✪ Bucky seemed amused by the memory of the night he’d had to sleep over or risk getting a strip torn off him by his ma. Steve liked reminding him of those times, back when things were so much easier than they were now.
He chuckled when Bucky pointed out that he was the taller of the two of them now. “Well, that’s why I have a bigger bed,” he joked.
Despite being the one to ask the question, and the fact that Steve had agreed, Bucky stated flatly that men didn’t sleep together.
It made the bottom of Steve’s stomach drop out to hear Bucky say it so plainly. Steve hadn’t really considered how Bucky felt about things like that before. It had never come up, he guessed, but to hear him say it like that, like he disapproved, it stung.
“Well,” he said, his tone having lost all its confidence, “this is a special thing. It’s just something you need right now.”
It was hard to try and rationalize why something he didn’t think of as wrong could be right to someone who thought it was wrong. It was a little much for 2am. Worse, was now knowing that Bucky apparently disapproved of Steve in a fundamental way. He wasn’t sure how well he was going to sleep after that little revelation.
“Okay. Good,” Steve said to Bucky’s clear implication that contact between them would not be appreciated. Evidently it was proximity he wanted and not human contact. So Steve turned over and tried not to feel like something big had just transpired between them. Something that now made Steve feel like he had to hide things about himself from his best friend.
“Then again, nothin’ is right to me anymore so I don’t know. Maybe men do sleep together?” Bucky amended awkwardly as the air suddenly grew tense and he couldn’t think what he’d said or done this time that had ruined the mood. He wasn’t the Bucky he used to be, perhaps he never would be but he was trying to get back some semblance of who he was before. He didn’t know what Steve was - there were no words adequate enough, that felt right, to explain just what Steve meant to him. But last he remembered, two men couldn’t share a bed without people talking, and he didn’t want to bring Steve down any further than he already had. Steve seemed to have adapted well to living in the twenty first century; Bucky had a long way to go.
“Don’t want to hurt you, Stevie,” He whispered then, eyes fluttering shut of their own accord despite his adamant refusal that he would not be falling asleep. His dark lashes brushed his still sharp cheekbones and he yawned widely, not even bothering to place a hand over his mouth because that would involve moving and he was getting quite comfortable. “I hurt you before with the metal arm...I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you again.”
He might not have been in control of his own mind but Bucky could never forget that fight on the heli-carrier. He had hurt Steve, hurt him so badly that he had to be hospitalised and that alone was one of the many recurrences in his nightmares. He could never forgive himself for it.
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