head sloshes forward and then settles, hot and heavy like the mud along the shore of the bayou. On summer days, he and Sarah used to wade through it to look for crawfish and apple snails, let it squelch around their toes and up past their ankles until the viscous goo soaked the hems of their shorts.

With another sniffle, he snags the tissue box and works his fingernail around the peel-off top. Outside the back window, the sun boils like a blister in the sky, soaking the bayou in May's relentless heat, the South teetering on summer's brutal cusp. It's the sort of weather that begs for a trip out on the boat: Coronas and Gatorades shoved next to frozen bait in the ice chest, lines allowed to drift in open water, letting the hours slip by until the world darkens like a bruise and stars pepper the sky and the gators bellow along the shore.

They should be out there now, soaking up the sun, seeing who can hook the biggest fish. They'll be stateside for a month — two weeks here, two weeks in Macon to visit Riley's family. Barely a flash in the pan, in the grand scheme of things, but time all the same, rolling out in front of them with no real plans, endless possibilities, plenty of chances to pretend — even for a moment — that life could be normal.

But today, well —

"hpt'Chu!"

Something warm unwinds at the center of Sam's chest. He reaches to set a hand on Riley's knee. "Bless you."

Riley shakes his head, hands steepled over his mouth and nose. As his breath snags, he flinches deeper into the cup of his palms. "hih! — hpt'Tchuu!"

A cough kicks up in his chest before he can lower his hands, the sound stirring deep in his lungs, rough and jagged like gravel caught in a bike chain. He sinks forward, elbows resting on his knees, body curling over his own box of tissues, dog tags trembling beneath him.

Sam frowns. As the coughing settles into a softer wheeze, he squeezes Riley's thigh. "You sound like shit."

"Yeah, well." A grimace strings Riley's expression taut, and he rubs his hand over his rib cage, palm flat against the plain of his chest. "You know shit always goes to my lungs."

Sam's hand shifts to pat Riley's back through another cough. God, how many nights did he listen to Riley hacking and wheezing when he wound up with pneumonia in January? He lay awake for hours those nights, shivering as the snow and wind whipped against the walls of their B-huts, praying through numb lips to a God who'd turned his back on that part of the world, begging that they'd make it to the morning as Riley coughed himself sick.

Sam withdraws his hand to nudge his thumb against the side of his nose. "You want some Vicks?"

Riley coughs into his fist. His knuckle skims the tip of his nose as he blinks at Sam. "Thought that was just for kids."

Sam huffs a laugh. "What, 'cause adults don't get colds?"

"I dunno, man. That's what I always heard." Riley pulls a tissue from his box and swipes it under his nostrils. A flush colors his pale skin pink, washing out the freckles scattered across his nose and cheekbones. They cover his face now, same as they did last summer just before they deployed — blooming in the sun like flowers, their edges fading into one another.

There's an image, here and gone, a flash of lightning at midnight: hundreds of those damn freckles, covering his face and arms like fallen rain, like stars blown apart over an endless sky. Sam's lips drift along the back of his neck, kissing down a trail of them, careful, slow, memorizing the warmth of his skin, as if he knows this is the last time he will touch Riley's lovely, unbroken body.

Think maybe I did, deep down.

Sam swallows.

"Does it work?" Riley sniffles and crumples his tissue in his fist. "If it'll work, I'm game."

"Of course it works." Sam drops his blanket and the box of tissues on the couch. "Stay here and I'll get it."

He offers Riley a light squeeze on the shoulder, then wanders toward the linen closet outside the bedroom previously occupied by his parents, now shared by Sarah and her husband. A small collection of photos in mismatched frames lines the wall: his parents on their wedding day, sharing their first kiss as a married couple; him and Sarah in front of a Christmas tree, digging through red and gold wrapping paper for candy and new board games; Sarah on the steps of Howard University, smiling into the sun; Sam in his Air Force fatigues out on the dock. He looked so much younger then, his shoulders too narrow to fill out the uniform — smaller, in a way, though it doesn't seem right that six months of witnessing the deaths of people whose names he will never know should change that.

He fumbles in the closet, eyes scrunching shut through a yawn, the layout of medicine a map his fingers know well from every other time he's been home since he enlisted. It's a familiar cycle: A few days pass in Delacroix, long enough for his nervous system to suss out the safety of the situation. Then, when his subconscious is certain he can rest, he crashes — comes down with some kind of bug just bad enough to leave him with a stuffed-up head and rough voice, the sort of thing that sounds worse to anyone listening than it actually feels to experience. At the first sign of a scratchy throat, Sarah bullies him into lying on the couch and watching shitty TV, even when he itches to get out on the water and remember he still has a home, that not everything is sun and sand and blood.

Sniffling, he pushes a knuckle against the side of his nose. His skin bristles under his touch, flushed and sensitive after several days of abuse. The pressure flares the smoldering itch deep in his sinuses, the one that's been tingling behind his eyes and cheekbones and down into his nasal passages for three days straight, swelling his sinuses and forcing him to keep a box of tissues permanently by his side.

"huh'TSCHuuihh!" Sam ducks behind the neckline of his shirt, shoulders buckling as the sneeze barrels through him. It rips across the swollen membranes of his throat and comes out all breath and spit, the echo of his shredded voice muffled behind the fabric of his t-shirt.

Tears prick the corners of his eyes as his lungs spasm through another breath. As his mouth falls slack, he clamps his shirt more tightly to his face.

"Huh … h'ADT'ZHiuhh!" He shudders through the sneeze, then sniffles, the air buzzing in his nose. His t-shirt sticks along his nostrils, flushed warm and wet, and he grimaces as he scrubs his face against it.

"G'bless you." Riley's voice is a sweetly low like fresh honey. He coughs. "You forgot your tissues."

Sam laughs into his ruined shirt. "Really? I hadn't noticed."

He lifts the hem of his shirt to give his nose a firm scrub, then snags the Vicks from the closet. On the way back to the family room, he strips the shirt off and tucks it over his arm. His dog tags settle against his bare chest, and the vent overhead whispers across his back, drawing goose bumps out along his spine. He relaxes into a shiver as he wanders back out to the couch.

That soft, nameless thing in his chest flutters warm around his lungs as he looks at Riley. The sun falls in a yellow ray over his face, kissing his eyelashes gold as he rests his head against the back of the couch, nose tipped toward the ceiling and lips softly parted. His dog tags tremble with his breathing, shivering on top of the white fabric of his t-shirt. As a quiet wheeze cracks in his lungs, they catch the sun, flashing white.

Like the picture of Sam in the hallway, he looks so young here, frozen in time — not the man with skin calloused by endless days and nights spent in the snow and wind and sun, cursing God as he bends over a graying body, trying to breathe life back into it until his own lungs give out and his eyes have gone hollow. This Riley is softer, one who doesn't slip away into himself when a car engine backfires, whose nerves haven't grown a protective coat yet — naked and exposed like the baby mockingbirds that fall from the oak trees every spring, mouths gaping, featherless bodies aching for warmth and comfort.

Oh, Red.

Sam bites the inside of his cheek. He drops his shirt to the floor and plops down beside Riley. "Take your shirt off," he mutters.

Riley cracks an eye open without lifting his head. His breath buzzes in a low laugh. "I'm not really up for that kind of thing right now, Wilson."

Heat flames up Sam's neck and settles in his cheeks. He shoves his palm against Riley's shoulder. "It goes on your back and chest, dipshit."

Riley hums a soft sound of understanding and shifts to sit up. A wince cuts through his forehead, and with a quiet cough, he folds his fingers around the hem of his shirt. A flash of skin — soft, barely darker than the cream he poured in his coffee this morning, untouched by the sun — peeks out above the waistband of his sweatpants.

Sam drops his gaze to the Vicks. He wedges the tub between his knees and works his wrist side to side, loosening the cap. "You wanna turn Killer Klowns from Outer Space back on, or are you gonna fall asleep on me like yesterday?"

"Man, that movie put me to sleep." Riley's shirt flips forward over his head and slides off his arms, rattling his dog tags. The white cotton puddles on the coffee table between the twin boxes of tissues. "You couldn't have picked a worse movie if you tried."

"Hey, I didn't say it was gonna be good," Sam says. "It's just mindless shit. Something you can turn your brain off to."

He taps Riley's back, nudging him to lean forward, and dips two fingers into the Vicks, his nostrils flaring as the menthol and camphor prickle through the congestion packing his head. It's the scent of waking up shivering in the middle of the night and calling out for his mom, of comforting words whispered in his ear as a cool washcloth kissed his forehead, of skipping school and reading comic books in bed, and for a moment, his chest aches. Even if he hadn't enlisted, this place would be haunted, reminders of them tucked between every chip in the paint and crack between the floorboards, their memories caught in the shadows.

Sam gets a dollop of medicated ointment on his fingertips, then lifts his hand to Riley's back. He rubs a slow circle to the right of Riley's spine, the Vicks glistening on his skin as Sam's fingers press against the rungs of his ribs.

Goose bumps bloom over Riley's shoulders. He stiffens through a shiver. "That's cold."

"It'll feel good. Just give it a second." Sam spreads his hand flat and works it up and down from the small of Riley's back to his shoulder. Beneath his touch, his skin glows softly warm, as if he's been lying outside under the sun. "You talk to your folks since we got in?"

"Yeah, a little." As Riley reaches forward to snag a tissue, his muscles flex under Sam's hand, a network of strings tightening and relaxing, tuned by invisible fingers. "Told them we picked up some kind of plague and your sister's nursing us back to health, feeding us real good and shit. Think she might be a better cook than my mom."

"Oh, you know she is." Sam's thumb presses into a knot below Riley's right trap. There's a mole just to his left, an eclipse in the pale expanse of his back, small enough he could hide it under the tip of his pinky. "You still have those … conversations with your mom?"

Riley's mouth turns up in a grin as he swipes the tissue under his nose with a liquid sniffle. "Hell yeah, man. snff! I was just telling her this morning about the annoying guy who keeps falling asleep on the couch I'm crashing on."

The knot gives a little, Sam's touch coaxing Riley's muscles to begin to untangle. He shifts to push the heel of his hand into it, his palm covering the mole. "She like me?" he asks.

Riley pinches the tissue up around his nose, his lungs wheezing through a shaky breath, rib cage broadening beneath Sam. "huhh — huh'TSHieww! Jesus Christ," he mutters. He sniffles and glances back at Sam, tears heavy in his eyes. "What? Oh, she loves you. Thinks you're a great influence on me."

"Sure am."

"huh'ISHhieww!" The sneeze shudders through him, curling his body forward with a soft shiver that ripples up into Sam's arm. He rubs his nose through the wilted tissue. "You talk to Sarah at all?"

"Only when you're not around." Sam dips his fingers back into tub of Vicks, then swipes them over the back of Riley's neck. His fingers snag on the chain of Riley's dog tags. "Feels like she rolls her eyes the whole time."

Riley hums a laugh. "Probably does. snff! Have you heard yourself?"

"Knock it off or I'll steal the couch back."

"hih — hih'DTshieww!" Tears bead on Riley's lashes and catch the sunlight as he blinks narrowed eyes. He drops his crumpled tissue in his lap and brings his fingers up to press along either sides of his nose, palms coming together like a prayer as he stutters through another breath. "Goddamn, what's — hDT'tshiiew! — what's in this shit?"

"I dunno, just … menthol, mostly. Nothing crazy." Sam laughs as Riley collapses into another sneeze. "I wouldn't have offered it to you if I knew you were so sensitive."

"Fuck off, everything's making me sneeze right now. Your hands feel kinda nice, though." Even as he sniffles, Riley's mouth turns up at the corner. "Think maybe I should let you rub my back more often."

Sam's throat flushes warm. His muscles grind through a swallow, dry tissue scraping against itself, dragging a husky cough up from his lungs.

He lets his hand slide down Riley's neck, slip off his back, and fall back to his own lap. The back of his nose twinges through a sniffle, air grating along overstimulated nerves.

"Do you ever think about —" He swallows again, shudders into another cough. His gaze falls to the puddle of sunlight in front of the couch. It's already begun to slip down Riley's body, leaving his face shadowed as it spills off his chest and legs in gentle waves of gold, pooling on the floor in front of him.

"Just." Sam rubs his hands together, working the Vicks into his wrists, the backs of his knuckles where his skin likes to crack in the winter. "If we'd met some other way. Do you think about how things might have turned out?"

Riley rubs a hand down his face. His fingers fold together in his lap. "You know I do, Sammy."

Sam nudges his big toe against the floor, right at the edge of the sunlight. "You think we would have … ?"

The sentence is a cliff's edge overlooking everything beyond the walls boxing them in — kisses they don't have to hide in the dark, gazes allowed to linger without fear of someone up the chain of command catching wind, trips back home where they can introduce each other as something more than friends.

Riley, smile still hung loosely on his lips, dives over without any hesitation. "In another life? 'Course we would've."

Sam nods. Chews the inside of his cheek as his gaze slips sideways toward Riley's. "So then — what about after we get out?" he asks. The shadows around them cling to his voice, color it dark and quiet. "You ever think about that?"

Riley's nostrils tremble through a sniffle. He tugs several tissues from the box and gives his nose a quiet blow, then peeks out at Sam from behind them, eyebrows carving soft frowns into his forehead. "You fishin' for a proposal?"

"Shut up." Sam bends over himself, folds his arms against his stomach. Still, goose bumps trickle over his back and down his chest. He takes a slow breath. "Just trying to have a conversation with you. See where your head's at."

Riley balls up his tissues and settles back against the couch with a sigh. His hand finds its way to his dog tags, and he wraps their chain around his fingers, the metal coiling tight around his knuckles. One of these days, that chain's going to snap — pop in half under his fingers from all the tension he's constantly putting on it.

"I think about keeping you alive," he says. "All the time, from the moment I open my eyes until I fall asleep. That's what it's all about — making sure we're both still here when it's over."

A cough wells up in Sam's throat, hot and hollow. He catches it against his fist, and his eyes flush wet. The tears gather on his lashes as he blinks back at Riley. "You don't think about what comes after?"

Riley's head bows into the shadows. The chain tightens around his fingers, his flesh going white, then purple. "Sammy, you know I wasn't raised like that," he murmurs. "We can't — it can't be like that."

Sam's throat squeezes. It's like trying to run in a nightmare, the sort of thing where they never cover any ground, no matter how many times they've argued it over in the desert alone late at night, but still, he presses. "You're a grown-ass man, Riley."

Riley nods. His jaw works back and forth for a moment before his throat twitches through a swallow. "Yeah, I know."

"So what, then?" Sam's voice rasps, scratched up from coughing and months of circling this thing between them, the heat he couldn't tamp down when they met at basic, everything they've let it grow into in the year and some change since. "You just gonna let them tell you how to live for the rest of your life?"

Riley lets go of his dog tags and scrubs a hand over his face again. "Come on, man. You know it ain't like that."

Sam rests his elbows on his knees, lets his forehead sink into the cup of his hands. His breath rides out in a low sigh.

You know the worst part? For all those times we fought, it wouldn't have changed a damn thing in the end.

Outside the window, a breeze blows in off the bayou, shaking Spanish moss loose from the oak trees. The silhouette of wings cuts across the sunlit spot on the floor, and the stillness shatters around the hoarse scream of a hawk. Somewhere down the hallway of family pictures, near his parents' old room, the floor creaks — the house settling as its old bones soak up the humidity, complaining like it always has during the spring and summer months since he was a kid.

Sam shivers. The back of his neck prickles with the same itch that creeps up on him as jackals circle them out in the desert, their bony shadows floating like ghosts over the sand in the dark. The air conditioner sighs with a gust of cool air, and a fresh wave of goose bumps washes over his body. He watches them sprout up along his naked torso, rising like tiny bug bites over his stomach and chest before spreading out to his arms.

Beside him, Riley wears matching bumps — so many little spots peppering his skin, drawing out a shiver as he rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose.

Sam hugs his arms against his stomach and curls around himself. With a heavy sniffle, he ducks to nudge his nose against his shoulder, head turned away from Riley.

"Doesn't feel fair to keep you a secret for the rest of my life," he murmurs.

Riley coughs on a brittle laugh. "Ain't much fair about any of this."

"Yeah, well." Sam bends forward to snag a tissue from the coffee table. He glances at Riley. "You gotta hope it'll be different someday."

Riley nods. He reaches to take the box of tissues from Sam, and their knuckles brush together.

He shakes his head through a sigh. "You're real brave, you know that, Sammy?" The corner of his nostril trembles as he sniffles. He pulls a tissue from the box but doesn't lift it toward his face, just folds it over on itself, makes it smaller and smaller in his palm. "Think you might be the bravest man I ever met."

Sam's throat winds tight, even as his mouth tugs up at the side. "That's just your fever talking."

Riley shakes his head. "I mean it."

Sam grunts. Rubs his nose against his tissue and stretches his foot toward the patch of sunlight. "You know you're just about the only reason I can stomach any of this shit."

"Yeah, I reckon that's true." Riley sniffles again, then lifts his hand to catch Sam's wrist. His fingers fold around Sam, skin warm, callouses familiar.

In the shadows, his eyes are softer — bruised in watercolor shades of gray and blue, the green of his irises darkened to the same color as the water off the docks in the evening. He looks older, in a way, the lack of light drawing out the heaviness that gathers over his eyelids when he hasn't slept well, the bags that never go away, the little smile lines he's beginning to develop in spite of it all.

"Don't stop thinking about what comes next," he whispers. "Do it for both of us."

**

Chills latch onto Sam, relentless as a rabid dog as they drag him back to consciousness.

Cold wraps around him like a body bag, like snow blanketing fallen soldiers. It drips across his forehead and over his temples, trickling down toward his eyes and catching in his lashes.

"Shh, it's okay." Fingers brush his face, wipe the water from his eyes. "Just got you a washcloth … your fever's back up again."

His breath sits heavy in his lungs, bubbling through something muddy when he wheezes out a groan. Light burns through his eyelids and coils around his occipital nerves, needling deep inside his skull. It flashes through him, brighter than those early mornings when the sun seemed to blaze through the whole sky and made his vision blink black and white, promising a migraine that wouldn't settle until his feet hit the ground again and darkness fell across the world.

Even with his eyes closed, tears well up, hot and salty under his eyelids. They collect on his lashes, melt away into the sweat and cold water dribbling from his forehead.

A metallic chirp comes from somewhere overhead.

"Open your mouth for me, Sammy." The bed dips, and a hand rubs a circle over Sam's chest. "Just need to check your temperature before I give you more meds."

Sam shudders under Bucky's touch as the chills sink their teeth down through his bones and into the marrow. Another groan grates across his throat, brittle and breathless, but he lets his lips part, lets Bucky slide the thermometer under his tongue. It jams against his nerves, cold and unwieldily in his mouth, makes the back of his throat flutter, his gag reflex tingling.

The tears leak down his cheeks — hot little streams, his skin blistering beneath them.

So many times, they carved trails through dust, washed lines in the sand and ash — sketched out his weakness on his face for everyone to see as they landed back at base. Eyes skittered away from his, dropping to the blood on his uniform, to the burn marks on his boots. But Riley never looked away.

"Hey." Bucky's hand cups the side of his face. His thumb trails along the side of Sam's nose, smoothing over the heavy throb in his sinuses. "It's okay. We just need to get some more medicine in you, is all."

Damp warmth leaks along the edges of Sam's nostrils. He tries to sniffle but coughs instead, his nose walled off with swelling and congestion.

"You just gotta get through tonight," Bucky murmurs. He moves the thermometer back under Sam's tongue. "It's always worse at night."

The bed creaks, the mattress bending with his weight as he leans over Sam. His fingers tug at the washcloth, sliding it higher on Sam's forehead, when something clinks against Sam's chest.

Sam cracks one eye open. Tears and fever wash his vision out, everything broken in starbust patterns of white and gold. He blinks, then blinks again before coaxing his eye to focus.

Bucky's dog tags hang down from his neck and rest against Sam's t-shirt, quivering at the center of his rib cage, the same way Riley's did that last night in Macon as he hung over Sam in the back of that shitty pickup truck they rented while they were stateside. They whisper against each other like insect wings, no heavier than a moth, barely there — a kiss through his clothes, a fist breaking the bubble of breath in his lungs, a plea dying on his lips as the man in his arms takes his final breath, the last piece of home crushed in his fist as Delacroix's sky stretches wide and blue and foreign above him.

His stomach surges into his throat.

Fire erupts over his skin as he lurches out of bed and into the bathroom, collapses on the tile in front of the toilet, and vomits. Everything is burning — but hasn't it always been? He is diving into flames, scrambling to pull people out even as the smoke blisters in his throat; Riley is lying in the sand, his body torn open, too burned to bleed as his lungs give out; he is drowning himself on the dock, letting the liquor coat his brain in a haze, his stomach on fire; he's puking the shit back up, blood boiling in his veins as Sarah tries again to coax him to come inside, please just come inside and try to sleep.

And just when he gets his feet back under himself after an eternity of hell, starts to feel like maybe he could have a shot at stability, he's tossed back in again — dodging flares and getting thrown out of the sky all over again.

As he drags a shaky breath in through his mouth, Bucky lays a steady hand on his back.

"You're okay," he murmurs, kneeling beside Sam. He reaches past him to flush the toilet, and cool air gusts against Sam's face. Something cold gets pressed against his arm. "Take a sip of this."

Sam coughs, his stomach clenching around empty air. His legs quake beneath him as he eases back on his knees. Sweat coats his body, sticking his shirt to his back, even as he shivers on the icy tile floor.

Bucky extends the glass of water toward his chest. "Take a sip," he says again.

Sam's arms shudder, muscles limp with adrenaline and the pain winding through his limbs. He lets Bucky hold the glass to his lips and sips from it, swills his mouth out and then spits.

His stomach cramps in on itself, though there's nothing left to bring up but a hollow gasp — a low, broken breath that snags in his chest and floods his eyes with tears again.

Bucky sets the water down and catches him as he curls in on himself.

"It's okay," he whispers, mouth warm against Sam's ear. "It's okay. I've got you."

Sam slumps against Bucky. A chill rips through him, burning over his skin, icy in his veins all at once. Pain throbs through his body, pulsing behind his eyes, twisting his stomach inside out, knotting in his calves. Everything shakes, hollowed out, ready to collapse like a bombed-out building.

He buries his face in Bucky's chest. The dog tags brush against his neck, soft as Riley's touch on that last morning, a ghost along his skin. The sky had been so clear that day, the wind catching them both in a gentle upswell as they sailed through the open blue, the sunlight silhouetting Riley's wings in gold when Sam dipped below him.

Sam's shoulders shudder, another breath suddenly struggling not to cave in under the weight of the past. His face flushes hot and wet.

"I miss him so much," he whispers.

"I know." Bucky tucks his face into Sam's shoulder and holds him closer. His voice dips low, rough as he speaks up against Sam's ear. "I know. I miss him, too."

Sam bites his lip, reining his breath in as tears seep into Bucky's shirt. A gulf hangs between them, a chasm of everything Sam hasn't said — all the memories he's spent years trying to leave buried back in Afghanistan.

They were never supposed to be a secret. And yet here he is, broken on the bathroom floor, throat jammed with everything he can't say.

He shivers through another rough breath as a tear hits the tile beneath him.

Told you I wasn't brave, Red. Never really have been without you.

**

I should go inside.

There is a part of him that knows this — the part that witnesses the rain crashing down on the bayou, that observes the water dripping down his face and neck and arms, that feels himself shivering beneath the weight of saturated jeans and a drenched t-shirt.

The part that inhabits his body — makes his limbs move and mouth tick up at the corner and colors his voice with laughter when he hears a joke, the part of him that might be a soul — lies dormant somewhere eight thousand miles away, buried beneath a burnt patch of sand in Bakhmala.

He stands frozen at the edge of the dock, vision washed white as the rain falls in buckets, fingers wrapped tight around a set of dog tags. They rest snugly against his palm, their metal warped from a bomb that will never stop going off behind his eyes.

Footsteps thud on the dock behind him.

"Sam, come inside." Sarah's voice breaks through the rain, its edges pitching up with the poisoned mix of pity and worry she's adopted since he got home. She traipses down the dock, a black umbrella bobbing over her head. "You're soaked to the bone."

He doesn't move. Rain drips off the tip of his nose and flows over his lips. A vaguely warm itch trickles through his left nostril, and he sniffles.

Sarah holds the umbrella over the two of them, huddling close beside him. Her arm brushes his, and the deep purple of her t-shirt flushes black as it soaks up the rain water. "There's coffee on," she says. "Come inside and warm up."

Sam traces his thumb over the letters on the dog tags, little scabs in the metal his skin has memorized a hundred times over. The chains fall across the back of his hand, slithering over his wet skin.

A chill creeps up his spine as his nose scrunches through another sniffle.

Sarah lays a hand on his arm, palm warm through the wet fabric of his shirt sleeve.

"Making yourself miserable isn't gonna bring him back," she murmurs. Her tone is lower now, steady without trying to cajole him for the first time in as long as he can remember, and something suddenly jams the back of his throat.

"So what, then?" His voice scrapes up from somewhere low in his chest, brittle from disuse and a vague soreness smoldering over his tonsils. The dog tags bite into his skin as he scuffs the toe of his boot against the dock. "I should just move on? Put him out of my mind?"

"No." The wind gusts over them, spraying rain against their backs. She reaches up to adjust the umbrella's angle and block the worst of it. "You should come in and put some dry clothes on. That's all."

His eyes flush hot and wet. He presses a knuckle against his septum and blinks out at the bayou. "I don't sleep, Sarah. Every time I close my eyes, I …"

"I know." She cups a palm against his cheek and wipes her thumb under his eye, flicking water off his skin. "Just come and get something hot to drink. Change your clothes before you get a chill. That's all you have to do."

He swallows. Makes his head dip in a nod.

Still, neither of them move to go back inside.

Sam scrubs his wrist against his nose and watches the rain splash on the dock just beyond his feet. Once, just before their first tour ended, he and Riley spent a day and a half hiding out in a cave when a rare storm hit during a flight over Bamyan. They squeezed in chest-to-chest, backs braced against the rock walls, bodies pressed together in the humid dark as the wind howled through the cracks overhead and water seeped in around their boots. At least five times, Sam had to grit his teeth as something small and scaly slithered across his face.

By the time they climbed back out, their knees wobbled and rolled under them, every muscle in their legs and backs locked in a spasm. A week passed before they could stand up straight again.

I'd go back today. Just to see you for another minute.

Sarah shifts, her head dipped to the side, eyes on the dock. "Listen, Sam," she says, voice half-drowned by the rain. "I don't — maybe it's none of my business, but I — you know you can tell me anything, right?"

He nods again.

"Okay." She tucks her braids over her shoulders and smooths the front of her shirt. Folds her hands at her waist, eyes on the rain as it falls on the water in front of them. "I guess I'm just trying to say that — well, I'm not stupid. I saw the way you looked at him, and — I'm here to listen, if you want to talk about it."

Heat pricks through the nerves in Sam's neck and into his cheeks, settles behind his eyes and at the back of his nose. He should probably feel a rush of shame or anxiety or hell, just simple adrenaline, but his body is a husk — hollowed out, as dark and empty as that cave.

He blinks down at the dock and shoves the dog tags in the pocket of his jeans. "There's nothing to talk about."

Sarah glances sideways at him. "Are you sure?"

He swallows. He could fill a novel with everything there is to say about Riley: what it felt like flying into hell side by side; the steady way they had each other's back, no matter how many hits they took along the way; how Sam never, not once, felt alone.

But more than that, maybe, there's an ache somewhere in his chest to name the quieter parts, like the way Riley always caught the punchline of a joke a few seconds late, his laughter bursting strong and loud above the buzz of engines, a reckless, ruthless sound. All his odd little habits — how he played with his dog tags or scuffed his boot on the floor or paced the same path around the B-huts hundreds of times when he couldn't sleep at night. The dozens of little ways he drove Sam crazy, like when he poured his milk before his cereal or got the other guys to help him cheat on crossword puzzles or dove headfirst toward death without a second thought. The way his eyes caught the light in the morning, the infant sun turning them the color of the jade ring their mom used to wear on Sundays. How his lips felt the last time they kissed.

Sam's throat collapses in on itself, squeezing tight around his breath. He makes himself nod again, swipes at the heat gathering in his eyes. Turns his back on the water and lets Sarah lead the way toward the house.

**

The world flickers in and out of focus. In one moment, a thermometer is being slid under his tongue, Bucky's silhouette outlined in lamplight; in another, Alpine nests on the pillow, her fur warm against Sam's cheek as sunlight washes the bedroom in gold; in the next, he's being coaxed to sip from a bottle of blue Gatorade and nibble at buttered toast, the TV mumbling something in the background about whale shark migration patterns.

He lets himself drift in this floaty place, awake enough to skim past any dreams, asleep enough to blunt the worst of his symptoms. Still, a low-level ache throbs through him, a full-body bruise that pulses with his heartbeat. An unscratchable itch tingles somewhere behind his eyes, the sensation walled off behind swollen sinuses, and his breath draws a soft wheeze from his lungs. Everything feels strangely heavy, like summer mornings spent swimming in the bayou in clothes three sizes too big, the fabric suctioning to his face, smothering him, dragging him down.

Riley hangs just beyond the edges, submerged beneath the water, bent around the knees of the cypress trees. There, but just out of view.

Sunlight pools on his quilt in honeyed shades of orange when Bucky rouses Sam with a kiss on the forehead.

"You're sweaty," he murmurs, his lips skimming against Sam's skin, buzzing along his nerves. "Feels like your fever broke."

"Probably ndot for long." Sam sniffles; his lungs kick against his rib cage, rebellious against the strain of trying to pull air in through his nose. He rubs a hand over his chest as his breath crackles and sputters, grit burning hot in his throat. "What time is it?"

"Almost six." Bucky lifts a glass of ice water from the nightstand and holds the straw toward Sam's lips. With his metal hand, he strokes his index finger against Sam's cheek. "Slept the whole damn day away."

Sam grunts and catches the straw in his teeth. Bucky's touch is cool against the swelling in his face, and he leans into it, lets his eyes close as he takes slow sips. Sweat sticks his clothes to his skin, and each swallow of ice water carves a cold trail down his throat and into his chest, cutting through the dull ache in his muscles.

When he's drained half the glass, he falls back against the pillows and pushes the heel of his hand into his left eye. Congestion pulses through his face and fills his ears, blanketing the room in a fuzzy static. He clears his throat, though his voice still sticks low in his chest, whittled down to a small, colorless sound, its edges dulled from the crap packing his head. "I should shower."

Bucky shakes his head. "You're too dehydrated. I ain't picking your ass up if you faint."

Sam fumbles through the sheets for a moment before locating the tissues. He glances back at Bucky as he pulls several from the box. "You would."

While Sam rubs his nose into the tissues, Bucky squeezes his shoulder. His mouth remains lax, but something fond flickers in his eyes, sweet and warm like when he watches Alpine play with a new toy or when he's sprawled out on the couch with one earbud in, listening to an old Vera Lynn song. "Try a bath," he mutters.

Bucky half carries him to the en-suite bathroom, and still, the walk leaves Sam shaking and breathless, his limbs wobbling with a sudden rush of adrenaline. He drops onto the edge of the tub and lets Bucky fiddle with plugging the drain, turning the water on, adjusting the temperature so steam rises in plumes around them. Outlined in the bathroom light, shadows smudge the spaces under his eyes, and the bruise over his right cheek has darkened to a grayish green.

Sam reaches up to touch his face. His fingers tremble as he brushes them against Bucky's jaw. "You okay?" he whispers. "Feels like maybe I'm weari'g you out."

Bucky angles his head to brush a kiss against Sam's fingers. "Don't mind being worn out for you, Sammy." He turns and crouches to dig under the cabinet beneath the sink. "We'll both sleep better tonight."

"I can take the couch." Steam seeps through Sam's nose, flushing his nerves hot. He reaches over Bucky to snag a handful of toilet paper. "Might not sleep so great after being in bed all day."

"You gotta rest." The cabinet closes with a quiet thud. Bucky straightens, a bag of Epsom salts in hand, and shuffles back to the edge of the tub. He glances up at Sam as he tugs at the bag's peel-away tab. "I'll put something shitty on. One of those home renovation shows you hate."

Sam shoves the toilet paper against his septum. "You hate those, too."

"So we'll both get bored and fall asleep." The bag pops open, little flakes of salt spilling out over Bucky's skin and against his t-shirt. He cringes, then holds the bag over the tub, letting nearly half of its contents spill into the water. "D'you feel like you're past the worst of it?"

"I dunno. It's been a while since I had the flu, but I think the first day was always the worst. Or the first ndight, I guess." Sam scrunches his nose and gives an experimental sniffle. His breath sizzles along his sinuses and cuts off with a sharp snag behind his sternum. "HDT'CHIshhuhh! Uhh — uh'idZCHHiuuhh!"

"Bless you." Bucky tosses the bag of Epsom salts back toward the cabinet and grabs a folded hand towel from the back of the toilet. "You still sound like shit."

"Well, yeah. Gonna sound like shit for a week, probably." Sam leans forward past Bucky to drop the wilted toilet paper in the trash can between the toilet and the cabinet, then takes the hand towel from him and scrubs it against his nose. "You ever have the flu?"

Bucky finds a mostly empty bottle of lavender bubble bath on the floor and pours it in the tub. "Of course I've had the flu."

"So you know this is how it goes." Tears smolder in the corners of Sam's eyes as he sniffles again. His breath stutters low in his chest with a quiet crackle, and he clutches the towel closer to his face. "HDT'Chishhuhh! Hih … hEDT'zhhuehhh!" The sneezes curl him forward on the tub, each landing a dull blow between his eardrums. He shudders through a heavy cough and gestures at his face. "It's gonna be a lot of this for a while."

Bucky shakes his head a little as Sam blows his nose into the towel. "Get in the bath," he murmurs, catching a thumb under the hem of Sam's boxers.

Getting out of his clothes is a clumsily intimate process — Sam climbs to his feet and slumps against the side of the tub, legs still unsteady beneath him; shivering, he lets Bucky guide his t-shirt over his head, allows him to help him step out of his boxers. Standing upright, his muscles feel like taffy beneath gravity's pull, weak and stretched thin. The steam feathers low in his lungs, and when he starts coughing, his chest gives an ugly wheeze.

Bucky rubs a steady hand over his back and mutters something about getting a humidifier for the bedroom.

There's an echo here, whispering over them as Bucky helps him into the tub and complains that he should have eaten more than just toast earlier, a mirror from another time: two men hassling each other to take better care of themselves because no one else would, scolding each other for running themselves into the ground; hands pressed to foreheads in the dim light of a B-hut or out under the stars, fingers feeling the sides of necks for swollen glands; laughter sneaking in through the cracks when a sneeze knocked one of them sideways midair or their voices sputtered and fizzed through their comms, breaking on every syllable. Knowing no matter what, they always had each other's backs.

"I was gonna order soup for dinner." Bucky kneels on the bath mat, then leans forward to grab a bottle of shampoo, his dog tags clinking against the lip of the tub. He pops the bottle open and tips it sideways over his palm. "D'you want anything else? Don't think you're running low on any meds …"

"Soup's good. From Benny's, right?" A shiver crawls up Sam's back as Bucky nods, the water's heat beginning to work its way through his muscles. "Don't know how much I can stomach, but …"

"I'll get a cup of broth, too." Bucky stretches over the edge of the tub and rubs the shampoo into Sam's hair, his fingers light as he scratches tiny circles over his scalp. Water seeps into the front of his shirt, and the dusty blue fabric darkens to navy. "Is your stomach still bad?"

Sam grunts a "no" and lets himself relax into Bucky's touch. "Think it was the fever more than anything … woke up and it all just hit me."

Bucky nods again. He thumbs a blob of shampoo suds off Sam's temple. "Seemed like you were having nightmares all night," he murmurs. "I tried talking you through them, but it didn't seem like you really heard me."

Sam sniffles. He drags a finger through the layer of Epsom salt on the bottom of the tub. "I say anything good?"

"No. Kicked me a few times, though." Bucky nudges Sam's shoulder. "Lean your head back."

Sam does, sinking down into the water until it laps at his ears, knees bent to fit as much of his trunk beneath the warmth as possible. He blinks at the water from the corner of his eye as Bucky scrubs the shampoo from his scalp. Soft plumes of soap filter out into the bubbles around his head, dissipating around Bucky's fingers as his touch slips lower to work the muscles of Sam's neck.

Sam closes his eyes and lets the quiet sound of their breathing settle over him — the stuffy catch of his, the even rhythm of Bucky's above him. It's the first time an illness has wiped him out quite this badly in front of Bucky, rendered him barely able to stand on his own feet without help, and yet there's already an easy routine to it. Since yesterday, Bucky's been a solid rock, dosing him with cold medicine, tracking his temperature, making sure he always has a glass of cold water within reach. Simple things, but the sort of care that takes attention to detail and practice when you add everything all together.

Bucky works Sam's neck and shoulders for several minutes, long enough for water to soak halfway up the front of his shirt, then helps Sam sit up a little higher. With a yawn, he settles back on the bath mat and tugs his shirt off. His skin flushes softly pink in the steam, the same full-body blush Riley used to get after showers. His dog tags glisten silver against his bare skin.

Sam swallows. "You do this before? With Steve?"

Bucky's mouth curves up at the corner — a quick, involuntary tug of muscles, and for a second, he looks younger, a version of Bucky Sam will never know, the one who shared an apartment with his best friend in a world that no longer exists. "Yeah. A few times." He ducks his head as he wipes his hands on his sweatpants. "Think he must've had pneumonia or something … it's kinda fuzzy."

Sam hums. He curls against the side of the tub and rests his face against its lip. Water drips down the side of his temple over his cheek before pooling on the tub's enamel. He drags his thumb through it, pushing it closer to the edge.

"Last night in the bathroom," he says. "I wasn't talking about him."

"Yeah, I know." Bucky's dog tags whisper together as he shifts to pull his knees up in an inverted V. "Kinda figured you weren't dreaming about him, either."

Sam glances up to meet his gaze. "Thought you said I didn't say anything."

"Nothing good." Bucky rests his metal forearm on top of his knees. He rubs the thumb of his other hand over one of the plates, smudging water across the reflective surface. "I couldn't understand most of it, but I got enough to know it wasn't something Steve had anything to do with."

"Yeah, well." Sam sniffles. In the steam, the congestion is beginning to ease into a warm leak inside his nose, and he pushes his knuckle against his septum. "The shit from Afghanistan is … it's all still there, you know?"

Bucky snags the hand towel from the floor and passes it to him. "Yeah, I know."

Behind the towel, Sam nudges at his nose and watches water continue to drip onto the edge of the tub. Everything he isn't saying settles over them, thick as the steam, coiling in his lungs, clogging his throat. So many times, he's told Bucky about the things that happened over there: the blistering sand and the shock of the cold; the people who died in his arms, gasping for air and turning gray; the first child he saw die — god, just how many children he saw die; the hollowed-out feeling he returned home with; the balled-up mess of guilt at the center of his chest he'll never untangle. And yet it's never felt quite finished, like a scrapbook of out-of-focus photos. Riley's there, but never the way he should be — a side character, a guy Sam knew once, just another soldier who didn't make it home.

Sam shudders through a low cough. It's been years — nearly two decades since he watched dirt get tossed on top of that casket in a rainy Macon graveyard — and still, he carries Riley like a noose around his neck, a dead body he'll never stop dragging through the desert, a ghost trapped behind the teeth of a younger man too scared to tell anyone the truth. It doesn't matter that he hears Riley in every gunshot and whisper of the wind when he's up in the sky, sees him in every sun-soaked morning in Delacroix, feels him in the low laughter Bucky breathes against his chest when it's early and they're just beginning to wake. Not when he's the only one who knows it.

I don't wanna take you to the grave, Red.

He sniffles and folds the towel over on itself on the lip of the tub. A loose thread at one corner hangs down and disappears into the bubbles, drawing water up into the white terry cloth, saturating the edge.

"Do you ever talk to Steve?" he asks. "I don't mean in any kind of real way. More like … just letting your mouth run."

"All the time." Bucky folds his hands over his knees. "Do you?"

Sam's bottom lip cracks under his top teeth. He swallows, but the words still come out rocky, like little shards of glass caught behind his vocal cords. "With Riley, yeah."

Bucky's head dips in a slight nod. He traces his thumb over the back of his hand. "Does it help?"

"I don't know."

Bucky nods again. His eyes settle on a point beyond the room, and the right side of his cheek caves in, caught in his teeth, the same way it gets when he's working through something neither of them can remember. "You don't talk about him very much."

"Don't know what to say, I guess. Feels like he got buried in the past for everybody else. And that's never how I wanted it to go, but … there wasn't really anything I could do about it." Sam's nose trembles through a sniffle. He lifts the towel, its wet thread trailing through the bubbles and down his wrist, and presses it against his septum. It hides the lower half of his face, a soft shield against the bathroom's white light, Bucky's distant gaze.

His lungs wheeze through a breath. "We spent so long keeping each other a secret, and then all of a sudden, I think I was supposed to talk about him, but it doesn't work like that. I couldn't just switch it off, or dial it back the way people wanted me to. Make them remember him the way they wanted without all the messiness."

Bucky hums. Keeps fiddling with the metal on the back of his hand, head tipped at an angle, a crease working its way between his brows.

Sam clears his throat, swallows the taste of grit along his tonsils. "Anyway, I wasn't really me when I came back. Took a long time for me to feel human again, and by then, everybody had already moved on. No one wanted to hear about all of it, and even if they did, I wouldn't know where to start."

Bucky nods again and chews the inside of his cheek. The line in his forehead deepens, a canyon between his brows. "You go to therapy back then?"

"Yeah, but we didn't — it was a different time, man. I don't have to tell you that. Couldn't really talk about it like it was anything more than what it looked like on the surface." Sam shivers, goose bumps creeping up along the exposed skin of his neck and wrist as the steam settles around the floor. The faucet drips, a lazy plink … plink … plink by his feet.

He lets go of a sigh, his breath shuddering through him. "Feels like maybe it shouldn't hurt so bad anymore. And it doesn't, most of the time, but then all of a sudden, it's like a wave hits me, and I'm back there all over again, and no one can see it."

Bucky shrugs without looking up. "You're always saying there's no time limit on this kind of thing."

Sam grunts, though the sound snags in his throat. He winces, spit grinding along his tonsils and larynx as he strains to keep from coughing. Deep in his lungs, congestion bubbles around his breath, and the nerves at the back of his nose flicker, nudging tears into the corners of his eyes.

Bucky cranes his neck, shifting forward onto one knee. "You okay?"

Sam's breath wavers, eyes narrowing to half mast as the room goes foggy with tears. He cups the towel closer to his face, nervous system teetering on the edge of triggering a sneeze, though a coughing fit ends up tearing through him at the last second. Each expulsion of air is a sharp, rasping blow to his ribs that pops and crackles like kindling in his chest and blazes in his throat.

Bucky dips his hand below the bubbles and lays it between Sam's shoulders. "Easy," he murmurs. "Probably just wore your voice out, is all."

Tears drip down Sam's cheeks as his breathing settles into a jagged, off-key rhythm. He scrubs the towel against his face, nose streaming behind it. "Sorry." The word claws over his vocal cords, and he chokes on another cough. "Probably gonna lose my voice …"

"You already did." Bucky stands, his dog tags falling against his chest, and goes to the sink. A moment later, he returns with a glass of water and kneels back down again on the bath mat. "Try to drink a little."

Sam shakes his head, eyes already narrowing again, the back of his nose tingling hot. His breath knifes through his lungs in a sharp gasp. "idZH'huehh! Huhh! — Huh'IDZHuehhh! Ishh'SHuehhh!" He coughs on the tail-end of the sneezes, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "Jesus Christ. Sorry."

"Quit apologizing and drink your water." Bucky holds the glass in one hand and rubs the other over Sam's back, and as Sam blows his nose into the towel, he bends to press a kiss to the peak of his shoulder, the exposed rise of skin speckled in goose bumps above the water.

Sam drops the towel over the edge of the tub and takes the water. He swallows a mouthful and grimaces. "Think I might do better with something to suck on."

Bucky hums against Sam's shoulder. "You gotta drink more, Sammy."

Sam rolls his eyes, though the muscles around the edge of his mouth flicker. He takes another sip and leans his forehead into the curve of Bucky's neck. A shiver whispers up his spine. "You're cold."

"M'not. You're just running a fever."

Sam grunts and sinks farther into Bucky. In the bathroom's humidity, he really does feel cool, though comfortingly so, like pressing a cold water bottle to his forehead after hours spent out on the baseball field back in middle school, skin coated in sweat and red dust; or a cold sip of his mom's sweet tea after a weekend afternoon spent helping his dad on the boat.

Bucky's hand rubs over his back, slipping low under the water to trace circles across his spine. "Was he a morning person?" he murmurs.

Sam blinks, his eyelashes whispering against Bucky's neck. "What?"

"Sometimes when I think about Steve, it's … it's like I could drown in everything. All these memories I forgot I even had." Bucky's thumb presses into the small of Sam's back, working the spot to the left of his spine that always aches after a rough night's sleep. "Sometimes the only way through it is to find something small. The shit other people never thought to care about. So … was he a morning person?"

Sam swallows. Feels his mouth falling into a smile.

"Well, yeah, more than you, but I guess that's not saying much." He tucks his head closer to Bucky's neck, one hand holding himself steady against the side of the tub. "Took him till we were up flying before he really woke up most of the time."

"You probably talked his ear off."

Sam shakes his head. "No more than he did. That man was always running his mouth." He rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose. Low in his throat, he hums a laugh — brittle, breaking halfway through, but warm nonetheless. "He called me Birdie. Got this stupid smirk on his face the first time he did it, like he didn't look like just as much of a dumbass trying to figure out how to get the wings to work."

Bucky's fingers cradle the small of Sam's back. "Bet you called him something worse."

"Red. It drove him crazy." Sam sniffles, then ducks toward his own shoulder, irritation sparking along frayed nerves again. "Hih'IDZuehhh! Huh — hDT'schhuehh!"

"Bless you," Bucky murmurs. He snags the towel from the floor, hand scattering drops of water over his bare chest, and passes it to Sam. "Red ain't so bad."

"It was some childhood thing. Think he was sensitive about it till he figured out I had a thing for him." With a heavy sniffle, Sam wipes his face on the towel. He clears his throat, though his voice still snaps on every syllable, the last shreds of his pitch and timbre chipped down to nothing. "You know he'd sneak food out to the jackals outside the base? Said they reminded him of his family's dog back home."

Bucky nudges his knuckle under Sam's left eye, smoothing over the spot where everything is swollen and heavy. Water drips from his hand down onto Sam's skin, carving a warm trail down his cheek. "Jackals … they're like coyotes, right?"

"Sorta. They're smaller — look a little bit like foxes." Sam catches a cough in the towel and swallows hard. "The ones outside the base started acting like stray cats — got so tame you could almost pet them if you had food on you."

Bucky hums. He rubs his thumb over Sam's cheek, wiping away the water from his hand. "I wanna know more," he murmurs, "but your voice is shot."

"I'm okay," Sam says, though his voice crumbles on the last word, and he coughs down at Bucky's shoulder, a soft wheeze whistling in his breath.

"Yeah, that's convincing." Bucky brushes a kiss against his forehead. His lips are warmer than the rest of him, a little burst of heat, like catching a ray of sunlight through the clouds. "You wanna tell me the rest when you're feeling better?"

Beneath his lips, Sam lets himself go lax. A jagged tenderness smolders along his tonsils and over his larynx, flaring bright every time he swallows, but it's a good sort of pain, like peeling a scab off. A slow, gentle unburying of the past. It isn't a letting go, but an opening of a door to let the light in. There's a sense now that maybe, he won't have to shoulder it alone — not the love, not the loss, not the dreams that gut him in the dead of night or the memories that warm him like a kiss every time he puts on his wings.

I got pretty damn lucky, Red.

"Yeah," he whispers. "I think maybe I do."

[pfaugh]

I fucking love it when people make new art. like when they're still starting out, they don't know where they're going —but it's fun. it's fun and they're learning and when you ask them why, they don't.. know. they hadn't thought about it yet. it's just.. a silly little thing. a hobby. a pet. an acquaintance. they barely even know 'er.

but they slip you a rough draft, and I mean, a rough draft, and.. it's not very good. but it's the best they've ever done. it's a testament to every silly little step they took, all the fun they had. the toll it took. the anger, the embarrassment. the product. whether it's their first or their last, it's there. and I love it.

I'm not sure how long.. any of us have, at this point. But I hope that, as long as there's people, there's new art. I hope kids keep writing poetry. I hope adults do things they never had time for before. I hope someone gets to see it all —even if it's just the person making it.

[mysticalsoot]

loving hard and desperately

—★—

i knew I loved hard

lived life with my heart

on my sleeve, over my shirt

but I didn't know I loved this much

this desperately, this hard

i didn't know I could love someone's everything

I didn't know I could love their teeth

or the way they grimace

or the way they fidget when they're nervous

I didn't know I could love the sound of someone's voice like a lullaby

or the way they speak quickly and with giggles when they're excited

or how they bounce on stage when they're playing guitar

I didn't know I could love so effortlessly

so desperately and hungrily

I didn't know I could love you, this way either

i never expected to love your lips and your nose

how your eyebrows crinkle when you're disgusted

or the way your tongue sticks out when you laugh

i never intended to love you in all your ways

i never intended to love this much

i don't think I intended to love

truly and wholy

the way that I love you

[considermygenderminecrafted]

I've been chattin a lot bout classism in england as of late n chattin w/ various people, n as always there is a lot of shit bout accents that gets brought up when we talk about this topic. N a lot of pain associated with tha. I think everyone who speaks non-standardised English has stories of their parents trying desperately to prevent them developin regional accents, or teachers gettin on their ass about it or just had lived with the social pressures of speakin how we do

So. This is for anyone who's had that shit spouted at them, for anyone who this resonates with:

The way you speak is good.

It's not summit to be ashamed of it's summit to be celebrated.

It's not 'just broken English' it has merit in it's own right, it communicates stuff standard English can't.

You're not dumb for soundin how you do, you're not stupid, you're not failin anythin. You deserve to have your thoughts listened to, not despite of how you sound but because of how you sound.

It's not broken grammar it's different grammar. It's not improper. It's not bad.

The way you sound is good n it's yours, whether you've got a regional accent or if it was taken from you, it's your story and it's your words and you deserve to be heard.

What we say is worth listen to, n how we speak is worth holdin on to. We have value not inspite of but because of how we say it

(anyone can reblog this)

[vessel-and-the-players]

I really wanna say hi to your other friends, but maybe none of us "Ghost-people" should appear in front of crowds... Can you introduce us sometime, Kris?

[kismetconstellations]

[bxsh-wxck]

Bastion Wick; Head canon 002 ↳ Memory of Trenton Rosenfield TW: Death mentioning, TW: War

Trenton Rosenfield was a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant, third generation army-brat, & a boyfriend to Bastion. They knew each other for five years---six months out of the five they secretly hooked up, an additional year and four months they dated. For Bastion Trenton was pretty much everything he thought he wanted in the world: the man was educated, sarcastic, dutiful, hard-working, tactless, and a pureblooded, patriotic believer of the american dream and the military that fought for that dream. Golden boy, perhaps, but underneath that veneer he grew to be someone that Bastion started to plan a future around. Though that future seemed to be just a fantasy, as a month and a half before their anniversary Trenton died in the line of duty; a hostile explosive  hidden between a quadrants they patrolled. His death severely hit Bastion, having lost a lover and a best friend caused him too much grief to continue on as a soldier. 

For the memory Trenton allowed Bastion to experience love and forced him to learn how bitter that same feeling could turn. The anger from the man’s death, the guilt, how he watched the military and his teammates continue with life---as if death was something to dsiplace and the job was to be the only thing you focused on; twisted him. 

Two years had passed from that funeral but the actions that were set into motion seemed irreversible. Bastion became overly cautious of others, rationalized being distant or cold as some greater good. In this time he became like a hermit, focusing on work and pleasure---nothing else in between. Life became a series of goals to meet, which left being social, friendly, romantic, transparent, and hopeful things he left behind. 

As for now, that memory being stripped has left the demigod feeling odd. On the one hand, he still knows how he’s acted but without that memory being an anchor; the reasoning as to why he had to act that way---his present self is begining to feel like he’s wasted so much. It’s like he’s seeing the demigods, his teammates for the first time. They aren’t pieces to a puzzle, not pawns to be used towards a goal. They are people and not things to keep at an arm’s length. 

This shift in his mindset, the lack of guilt and anger acting like walls he justifies to keep up, is going to allow a more open and geuinely honest Bastion---though knowing there was a memory, something in him, that he knew was important to lose is still going to fuck with him. 

Some key points: Physical intimacy, touching and hugging are more possible for him now. Openly flirtatious and being able to talk about his past are all on open for discussion. Not having a memory of Trenton allows him to show off his more romantic side he’s been hiding, though that lack of his memory, also stripes away his cautious/overly protective mentality too.  

fc: graham rodgers