He was tucking a leg of the sweats under his pillow so that it wouldn't be lumpy when he lay his head down, and he glanced over when Steve entered. His friend was looking better clean, fed and with the last traces of a flush fading from the man's cheeks. If he hadn't seen the bruises, scrapes and other signs of hardship, he could have thought that everything had been a bad dream. It wasn't, and he pulled back the covers to allow Steve to climb into bed more readily next to him. He was very desperately tired now.

Yet, he stiffened at the request and hiked the covers higher up his chest as if that would provide some of the necessary decency that Steve was craving from him. "Why? Does it bother you if I'm like this?" No one had seemingly ever been upset at his body after all; it was all business-like, a well-oiled machine or whatever they had begun to call it near the end there.