"She should've been proud of you. I would," she huffs, angry on his behalf even if it's none of her business. Realizing that she'd said all that out loud but also refusing to take any of it back, she just leans back into her pillows and brings the blanket up to her chin. "Many of us here would be quite literally dead without you."
It takes her a moment to place the irrational surge of emotion: jealousy. Not over him, specifically, but at the fact that somewhere out there was a woman who turned him down. What wouldn't someone like Stephanie Rogers give for an opportunity like that? To have a good man and a good life? It really isn't fair that others get to squander what people like her would hold so dearly in their hands.
"She doesn't know what she's missing," she mumbles bitterly.
Bucky laughs softly and shakes his head. "Oh, she was proud, but I think it was more of the diamond on her finger than of me. Women want a husband who both makes a ton of money and come home at night, Miss Rogers. Since I have the money and never come home, I only fill half the requirements."
He doesn't know why he's having such a personal conversation with a patient but he is and he is locked into it. She has a way of getting him to talk that others don't.
His explanation only makes her huffier. "Not all women," she grumbles. It's such a stupid generalization — even if she acknowledges that it would be nice if she had a husband with the means and who liked spending time with her enough to come home.
But she has to smile at his admission. "That's alright, it's making me feel better. You know, about being single and probably never ever getting married. That's your job, right? To make me feel better?" she jokes. Because she doesn't want him to stop. It's nice, to have a conversation like a normal person, instead of all the prodding and the medical talk. Or just to have a conversation at all; she's never really had visitors.
He's also... well. She likes listening to him talk. He can read the phone book and it would rivet her attention.
“I guess we can be single together, Miss Rogers. It isn’t as if I have time to meet anyone when I’m here all the time. My fiancée was someone I went to college with,” he tells her.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a guy coming around to bring you sketchpads, though. I haven’t seen anyone at all come visit you except for me and I don’t count. I don’t think that’s particularly right.”
He shouldn’t do it but he touches her hand lightly. “Don’t worry about being single for long. You’re talented and can hold one hell of a conversation. Men would be stupid not to go for that.”
The touch surprises her. He's not supposed to be doing this, is he? Or telling her that they can just be single together. Ha.
"Men do not want to spend their lives taking care of other people," she says, with bitterness in her tone. She realizes she's talking to a doctor, who does exactly that, but that's a different situation entirely. "Doesn't matter that I know how to cook, how to sew a shirt and a wound, how to please a man—" She pinks at the admission, but continues, "—when I'm sick half the time to manage that anyway. Nobody wants a woman like that for a wife."
She should pull her hand away, shouldn't she? But she doesn't want to. So she plays dumb, like he's just checking her pulse or something. Doctors do that, right?
"Sickness and health," Bucky says. He doesn't let go of her hand even though he should and he shrugs a little bit.
"I made a whole career out of taking care of sick people. When you meet the right person, it doesn't matter. You want to take care of them because you love them. If someone can't get past your health, that's not a person you want around anyway. They just want someone who cooks, cleans, and pleases them in bed without any of the important stuff. You don't want people who don't see past the shallow things."
She nods emphatically. "I hope you find your person." And she means it. He's very kind. It would be awful for someone like him to spend the rest of his life alone when he deserves to be loved and happy and cared for.
Then she shrugs. "I'm not really sure I wanna meet mine." Her gaze turns distant and her expression sad. "What's the point if I won't live long enough, anyway? I don't wanna be the reason for anyone's suffering." She wants a great big love, a grand romance, that's true, but she also knows the odds are stacked against her. Even if she did find someone who would love her despite her status and her health, she would leave him eventually, and she'd seen what death and grief does to people — like what had happened to her mother.
"No? I'm sure your person is out there waiting for you," Bucky argues back. "And they want you in spite of any challenges they have to overcome to be with you. You really want to shut the door on that? Some people would rather have a great love and lose it than never be loved."
Bucky thinks he's one of those people, actually, and decides to say so.
"I know I would. I would rather have the real thing for a little while than never get to have it."
She's quiet for a moment, pursing her lips together. Then, softly, almost as if she's embarrassed to admit it, she says, "Me too. I... I just don't wanna get my hopes up, I guess. Whenever anything nice happens to me, something worse always comes afterward."
Then she squeezes his hand. "I hope you find her, one day. Someone who loves you so much she will do anything to be with you. She'll bring you lunch when you get too busy and wait for you when you're up late because of an emergency and sing you to sleep when you're too tired." Seriously, it's not that hard. And if it were her, she'll fill his house with sketches, read him books, mend his clothes. If he can only be home for a few hours, then she'll make them count.
"Well, I'm not gonna rule it out," Bucky says. He squeezes her hand lightly. "But you shouldn't sell yourself so short, Miss Rogers. You have a lot to offer the world to just write yourself off before you get a chance to shine."
Bucky thinks so, anyway, and he wishes she wasn't so down on herself. She has medical problems, certainly, but she has a lot of value and light to bring to the world.
Well, she's blushing now. "You're very kind. I... I'll try."
She spends the next couple of hours thinking about what he'd said while sketching another portrait of him on a blank page she'd found in the book she has. It's as she imagines him at the end of his day, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, holding a glass of wine as he winds down for the evening. That's what rich people are like, right?
Then, in a burst of inspiration, she adds a some more details to the background. Half a frame in the corner, since he'd said he was going to frame the sketch she'd given him. Part of a table, with a meal waiting for him. A woman's hand, her fingers slender though calloused from housework, covering his left hand, obscuring whether there is or isn't a wedding ring. She likes to think there is, just as she pretends that the woman's hand is hers.
She quickly shuts the book when he returns to the room, having forgotten that he'd said he was going to come back to bring her some paper and pencils. "Hi," she greets, suddenly shy.
Bucky comes in and while he's technically off-shift for the evening, he does give Steph a cursory look, trying to see if she looks any different than when he'd seen her this afternoon. If anything, there's more color in her face and that can only be a good thing. If he didn't know she was very ill, he'd think she was blushing.
"Your color is better, Miss Rogers," he says, flashing her a smile. "That can only mean good news. Have you been drawing this evening or am I not allowed to know?"
Maybe this is borderline flirting and he should stop but she's very easy to talk to, easier than anyone else these days.
She glances away, her blush darkening. "Don't be mad," she mumbles before handing the book on her lap to him, opened to the page with the new sketch. "I was just thinking about what you said..."
She's been thinking about him a lot more, actually, because he's nice and cute and he's said there's no one back home who might get angry that some strange woman in the hospital is drawing pictures of him. She knows she's not supposed to, since he's her doctor and all that, but she can't help it. Then again she's not supposed to pick fights either, but that hasn't stopped her before, has it? At least this time no one's getting hurt.
She watches his face, bracing herself to be berated for being weird and inappropriate and not acting like she ought to — but also curious how that might look on him, how the lines and curves on that handsome face might change. In fact, she starts to imagine how he might wear more intense emotions: anger, desire, pleasure...
Bucky is a little surprised at the portrait but only because of its intimacy. Does his face ever get soft like that or did she just imagine it? Just like he had with the portrait before, he traces a fingertip over the lines of it. It strikes him that there's a woman's hand in the portrait that's covering his own but he can't tell who it belongs to.
"This is beautiful," he says softly. "More than the other one, even. How is it that you can see me like this? I don't think anyone has ever seen right through me the way you do."
He doesn't lift his head as he says it, too fascinated by the drawing, and a lock of hair falls over his forehead.
"I don't know. I just... think about you a lot, I guess." Wait, what? "I mean—"
She thinks to explain, but quickly decides against it before she can admit that she's imagined him in far more, ah, intimate scenarios. She just slowly sinks back beneath the covers, mortified, and hopes he'll also just pretend this is a side-effect of some drug she'd been taking or something.
But because she can never really shut up: "I feel like I know you. Maybe in another life." Oh God Stephanie stop being fucking weird.
The question seems stark in the room and even though he'd asked it softly, Bucky feels as if he's almost said it too loudly because it's something that can get him in trouble - not that she is attracted to him, that happens, but that he's attracted back.
It's hard not to be. She's beautiful, talented, and in spite of her illness she has a passion for life that can't be matched. She seems pretty adamant that she'd be better than his ex fiancee at a lot of things, most notably the emotional ones, and that is tempting. He is lonely, after all.
"You don't have to tell me. It's just, I am attracted to you. More than I should be. It's not something I should do as a doctor. It's unfair to you to pretend that I'm not, though."
She's visibly startled by the question, the answer already there on her face, clear as day. Then she gets defensive and skittish, sinking into her pillows while she makes a vain attempt to hide her face by pulling the covers up to her chin. "Yeah, so what? I bet you get that all the time. And it's not like I'm asking you to like me back." She already knows he doesn't, because nobody who does will call her Miss Rogers, and besides, rich boys like him don't hang around girls like her.
And then he says he... does?
She gives him an incredulous, disbelieving look. "Really?" But her distrust quickly disappears because he keeps looking at her with that earnestness he says he's not sure how she sees — because it's right there.
Then another thing occurs to her. "Oh shit. Are you in trouble? Did my sketches get you in trouble?"
Edited (need more coffee lmao) 2025-06-19 06:26 (UTC)
"In trouble? Absolutely not," Bucky says. "No one would care about those except me and I care a lot about them. Besides, I brought you a sketchbook and pencils to further your art."
He pulls them out and puts them on her lap. This is much easier to talk about than feelings.
"You wanted me to sit for another portrait, right? You're already great at drawing me but I thought you might want a live model. And yes, really. I am drawn to you even if I shouldn't be. You're amazing. I've never met a woman quite like you before."
She was relieved that he wasn't in any trouble, but that relief quickly turned into shock when he placed the art supplies on her lap. She straightened up and ran a hand over them, fingertips gingerly touching the surface. "I..." She was stunned. "These are new." When she'd requested some supplies she'd expected pieces of scrap paper and equally used pencils, not brand new, expensive items. "They're beautiful. No one's ever given me... I can't accept—"
He knows just how to make her agree though, because when he offers to sit for her, how could she say no to that? She couldn't even resist bringing her hand up to lightly touch his cheek, especially when he compliments her. Thankfully she's seated because her head might be spinning a little.
"I'm sorry I'm not..." Rich. The kind of girl his parents would want him to bring home, who he should be with. And yet she can't pull away either. "But I really like you." She then adds, in a whisper, because it feels too intimate and somewhat forbidden, "James." Of course she knows his name, has taken note of it off his nameplate and prescriptions and paperwork.
"Sorry you're not what?" he asks, just as softly. He's said his name and it feels so good that he wants to beg her to say it again and again. It's inappropriate, however, and he doesn't. What he does do next is highly inappropriate and he covers her hand on his cheek.
"Stephanie, I like you too. I shouldn't, you're my patient, but I do. I want to be the one to go home and take care of you so you don't have to work and get sick again. It tears my heart out to know you're going to leave this hospital and wind right back up here because you need to work. You deserve a chance to rest and heal."
He closes his eyes for a moment and savors the touch. "Do you still want me to sit for you?"
"I'm dirt poor and an orphan, James. My Ma managed to send me through nursing school but I've been too sick to actually work as one." Too sick for a regular job, basically, so she cleaned and waitressed and did laundry and repaired people's clothes and whatever odd job was available whenever she was feeling well enough for it. "You deserve better than that."
And yet she knows she can make him happy in other ways. Which is why she doesn't pull away, and even says, "I won't always be your patient." Maybe she can try what he'd suggested and sketch for rich people. That would be work she'll love, and pretty easy too, unless the clients were mean and she'd get into fights with them.
"Yeah, I do. You wanna do it now, or..." She pauses for a moment, biting her lower lip. "Wait until after I'm discharged? I can go to your house. You'll be more comfortable there."
"Who says you can't do more than one sitting?" Bucky says, giving her a little bit of a smile. "Because I don't really want to leave, necessarily, even though I'm off-shift right now."
Normally he would be standing while examining her but right now, he sits on the edge of her hospital bed; Stephanie is so thin that he has plenty of room to do so.
"Unless you don't want to draw me tonight? As to you being poor and an orphan, do you think I care about that? I don't."
He has a really nice smile that she can't help smiling back. And he smells really nice, too. "Have you eaten your dinner? I can wait until after you have." He might've gotten too engrossed with his work that he'd forgotten to eat. They still have a bit of time before visiting hours end anyway.
At his insistence that he didn't care about her social status, she ducks her head and releases him to fidget with the supplies he'd brought her. "I'm glad you don't," she admits quietly. "I'll work hard. I'll make you happy."
"I had something," he assures her. "I grabbed a sandwich from the cart before they were all out. Trust me, I listen to my stomach even if I don't listen to anything else."
Bucky hears her say she'll work hard and he shakes his head. "Only if you want to, Stephanie. I don't require you to have a job or work yourself half to death. It's not something you have to do to prove yourself to me."
"A sandwich? You need to eat better." Not nagging, just concerned. He works so hard. "I can cook for you once I get discharged," she offers with a blush. He'd said she doesn't have to work too hard to prove herself, but taking care of someone you like isn't work at all.
She scoots a bit more to the side so he has more room on her bed, then picks out a pencil from the set he'd brought her. "These are so nice," she comments, before finally selecting one and opening the sketchpad to its first page. She scrawls Stephanie Grace Rogers on the bottom right corner in a neat cursive, then flips to the next page to begin her first sketch.
She peers up at him. "You don't gotta stay still or anything, we can keep talking." She does reach up with her free hand to tuck a stray strand of his hair back so his face is clear, then takes a long, good look before starting to sketch the outline of his profile.
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It takes her a moment to place the irrational surge of emotion: jealousy. Not over him, specifically, but at the fact that somewhere out there was a woman who turned him down. What wouldn't someone like Stephanie Rogers give for an opportunity like that? To have a good man and a good life? It really isn't fair that others get to squander what people like her would hold so dearly in their hands.
"She doesn't know what she's missing," she mumbles bitterly.
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He doesn't know why he's having such a personal conversation with a patient but he is and he is locked into it. She has a way of getting him to talk that others don't.
"I shouldn't talk about such things."
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But she has to smile at his admission. "That's alright, it's making me feel better. You know, about being single and probably never ever getting married. That's your job, right? To make me feel better?" she jokes. Because she doesn't want him to stop. It's nice, to have a conversation like a normal person, instead of all the prodding and the medical talk. Or just to have a conversation at all; she's never really had visitors.
He's also... well. She likes listening to him talk. He can read the phone book and it would rivet her attention.
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“I’m surprised you don’t have a guy coming around to bring you sketchpads, though. I haven’t seen anyone at all come visit you except for me and I don’t count. I don’t think that’s particularly right.”
He shouldn’t do it but he touches her hand lightly. “Don’t worry about being single for long. You’re talented and can hold one hell of a conversation. Men would be stupid not to go for that.”
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"Men do not want to spend their lives taking care of other people," she says, with bitterness in her tone. She realizes she's talking to a doctor, who does exactly that, but that's a different situation entirely. "Doesn't matter that I know how to cook, how to sew a shirt and a wound, how to please a man—" She pinks at the admission, but continues, "—when I'm sick half the time to manage that anyway. Nobody wants a woman like that for a wife."
She should pull her hand away, shouldn't she? But she doesn't want to. So she plays dumb, like he's just checking her pulse or something. Doctors do that, right?
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"I made a whole career out of taking care of sick people. When you meet the right person, it doesn't matter. You want to take care of them because you love them. If someone can't get past your health, that's not a person you want around anyway. They just want someone who cooks, cleans, and pleases them in bed without any of the important stuff. You don't want people who don't see past the shallow things."
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Then she shrugs. "I'm not really sure I wanna meet mine." Her gaze turns distant and her expression sad. "What's the point if I won't live long enough, anyway? I don't wanna be the reason for anyone's suffering." She wants a great big love, a grand romance, that's true, but she also knows the odds are stacked against her. Even if she did find someone who would love her despite her status and her health, she would leave him eventually, and she'd seen what death and grief does to people — like what had happened to her mother.
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Bucky thinks he's one of those people, actually, and decides to say so.
"I know I would. I would rather have the real thing for a little while than never get to have it."
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Then she squeezes his hand. "I hope you find her, one day. Someone who loves you so much she will do anything to be with you. She'll bring you lunch when you get too busy and wait for you when you're up late because of an emergency and sing you to sleep when you're too tired." Seriously, it's not that hard. And if it were her, she'll fill his house with sketches, read him books, mend his clothes. If he can only be home for a few hours, then she'll make them count.
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Bucky thinks so, anyway, and he wishes she wasn't so down on herself. She has medical problems, certainly, but she has a lot of value and light to bring to the world.
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She spends the next couple of hours thinking about what he'd said while sketching another portrait of him on a blank page she'd found in the book she has. It's as she imagines him at the end of his day, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, holding a glass of wine as he winds down for the evening. That's what rich people are like, right?
Then, in a burst of inspiration, she adds a some more details to the background. Half a frame in the corner, since he'd said he was going to frame the sketch she'd given him. Part of a table, with a meal waiting for him. A woman's hand, her fingers slender though calloused from housework, covering his left hand, obscuring whether there is or isn't a wedding ring. She likes to think there is, just as she pretends that the woman's hand is hers.
She quickly shuts the book when he returns to the room, having forgotten that he'd said he was going to come back to bring her some paper and pencils. "Hi," she greets, suddenly shy.
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"Your color is better, Miss Rogers," he says, flashing her a smile. "That can only mean good news. Have you been drawing this evening or am I not allowed to know?"
Maybe this is borderline flirting and he should stop but she's very easy to talk to, easier than anyone else these days.
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She's been thinking about him a lot more, actually, because he's nice and cute and he's said there's no one back home who might get angry that some strange woman in the hospital is drawing pictures of him. She knows she's not supposed to, since he's her doctor and all that, but she can't help it. Then again she's not supposed to pick fights either, but that hasn't stopped her before, has it? At least this time no one's getting hurt.
She watches his face, bracing herself to be berated for being weird and inappropriate and not acting like she ought to — but also curious how that might look on him, how the lines and curves on that handsome face might change. In fact, she starts to imagine how he might wear more intense emotions: anger, desire, pleasure...
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"This is beautiful," he says softly. "More than the other one, even. How is it that you can see me like this? I don't think anyone has ever seen right through me the way you do."
He doesn't lift his head as he says it, too fascinated by the drawing, and a lock of hair falls over his forehead.
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She thinks to explain, but quickly decides against it before she can admit that she's imagined him in far more, ah, intimate scenarios. She just slowly sinks back beneath the covers, mortified, and hopes he'll also just pretend this is a side-effect of some drug she'd been taking or something.
But because she can never really shut up: "I feel like I know you. Maybe in another life." Oh God Stephanie stop being fucking weird.
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The question seems stark in the room and even though he'd asked it softly, Bucky feels as if he's almost said it too loudly because it's something that can get him in trouble - not that she is attracted to him, that happens, but that he's attracted back.
It's hard not to be. She's beautiful, talented, and in spite of her illness she has a passion for life that can't be matched. She seems pretty adamant that she'd be better than his ex fiancee at a lot of things, most notably the emotional ones, and that is tempting. He is lonely, after all.
"You don't have to tell me. It's just, I am attracted to you. More than I should be. It's not something I should do as a doctor. It's unfair to you to pretend that I'm not, though."
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And then he says he... does?
She gives him an incredulous, disbelieving look. "Really?" But her distrust quickly disappears because he keeps looking at her with that earnestness he says he's not sure how she sees — because it's right there.
Then another thing occurs to her. "Oh shit. Are you in trouble? Did my sketches get you in trouble?"
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He pulls them out and puts them on her lap. This is much easier to talk about than feelings.
"You wanted me to sit for another portrait, right? You're already great at drawing me but I thought you might want a live model. And yes, really. I am drawn to you even if I shouldn't be. You're amazing. I've never met a woman quite like you before."
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He knows just how to make her agree though, because when he offers to sit for her, how could she say no to that? She couldn't even resist bringing her hand up to lightly touch his cheek, especially when he compliments her. Thankfully she's seated because her head might be spinning a little.
"I'm sorry I'm not..." Rich. The kind of girl his parents would want him to bring home, who he should be with. And yet she can't pull away either. "But I really like you." She then adds, in a whisper, because it feels too intimate and somewhat forbidden, "James." Of course she knows his name, has taken note of it off his nameplate and prescriptions and paperwork.
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"Stephanie, I like you too. I shouldn't, you're my patient, but I do. I want to be the one to go home and take care of you so you don't have to work and get sick again. It tears my heart out to know you're going to leave this hospital and wind right back up here because you need to work. You deserve a chance to rest and heal."
He closes his eyes for a moment and savors the touch. "Do you still want me to sit for you?"
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And yet she knows she can make him happy in other ways. Which is why she doesn't pull away, and even says, "I won't always be your patient." Maybe she can try what he'd suggested and sketch for rich people. That would be work she'll love, and pretty easy too, unless the clients were mean and she'd get into fights with them.
"Yeah, I do. You wanna do it now, or..." She pauses for a moment, biting her lower lip. "Wait until after I'm discharged? I can go to your house. You'll be more comfortable there."
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Normally he would be standing while examining her but right now, he sits on the edge of her hospital bed; Stephanie is so thin that he has plenty of room to do so.
"Unless you don't want to draw me tonight? As to you being poor and an orphan, do you think I care about that? I don't."
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At his insistence that he didn't care about her social status, she ducks her head and releases him to fidget with the supplies he'd brought her. "I'm glad you don't," she admits quietly. "I'll work hard. I'll make you happy."
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Bucky hears her say she'll work hard and he shakes his head. "Only if you want to, Stephanie. I don't require you to have a job or work yourself half to death. It's not something you have to do to prove yourself to me."
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She scoots a bit more to the side so he has more room on her bed, then picks out a pencil from the set he'd brought her. "These are so nice," she comments, before finally selecting one and opening the sketchpad to its first page. She scrawls Stephanie Grace Rogers on the bottom right corner in a neat cursive, then flips to the next page to begin her first sketch.
She peers up at him. "You don't gotta stay still or anything, we can keep talking." She does reach up with her free hand to tuck a stray strand of his hair back so his face is clear, then takes a long, good look before starting to sketch the outline of his profile.
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