A/N: Last chapter, kids. Hope you enjoyed it :) More stories will be coming, I'm sure, as I have time to write them. Thanks again for all the kind reviews!

"Turns out you can still get sick, huh?" Bucky sits on the edge of Steve's bed, a wide comfortable thing now, with plenty of cushion. He's holding out a frankly massive cup of soup. A large frosted-over blue frosted ice-pack rests in the metal hand against his knee.

Steve doesn't trust this mattress he knows: it's too soft. Bucky doesn't blame him. But Steve's just going to have to put up with it, because Bucky's sure as hell not letting him get up for a while.

"Ugh…yeah." Steve groans, big hand flopped over his eyes. "Who knew?"
He'll probably be over whatever he's got by this time tomorrow, but for now he's hot and nauseous and shivering, and he feels like utter garbage. "At least I'm not... gonna have… a fucking asthma attack."

Bucky smirks, shoving Steve's hand out of the way and laying the ice-pack over his forehead. Steve groans a little louder, but this time it sounds more relieved than pained.
"Language, punk. Geeze, and here I thought I was the one that talked like a sailor."

"I'm sick. I can swear all I damn well please." Steve mutters, holding the ice-pack in place with one hand as he wriggles upright, accepting the hot soup.

"Ri-i-ight." Bucky grins indulgently. "Whatever you say. Now eat."

"You know he'd probably throat-punch me if I tried to play nurse?" Clint remarks, not looking up from where he's fussing over the fletching of an arrow.
Bucky's been in the Captain's room for the last half hour, fussing over him. The others are still not completely sure what to make of that.

"You make a crappy nurse." Natasha counters, without missing a beat. She's just field-stripped and reassembled a pistol, clocking in at just under 15 seconds. Not bad… she muses to herself. But she could do better if she tried.
"Trust me."

"He'd probably at least yell at me, but I don't know about punching." Sam offers as kindly as he can. "Gotta say, though... I didn't think he could even get sick, with that whole super-man thing he's got going on."

"Turns out, nobody's perfect."
They turn as one to find that Bucky has reappeared in the doorway, empty soup mug the size of a small cauldron in his flesh hand. He drops it on the kitchen counter and himself into a seat.
"If anybody was gonna beat the odds and still manage to get sick, it'd be that idiot." He somehow manages to turn the insult into an endearment. He always does.

"You sound like the voice of experience." Clint has set the arrow aside and is now fiddling with a throwing knife, testing the balance in his palm. He twirls it once experimentally. "You his official babysitter or somethin'?"

Bucky snorts, running metal fingers through his hair. "Somethin' like that. Stiff breeze would've knocked him over when we were kids. Don't know how many times I thought he was a gonner. Just too damned stubborn to die, thank god."

"You do realize you're probably the only guy on earth that Captain America is willing to let take care of him, though, right?" Sam interjects. The therapist in him likes giving Bucky reasons to feel special. Useful. Bucky needs to be reminded that he's a force for good, not just a killing machine.
After the crap he's survived, he deserves reminders wherever they come up.

The friend in Sam just wants to make his friend feel better.

"Yeah, that's force of habit, probably." Bucky says easily in answer, even if they all know it's bullshit. "I never gave him a choice about it then. Still don't. I guess he forgot he's bigger'n me now and I can't just bully him into cooperatin'."

"Sure, of course." Natasha's tone is even, but she's obviously not buying a word of it. "I'm sure the king of ' Tis but a fleshwound' just forgot he hates getting looked after. That's plausible."

"Hey," Bucky stretches out his legs and lets his eyes drift shut as he tips his head back. It's a sign of how much he trusts the others that he's willing to literally bare his throat in front of them like this. "Steve's my kid brother. What can ya do?"

"He's not-" Clint starts, but he shuts right back up when Bucky cracks an eye and glares at him.

"Steve's family." He says firmly, shutting the eye again and settling back. "Family takes care of each other. End of story."

Nobody else argues the point with him.