Work Text:
Sam wanders through the festival crowd soaking in sunshine, watching dancers and musicians with hats set out for tips. It's a mishmash of scents and sights, breeze and coffee and pastries, tables crowded with tourists with sunscreen-streaked arms and toes burned pink.
If Bucky Barnes is anywhere today, it's here.
Steve can try to find his friend in bunkers full of weapons and rust, and that's his choice to make. But everything Sam's turned up shows the same thing Steve refuses to hear: this is not a man who has Steve or HYDRA as his first priority.
Harsh? Maybe. But Sam knows how it is to try to get his head on straight and Steve doesn't. If Sam has Bucky's measure right from talking to backpackers and cafe backroom staff, this is where he’ll be. The crowd is painfully normal and irresistible as an opportunity to make easy money.
Whoever Steve's friend is now, he farms. He picks fruit. He plants trees. He works harvest and lambing and washes dishes. By all appearances, he’s like most of the ex-Special Forces men Sam's known in that he never wants to touch a weapon again.
He paints children's faces at a festival, even.
Sam doubletakes, looks again, and discovers it's true. He's here. His hair dyed watery red, friendship bracelets massed on his wrist, paint smearing his forearm and nails. Heavy hipster frames squaring his face. But it's Bucky holding the paintbrush, it's Bucky dipping the tip into the palette over his knee and tickling it over the face of a little boy clutching an older woman's hand, squirming and wrinkling his nose.
Sam stops to watch him finish the ears on the tiger, little fluffs of white, touch up a couple of the stripes, then gesture to the mirror beside him.
The kid beams and tugs on the older woman's sleeve with a stream of happy chatter that warms Sam's grinchy heart out of its shock.
She makes delighted noises and takes a picture, then kisses Bucky's cheeks, pressing cash into his hands, Bucky answering with a tilt of his eyes and a lazy Sunday morning smile that makes her blush and slap his arm and add an extra note to the pile she's put in his hand.
Then they're gone, and it's only Bucky in his shitty disguise and Sam breathing against the molten vindication singing in his skin. He steps forward. "What if I wanna get painted?"
"Why ain't you sat down, then," Bucky answers, and he daubs the tips of his brushes in a murky jar. There's no indication he recognises Sam, but Sam's pretty sure he wouldn't talk this way to a complete stranger. "What do you want?"
Good question. Good damn question now that he's here and found the man himself. Sam takes a seat where the kid was, looking at himself in the little makeup mirror, at Bucky grinding the bristles of his brushes dry against a folded paper towel. His left hand is gloved. Sam wants to poke at him and see if he's right about this part of all Steve's unsaids too. "How about a rainbow heart right here?" tapping his left cheek.
Bucky raises an eyebrow. "Catholics," less discouragement and more a warning.
"Then put some flowers on the other one," Sam says. "Go for a triple." Like Sam just did.
"Why," Bucky starts, and eyes Sam, and cuts himself off with a nod. "Gotcha."
"Wow, your eyes work, good job," Sam tells him, indulging himself in being a little bit of a dick. "No wonder you're an artist." He means it actually, that tiger was gorgeous.
Bucky scowls and dips a brush in paint. "Well, once upon a time, I went to art school. Might've something to do with it."
Sam holds himself still at the first tickle of bristles on his skin. "You remember or you were told?"
"I remember life drawing classes and bein' real, real confused about myself," so dry Sam almost doesn't follow until he does and jerks back to smirk. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. It was a time."
Still, nothing so far confirms that Bucky realises who he's painting. "You know who I am?"
Bucky squints, something guileless about it despite the frames and dyed hair and glove. "Not really. I think you're his friend." His eyes shift a moment, side to side in the struggle of distant memory. "It's Richard of Old York, Gave... Do you know what I mean?"
Sam hasn't heard that mnemonic in a long long while. That shit's old. "Almost," Sam says. "Today we say R-O-Y-G-B-I-V."
"Right," frowning and dipping his paintbrush into the bright deep red again, then pausing to tilt out his wrist with a deeper frown. "Okay, but that's not a mnemonic, that's an acronym."
"Take it up with whoever invented it," Sam says, half-kidding.
Bucky gives a prissy shake of his head and touches his brush to Sam's cheek. "Thanks, might write them a letter."
It's kind of close, sitting this way. Really close. It should be way more awkward, but it's not. Sam resists the urge to close his eyes. "It's email these days. Phones, even."
"No thank you," he says darkly, and Sam struggles against a smile. Okay, no contact info yet.
Bucky's artist's hand is delicate, yielding, the stroke of his brushes ticklish. Sam can just about count his eyelashes, taste the chapped line in his bottom lip. He distracts himself from Bucky's face and peeks at his own in the mirror instead. The angle is bad but Sam holds still for the brush, unwilling to ruin what Bucky's started.
The heart layers on his cheek in bright colours, lines alternating to dry before he strokes down fresh paint in between. And over Sam's nose feathery green trails, leaves against the tip of his nose, a branch curving down against his jaw to rise vertically and streak across his cheek the green of a flower Sam's only seen in shop windows. "What is that?"
"Bird of paradise," Bucky says absently, face focused, adding a fan of orange above purple, the tip of his brush coming so close to Sam's eye that the grip of his glove on Sam's jaw, the way he's so near Sam can see the brown dots in his irises, is comforting.
"Bird of paradise," Sam repeats, pushing the smile in his mouth deep down into his throat. Might not know his name but sure knows how to use the Falcon callsign to flirt, huh. "I'm Sam."
"Hi, Sam," Bucky says, not moving away as he mixes red and pink and yellow, then draws along the green a tinge of blush-pink.
Bucky's breath on his skin, the cold drag of the bristles, sun warming his shoulders. It's all so close and there's beauty painting his skin. Vivid pride colours on the left, and this flower he's never seen, bold and startling enough that it balances out the heart with what flower is that? for anybody looking twice.
Flirty and thoughtful and a touch gentle as the pat of a senior cat's paw. What a combo.
"Hate to break this up, but I gotta ask what you're doing here," Sam says, holding still for touchups to the blue streak on his cheek. That colour seems runnier than the others. "Not why this, I know you're making some spare cash. Why in the area. In general."
Bucky eyes him with a smile barely there. "You know anything about Johann Fennhoff?"
Sam frowns despite his best efforts, the brush lifting from his face as he thinks. "Rings a bell," he says finally.
"The villa with the copper roofs and marble chapel, you woulda seen it on your way in," Bucky says, wetting his brush and leaning in again. He really is very close. Sam can see the closeness of his shave, the promise of a dimple in his chin. His breath tastes of spice and tannins. "It was his. He was their hypnosis expert."
Ah. "So you are here for HYDRA."
"Sort of," Bucky says, smile going lopsided. "He had rabbits, used them to test how well the brainwashing was working on me. You know what the place is now?"
Sam jerks back. He remembers a sign that - with bunnies - "No way."
"An ethical angora wool farm," Bucky says, smiling around the words, the tip of his tongue tracing his waterline on telling Sam a juicy bit of gossip. "It's the same fucking rabbits. Man left it to them in trust. For their welfare."
He doesn't mean to laugh, but. Fuck.
"I'm working the wool harvest tomorrow," Bucky says, rounding the tip of one of the orange petals on Sam's cheek, that appreciative light still in his eyes. "Ya know, if you wanna come pluck some rabbits in an ethical fashion."
"Well," reeling from the absurdity and the discovery that Bucky Barnes has a sense of humour so gallows it braids its own rope, "if it's ethical, sure."
Bucky grins at him, dips the brush against Sam's cheek, and sits back with a gesture to the mirror. "What do you think?"
Sam examines himself. It's cheap paint so it'll crack over the next hour, but right now the heart's colours are vivid and unmistakable, a progression of colours blended enough to look rainbow without the green-yellow part getting muddy, and the bird of paradise flower is... "You are an artist," Sam says frankly.
"Eh, coulda woulda shoulda," Bucky says, but he looks pleased and it goes to his eyes, makes them spark brighter than the starved cling of his skin to his jaw, the sleepless bags puffing to his cheekbones.
"I'm not going to pay you," Sam decides. "You owe me for my steering wheel."
Bucky blinks, eyebrows rising. He looks and sounds very uncertain. "What'd I do to it?"
Sam blinks back. "You don't remember?"
"No," Bucky says slowly, and leans closer, examining Sam's face with a crease deepening between his eyebrows. "I used my arm, didn't I. You must've survived me. How?"
That's a hell of a question to remind Sam he's talking to someone who literally has his own fatality rate. "Not interested in talking about it," Sam says. "Just trust that you owe me a steering wheel and I'm mad about it."
"Huh," blinking again, and he sits back and dips his brushes, dries them again. "Okay. Well, nice to meet you, Sam," waving with the brushes, squinting into the square. "Have a nice day."
Sam wants to touch his face, admire the stiff green leaf, the orange and purple petals of the flower so vivid on his face, but he can feel some patches are still wet. He sneaks another glance in the mirror. He looks - hell, he looks beautiful. He likes the way this flower looks on his skin. "See you tomorrow."
"Work bus leaves from the stop at five," Bucky says, gesturing across the square to the metro station.
There's some kind of dig in there, like he thinks Sam can't manage to get up that early or something, and Sam narrows his eyes at him. "See you at ten to."
"Okay," Bucky says, clearly humouring him.
***
This part of the city centre is friendly enough not to blink too much at the heart on his face, but on the metro to where he's staying with Steve, not so much. Sam scrubs at the heart with his fingertips dipped in water, rainbow colours running down his arm and caking under his fingernails.
The bird he leaves. He looks enough of a tourist to get away with it. Bucky took a lot longer with it than he did the heart and there's something to that, the delicacy of his steady wrist.
Sam washes his hands and starts cooking, mindful of Steve coming back hangry as he always is after an unsuccessful base raid.
Steve's so focused on the food he doesn't notice the flower until he stops to take a big gulp of water, wipe his mouth, and groan like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. "What's that?"
"A bird of paradise, or something," Sam says. "I didn't want to wipe it off too fast."
Steve looks, for a solid minute, jaw flexing and eyes sharp in the warning signs he's about to pitch one of his why-won't-you-go-with-me tantrums.
Sam says nothing and keeps eating.
Then he relaxes, shakes his head, and sags into the rickety chair so hard it squeals. "Yeah, I see how you didn't." A smile touches his face and not his eyes. "It's good work."
"I thought so," Sam says. "Nothing came of it, huh?"
"No." Steve's grim all over. "I don't know why he won't come out."
Sam thinks about the rainbow heart and the mess of friendship bracelets on Bucky's wrist in particular tricolour patterns and chews very, very, very slowly so he doesn't inhale mashed potatoes.
"Sam," Steve says, all earnestness. "You don't have to avoid the bases. We make a good team. I know he's hurt you before, and revenge makes people a bit unreasonable, but I'd be right there with you. Can't promise much but I'd promise you that."
Sam wishes he were more surprised. "I have a different approach. That doesn't mean I'm afraid. It means I'm thinking differently. Can you accept that?"
Steve fidgets with his thumbnails. "He's got to be real confused," he says, all earnestness. "I think about how he's gotta be looking for clues to what all went down, and he's got to be so angry at HYDRA taking so much from him all this time. And there's no clues to any of that out there," gesturing to Sam's face. "It's real pretty but it's not a clue, you know?"
You have no fucking idea, Sam barely manages not to say. "If you're done patronising me, eat your fucking dinner."
Steve's eyes widen. "Oh, buddy, I didn't mean -"
"Eat your dinner," Sam snaps, and it's mostly an order, and Steve's jaw twitches but he scoops up some potatoes and shovels them in his mouth anyway, lips tight around his spoon.
Sam's actually kind of looking forward to sneezing his head off tomorrow.
***
Steve's asleep when Sam leaves, murmuring restlessly, arm flung out, fingers twitching empty. He told Sam once that he only really knew he'd slept if he'd dreamed of Bucky falling.
Sam's qualified for a lot, but he's a group counsellor. That there is one-on-one trauma therapist material, which Sam is not.
Instead he's going to go do something else he's unqualified for, but much less dicey. Sam picked out his sturdiest clothes, the kind he'd wear to pull up stalks in Titi's garden at home, and he finds the bus waiting with a motley crowd around it. Some people are on it already, slumped in seats; the rest are standing around with the low chatter of seeing off friends for the day.
Bucky's leaning against the wall, smoking with both of his hands in his pockets. Inhaling with a flare of the tip, exhaling around the cigarette, smoke wafting upwards and fringing his lashes in fog when he opens his eyes and looks at Sam. "You made it," he grunts, cigarette wobbling between his lips. His hair is still that faded red. It suits him.
Sam steps around someone curled up asleep, shirtless and tattooed, skin the taut bronze of a white seasonal worker circling the EU. "You thought I wouldn't?" Sam remembers Catholics, the warning in it, the balance of his face paint, and takes a hunch. "I'm tired of you old white guys. No faith."
He smiles around the cigarette, props up a foot like he's walked out of a fifties photograph. "Sorry about him."
"What, you remember how much of a pain in the ass he is?" Sam asks, only half-kidding. Even Steve's own stories make it clear the guy was a pain in Bucky's ass from sunrise to sunset and beyond.
"I apologised for him a lot, that much I'm sure of. His memory tastes of bein' real sorry all the time," Bucky says, dry as a desert. He pulls his hand out of his pocket, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and offers it to Sam.
"Nah," Sam says, thrown by the easy admission of what he assumes to be very private thoughts. Is Bucky Barnes trauma dumping? Here? Now? "I'm good. Are you good?"
"Yeah, I'm good," Bucky says, giving him a once-over so quick Sam barely catches it. He barely has enough time to think was that-? before Bucky's inhaling again. "Sorry about the cig smoke. Haven't got a lot of things I know for sure these days, but s'true I oughta keep them out of your hair."
Probably the most roundabout apology Sam's ever been given, and the most unnecessary. "Don't do it on the bus." The dumping and the smoking.
Bucky nods and stubs his cigarette between two licked fingers. It's the kind of thing Sam's uncles used to do. A tough-guy look, mostly painful, a little graceful. "Wanna share a seat or not? Bout forty minutes out."
"It's fine," Sam says, and follows him onto the bus and into a seat narrow and musty, the floor gritty under the soles of his feet. He sneezes, then drops down by the window. Bucky follows in after him, bag on his knees that he doesn't keep to himself.
Sam could nudge him back into his own space, but something about the fake glasses and the split in Bucky's lip stops him. The warmth of it, the casual angle of his arm on his thigh, the press of his shoulder. Bucky's between him and everyone else and it's not that Sam's scared, exactly, but he's also the only Black guy on the bus, and there's an implication to how Bucky's sitting that... huh. "You sure?"
"If it's OK by you," Bucky says without moving his lips. He says it the old-fashioned way, definitely the letters o and k put together.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Yeah, why not." It's Bucky’s right hand closest to Sam, and Sam touches Bucky's arm over where the hem of his sleeve falls, lets it linger there long enough for them to be perceived.
"Helps a fella out too," Bucky murmurs, and offers Sam a snack bar. "You hungry?"
Sam takes it. Unexpected kindness is one thing, looking a gift horse in the mouth is another. "Thanks."
It's an uncomfortable ride to the villa, suspension not really up to the task of going over gravel, but it's far from the worst Sam's had to carefully unclench his teeth through. The sight of the villa has him squinting.
It doesn't get much less grand close up. To Sam's eyes it's a castle, green roofs and pointy towers and ornate windows and statues.When they slip out of the bus onto pebbles, Sam stumbles into Bucky, leans into him and tilts his head back and back to take it all in. "Villa, huh."
"Yeah," Bucky says grimly. "'Oh, it's only my humble villa'," quoting in an accent too specific to identify, then dropping it with a sneer. "Pretentious fuck."
Sam bites back a laugh. "You said he left the place to the rabbits, dude. That is a pretentious-ass thing pretentious-ass people with pretentious-ass castles -"
"It's not a castle!" Bucky's laughing, hoarse and thin like it surprises him as much as Sam. "It's not."
"The fuck it isn't," Sam says with a glare at the facade. He's pretty sure some of that shit is actual crenellations, and that means it's a castle, whatever the fuck anybody says.
Bucky loops his arm in Sam's, right arm in his left, a good choice because Sam definitely would run screaming from the other one and give the game away. "Come on, that's the supervisor. I'll translate."
They're taken to a ballroom the supervisor calls a plucking room and given classes in how to treat and handle the rabbits. The rabbits are fluffy beyond belief, so fluffy Sam isn't sure how to pick them up without felting them to pom-pom-eared doll-sized rabbits on the spot.
The supervisor has a lot to say about felting, and dry hands, and having 'a peaceful aura', and the four stages of wool quality, and that if any unauthorised sharp edges are present in the hall the offender will be left to walk back to town with no help from anybody. Ditto for upsetting a rabbit, ditto for mixing stage fur, ditto for rushing and hurting a rabbit.
Their job is to be slow, careful, not mix up the wool, and absolutely one hundred percent not fuck with the farm's organic and cruelty-free certifications.
It's cool inside the ballroom, lots of fans overhead and lots of fencing run around the middle separating the rabbits by what stage they've had plucked already. It smells of hay and straw and animal and poop, something furry. Sam's given an apron and gloves with the thumb and forefinger cut off on the right hand, a rotating table to sit at, and a rabbit that nibbles the air and ignores him.
"Hi," Sam says to the rabbit, feeling awkward. He hasn't had to interact with one before, let alone ones that are fluffy as a fresh duster. Let alone ones as smart as the supervisor said they were. "Please don't bite me."
Bucky exhales next to him. "They're trained not to. I would know."
The rabbit ignores him as thoroughly as Sam ignores that particular bit of bleakness, and Sam cautiously puts his hand to its head to stroke it. It flicks one of those fluffy ears and doesn't move.
Okay. "Good rabbit," Sam says, and feels for loose fur, wool, whichever, with his bare fingers. It's a stage two rabbit, stage one already plucked, so Sam's mostly working with second quality from the part Bucky translated first as 'skirt' then 'dust ruffle'.
Figuring out the difference between the guard hair he's not supposed to pluck and the loose hair they're paid to take is easier than Sam thought it would be; the way it pulls against his fingers is different, and the plucking wool is subtly longer, loose from the skin.
His first successful wisps stack in his left palm to a pale brown cloud, ridiculously, absurdly soft, and Sam places it in the cloth bag he was given, watches the other people to see what they're doing, watches Bucky.
Bucky who is handling his rabbit with sure, delicate hands. His touch doesn't peel Sam open to watch, not exactly, but seeing that it's even possible is a jagged thing. It makes Sam remember Bucky's hands on his skin, the delicate flick of his brushes, the force of his kick that broke Sam's ribs and left him breathing bruised against a swollen spleen for weeks.
The steering wheel is the easier injury to talk about. It's not the only one.
Sam tells himself to focus, that as absurd as it feels, he's actually working right now and should at least try not to fuck it up, and copies Bucky's technique.
Right hand on the rabbit, to be sure it doesn't hop away when he isn't looking, finger and thumb lifted to avoid sweat and oils getting on the wool. Left hand dumping out the hairs in gentle puffs on top of each other, keeping the lines straight as possible in the bag.
Alternating back and forth, building cloud upon cloud of fur, the rabbit on the lazy susan settling with pets to the back of its head and once in a while, washing its face. The rabbit does not give a single fuck about Sam pulling on it and Sam relaxes into the rhythm of it, searching out puffs to tug free until all that's left are the legs and ears and butt, which are third stage and for someone else to do.
The supervisor demonstrated a series of clicks to tell the rabbit to come to his hands, but Sam really doesn't trust it'll work. He's never really heard of rabbits being trainable, whatever Bucky says. But he tries the noises as best as he can, then holds his breath as the rabbit flicks an ear, then steps into his cupped palm.
Sam feels the weight of being trusted so much by something so very small. He sets it down in a run for rabbits waiting for stage three, stroking its head when it looks around, and hovers to pat it some more. There's something about how it relaxes and chooses not to hop away even though it could.
He glances back to find Bucky watching him, a twist to his mouth as he plucks wisps and lays them into his hand the same way Sam was. "What?"
"Nah, just. You sure are gentle."
"So are you," Sam says, and the irony of the situation once he's looking for it does bite a little. These beautiful, fluffy, groomed rabbits, everything about this place tuned to their gentle care. It's a farm in the way someone's pile of yarn in a cupboard is a craft store. It's ideal. It's -
The same fucking rabbits echoes in his head. "So the ironic hipster frames just indicate how your day's going, huh."
Bucky's mouth evens into a tight smile. "Something of the sort, yeah." He addresses the rabbit on his susan very seriously. "Do you know what it's like to eat your hair?" He smooths his hand over the top of the rabbit's head, so gentle it's excruciating to watch. "No. No, you don't. Because they care about you." The smile gets worse.
Sam contemplates the warm fur under his hand, its sensitivity to water and the wetness of a person's throat. He thinks about the impulse to come back and gently groom the same rabbits that were once an instrument of torture.
He gets that. Sam clicks his tongue into the same patterns for a rabbit waiting in the second-stage run, waiting for it to come to his spread palms in the straw, and carries it to his susan, settling it with pets between its incredibly soft ears.
"First time I came home from Afghanistan for good," Sam says, "and this was for good, not out of choice, but because my closest partner was killed in front of me." He weighs more details. "RPG. He was wearing a wing pack, if you remember ripping up mine."
"I remember."
Sam wasn't expecting that, and he looks over to find Bucky's watching him with deep seriousness. Sure, he glances down to pluck more fur as he goes, to be careful and check on the rabbit's state of mind, pet if it gets agitated - but his attention is all tuned towards Sam in a steady stare of angles and focus. "So I told him that much. You know who I mean?"
"I think so," Bucky says.
"Right. But I didn't ask him if he knew what that meant. Didn't think he would, not sure if you had RPGs in your day. But I'll tell you this, give you a hint. We were close in the air. Really close."
Bucky hums, sets aside a bundle of wool so light and soft he has to shake his hand to make it to fall from his glove. "How'd you get the mist out of your hair?"
The smile on his own mouth is ugly, too ugly to show in public, and Sam ducks his head, tips out an unfinished bundle into the bag and puts a hand on the rabbit to keep it steady on the susan, the other to his mouth to cover the pained twisting things it's doing.
Yeah. That's the thing, isn't it, about being in the air with almost no armour to speak of. Maneuverability, precision, speed, those were the priorities, and a direct hit from an RPG doesn't only drop a man. It's worse than that.
It was worse than that.
"I didn't. Shaved it all off. I still smell it all for a while when I wake up," Sam says. "Anyway, I went to a mall. Don't know if you've seen one, but they have these little things for kids that go up and down, flash some lights if you put a coin in the slot. I saw one that was a rocket."
"Ah," says Bucky, knowing.
"Mhm. I put coins in for I don't know how long, and I climbed in - it did not fit me, man, I could only get one leg in, my knees were up here," gesturing to his neck, "and I sat there laughing until I cried to this little, like, rocket muzak soundtrack, do dee do -"
Bucky laughs beside him, that same hoarse startled sound, and cuts it off with an awkward noise. "Uh, sorry."
"No, you can laugh, it was ridiculous." Sam's smile settles to something easier to wear, and he stretches his fingers, careful of his turbulent feelings. A peaceful aura might be bullshit, but his agitation right now isn't. Okay. Okay. "It was fucking ridiculous."
"About as much as us being here?" Bucky asks as if he's confirming something he knows.
"Yep." Sam shapes it decisively, shakes out his hands, and offers one to the rabbit to check if he's settled enough for it to let him touch it. It sniffs for a bit but doesn't twitch when Sam reaches to pet it again. "And how fluffy these things are. I did not know they came this way, I swear to you."
"Yeah, they make really nice blankets," Bucky says, giving his rabbit the delicate two-fingered scratch of having cats at some point in his life. "Former employers loved 'em."
"You didn't get one though," Sam says, testing Bucky's tolerance, this strange mood of confidences.
Bucky shrugs. "Well, they didn't love me, did they," all wry grin and shared joke, petting the rabbit in a long smooth stroke.
Sam snickers, puts his hand to his mouth to hide his grin again. "I'd say sorry, but -"
"Turnabout's fair play, yeah," Bucky says, bright around the eyes in a way warmer than any smile Sam's seen so far, head tilted, watching him with a face so intensely open. There's a mind in that face working furiously, intently, constantly, and it doesn't want anything from Sam.
It's like being right next to a busy road listening to traffic smooth enough to be soothing static. It makes it clear to Sam, then, why he didn't turn around and go tell Steve right away that he found Bucky in that square.
He's alert, aware, oriented. His clothes and hair are clean and neat, he's employed, he's able to carry a conversation and has every sign of being capable of informed consent.
As in everything Steve doesn't think Bucky is. Sam's met vets much, much worse off. A lot of them. "Do you want me to tell him about any of this?"
"No," Bucky says. It's gentle somehow. "Thanks. For asking."
"Sure," Sam says, and sets back to the tiny rabbit in his care, all fluff and quick heartbeat, plucking loose hairs. Watching for its comfort and safety as if there was never any other way, in this place, to treat a living thing.
***
Steve's not a bad tracker, but his approach is still fundamentally wrong because he still doesn't want to listen to Sam. So the bases keep not working out and Sam keeps having to split off to avoid losing his cool inside yet another monument to rank supremacist bullshit. It's depressing to go round and round on the same argument all the time. It's depressing to volunteer what did actually fucking work to find Bucky Barnes and be slapped down, and even more depressing to think that even if he did end up telling Steve about the rabbits, Steve wouldn't believe him.
It takes him an hour to work up to the idea of maybe getting some ice. He wishes he was surprised when he opens the door of his hotel room next to Steve's and finds Bucky waiting in the hallway, hair dyed blonde and the frames even more obnoxious hipster, his left arm in a sling under an obnoxious plaid shirt. Even his boots are obnoxious. It's the perfect hipster disguise.
"All you have to do is say something racist and pretend it was ironic, and then the picture's gonna be fucking perfect," pressing his fingers together.
Bucky's eyebrows rise as if Sam's being unfair. "Not aiming to go that far, pal."
Sam shuts his eyes and leans against the doorframe. He's not being unfair. He's tired, he's annoyed, he's homesick all to hell. "I'm not in the mood."
"Well, market's got real good gelato. You want gelato? Vanilla?"
"What? Get the actual fuck out of here," Sam says, torn against the urge to step into the warmth of Bucky's voice and pretend all this shit is okay and not fucking awful. But it is. It's fucking awful, and Sam closes the door on him. Crawls into the bed he hasn't bothered to make yet and pulls his pillow over his head.
Bucky knocks. Sam ignores it.
The door opens.
"If you don't get the fuck out, I'm telling Steve," fed up and homesick. Sam's nasty and twisted up inside and he doesn't like it, he doesn't fucking want it.
"I'm gonna find out who shit in your cornflakes," Bucky mutters, door clicking shut on what sounded kind of like a threat.
Sam doesn't feel any better for telling him to fuck off, but at least he has principle to keep him warm when all he wants is to be at home with his family. Great. Good comfort. Really helps with missing the goddamn birth of his nephew.
The door opens some indeterminate amount of time later, Sam stirring from a resentful nap to see Bucky pulling stuff out of a bag. "I told you to fuck off," Sam croaks, rubbing drool out of the corners of his mouth, sleep from his eyes. He's unhappy and gritty all over, his shirt wedged into his armpits in a thick, sweaty roll.
Even the light is wrong, too bright, too cold, and Bucky fucking Barnes is still fucking here.
"Hey. Asshole. I told you to fuck off," Sam repeats. He's so tired of repeating himself to Steve, to Sarah. His boss at the VA even. He's so tired and his boss, who literally assesses veteran mental health to figure out their immediate needs, has started checking in every day.
His goddamn boss on another continent has noticed Sam's going downhill. But the guy he's literally here with - and for! - is too busy rooting around bunkers turning up big fat zeros, and the guy they're looking for is literally in his fucking room.
Sam thinks about lying back down and growing roots, melting into the bed maybe, haunting this hotel forever. It's tempting.
Bucky fucking Barnes is still messing around in his room, and Sam ignores it until he can't any longer, sitting up from his depression funk by the power of sheer fucking aggravation. "What the fuck are you -"
He curls his hands into the blanket at the sight, numbly pulling down his shirt, uncertain of what to do with himself.
"What are you doing," but it's token, he can see for himself what Bucky's doing. There's a hat saying CONGRATULATIONS! and a silvery little banner pinned up, and an oversized muffin with one of those red-and-white number candles on it, an unlit 0.
He's painting something, or sketching something. Sam wrestles with curiosity, with the soft empty fade inside him, then gets up and pads over to look.
It's a card, blue, Es ist ein Junge! written on the front. The picture of the baby is white, which Sam would never fucking buy, ever.
But Bucky's got it spread flat, brushes out, mixing paint, glancing up at Sam - no, not at Sam, at his - neck? Sam touches it, bewildered even after he understands. Because he doesn't tan there. Bucky's looking for his skin tone. Matching it, painting it on. It's a hasty fix for a reason.
"You're keeping tabs on my family," Sam says numbly, sinking into the chair across from Bucky. "You know my sister's..."
Bucky glances up at him again. The line between his eyebrows is very deep, concentration fiercely blank. "Went and looked for what made you so upset. Figured it wasn't himself," raising his eyebrows at the wall, "or you'd've pulled me in by the ear to complain. Thought maybe a family thing. It's not bad, a new baby," the words ginger now, picked out, "is it?"
A tiny, perfect nephew, Sarah and Jody, the two of them the best parents in the world? No. It's the best thing. It's the best. And the worst. "I was gonna be there," Sam says. "I promised her I'd be there."
Bucky looks at him, the line still deep between his eyebrows. Like he's actually worried about Sam. "Think I'm almost done with this. Put the hat on."
Sam smooths the wrinkles in his shirt and puts it on, chest empty and his eyes threatening to burn. Bucky shows him the picture for approval and it's gorgeous, not quite right but close, close enough to be an It's a boy! card with a little baby firmly and definitely Black. "Yeah. That's okay."
"Okay," Bucky says. "Sit where I am."
Sam shuffles around, feeling... he doesn't know what he's feeling as he watches Bucky disable the smoke alarm, put the muffin in front of Sam, use his lighter on the candle, put the card in Sam's hand. It's the kind of thing Sam would've done, normally. "You're serious."
"You did it for your cousin," Bucky answers.
That's right, actually. He was deployed for Simone's birth, and Riley and some of the other guys in the squad helped him do up a little WELCOME BABY SIMONE party in the barracks. Everybody was so invested in how it was going, if she was okay, if the baby was the cutest baby in the world. Sam got in a couple joking slapfights with guys swearing their babies were cuter until they all agreed everybody else was wrong and that was the way it was gonna have to be.
He didn't know those pictures were still on the internet. But of course they'd be, Riley put them on facebook, and Riley's too damn dead to delete anything, isn't he? Bucky must have found those pictures while he was digging.
Riley. Sam's gut aches.
"Sam," Bucky says. "Hey. Been a while since I had sisters, but that face would worry any one of 'em. You wanna look happy about it?"
"You know what would make me happy? Going the fuck home." He rubs his hands together, fingers twitching. "Steve doesn't listen to me, you don't want anything to do with him, I don't - I don't know what I'm doing here. What's the point of me?"
Bucky lowers the camera, face bulldog-wrinkled. "I thought you wanted to be here."
He jerks out a sharp, ugly laugh. "You're kidding."
"Wilson," firm and strange. "You peel your goddamn ears open and you listen good." He's only called him Sam until now, and the weird shuffle of his feet is nothing compared to the wildness in his eyes.
Sam presses back in his chair and puts his hand on the knife strapped to the underside, his whole scalp prickling danger.
"You pass up seein' your sister'n'her lil one for no goddamn reason one more time," words pressed out in a fierce tumble that devolves into a dialect Sam can't begin to understand but knows from Steve on a swearing jag is full-bore old-timey Brooklyn, and if he doesn't understand the words he definitely understands all the pointing at the door.
"Look, I don't speak thirties," Sam says, dipping a careful toe in the turbulence of Bucky's mood. Angry but not raising his voice speaks to a certain level of control that may or may not snap on him, but it's better to know now than later. "But I am here for a reason."
Bucky shakes his head, a terrible, resigned kindness in his face now. He plucks the hat from Sam's head, pinches the wick of the melting candle. "Pal. Hear me out a minute," soft, very soft as he squats down and presses the card in Sam's hand to Sam's chest.
Sam's conscious of not having showered, of his rumpled shirt and stubble, the depression funk reeking from his armpits, and he shuffles his fingers on the knife.
He must know where Sam's other hand is and what he's holding, but he doesn't bat a single eyelash. Only keeps his hand on Sam's holding on that card with its little Black baby boy painted careful as the flower was on Sam's cheek back then. "Living's hard enough without being the reason another little kid doesn't get their family all together when they need 'em. You wanna help me? Then spare me. Go home."
Sam stares him down, incredulous. "So did Steve learn the manipulative speeches from you?"
"Don't know, doesn't matter." He clicks his tongue in his cheek, eyes serious. He looks like every NCO Sam's ever dealt with, the good ones with their finger on the pulse of their unit, talking down a jittery soldier. "So? Am I gonna have to keep giving you the martyr talk until -"
It surprises him to laugh. It surprises him twice over when he realises he can't remember the last time something was funny. Shit. Shit, this holding pattern with Steve really has worn him down. "Stop. You can stop. I get it."
"Good," Bucky says. He glances around as he gets up, half sweeping the perimeter, half looking for something. "Clean up and pack your shit. I'll be back in a bit."
"I don't know when Steve'll be done," Sam says, thinking about showering, about changing his clothes. It feels less insurmountable than it did when Bucky woke him up.
He waves Sam off as if Steve, ex-best-friend, is no big deal. "Not my priority." He turns to the door, then back to Sam. "If I don't owe him my life, you don't either. Think about it."
Sam blinks after him. Huh. The brainwashed assassin has a point.
He feels better for washing up, moisturising, getting the stink out of his pits, brushing his teeth. Better still for picking out an actual set of clothes, jeans and good quality shirt, his favourite jacket.
The question of Steve was a hard one. Sam thought about calling him, but bunkers generally don't have reception and it felt kind of cold. So he left Steve a note, more of a letter about Sarah and the new baby and how he feels he'll do more there than here, and he's not helping much besides, and Steve can still call if he wants help. All true things Sam didn't want to acknowledge.
Going off on adventure after your friend's long-lost brainwashed best friend wasn't supposed to mean watching your friend devastate themself over and over and over and over. It's like Sam's role is to watch Steve's slow emotional suicide, and it's -
It's not working. Sam's not sure it ever worked.
He focuses on travel plans. He's got his passport, he entered the country legally, it should be okay. But he's got to plan an extra hour in security, which means arriving three hours early, which means -
The door opens and Sam realises he lost his game of Snake so long ago his phone is cold in his hands. Bucky gestures impatiently. "Ready?"
"Yeah," Sam says. He's written all he can write to Steve at this point. He's packed all that he was able to pick up on the way, mostly products that weren't great but at least didn't make his skin go to shit. "Yeah, but for what?"
"I'm driving you," Bucky says simply, and tosses a bag at Sam's chest. "C'mon, slowpoke."
"Who are you calling slow," Sam says, following him out the door.
The car is a tiny grey Camry parallel parked so tightly every blink is a mirage of all the scratched paint that would've happened if Sam tried the same shit. How in the actual fuck did Bucky manage that. Did he manage that? "Can you even drive?"
"Watch me." He unwedges the car without scratching anything, which Sam is pretty sure is some super soldier serum cheat code shit. Soon they're on a ring road driving fast, windows cracked, air slicing cold and fresh.
The bag has an envelope stuffed with airline tickets for a flight leaving in a couple hours, details of a hire car from New Orleans airport booked under Sam's name for when his flight gets in, and another envelope stuffed with cash in American tens and twenties. The notes aren't fresh or crisp; they're crumpled and smoothed out, the edges tattered. It's a lot of money for non consecutive bank notes out of nowhere. "Where'd you get this?"
Bucky cuts his eyes to his briefly. "Asshole tourists who refuse to learn not to tip with their own shitty cash. You take that, you're doing me a favour."
"Look at you sounding all local," Sam says, reaching into the back seat for his bag to start distributing the cash between its pockets and his own. The real issue of keeping his money will be on the American TSA, civil forfeiture end of things, but by that point he won't be anyone's problem anymore except his own. He won't be an issue for anybody period, and at this point he's looking forward to poopy baby laundry because at least he'll be helping somebody out.
But he has some pressing questions and from the exit signs not a lot of time left to get them answered. "It'd be nice to know why you're doing this."
"Me?" Bucky shakes his head, squints at a sign and undertakes into the next lane with a smooth roll of his hands on the wheel. He drives like an old man, palm hooked in the bottom edge of the wheel, grip easy in his lap. "Why'd you come with me in the first place?" He isn't looking at Sam, his mouth set. "I don't mean today, neither."
Sam's kind of horrified to realise the obnoxious tiny-ponytail plaid-hipster aesthetic is growing on him. "Dude, you invited me. You can't put something that pretty on my face and invite me places and expect me not to go, hmm, maybe I should give the crazy guy a chance."
"Ah," Bucky says, nodding seriously. "So it's the artist thing, got it."
The audacity of this guy. "It is not the fucking artist thing, that's not even a thing," Sam argues back, but holy fuck he's missed this back and forth with somebody. There used to be it with Steve, but shit's changed, with Steve. For the worse. Sam gets it, and Sam's sorry to leave him, but the air out here is the easiest he's breathed for a long while. "You're not Salvador Dali or whoever."
He makes a face like Sam's pissed in his beer. "Fucking Dali."
Sam seizes on the weakness. "Something wrong with Dali?"
"I'll tell you what's fucking wrong with Dali," Bucky sneers, pointing his chin so emphatically he looks ridiculous, lifting his finger from the wheel to count in the air. "First of all -"
"You saying surrealism isn't relevant to our lives?" Sam digs it in a little more to watch the shift of Bucky's face, the war between annoyance and laughter. "Me, I think he was a genius ahead of his time."
Bucky whistles through his teeth. "'Ahead of his time'." He makes a disgusted noise that suits his whole getup so perfectly, Sam bites his lip on a grin. What a goddamn hipster. "Listen, asshole. The clock motif - I'll tell you about the fucking clock motif, alright -"
Sam bites his lip harder on a big secret, watching Bucky rant in full-bore nerd paragraphs: he doesn't even like Dali.
But it's been months since he's had so much fun with somebody - not since the rabbits, actually - and if he can find warmth here in this tiny car with Bucky's hipster-ass hairdo and hipster-ass opinions, he can sure as hell nurse it in his chest and bring it home.
Home to Sarah, and tiny perfect AJ, and Jody, the best brother-in-law Sam never asked for. He's going to buy them so many bits of souvenir knickknack from the airport before his flight leaves. They deserve it.
Bucky lets him out at the airport as promised, leaning over the wheel to give a little wave, his face that odd, open kindness that first marked him in Sam's heart as someone he liked. "Take care of your sister. And you. You as well, I mean."
"Yeah, you too. Thanks for this," Sam says, and means it so much that when he takes Steve's call apologising for choosing not to notice Sam being unhappy, he isn't as devastated as he could've been. It hurts, a lot; but someone did notice, did help even if Steve didn't, and that matters to Sam. It matters.
***
They visit Wakanda once during the time they're on the run. There's a paramilitary bunch winding their way down from Algeria, establishing drop points and supply caches to try and pick up where Klaue left off.
Between them, Wakanda's border protections, and a squad of War Dogs, dismantling the line and handing over the last of Klaue's known associates goes easily enough that King T'Challa lets them past the border for a day or so to get their bearings.
Steve barely finishes thanking the guy before he's asking about Bucky, but King T'Challa holds up his hands in a gesture more resigned than irritated. "I understand your focus. However, I must warn you. It will not be returned. The combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia is a difficult one."
"I'm sorry, I don't know what that means," Steve says. He's grubby, wavering on his feet. They all are. "I don't mean to be rude. I just wanna see how he is."
T'Challa eyes him, face opaque, and gestures. "This way."
Sam tags along because he's kind of curious himself, ignoring Nat's raised eyebrows and Wanda's confused where is he going?
And, all right. Sam sees what King T'Challa meant.
Steve's got a hand over his mouth, staring as if he's looking at something terrible, and Sam steps up beside him. "You got a bed calling your name. Go kiss your pillow. This isn't for you to help."
Steve walks away, looking over his shoulder with that awful pity, and Sam waits until he's gone before he turns back to the room of madness. This wall is see-through from Sam's end and unmarked. The other walls, ceiling and floor included, are covered in words going sideways and crossways, upside down and spiraling into circles. There's a lot of colours. There's pictures of people with blobs for faces, flowers sketched in migraine zigzags.
For somebody who's been in disguise every time Sam's met him, this is a hell of a lot of honesty to live in.
"He looks okay," Sam says, and it's true. The walls are a bit much, but Bucky himself is washed and shaved and clean where he's bent over a bit of floor, scribbling between his feet. He's lost his left arm and a lot of the bulk he had in Germany, but not so much that Sam's concerned.
King T'Challa has his hands linked behind his back but he makes it regal, not at all soldierly. "I like your reaction."
Sam notes the emphasis on 'your' and winces. Yeah. Steve hasn't actually gotten over much where Bucky's concerned, it's just been less relevant day-to-day. "He's calm and writing stuff down. I've seen worse," Sam says truthfully. "Can I say hi?"
"He can hear us," King T'Challa says. "We thought it prudent that he know what was said about him."
"And I can see you." Bucky's voice is tinny through the glass but when he looks up his face really isn't all that different. "Hi. You look like I feel."
Sam laughs. What is up with this guy and making him laugh when he doesn't mean to, seriously. "What, crazy?"
"Tired," Bucky says, sitting up, and he looks concerned as he sounds. The guy in a box full of classic wall-of-crazy is worried about Sam. God. "Really tired. You seen your family lately?"
"Nah. I get to call them sometimes," Sam says. He weighs his words. "You know, my sister had another baby."
Bucky leans forward and, for all that there's glass and clearly a lot of mental whatever separating them right now, it's like they might as well have their knees pressed together again, their faces close. "Yeah? She and the little ones okay?"
"Yeah." Sam lifts a hand, then touches the glass. It helps a little to touch something. "Far as I know, yeah." If he sounds sad about it, that's just his right. This time it's different. He can't go home.
"King T'Challa, your highness," Bucky says, bowing over his knees. "Can I give Sam my kimoyo hours? I don't got anybody to call, I'm just wasting it, you know that. It'd do me good to know Sam got to."
"Generosity freely given is not wasted," King T'Challa says pointedly, and turns to Sam. "But of course we can."
He didn't think about that. Sam doesn't even know if they have time, but… God, hope is painful. "I can call Sarah?" It's Wakanda. Maybe Sam could even video call, see her face.
"They won't find out," Bucky says, watching Sam intently. "It won't hurt her. They're good at that here."
"We are very good at that," King T'Challa says. "Despite efforts to prove otherwise. I'll find a bead that you can use -"
"I wanna give him mine," Bucky says. "Sorry to cut in, but." He gets to his bare feet, digging in his pocket for something small and round that he offers cupped in his fingers. "Is that okay?"
King T'Challa shrugs at Sam. He makes it very elegant. "This is a symbolic gesture and not necessary. But if you feel you will be safe, you are welcome to accept it."
"Yeah," Sam says without doubt. "Yeah, I'll be fine." King T'Challa does something with a bead of his own and a door appears in the glass, a thin line like a cut in reality. But it's a door, and Sam touches it, walks through to where Bucky's standing.
All the writing is even more intense from inside, and Sam doesn't pretend not to look. Damn. "This is what your head is like, right?"
"Pretty much," Bucky says. "I had notebooks in Romania, but they took them. So."
Sam takes the bead from his hand. He doesn't have to ask who 'they' are. Fucking Ross and his international-law-whats-that bullshit. "Little bit harder to steal a whole room, yeah."
Bucky's eyes crinkle. He does look tired as Sam feels, the desperate kind of exhaustion that laps warm at Sam's insides and grits his eyelids. "I hope your family is okay. Blessings to the little one, if you do that kinda thing."
They don't really, but Sam'll take it. His throat constricts a little. "If I knew I was seeing you, you know what I would've got you?"
He squints at Sam like he can't believe he's real. "What?"
"One of those angora blankets they had at the gift shop. Eight hundred euro, softest shit ever?" Sam looks around. "It'd be just the thing to jazz this place up. Creature comforts, a little break in the crazy, you know what I mean?"
King T'Challa sounds amused. "We have tried to offer Sergeant Barnes a shawl as token of his welcome, but he refuses to accept."
Sam stares at Bucky. Shawls are a big deal in Wakanda. Like, big, and Bucky's turning that down? No. No, it can't be. "Does that mean I get to give you the martyr talk now? Is it my turn? Oh, you better get ready."
Bucky laughs. He might look different but he sounds exactly the same when he does that.
King T'Challa makes a surprised little noise.
Sam refuses to stop playing the funny, bombastic guy. He's tired, hungry, thirsty, and on a roll. "I'm just saying, if you can guilt me into going all the way across the world, I sure as hell can make you take a shawl. It's payback time, baby."
Bucky reaches out and Sam shuts up as if Bucky put his hand over his mouth. But it's only his fingers dry and electric on his wrist, the kind look in his bruised-tired eyes like he knows Sam's bluster is running on less than empty. "It wouldn't help. It's a different kinda thing, you might as well save your breath. But thanks."
"That's my line," Sam says, holding up the bead, stepping back from a touch he doesn't know how to handle. From the way he wants to stay and read all this stuff, wants to tell Bucky honestly that he's so tired, just so fucking tired of not being able to go home. From knowing that if he said it aloud, Bucky would understand.
Sam carries that feeling with him for a long time.
It felt like Bucky understood all through the attack on Wakanda. Understood through the shimmer of the shield, through finding each other in that forest with five years gone, understood the complicated nature of being at Stark's funeral.
Understood and understood until he didn't anymore.
Until he chose not to notice Sam's feelings when they were inconvenient to Steve's plans, and he'd never done that before. Until he chose to pull all that warm thoughtful spark away and leave Sam on read, leave him alone with the way Sam had said it feels like someone else's and Bucky hadn’t answered. For months and months Bucky still doesn't answer.
Before the fucking shield pass, Sam honestly was starting to feel like, if everyone else was gone, at least Bucky -
Anyway. Fuck him.
***
Sam is so damn tired of being jerked around, and this restlessness in his skin only makes it worse. He doesn't like being in Madripoor, he doesn't like the way everyone with power or resources so far have been white, he doesn't like his clothes, he doesn't like any of this, and he doesn't like how that drink is hitting him now.
It was not friendly going down, and Sam doesn't only mean the snake balls. He doesn't feel right. He knows his own body, and it doesn't feel right. All the running made it worse, and now they're here at Sharon's party surrounded by art, and he doesn't feel right.
"Hey," Bucky says, wandering back as if he'd never mocked Sam for looking up paintings on his phone. Normally it wouldn't have stung at all. But with the Smiling Tiger's suit heavy and hot and Zemo visibly enjoying making life really uncomfortable for both of them, Sam's raw in a way he didn't ask to be.
"You know that thing you do sometimes when you know something's up with me? That would be great right now. Do you even bother to notice anymore?"
Bucky's eyes widen. He looks caught for half a second, the planes of his face stark in a pulse of neon light. The light passes and his hand settles on Sam's wrist, thumb pushing up his sleeve. It's his right hand, and the touch is delicate.
Delicate as painting his face beautiful. Delicate as helping a rabbit who didn't deserve anything less than gentleness, or getting Sam the fuck home out of his head.
It's an answer.
"Damn you," Sam whispers, unsteady inside with betrayal and this not-rightness sloshing under his skin. "I fucking knew it. If you fucking know I'm not okay, why -" Sam swallows volume, presses his hurt into a hiss from behind his teeth instead. With the heels they're the same height and Bucky stares at him.
Bucky fresh out of HYDRA, fresh out of withdrawal, freshly rebuilding his life in a world beyond moved on from him - Sam misses that guy. Fuck. He barely knew him and he misses him.
Sam thought he was texting that guy, all those months. He thought. But Bucky never answered. "I liked you back then," Sam insists, feeling pathetic and too hot. He's sweaty all over. "Why are you worse?"
For a moment a pulse of light, red this time, highlights the twist of Bucky's mouth that Sam's never forgotten. The face that once signaled an impending joke, a cruel memory, both. Sam's hands feel full of softness he can't crush but it's only Bucky's hand in his.
When did it get there?
Bucky tugs it out of Sam's slack grip, puts the back of his hand to Sam's forehead as if he's very small. It gets to Sam, has him shuffling closer on a swallow too helpless for his own liking. "You're too warm," Bucky says seriously, brows creasing. "I don't think you're well. You should stick close. If you don't mind people thinking we're, uh."
The Smiling Tiger with the Winter Soldier? For all Sam knows that's what he implicitly told people when he put his hand on Bucky's shoulder in front of everyone in that bar.
It's definitely something they did all day at that rabbit castle. Sharing the provided lunch with their knees bumping, walking together around the grounds. Sam fascinated by the birds in the trees and the songs he hadn't heard before, and Bucky watching him with a tilt of his head and that open fathomless face.
He let Sam pick the music that entire drive, scrolling through FM stations, not complaining when Sam turned it up and sang along to the catchier choruses. Once upon a time he was nice to Sam when Sam needed it.
"Yeah, whatever," Sam mutters, leaning into it when Bucky puts his arm through Sam's. The deja vu is breathtaking. The fit of Bucky's body against his was a bad idea, but Sam doesn't want to pull away. Bucky's close and solid and somehow him being warm is a good thing, though Sam's way too warm already. "Guess there was something in that drink. Guess it was that kind of bar," trying to make a joke out of how much need is floating too close to all Sam's surfaces.
"You mean we were lucky Sharon took that shot," Bucky says. He's near enough that Sam can pick it up, the words and his dry tone, that familiar one from back then, and Sam twists around to look at him once the words hit. "Fuck. Sorry, I shouldn't."
It's a nasty, awful implication. "You're not wrong," Sam says. It hovers in the heat in his skin from the drink, the fuzz in his brain from Bucky being so damn close.
He thinks about rabbits and what Zemo said and that vicious humour and the strength of Bucky's arm in his. The prettiness of the art pieces in their clear cages, the lurid colours of people's drinks shading their hands brighter neon than the lights. The intense, intent look on Bucky's face now, watching without asking for a thing. The burn of his skin under this damn suit.
"I'd find somebody safe to fuck this out of me," Sam tells him, licking dry lips, "but it's kinda risky. Not sure about some of Sharon's guest list."
Bucky's face. Under these lights it becomes familiar, becomes a spark and kindness he never breathed a word of to Steve. He watches Bucky lick his lips too, holds up under the way he searches Sam's face for something. "Yeah, sharks and maneaters," Bucky says carefully. "Wring out a man and rob his wallet."
"No kidding," Sam mutters, pressing closer, Bucky's hand coming to the small of his back as someone pushes past them. They move sideways, deeper into shadow, closer to the wall.
"Leave him hanging too. But some of us're working on being reformed. Safe." His hand presses firmer against Sam's spine, his voice rasping uncertain in the new dark, shadows blending black and blue. "Wouldn't make an issue of it after. Treat you right long as you want."
He thinks about the man who walked with Sam and listened as Sam let himself be excited about birds he'd never seen. That was a date. It was a date, and Bucky fucking ghosted him, and - "I'm not even going to bother trying to hold you to that," Sam tells him, too keyed up not to be openly bitter. "Mister left me on fucking read."
Bucky's jaw flexes against Sam's cheek. Ha. Point scored. "Yeah, Sam, I won't do it again. Not over this or anything." He tilts his head, pulls back and peers into Sam's eyes, brows creasing that same worry. "Long as you want, I said."
He's so close. Closer even than when he painted Sam's face, and his breath doesn't taste of alcohol or sweetness. "I don't believe you."
His lips don't either, soft and surprised under Sam's until his hands tighten and he's dragged back off his feet, pulled into a corner contrasting even darker between two floodlit artworks. Bucky's face is taut. "Okay, so you don't have to believe me. You need a hand and I got it to give," he says, matter of fact. "Take it or leave it."
Anyone could see them here. People probably are seeing them, but there's not much to look at, except the Tiger's suit is too recognisable, and - "Fine. Alright, but I don't want Zemo to see my ass," Sam says. "He doesn't deserve it."
"That I agree with," Bucky says, sweet and dry and turning them. The press of the wall to his shoulders fizzles through Sam's head like champagne bubbles. "Look, before we do anything, I gotta warn you."
Bucky's closer still now, body pressed to Sam's. Sam grabs at his hips, hooks his fingers into his jean pockets and pulls just because he can. "What?"
"You won't forget any of this," Bucky says, his gloved hand pressing cool to Sam's face. The shadows are so very dark, the music muffled by the pounding in Sam's ears. "You're not gonna wake up in any doubt about your choices. It's not that type of drink."
"It makes me more honest about what I want, doesn't it," Sam says. "That's why I didn't turn off my phone, you know? I thought about it. But I wanted to be home, I wanted all this shit over -" He shuts his eyes again. "Okay, mood swings, definitely a side effect."
Bucky doesn't say anything for a minute. Sam sniffs, tells himself he is not going to cry enough to need to wipe his eyes, he is not, he is fucking not. It doesn't matter that Bucky listened the last time he said that. He can't let it matter. He focuses instead on the solidity of Bucky's body against his, the press of his hand to his back, the curve of his left hand against Sam's cheek. Bucky's blocking the other side of the corner.
If Sam does end up shedding a couple tears nobody will see it. It's so thoughtful it pisses him off. "I'm good," he says, straightening against the wall, forcing it to be true. "I'm good." Sam curls his hand in Bucky's jacket, crushing the zip and not caring. "I'm so good I might even think you're doing this because like me."
"I might think you like me," Bucky counters. "Dangerous stuff. Might go to my head."
Sam scoffs, shuts his eyes against a very different kind of burn. "You say that like there's room in there. I've seen your head."
Bucky's hand drops to Sam's throat, thumb dry against his damp skin, and doesn't say anything. Sam lifts his chin and looks Bucky in the eye the way he wants to.
There are so many people here. People dancing and drinking and talking all around them. People who can see Bucky pressed against him if they bother to look. Definitely a lot of people seeing and knowing somebody's hooking up. Speaking of beady little eyes. "We gotta watch out for Zemo."
"Sharon's got him," Bucky says, flattening his hand when Sam moves to protest. "Seriously, you think she wants his shit ruining her party? It's in her own interest."
True. Sharon's kinda fishy, but yeah, they can count on her self-interest. "We could do it here," Sam says, settling back against the wall, testing the idea now that it's the only thing in his head again. He wants it. Bucky obviously knows Sam wants it. Obviously knows Sam's hard enough to penguin waddle. "Here, right?"
Bucky shuffles against him, a foot pushing between Sam's ankles as someone wearing way too much perfume passes way too close. "First round at least."
"Oh, now you're optimistic? About this, really?" Sam doesn't mean to grin up at him, but he is. "I'm not twenty anymore, dude."
"You'll see. We'll see. If you want." Bucky is staring at him so very close with so, so much attention. At his eyes, his mouth. Sam licks his lips, testing, and watches Bucky's lashes flutter halfway shut. Fuck.
"Yeah," he breathes out. "Yeah, I want."
Bucky kisses him again. It's like they've never kissed before and it's like they've spent years almost kissing. Years breathing in each other's friend spaces, each other's missed connections, sharing the almost-taste of each other all the while. All those years resolving to the throb of his blood in his ears, the glide of Bucky's hands under his jacket, the sound of some party or other cheering in the distance, yelling birthday wishes and congratulations.
The melt in Sam's bones narrows, focuses on the pass of Bucky's hand over his dick. They're so close, they're so obviously hooking up right here, and it gets to Sam, being seen without being known. "Do it."
The look Bucky gives him then is electric in Sam's chest, settles in his ribs and sparks up his back. He's quick with his hands, opening Sam's trousers, unzipping them, refastening his belt around his waist to keep them up.
Clinging to Bucky's shoulder as his hand wraps bare around Sam's dick is a thing of shaky knees and the casual, knowing fit of his fingers.
The twitch of his thumb over Sam's head is intense. Gentle as soothing a wary rabbit. Precise as holding Sam's face still for the prettiest thing anyone's ever drawn on his skin. Sam sighs and clings to Bucky as his feelings flip-flop without his say-so, riding the dizzy wave of being so turned on and so reminded of the past at the same time.
It shouldn't have meant that much. Sam's told himself for years that being seen at his rawest and bundled home safe shouldn't have meant that much. But it did, is the thing, and that touch again here and now - with that face -
"I'm not gonna last," Sam says thickly. There's a vulnerability to all this, almost too much, and he fits his fingers around the back of Bucky's neck, holds on tight. People will see his fingers against his neck with the pass of lights. They'll see and know and something in Sam cares about it. Something in him likes the idea of being remembered with Bucky touching him way, way too much, enough that he's already winding up to getting off. "Not if you keep doing that."
"I want to, though," Bucky says, still stroking him. It's tender and it's light, lighter than Sam usually touches himself, but his dick is too sensitive even for an experimental thrust. "Hey. Hey, shh. I've got you."
Sam remembers how good it feels when Bucky's in the driver's seat. He shivers hard enough for his teeth to chatter, forces himself to speak. He's unsteady, glad of the wall and Bucky being so unyielding against him. A stroke of his dick and all that, Jesus. What is he, actually twenty again? "I feel weird."
"If the first wasn't too much, the second wouldn't be so good," Bucky says. "That's how this thing works. You - Tiger -"
"Fucking Conrad," Sam points out, distracted and distracted again by the fact that his dick is still being stroked so lightly. It goes to Sam's toes and the aching balls of his feet, melts the pain into something warmer, fire-crackling. "So this is a better sex thing."
"Yeah, it can be good. I'll make it good," quick like Sam was about to hassle him on it. He's focused and serious in the middle of giving Sam a handjob in the corner of Sharon's art auction. Sam really wants to kiss him.
He holds him close with his hand on his neck, their noses bumping and Bucky's tongue stroking over his lower lip in a way that makes Sam feel the insides of his legs spangle, draw up all the way to his crotch. He fumbles at Bucky's hips, unsure if he's trying to push him down or climb him.
Bucky catches on fast though, turns Sam around to face the wall. He steadies himself on smooth paint, biting the inside of his mouth at the press of Bucky's hips. That, okay. That's a hell of a dick if he's not mistaken. He pushes back experimentally, feels Bucky huff in his ear. "Patience, Christ. I don't want Sharon to throw us out."
"Sharon who," he says blankly, head full of cotton wool and the pulsing urgency in his balls, the rush of body-warm air on his dick.
Bucky laughs behind him, the startled unpracticed rhythm of it catching familiar in Sam's head. "I've got you," and it's not heavy and heady, it's not a sex voice, but it's so goddamn sure it hits Sam like a truck. "I've got you. God, you feel pretty."
"Yeah?" Sam leans into the hand sliding down his belly, Bucky's tongue busy on his earlobe, making him shiver from the spine outward to his clutching fingers. "Tell me again."
"Oh, do you - you want me to talk?" His chest fits against Sam's back, hips snugged up tight, and Sam involuntarily grinds back at the first touch to his dick. Bucky's hand is still dry and it barely matters when every goddamn stroke is so fucking slow and so fucking much.
His voice, the words. This spellbinding intimacy surrounded by strangers. Sam groans. "Yeah, don't stop."
Bucky makes a soft, desperate sound in Sam's ear. "Don't wanna get personal. I don't know who's listening." He shuffles them both closer to the wall, Sam turning his head and searching for - and a mouth on his, and that's right, that's. Sam moans around Bucky's tongue in his mouth, sucks desperately at his lip. Tasting him alone makes his dick twitch, makes him jerk back for a breather.
"This shit is intense," Sam mumbles. He's sweating again, or still, he can't tell, and his clothes are heavier now, scratchy. He wants to take them off, he wants to be naked, he wants. "Round two better be upstairs. Hey. What's round two again?"
"Got a plan." He's more composed than Sam, but not by much. He sounds on edge and his hand is still so gentle on Sam's dick and it has him pushing his ass into his crotch without thinking. "I'm gonna - I'm gonna take you upstairs after this and I'm going to put my tongue in your ass."
Sam's heels draw up without permission, Bucky following him onto his tiptoes as Sam moans, shivers on the edge. That tongue, there - really? Really? His butt and hole squeeze tight at the thought. "You promise?"
Bucky gives his ear a long lick, pointed tip sweeping the shell, and Sam's bones are lead, his blood is water. The air is syrup, hot and thick. "Wash you up real nice," Bucky promises, heated. "Get all this shit off you."
Sam nods fervently, sucking in a breath as Bucky's rhythm speeds up a little. "God, yeah."
"Work you loose," Bucky rasps. "Soap you up. Rinse you all pretty. Get on my knees and shove my face where it belongs."
"Round brown," Sam agrees nonsensically, tongue thick. He turns his face against the cold paint of the wall, hauling in a shudder of a breath, Bucky's thumb working the underside of his dick so generously. Right where it's the right kind of too much, concentrated and pin-point and zinging Sam's balls until his mouth is a lake and he's about to come.
He catches sight of someone, a blurry reflection in glass, a reflection maybe not even watching them, but there. Definitely there. They're here, and there's so many people and in this corner it's the two of them, Sam and Bucky and no-one else.
Sam comes so hard it hurts, so hard he shakes and Bucky has to hold him against the wall so he doesn't curl up like a pillbug. The weight of Bucky's strength nets a final pulse into Bucky's hand and that's it, he's done. He can feel the hollow ready looseness in his body, the way it is not done, but for right now? He's done.
Sam isn't sure how they make it upstairs. He's pretty sure Bucky handles Sam's come somehow, and he definitely knows he didn't do up his own belt, but he does walk up the stairs with his own feet even though Bucky's holding him up.
The lack of noise in the room - not the pounding in his head, that's hanging around, but the actual lack of any sound that isn't faint music beneath their feet - pulls Sam into himself enough to realise Bucky's trying to undress him. "I can do it."
He steps back, hands raised. "Okay." He's pink in the face, nodding jerkily. There's a dark, damp patch on the front of his jeans. "Get you some water."
The mention of water reminds him that he's desperately thirsty. Sam leans against the wall, struggles out of Conrad fucking Whoever's suit, and leans there, rubbing his hands over his arms. He's still jumpy, still so viscerally ready to be turned on, but it's slower now. A beat change, frenetic riffs going drawn-out and syrupy.
It feels good. It feels, it's...
"What the hell is this stuff?" Sam asks Bucky when he comes in with a jug of water and a glass of nirvana, pouring it straight down his throat and holding out the glass for Bucky to fill it.
"Sex enhancer," Bucky says. "It's, it's a whole thing. You'll want all of this."
Turns out he does. "You promised me a bunch of stuff down there."
"Yeah, and I meant it." Bucky glances at him, then strips out of his clothes. It's unceremonious, unglamorous, Bucky's body unremarkably the same as any other thin and athletic white man's. "If you still wanna. I can leave you alone if you want."
"No," Sam says without thinking, then lets himself actually process the question.
But the answer's the same. Bucky spent months being unreachable and unreasonable and none of that hurt's gone away. The way he's looking at Sam, though - the way he's looked at Sam tonight, how he's sounded, Sam can kind of, for a few hours, let himself think -
His heart is soft and stupid and Sam knows he shouldn't be wishing this was something more than helping a guy out. Being let down by Bucky fucking Barnes hurts.
"You said you'd wash me up," Sam says.
"For my mouth, yeah." Bucky's got hairy legs, a dusting of it on his chest, a treasure trail to his dick bobbing circumcised and stiff. Abs. Ribs that show faintly when he breathes out. Big flat nipples. Veins running over his right hipbone. Scruff, and a dip in his chin, and more veins on his forearm.
Sam's so horny about it all that he's actually embarrassed.
Bucky clears his throat. "You done looking?"
"Is the king of staring," Sam says, ungluing his tongue, "actually lecturing me about looking too hard at his naked ass -"
"It doesn't matter if you like my body," talking over him impatiently, "it can help you right now, so come on."
Sam blinks, then blinks again. "Who said I didn't?"
"Point is you don't have to," Bucky says, going to the bathroom and fiddling with the taps. "Would you come here? Please, thank you."
"I don't get why you're mad," Sam says, his mouth moving mostly without permission again. He scowls. Who gives a shit if Bucky's mad at him? He doesn't have anything to be mad about.
"I'm not, I just wish this was - it's not important." He tests the water, turns to Sam, something tired and awful in his face smoothing over quickly. "I'm not mad. I'm worried. This stuff takes a lot out of a guy and I don't know, Sharon's, something off with her." He rolls his shoulders. "Look, it doesn't matter," he says again. "I wanna make good on what I promised. Get in here."
Sam's expecting the water to be hot when he steps in, but it's not; it's cool but not cold, too blissful not to moan.
"Gonna be the death of me someday," Bucky mumbles, getting in behind Sam and closing the screen door. Sharon's got a fancy bathroom but it's not the biggest fit, and their bodies brush as Bucky reaches past him for soap, lathering his hands. "Anywhere I shouldn't touch?"
"I'll tell you when you get there," Sam says, tired of the buzz under his skin, tired of the mood swings. Tired of meaning everything he says.
Bucky's hands are warmer than the water but colder than his skin, and all the contrast has Sam pressing hungrily into them right away.
"If you get there," he amends, eyes closing at the long dig of Bucky's thumbs on either side of his spine. "Gonna work out the knots, huh?"
"That's the plan," Bucky says.
Sam hums, sinking into the greed of his own skin for this slippery, intent touch sliding over his arms and legs, his chest and back, down his thighs to his calves and up again.
Soap runs into the drain, carrying sweat-stink and the Smiling goddamn Tiger with it. Sam braces himself on the tiles for Bucky's magic hands working the backs of his thighs, rubbing and squeezing upward and upward. Easing Sam's feet apart little by little until Bucky's touching his taint, cradling his balls in his soapy hand with that same unbearable soothing tenderness.
He reaches round, stroking Sam's dick with his soapy hand, washing it off with the shower head. Sam stands there and lets him, lost in the spill of water, the building urgency under his skin. And it is urgent, it is needy, but it's more total, it's bigger, it's -
- if he had to do this by himself, Sam's pretty sure he would have cried with loneliness while jerking off. Because it's touch that raises it and soothes it, firm touch slippery as the lukewarm water running over his skin.
It's the knead of Bucky's fingers in his glutes, finding the places that knot from long hours flying, the places that knot from hours of sitting in meetings being patronised, the places that tighten up from situps and posture and keeping all his shit to himself. Standing upright like a soldier, taking it on the chin like a man, never letting them see you sweat.
All those places, dissolving. All that sliding away until Sam's relaxed in Bucky's hands, covered in soap and desperately hard, gasping open-mouthed. Desperately in need.
"I've got you," Bucky promises, his hand sliding between Sam's asscheeks, fingers stroking over his hole, and the first twitch of pleasure is the first ding of a bell striking noon; the second is the promise of more to come, Sam's breath and heart calming, spreading into his pulsing fingers and toes.
He clutches for Bucky's arm around him, finds it's the left one and makes an animal noise.
"Shit, sorry." Bucky shuffles so fast that Sam's only left teetering in soap suds and slick water for half a second before Bucky's holding him again. "I've got you. I fixed it. I got you."
Sam clutches for him, digs in his nails and takes breaths that catch and shiver deep. Those fingers are slippery and unyielding over his rim, lukewarm as the water, and Sam moans in his throat at the sheer goddamn relief. "You gonna put your mouth where your money is?"
"Almost," Bucky says in that voice of speaking to rabbits and children, sharing terrible truths about how it is to make something of yourself after. It's a voice like how he listened to Sam sing all the birdcalls he'd never heard, all the songs he missed.
Sam leans his head back against his shoulder, all turmoil and ache. Knowing there's only one person in the entire goddamn island he trusts to touch him right now, and he's an asshole who ghosts people he paints, except right now, he's not. Right now all Sam knows is being touched slow and true.
Bucky holds Sam a little away from him, washing him down, getting him to bend against the wall and let him go between his cheeks. It would be humiliating if it weren't so gentle, it would be mortifying if it weren't for the promise of Bucky's mouth, the thrum of his own pulse building and building with each spray of water, each careful kiss Bucky puts to Sam's shoulder.
His shoulder, and his spine, down and down, every knob, nuzzling the patch of down over his crack, his heart tumbling to the heat in his crotch with each kiss.
Sam puts his hands to the wall and spreads his feet apart, shudders at the decisive sound of Bucky sinking to his knees.
"If I hurt you it's not that I mean to," Bucky says against his left cheek, breath warm.
He's too relaxed not to laugh. "If you hurt me going down on my ass?"
Bucky sighs, kisses his ass - literally kisses his ass, which kind of makes Sam's head spin - and rubs his hand up and down, spreading Sam open, dropping scratchy stubble-kisses to the skin inside of his crack.
Sam knew it was sensitive, but -
He lifts on his toes, moaning, and Bucky follows. The water keeps pouring lukewarm and soft and all that stubble, Bucky's mouth, his cheeks pressing Sam apart, his face right there and his breath on Sam's asshole, it's just. It's a lot.
"This is a lot," Sam croaks.
"How the hell do you think I feel?" Bucky complains. He's actually a little bit muffled, his hands kneading Sam's glutes again until he eases up. "Even down here you're pretty."
Bucky's face presses deeper between his cheeks. Shit, that stubble. Sam could swear he feels Bucky's eyelashes. "My asshole is pretty?" He doesn't believe it, but he wants to. He sincerely wants to.
"Enough to eat," Bucky answers with a swipe of hot, wet tongue. Strong tongue. So strong it presses flat and wide, drags down slow enough to make Sam really feel every bit of every crease in his asshole. He can't help twitching, pushing back.
Reaching for Bucky's head, dragging his fingers through wet hair. "Don't stop," and if he's asking for a promise from Bucky of all people, well. Nobody ever said Sam couldn't be foolish.
His tongue pulls back and Sam inhales, and then the tight kiss of his lips makes Sam's knees tremble. Bucky shoves a hand between Sam's shoulders, holding him up tight against the wall, and Sam sucks in a relieved breath from his gut. It's all he can do, breathe in that humid gap and feel and feel.
There's so much to feel. Bucky's shoulders against his thighs, wet skin sticking. His hand stroking Sam's dick, twisting at the tip every time he sticks his tongue in, a jolt stringing through Sam's crotch, keeping him desperate on his tiptoes.
It's methodical. It's overwhelming, not least when Bucky shoves his face deep enough to divert the spray into trailing over Sam's thighs, breathes against his crack, and plays with Sam's rim with the tip of his tongue. Flicks it over and over, tonguing him all around in a long wet circle of heat, driving him crazy enough to squirm back and try to ride his face.
He thought he'd get fingers or something, but Bucky sticks in his tongue stiff and strong, holds still inside while they both wait for Sam's ass to calm down from trying to reflexively push him out. His nose is mashed so tight to Sam's crack that his breath puffs over his rim, dries all that spit to cool and dry and maddening, not enough.
Bucky inhales, pulling cold air up over Sam's rim, then curls his fucking tongue inside him. Curls his tongue and fucks him with it, plush building wet and hot against his asshole with each stroke until it slips in and fucking curls, only to drag out and do it all over again. Sam's been licked before but he's never thought oh shit I'm getting fucked before.
Bucky is fucking him and all Sam can do is hold onto his hair and the wall and make desperate noises. His pounding heart drowning out everything but the live wire of that tongue, that hand twisting on his dick, stretching Sam in opposite directions and filling the gap with bone-melting want.
But then it stops. Bucky switches to more of those broad, flat licks that press and drag and spangle through his butt and the backs of his knees, the whole of his lower half connected to his asshole and the grind of those rough tastebuds on every fucking crinkle.
Sam pulls hard, scrabbles on Bucky's scalp and urges him closer, closer, harder, more. Gets Bucky's nose flattening again, gets that tongue, God, teasing him. One of those long drags stops to play the tip around his hole as if that's what Sam fucking needs right now, and Sam can't feel his legs, can't - his entire existence is a tongue and this vague knowledge of a hand on his dick connected to the sensation in his asshole.
Bucky breathes on him, fucking breathes on him, all that spit drying again, breath hot and hard and not enough until his tongue curls inside him again, fucks him wet and strong and perfect, perfect, perfect.
He's not sure exactly of when he comes, halfway an afterthought to the pulse through his body, the rich lax goodwill suffusing his body. He knows he feels good to the roots of his hair and good to the curl of his toes and just, good. So good. He thinks he says he feels good.
It's really important for some reason that whoever's with him, dark-haired and white with strong hands, knows Sam feels really, really good.
Sam opens his eyes in bed and thinks he slept. He thinks he heard someone call him sweetheart, but he's not sure because he's alone. He's deeply sore like the aftermath of a good massage. He stretches, careful of his stiff joints, the sheets feeling good on his skin, and that's it.
He knows what he did last night. He knows what he and Bucky did. It doesn't come to him, it's there and present in perfect clarity. The whole thing. They fucked and they fucked again. Sam is never gonna be able to go to the bathroom without knowing what his asshole is capable of making him feel so long as he has the right drink and the right tongue.
Sam pulls the sheet over his head, draws up his knees, and walks himself through a very boring breathing exercise.
He wishes he were embarrassed. That would be easier to handle. There's a protocol for that. Gather up clothes, sneak some water in his hand from a tap, sneak out. But he's not. He felt so fucking good, and he feels all that post-goodness still, and he just can't be sorry about the fact that it's all worn off and there's still literally no-one else in the world he would rather stick their tongue in his ass than Bucky Barnes.
It's early-late enough that Sam can pull on some underwear and creep to the clothing rack Sharon oh-so-conveniently keeps in the common area without risking Zemo being awake to see him.
Bucky's there, though, up and dressed already, staring into space, and Sam decides to wait to talk until he has trousers and a belt on.
"Hey."
"Hi." Bucky turns his head but doesn't look around. "Doing okay?"
"Yeah," Sam says.
Bucky looks ahead again, Sam tries to find a shirt off the rack that isn't uncomfortably slinky, and Sharon comes in fresh like she wasn't awake all night. Zemo follows her in, and that's it. They're drawn into the mess of whatever's going on with Sharon, and Zemo being a manipulative creep, and they go to the container yard to find Nagel.
The best sex of his life and five whole words are all the aftermath he gets. Sam can't decide how to feel about it. He just knows he'll never forget how it felt.
***
Bucky's been showing up so much lately that it makes Sam nervous about how every time they look at each other there's that thing between them. If it was because of not seeing each other for a while, it should've gone away. It hasn't.
Bucky showed up to the practice session with that fumbling apology and the book he'd been contorting himself around. He showed up for the boat and for Sam and stayed the weekend and did all of the dishes without a word, and that unspoken whatever only got worse. And when Sam finally put on the suit -
That fucking suit. It's Bucky's constant staring turned into a whole host of metal and material. It's a product of nothing but that guy mapping out his entire body in his head with every one of his grinding gears, thinking through the bend of his elbows and the clearance between his ankles and the tips of his wings.
Every time it assembles over his body, he's wearing Bucky's attention. Every time a little bit of extra boost kicks in when he needs it, he's wearing the thoughtfulness of the guy that saw something was wrong, went to find what it was, then fixed it. Every time Sam's goggles fit to his eyes without hurting, he's wearing the touch of the artist who painted his face cheeks with his brush and then his ass cheeks with his tongue.
Sam's hesitance about the suit wasn't all about Captain America. Ninety-eight percent was. The other two percent was having Bucky close to skin when Sam really doesn't know how to feel about the guy, isn't sure Bucky won't decide to ghost him for months on end again.
Except ever since the cookout he's been present and attentive when Sam needs him, and Sam's starting to let himself really fucking love his suit.
It answers to minute movements Sam learned years ago from having to control his first set of wings on nothing but gears and kite strings, that much is the same, but the difference in practice is enormous.
It makes flying feel like cotton sheets after line-dried towels. It's the difference between the sad green supermarket peaches in DC and fresh ones from Titi's tree, sun-warm and sun-ripe and indescribable. It makes him happy, is the thing, so happy he barely minds losing his footing and rolling across Sarah's yard.
Screwing up a landing will happen on missions; there's no point pretending it won't. The point is that he could throw the shield to Bucky before he rolled, and get the tell-tale thump of it back into his hands as he pivoted to throw it at a bounce pad. The point is that it worked, their partnership works. The point is the suit is amazing.
Training with the suit is kind of a mindfuck of being known, in the best way possible.
"I should tell Wakanda how much I love this," he tells Bucky, twitching his shoulders, wings closing. "You know how to write a thank-you letter, you can help me." He's been thinking about it for a while. It doesn't sit right with him to take a gift so good and not express his own gratitude somehow. "One for King T'Challa first off, but definitely one to whoever made these."
"You'd be writing to Scholar Dzudkho. Zie's real nice." Bucky looks him over. It would be a professional kinda sweep if not for that calm, staring face.
Sarah might get flirted with, the neighbourhood ladies might get charmed, their local point guys on missions might get fucking snowed by a smiling hey there, but this attention is all for Sam. It gets in Sam's gut how much he likes having something of Bucky that's his.
"You still like it?" The staring? Oh. The suit.
"Fuck yeah, look at this," Sam says, flexing under his shoulder, snapping out a wing behind Bucky and folding it back with no effort just because he can. The delay can probably be measured in parsecs, it's so brilliantly smooth. "I'm learning how it all works, though. There's a lot of detail."
"You can blame me for that if you want," Bucky says, smiling deep in the creases around his eyes. "Asked for all the bells and whistles."
Sam's wondered about this too. "How'd you get it? I thought they didn't like you anymore."
"Call it leverage," Bucky says simply. He's distracted, guiding a spider onto his finger and putting it in the shade of Sarah's gallery. Sam wants him mostly out of the way while he's practicing with the wings, but it's still good to have him here to shoot paintballs and work on Sam's dodging.
God, is it ever good to have him here, even if 'leverage' is a sour, worrisome note in what had been shaping up to be a damn good day in a damn good week. "Kinda threatening, dude."
"What? No," jerking round with a stare at Sam as if Sam should think better of him somehow. Which, he wants to. He really fucking wants to. "I wouldn't deliver you a blackmail suit."
"I wouldn't take it," Sam points out. There's so much sky here in Delacroix. There's so much horizon, glittering water and the sprawl of bayou. There's Bucky beside him. He's not trapped in this conversation if it goes bad.
"Wouldn't ask you to, and I didn't," calm, watching Sam still. "I mean I gave them all of Pierce's secrets. And the World Security Council's. Their agents didn't have the access I did. Now they know what I know."
Sam peers at his face, Redwing still not alerting him to anything wrong with the suit or anybody coming up the drive, and takes an easy guess at how incredibly not fun that must've been. "They didn't like what they heard."
"Nothing for anybody to like. And I don't have anything exclusive for anyone anymore. It's you and me. But what came of it's good." Bucky looks Sam up and down again, smiling crooked. "More than. It suits you."
Sam's stomach flops again. He wishes he knew what that look meant. "You gonna get tired of admiring your handiwork any time soon?"
Bucky's mouth curls back into a smile that creases his nose. It's Sam's favourite. "Nah." He takes a seat on the gallery steps, unloading the paintball gun and leaning it against his knee, ammo every colour but red.
It's been a long day of training and more training, and Sam takes shelter in the shade, experimentally bends his arms and knees. Not too sore to make dinner as promised yet, but getting there. "You hungry?"
"Could eat," Bucky says absently, head tilted the way he gets when he's listening to something not Sam. This man in front of Sam is the one who painted a card still pinned to Sarah's wall and smiled when Sam sang with the birds and played lifeguard at the cookout. The set of his shoulders is steadfast. Sam could love him if he'd stay. "Is that a boat?"
Redwing's heat map agrees; there's somebody sailing up the river, digital tag marking it as one of the fishing school's old clippers. "It's a learner. Guess it's not just me practicing new stuff today." There's so much warmth in the way Bucky's looking at him. "Do you still do the artist thing?"
"Sometimes," Bucky says, crinkling so much that, God, Sam wants to believe. "Why? Gonna tell me to draw a picture, it'll last longer?"
"If the shoe fits, staring machine," Sam says.
Bucky laughs. It's still the same unguarded sound. "Sec, lemme check for bugs." His stride swings closer to Sam, his arm coming up, hand settling light on Sam's shoulder in a pat. It's the right one, he's still careful not to startle Sam with the shine of his left.
Sam also gets spooked by stray foil packaging and glints off metal fixtures. It's a whole thing, to the point where the paint on his wings is matte in sunlight and Bucky calls going in first 'checking for bugs' when he's actually closing all the blinds before Sam has to wear down his coping mechanisms ignoring glare off the kitchen fittings.
Not that he's said anything about it. No, it's all been quiet, practical, annoying consideration about how much that moment on the highway of his fist crunching through the roof and making him helpless in an instant stuck with Sam. And just as quietly and annoyingly clear that he doesn't take it personally.
Sam loiters, fanning himself, watching the boat pass, waving when Old Fen in his trademark yellow cap lifts a hand beside a gangly teenager crouched over the engine.
He loves this suit. He loves that they're back home safe and sound after their first mission together went well. He loves that nobody died and everyone they were sent to save is okay. He loves that this whole Captain America thing feels like it might actually work in more than theory. He loves that it did work, does work, is working.
He doesn't love the flip-flop of his heart.
"It's clear!"
"I'm gonna shower," Sam says, heading past the kitchen, past Bucky and away.
"Three over easy?" Bucky calls after him. "We gotta use these eggs."
"You know it," Sam yells back, and locks the bathroom door because it makes him feel better. Bucky hasn't asked why Sam undresses in the bathroom now, and Sam hasn't said.
He doesn't have a way to confess that after Madripoor his number one speedrun to jerking off successfully is to suck two fingers, put them on his asshole, and rub himself front and back to the memory of Bucky's tongue. He doesn't have a way to ask if being around and likeable is all a friendship thing, doing right by Sam now he's got his head out of his ass, or. Or.
Sam feels better for jerking off. He steps out of the shower, gets dressed, and goes to eat his three eggs over easy with toast sliced into soldiers because Sam likes it that way, with decaf coffee because it's past four pm and if Sam has caffeine now he'll be awake all night, with Bucky eating on the other side of the kitchen counter because Sam gets antsy when people sit next to him.
He's hungry but his mouth is full of words.
Every time he sees the Bucky he met - that guy with the humour and the hands and kindness - he wants to ask if he remembers last time. Remember the rabbits? Remember the car? Remember you putting your tongue in my ass?
"Are they bad?"
Sam blinks. The coffee is okay for decaf, still has enough of the right flavour to tick the ritual boxes, but it's gone past hot into barely acceptable warmth. "What?"
"Your eggs," Bucky says, a line between his eyebrows. He's got a sketchbook balanced on his left hand, a towel draped over his arm. It's weird and thoughtful. "You're not eating. Did I not do them right?"
"Oh." The eggs speckled with pepper that Sam hasn't really touched except to scramble them up with a bit of bread now too soggy-gross to eat. But it's not Bucky's fault that Sam's heart does stupid heart things like remind him that Sam first felt a spark with this guy, no shit, ten fucking years ago. God, it's been a decade and he can still feel paint dried stiff on his cheek if he concentrates. "No, they're fine."
All of this is weird and thoughtful, and Sam wants it so fucking badly. He wants to trust it. He wants to work with Bucky with this - this state of being between them. He wants to text Bucky and have Bucky text him back with dry little full stops at the end of his sentences.
He wants Bucky to casually roll up to Sarah's with him and get climbed on by the boys and maybe never go away again. He wants his hands on his ass and he wants his lips on his spine. He remembers every little bit of how it was to kiss him in that not-so-secret dark corner.
"Come on, Sam, you gotta eat something. You're liable to give yourself a headache."
Sam blinks back out of his thoughts. His plate of cold eggs he wouldn't have eaten anyway has disappeared, and Bucky's refilled his coffee and put a protein bar next to it. A bar in clear packaging because of goddamn course.
Now, anyway. Now it's an of course, and Sam doesn't know how to deal. All his mouth wants is to ask questions he shouldn't.
Maybe it's never going to be the right time. Maybe now is the time with the scratch of pencil on paper. "Remember Madripoor?"
"A lot happened in Madripoor, you're gonna have to be specific," Bucky huffs as if Sam's asking any old question. He doesn't stop drawing, eyebrows pulled together. Sam can't shake the feeling that if Bucky wasn't already in Sam's sights, if this was any place but Sarah's, he'd be running.
Sam wouldn't push it, he'd stew some more in this mess, in the way he dreams about Bucky on top of him these days, but he wasn't the one who flirted first back then. He isn't the one who does all these little things now, and he has to know if -
He has to know which future this is. If it's the one where Bucky never touches him again and Sam's getting it all wrong and this is how they're meant to stay, close as brothers and never anything else, Sam the only one with unfulfilled wishes.
Sam makes his voice firm. "You said you wished it was different. You know what I mean."
Bucky looks up at him, shifting the tea towel to get in the way of a strip of light that's moved to fall over his arm and shirt. "Yeah, I remember. You know, just - eat that. Drink your coffee, let me finish drawing. You can ask me again after. I'm better at this than I am talking."
"What, that's going to answer all my questions?"
"Sure hope so," Bucky says, watching him in that certain, focused way, and Sam gets a surreal little feeling about what it is he's drawing.
If he's right, then - it's true he's always regretted not getting a picture of it that time. "Okay," Sam says. "Okay."
He takes his coffee to the work table by the counter, pulls up his laptop with the paperwork from their mission. Even a really good, successful mission still needs a thorough report.
Bucky sits down across from him, sketchbook placed where Sam can't see it. He's got one of the boys' pencil sets with him, most of them worn halfway down, switching colours frequently. Lots of purple. Lots and lots of orange, and green, and God, it is, isn't it? Sam wants to believe it is.
Someone occupying themselves beside him in silence, gears grinding in undemanding concentration like ambient white noise, is just... really pleasant. Sam hasn't had this kind of partnership for a long time, and now, between the boat and the mission and the cookout, Bucky lifeguarding the neighbourhood kids so Sam could take pictures and chat with their parents, it's a lot.
Moreso for having absolutely no fucking evidence that it existed long before Bucky ever knew to come to Delacroix. Nothing to prove Sam isn't making it all up, imagining things. He can't show Sarah rabbits and have her understand. He can't tell anybody that Bucky tongued him back to life when Sam had to come so badly he was about to die. He doesn't have anything but his own memories.
He's finished the report and switched to dicking around on the internet, catching up on birding forums, when Bucky clears his throat. "I finished, if you wanna take a look."
Sam angles the laptop screen down.
It is.
Bucky hands it over, the whole sketchbook, turns it around for Sam. Their fingers brush and Sam thinks maybe Bucky's shaking.
The colours aren't the same as the facepaints, of course, the pencils too thin and Bucky's hand too light. But the curve and display and beauty is the same. The vivid orange fan, and the pink flush running along the main thick leaf. The twin purple spade-shaped petals. In life it's even more beautiful, but this one is Sam's.
"I looked it up when I got a chance," Sam says into the ticking quiet of Sarah's house. "They're called strelitzia reginae."
"Bird of paradise. Yeah. That's you," Bucky says. He swallows then, a hard line in his throat. Closes his hands around each other. Sam can feel through the table how badly he's trembling. But he's staring with the face that is Sam's, fathomless and unwavering. "Knew soon as I saw you with my own eyes. It's always been you. Always was gonna be. If you'll have me."
He doesn't know what to say. Sam isn't sure he can say anything. All of his questions have run up against their answer and all he has now is certainty.
Quieter still: "It's all right if you don't want it. It's yours all the same."
Sam shifts the heart he's holding to one hand, leans over the table, and kisses him.