Steve goes very, very still as Bucky checks the dressings. He's not the type you save, he's the type you stop. But Steve's too tired to play that game. Would he fight? If he had to?

He stares at the man above him as if studying all the nuances of a painting thought lost, and has no answer.

"We met when we were children," he says, when the silence is less like knives. "You protected me. My whole life. That's who you were. What you did. I wasn't much before the serum, Buck-- but I never walked away from a fight. And you were always there to pick me up, and patch my wounds." Like now. He doesn't say it, but his eyes track the motion of Bucky's hands. "And you called me all kinds of words for it, but I knew, I always knew you had my back." He's babbling. If he were anyone else, maybe he could get away with blaming it on the pain, but he isn't anyone else and he doesn't even try. He's just a man who misses his best friend.

"I still trust that," he says softly. "I still trust you."