Chapter Text
—Avengers Compound, Upstate New York, December 2014—
“You ever just sat back and watched the sunset on a breezy winter evening?”
He has, yes. For a certain value of “sunset” and in a more active stance than “sitting back.” Has watched the sunset of light slinking out of sight, and the sunset of life leaving a body. The latter, more times than he could ever hope to tally.
Winter and all the other seasons. Evening and all the other times. Breezy and all the other weather. They run together—the rooftops, the sunsets—into an ugly brown smear, timeless and eternal.
That is not what Sam Wilson is asking him, though.
Sam Wilson is asking about the sort of sunset currently streaking reds and oranges and golds along the treetops, reflecting gentle fire along the ripples the wind is stirring up on the water. He’s asking about beauty, and light, and wonder. And it’s a gift that Sam Wilson is asking him about them like he thinks he is a person with any right at all to those things.
He has watched these sunsets, and probably in the winter, and probably on the sort of slightly windy day that flings hair in his eyes and makes it that tiny bit more difficult to kill someone at a distance.
He’s watched them from rooftops, waiting for a target to get in position.
And he’s watched them… sometimes… when there wasn’t any target at all. With someone who… who isn’t a handler. Someone sitting beside him and not supervising him until extraction. Someone relaxed like after the hit’s been made but without there having been a hit at all.
Sort of like this, actually, sitting next to Sam Wilson, who calls himself a friend even though friends are for people.
And that must be what he thinks he’s remembering. Just has the timing mixed up, is projecting the now onto the then. It happens all the time, little double-vision blips that he only chases down when he’s feeling like he deserves the migraine and no one else will give it to him.
There’s no time for that now, though, even if he does deserve the migraine. Now he has to answer the question. It’s been too long already.
“Yes.”
Sam Wilson stretches his legs out and leans back against the side of the air intake. He does not seem to mind the delayed response, although... No. “Seem” is wrong. Sam Wilson does not mind it. If he minded it, he would say so and not pretend otherwise, not be a book with lines he has to read between and guess about.
Sam Wilson does not lie to him. He does not lie to Sam Wilson. They have an understanding.
Sam Wilson shifts, puts one ankle over the other, speaks. “Used to go up on the roof all the time, growing up—or as near to as I could get.”
Sam Wilson pulls his hands out of his coat pockets and holds his arms out in front of himself, gloved fingers framing a patch of nothing. “Picture it. Skinny little dude with his head out the window, eyes on the clouds like they’ll get away if he blinks.”
Sam Wilson laughs and tucks his hands away again. It’s as genuine as the rest of him. It shows his teeth, but in a way that’s friendly and open. “Man,” he sighs. “Couldn’t get up in that sky soon enough.”
He nods, because that will buy him time if Sam Wilson sees the motion out of the corner of his eye. It is not a lie. Sam Wilson loves the sky, Sam Wilson has always loved the sky, Sam Wilson was once a “skinny little dude.” He can nod. He understands the information. He accepts it.
What he doesn’t understand is how to play his role in the conversation. Because it’s a conversation, and that means replies that are more than one syllable, more than a single word. Give-and-take, just like the call-and-response. I am ready to comply. So many words, that. He owes Sam Wilson more words than “yes.”
The nod will only last so long, only give him so much time to think, but Sam Wilson is not expecting a response.
Steve Rogers always expects a response, even when he says that he is not.
Because he and Steve Rogers do not have an understanding.
Steve Rogers can say one thing and mean another, sometimes without even knowing. Steve Rogers lies to himself better than he lies to anyone else. Steve Rogers talks about his past and thinks that he was there too, as “Bucky.” Steve Rogers thinks he will remember it all, will be “Bucky” again, if he can only describe it well enough, often enough, with enough silent pleading in the back of his eyes.
If Steve Rogers wants him to believe it so badly, he should try saying it all right after the halo comes up. That will do the trick for a few days, at least. Maybe Steve Rogers will be happy, then.
But no one thinks he was in Sam Wilson’s past… No one tries to tell him he was there for the earlier parts of it, the childhood parts, before the wings and the desert and the other man who fell through the night sky, plummeted wings-first into the soft, sweet arms of death.
Maybe no one knows about the middle part, before the helicarriers but after the skinny little dude. No one has mentioned it. He knows Sam Wilson is not angry about it. He and Sam Wilson have an understanding, so if he was angry about it, he would say so.
But… even though they have an understanding, he has not asked Sam Wilson about the desert and the other man because they might not have an understanding anymore if it turns out Sam Wilson doesn’t know and knowing changes things.
It’s hard to tell who knows what things. He can’t base it on who talks about what and who does not. No one talks about the helicarriers, after all, and they all know about it. It is on the television and sometimes on tablets and projected on walls before people see him and turn it off and scold him for being too quiet. Everyone knows about the helicarriers.
Was there a car, too?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he was not in Sam Wilson’s childhood, and neither was “Bucky,” and so when Sam Wilson talks about being a skinny little dude, he does not expect laughter from him, does not expect any shared reminiscing, does not expect requests that he elaborate and confirm.
Sam Wilson just wants to share.
He should share, too. Give-and-take. Conversation.
He should share about sunsets, but that feels dangerous, like he might share the wrong kind of sunset. Rooftops might be safer. They are on a rooftop right now. Sam Wilson mentioned a roof. It’s only a little step to the side from sunsets. Sam Wilson will guide him back to sunsets if he is talking outside the lines.
“There was a bird, once.” This is something he can share, now that he remembers it. Now that the glittering scarlet mewp on the tabletop tree has spoken to him and reminded him and is safely hidden and cannot be burned.
Sam Wilson turns his head, raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“On a roof,” he elaborates. It was not sunset, but it was in the late afternoon, and it was a roof, and it was winter. This counts. He will share the mewp with Sam Wilson. And only the mewp. Not what happened after.
Sam Wilson nods. It’s encouraging but not expectant. A nudge but not a shove. If he says nothing more, Sam Wilson won’t be upset or feel like he was led on or let down.
“It was red and black, with gray and a little white. It chirped like ‘mewp-mewp.’ It was beautiful and I… I felt… like…” Maybe this is “want.” Maybe he had wanted on that roof with the mewp dancing hop-hop back and forth on his rifle, and that was why the garland birds had been burned during the base inspection.
Maybe it was his fault even before it was his fault. Maybe it was his doing all along. Maybe he had doomed the garland birds when he first set eyes on them. He always does destroy the precious things.
His lungs are not working right. The thin winter air is somehow still too thick to breathe and there is a sharp-edged lump in his throat anyway, and so they have given up trying to get any air at all.
“Sounds like a pretty bird, Barnes.” Sam Wilson is giving him a chance to nod and hand the conversation back. But he is not taking it back. It is his choice. To hold the conversation or to hand it back.
Maybe it will be safe to say it. Maybe it will feel good to say it. Maybe that is why he is not allowed to say it. Has not been allowed to say it. Or feel it.
“I… wanted… to touch it.” It does not feel good to say. It burns his throat like a stun baton, like an air tube, like a bottle of bleach, like…
He says it again, because he should not feel good, and order only comes through pain. It comes out like sandpaper on an open wound, soft and rough and well-earned.
“I wanted to touch it.” The words scrape his throat like honey and razor blades, sweet and sharp and wrong. “The bird.” He swallows. Has to do it a few times because his mouth is too dry to cooperate and there is nothing to wash the lump down with. “I wanted to reach out and touch it and squish it and just… just…” Just what? “…hold it.”
And he has said it. He has said it, and he should not have, and it still burns, only deeper in the pit of him now, mockingly, bubbling up like the giggles of long-dead children and he is going to be sick.
“Hey. Hey, Barnes. Are you with me?”
Sam Wilson and he have an understanding.
He nods. He is on the roof with Sam Wilson, looking at a sunset and forcing himself not to be sick with the hard-won discipline that comes from decades of practice.
He and Sam Wilson have an understanding.
So Sam Wilson will not punish him now for his failures in the past. For… for daring to want something. For setting up the garland birds for the bonfire and the melted glass of their feathers curling up and hissing and popping even louder than their screams.
“It’s okay, Barnes. It’s okay that you wanted something, however long ago, just like it’s okay if you want something now.”
Sam Wilson and he have an understanding.
This is what Sam Wilson believes, that wanting is something he is permitted to do, to experience. He isn’t lying to himself. It isn’t at all like when Steve Rogers lies to himself. Sam Wilson is mistaken, but there isn’t some little part of him that knows the truth and refuses to see it. He’s fully and completely, genuinely and truly, entirely mistaken. Down to his core.
“…No it isn’t.”
He will not lie to Sam Wilson. Even if the truth is something Sam Wilson will disagree with because he is mistaken. It is still the truth, and it is the only response he has available because it is the truth.
Because they have an understanding.
Sam Wilson has never lied to him. He has never lied to Sam Wilson. They agreed not to lie to each other on the riverbank while counting up guns and knives, and so they won’t lie now while sitting on the roof under the blood-red sky.
Just like on the riverbank, if one of them is mistaken, or forgets something, then: no-harm-no-foul. Then: they fix it. Then: they move on. Honest mistakes are honest mistakes, so long as they’re honest.
Sam Wilson is honest now. He is angry-not-at-him, and he is sad-about-him, and he wants to argue the point because he is mistaken but he is honestly mistaken all the way down.
“I know you believe that, man, but you are wrong.” Sam Wilson sighs, runs a gloved hand down his face, looks exceedingly tired. “Someday, you’re gonna wrap your head around that, but it’s not going to be today, and I don’t want to fight about it.”
Sam Wilson is thoroughly mistaken about wanting, so mistaken that he thinks it goes the other way around, that he is the one who is right. But he isn’t lying. Neither of them are. So it’s okay.
“That okay with you?” Sam Wilson looks hopeful. “Not arguing about it today? Saving it for later?”
“That’s okay.” It is the new “understood.” The one that means the same thing but doesn’t make people angry. It comes in a lot of forms, a lot of different combinations of words, but they’re all just variations on the basic underlying message. I understand and accept what is happening. I will comply.
They will save the disagreement about wanting for later, somewhere in the pile of all the other disagreements that Sam Wilson calls “your baggage.” Specifically, “the metric shit-ton of industrial-grade baggage you haul around on your shoulders, Barnes.”
Sam Wilson would rather he carry a wallet. He doesn’t understand what that means, but Sam Wilson has said it doesn’t matter, that he will understand it later.
There will be a later. There is always a later. And then, he will be able to make Sam Wilson understand about the wanting. But that’s not for today. Sam Wilson doesn’t want to fight about it now, and he doesn’t think his throat would let him anyway, even if Sam Wilson did want to argue.
Sam Wilson is satisfied with the response. It’s interesting watching him stuff all that anger-not-at-him and sadness-about-him out of sight—maybe in his wallet—and do the smile with the one side of the mouth lifted a little. The one that is joking without mocking, half a laugh even though it’s silent.
“So it went ‘mewp-mewp,’ huh?” Sam Wilson’s smile evens out into a grin. “Sounds cute.”
He nods. The mewp was cute, and it sounded cute, and it was squishy. He would have liked to gently squeeze it. But it’s nowhere in reach now—years ago and countries away—so he settles for demonstrating the mewp’s mellow chitter.
Sam Wilson laughs, and it’s not mocking at all.