Archive of Our Own ^beta

What got him through it was remembering Steve.

The worst winter nights, when he wasn’t sure there’d still be two of them in the morning, he’d lie next to Steve, holding him to share every scrap of body heat, or staying back to let the heat of Steve’s fever radiate unhindered.  He’d massage Steve’s fever-aching joints and temples, or re-wet the cloths to cool him off again, or keep one hand warm and still in the middle of Steve’s back through the worst of the coughing, just so he wouldn’t be alone during any of it.

Asthma attacks were the worst.  He was powerless, watching mere breath become a battle.  He’d once tried breathing through the tiniest straw he could find, when Steve wasn’t around, to see what it was like. He’d made it three breaths before he’d flung the straw away, heart pounding, hands shaking, and sucked down the hugest breaths he could take just to reassure himself he still could.

No wonder Stevie never ran away from a fight.  What was left to fear? He’d always known Steve was brave, but he’d had no idea.  No fucking idea.

“How do you do it?” he said, the next time Steve had survived an attack and was lying exhausted in their bed.  He was carefully massaging Steve’s neck and back, always sore afterwards from the strain of trying to get enough air.  (He’d done his best to forget the moments he hoped for an asthma attack so he could touch Steve this way again.)  “How do you live through that and not go crazy?”

“Who says I don’t?” Steve managed, then wheezed a few more times before adding, “Not like you to. Miss a chance to call me crazy.”  A few more wheezes.  “One breath after another.”  He smiled faintly, eyes closed.  “Remember when I told you to. Turn the clock around?”

Bucky nodded.  “I did wonder what was goin’ on in your head.”  The cotton of Steve’s T-shirt was almost worn through; Bucky pulled another blanket over him.

Steve’s smile grew warmer.  “But you did it…  I gotta forget how hard the last breath was. Can’t think about the next one, or how long it’s been. How much longer it might be.  One breath at a time. All I got strength for.”   He stopped to catch his breath again.  “Couldn’t tell you all that right then.  Thanks for doing it anyway.”

Bucky moved his hands to the back of Steve’s neck – Steve tensed up there when he was anxious, then paid for it with headaches – and worked his way slowly along neck, shoulders, spine, and ribs, torn as always between letting his hands tell Steve all the things he couldn’t make his mouth say and fear that Steve would get the message.  “Somebody’s gotta watch out for you, punk.”

Steve’s lips twitched.  “Jerk.”  He turned a little, a silent request, and Bucky moved to the newly available part of his back.

“I almost –” Bucky sighed.  “No, I don’t almost know what you mean, I try so hard to take every breath for you, my damn sides are always sore after your attacks, but I ain’t sayin’ I really know what it’s like.”

Steve’s smile was still small, but it didn’t disappear.  “That’s good though, Buck.  I never want you to know.”  He managed one breath without wheezing, then another.  “Now trade me.”

Bucky’s hands froze.  “What?”  Steve couldn’t mean –

“Turn over.  Reckon I know what feels good for sore sides after an asthma attack.”

Bucky obeyed, too flummoxed not to, lying on his stomach to avoid awkward explanations. He wouldn’t make any noise at all, nothing to show – Steve dug his thumb into a spot Bucky hadn’t even realized was tense, and he groaned.  Dammit.

“Well now that almost made the asthma worth it,” he heard. Dammit again, did Steve really say that or was he going crazy?  He lifted his head to find Steve grinning mischievously at him.  He flushed.  This wasn’t the first time Steve’s jokes had sounded like the invitation Bucky was trying so hard not to imagine.

He’d been silent too long.  Steve’s eyes narrowed speculatively.  “Expected you to jump all over me for even suggesting that,” Steve said.  “But you look like the time Sister Mary Albert caught you looking up Mildred Watson’s skirt.”

“Millie told me to, and I didn’t see past her knees,” Bucky protested absently.  Then he put his head back down so Steve wouldn’t see anything else in his face.  He just had to figure out how to deflect whatever Steve was thinking or wondering or – Steve pressed his thumb into a slightly different spot.  “Mmmph,” said Bucky.  Dammit.

After that, “got asthma in my back” became a running gag – a double-edged joke that let them slide past talking about the many illnesses that might kill Steve, or the fact that two men had no business wanting their hands on each other.  Bucky noticed, though he said nothing, that Steve was as careful as he was to crack that joke only at home, only when the curtains were closed. Steve’s hands didn’t have the strength of his own, but Steve had an artist’s eye for posture and motion: he always knew exactly where Bucky’s “asthma” needed to be soothed.  Bucky was proud the first time he was the one to treat your asthma, think you got some right there before Steve asked.

When they came for Bucky at Kreischberg, he figured his number was up.  He’d helped carry remains of former fellow prisoners out of Zola’s lab, unbuckled straps from corpses of men who looked like they hadn’t gone easy.  He longed to fight hard enough to make them kill him quickly – he could at least damage a few, even tired and hungry – but they all knew the drill after that had happened the first time.  They didn’t punish you at all – other than whatever they did to you in the lab anyway – but they shot a fellow prisoner or two for every one of them you hit.  So Bucky walked off with them as jauntily as he could manage, tossing a “See you fellas around – save me a beer” back to his fellow POWs and relieved right down to his core that Steve would never be in a place like this.

He doesn’t remember anymore everything they’ve done to him on this table; he’s forgetting as fast as he can.  At least they don’t ask for information.  He thinks he wouldn’t give it, but he’d hate to find out he was wrong.  They haven’t even tried to stop him muttering his name, rank, and serial number; they ignore any noises he makes, except for Dr. Zola, who says “hmm” when his screams are particularly ragged.

So he gets through it by remembering Steve.  Sometimes he can think of Steve – his smile when a drawing comes out right or Bucky comes home, his voice saying “I can do this all day” – Bucky mumbles along to that memory when he can – the feel of Steve’s spine under his hands, or Steve’s fingers on the back of his neck after a long day.  Other times whatever they’re doing to him leaves him able only to survive from breath to breath.  He’s so damn grateful to Steve for showing him the way, but grateful too that no one makes it through more than a few days of this.  It would kill Steve to ever know that Bucky had had to learn this skill.