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If Sam wasn’t expecting his morning to start with a raccoon-eyed ex-assassin perched on the foot of his bed and staring at him intensely, he’d formed no expectations at all.
Bucky was glowering.
Sam scooched backwards away from him, trying very hard not to make any sudden movements. Bucky seemed content to crouch there on his haunches, silent, just watching him.
“Um...g’morning,” Sam finally said.
Bucky grunted.
“Are...you...looking for Steve?”
Bucky snorted, scowling.
“Yeah, that’s kinda...why would you be looking for Steve in my bedroom, right?”
Despite his heart pounding in his chest, Sam wasn’t too freaked out to notice Bucky’s tiny smile.
“So, uh, what can I do for you, man?”
“It’s my birthday,” Bucky growled.
“No shit?” Sam sat up against the headboard of his bed, oblivious to the way Bucky’s eyes flicked down to his chest, left exposed by the blanket that had fallen down around his hips. “Congratulations, man. You’re what, ninety-six this year?”
Bucky shrugged.
“Okay, well—” Sam leaned over sideways, watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye as he reached for his phone— “why don’t we call Steve, he’ll come over and the three of us can—”
“No,” Bucky snapped, and Sam froze in place.
“O...kay,” he said carefully, retreating slowly. “That’s—that’s fine.”
“It’s my birthday,” Bucky repeated, sullen.
“Happy birthday, Bucky,” Sam told him. “Listen, tell you what. Give me twenty minutes to shower and get dressed, and I’ll come out and make you breakfast, how about it? Birthday pancakes, I can even do ‘em in shapes.”
His jaw working slightly, Bucky seemed to be considering the offer; then, suddenly, he stood, stepping down to the floor and stalking out of the room. Sam couldn’t stop himself from breathing a sigh of relief as Bucky’s heavy boot-steps retreated down the hallway. He rolled off the bed and grabbed his phone from the nightstand, making a beeline for the bathroom.
Once there, he turned on the shower, keeping one eye on the door as he dialed, and praying that the sound of the water would be enough to cover up his voice.
Steve sounded breathless when he answered; probably in the middle of his morning run, Sam thought. He skipped the usual pleasantries, knowing that Bucky could come bursting in at any moment.
“Steve, I found him,” he said without preamble; there could only be one ‘him’ that could mean.
“What?” Steve was instantly laser-focused, snapping into what Sam had already come to recognize as his Bucky-voice. “You found a lead? What is it, what have you got?”
“No, not—” Sam turned away from the door, cupping the phone in one hand. “Not a lead, Steve, him. He’s in my damn kitchen, he was sitting on the end of my bed when I woke up not five minutes ago.”
There was a beat on the other end of the line.
“I’m on my way,” Steve said finally. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“No, don’t come here—he told me not to call you. I’m hiding in the bathroom, I told him I was gonna take a shower.”
“Sam, if he’s not...stable, I—look, you read the same file I did, about what Hydra did to him and what—what they made him do. We don’t know where he’s been or what he’s been doing the past nine months, or how much he’s remembered about who he is, I don’t want you getting hurt—”
“If he was here to hurt me, he could have done it a lot easier while I was still asleep,” Sam pointed out. “Nearly gave me a heart attack, waking up to find him just sitting there staring at me.”
“What did—whaddya think he wants, then?” A pleading note crept into Steve’s voice. “Did he look okay? Did he—did he say anything?”
“Honestly, man, I think he just wants company.” Sam sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “He said it’s his birthday today. I’m bribing him with pancakes not to kill me. I have no idea what the hell’s going on.”
“That’s not right—his birthday’s not for almost two months,” Steve said, confused. “March 10th. Why would he—oh god. Oh, my god. How could I have forgotten...”
“What? What is it?”
“I need to sit down.” Steve sounded sick to his stomach. “Sam, today is the anniversary of the day he fell off that train in Austria. Today’s not his birthday, it’s—it’s the day he died.”
“Shit,” Sam said feelingly.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Listen, I gotta get in the shower and get back out there before he gets suspicious. Keep your phone on, I’ll try to send you updates. Who knows, maybe I can talk him around to letting you come over. And Steve—I know your instinct is to come charging in here, but I need you to trust me on this one. Promise me you’ll sit tight and not do anything stupid.”
“If I did that, how would you know it’s me?” Steve joked, audibly straining to keep his voice casual. “Sam—be careful, okay?”
“Believe me, you don’t gotta tell me twice,” Sam assured him. He tucked the phone under a hand towel on the counter so that it wouldn’t be visible if Bucky came in, then stripped off his pajama bottoms and hopped in the shower. Years of military service had taught him how to get clean in a hurry; a scant few minutes later, he was heading back to his bedroom and sliding into clean jeans and a plain t-shirt.
A small, selfish part of him was hoping that Bucky would have vanished again, but when he peered tentatively around the corner into his kitchen, there he was—hunkered down at the table with his back to the door, and to Sam’s great shock, adorned with a brightly-colored paper hat.
Sam backed out into the hallway, then made a point of stepping heavily as he entered the room, so as not to startle him. It didn’t seem to make a difference—Bucky didn’t look around or react at all when Sam came in, just kept glaring at the wall opposite him as if he had a grudge against it.
The front of Bucky’s party hat had the words ‘Birthday Boy' printed on it in a whimsical, childish font, along with a big number 5.
“Is that...is that from the stuff left over from my nephew’s birthday party?” Sam asked, incredulity overwhelming his tact. “Have you been going through my cabinets?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you—don’t do that, man.”
“It’s my birthday,” Bucky told him challengingly, looking up to meet his eyes.
Sam swallowed his response. “Yeah, sure,” he said instead. “Okay.” He moved to the counter and started taking ingredients out of the cabinets. Bucky watched him in silence as he mixed the pancake batter and started heating up the griddle.
“Y’know, we’ve been looking all over for you,” he said conversationally, dropping butter into the pan.
Bucky grunted.
“What’ve you been doin’ with yourself?”
No answer.
“This isn’t happening,” Sam muttered under his breath as he flipped the pancakes over. “This cannot possibly be real. I’m having some kind of bizarrely realistic nightmare.” He fetched a plate and fork, turning the perfectly cooked pancakes out of the pan.
Presenting the plate with no more than the usual flourish, Sam turned away from the table to fetch the maple syrup from the fridge. When he came back, however, rather than starting to eat, Bucky was frowning at his plate, chin jutting out.
“Not hungry?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows.
Bucky glared up at him. “You said you’d do shapes,” he accused, sounding far more petulant than a man so dangerous had any right to be.
Incredulous, Sam stared back for a moment before answering. “I’ll do shapes on the next batch,” he told him finally. “Just eat ‘em.”
Grumbling something in Russian under his breath, Bucky pulled the plate towards himself and drowned it with syrup. Sam winced at the sight; if Bucky noticed, he ignored him.
Sam carefully poured the next round of pancakes into hearts of varying sizes, leaning up against the counter to watch Bucky as they cooked. He’d demolished the plateful in record time, and was corralling the leftover syrup into one puddle.
“Hungry, huh?” Sam asked, feeling a little guilty for his short temper. Bucky nodded, dipping the index finger of his flesh hand into the syrup and sucking it clean. “I bet it’s been a long time since your last hot meal.”
“Couple’a months,” he mumbled, shrugging.
Sam shook his head. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.” He brought the griddle over to the table to serve the pancake batch directly on the plate, still steaming hot, and was unexpectedly rewarded when Bucky broke into a brilliant smile at the sight. Sam’s heart skipped a beat as he turned the beam upwards, dazzling him. In that moment, he felt as if he was looking at the old Bucky, untouched by Hydra’s poison—the golden boy memorialized on the walls of the Smithsonian, the man Steve had been chasing since the first moment his mask came off.
Still grinning, Bucky turned his attention to his plate, and the spell was broken. Sam shrugged it off, hurrying back to the stove, a light blush heating his cheeks. “Bet I can do stars,” he called over his shoulder. Bucky grunted in response, his mouth stuffed full.
The stars wound up a little lopsided, but Bucky didn’t seem to mind. The smiley faces were easier; Sam experimented with giving them different expressions, trying to make Bucky laugh. Finally, by the second-to-last batch, Bucky’s appetite was starting to slow down; he actually had a few bites left of his last cake when Sam served him the next.
For the final batch, Sam got ambitious; as carefully as he could, he spelled Bucky’s name out letter by letter. The delight on Bucky’s face was well worth the effort it took. After he polished off the Y, Sam banished him to the bathroom to scour the syrup off his face and hands. (The hat stayed behind on the table.)
As soon as he disappeared down the hallway, Sam pulled his phone out of his pocket, firing off a quick text to Steve:
all fine so far he ate abt 3 doz pancakes not sure what 2 do next
The response came so quickly, Steve must have been watching his phone like a hawk:
Keep him talking, try to find out where he’s living. Did he tell you anything about where he’s been since the fight in D.C.? He wouldn’t have gone back to Hydra.
Sam rolled his eyes; he’d taken to modern technology like a fish to water, but after two years, Steve still texted like he was writing you a letter. Even Natasha hadn’t been able to convert him to the use of emoji, at least not yet; Sam suspected he was holding out just to be stubborn.
all he said was he hasnt been eating well. Let you know if i get more
Hearing Bucky coming back down the hall, Sam locked his phone and shoved it hurriedly back into his pocket, covering his rush by gathering the dirty dishes into the sink. “So what do you want to do today?” he asked casually, rinsing off Bucky’s plate before setting it into the dishwasher. “We could have a party, if you want, get some people together—”
“Stop trying to get me to talk to Steve,” Bucky said wearily.
Sam stared at him searchingly for a moment.
“Tell me why you don’t want to talk to him, and I will,” he answered finally.
Bucky pouted as he slunk over to the table and sat back down. “It’s complicated,” he said mulishly.
“Try me. I’m a smart guy.” Sam folded his arms over his chest, determined to wait him out; he looked Bucky over carefully as he did so, appraising him. Gone was the leather and the tactical gear, gone the arsenal of weaponry. What Sam had mistaken in the shadows of his bedroom for combat paint was now revealed by the early morning light of the kitchen to be dark circles around Bucky’s eyes. He wondered idly where Bucky had gotten the tattered jean jacket he was wearing; his boots, too, were different. The black combat boots had been replaced with tan workman’s boots, well-worn; at least Sam thought they would be tan, if they were clean.
It didn’t take long for Bucky to tire of Sam’s silence. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” he said quietly, more to the table than to Sam.
“From what I read in your file, you didn’t have much of a choice.”
“I know.” A muscle moved in his jaw. “But I still did it.”
Sam sat down heavily across the table from him. “...Yeah.”
“Steve won’t understand that. I know what he’s like—I mean, I remember. He’ll have his heart so dead set on it not being my fault that he won’t stop to consider that it might not matter. But you do understand,” Bucky told him softly. “I can tell. I had a feeling you would. Anyway, it’s my birthday and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How much do you remember?” Sam pressed. Bucky shrugged.
“Some. Enough. Can you bake?”
Sam blinked, surprised by the sudden change in topic, but went along with it. “Uh...yeah, I guess. Not as well as my mom, but yeah.”
“Can you make a pineapple upside-down cake?”
“Never tried. Probably, if I had a recipe. I guess that means you want me to make one for you, right?”
Bucky nodded.
“ ‘Cause it’s your birthday, right?”
Another nod.
Sam sighed. “Sure. Why not.” He pushed himself up from the table, grabbing a cookbook from the cabinet and thumbing through the index. “Yeah, this doesn’t look too hard. I think I got most of the ingredients already—everything except the fruit. You wanna come out to the store with me?”
He shrugged again, noncommittal, but when Sam started gathering his wallet and keys, he followed.
Sam wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of Bucky’s arm, but to his relief, he didn’t need to. As they were leaving the house, he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, hiding the metal. It being January, that didn’t attract any attention as they wandered through the grocery store. Besides the cake ingredients, Sam had a regular shopping list; he mostly ignored Bucky, who was behaving very oddly.
To be fair, he couldn’t really expect Bucky to meet the average baseline for normal behavior. But still, it took all of fifteen minutes for the last vestiges of Sam’s hesitation and fear to disappear, shredded by pure irritation. Nobody—nobody—could be dangerous who was this annoying.
He had an attitude about everything. Everything cost too much, or it looked wrong, or there were too many kinds.
(“Look at this shit,” Bucky demanded, standing in the cereal aisle while Sam tried to decide between Honey Nut Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats. “Sam—Sam, look at this. Why do they—you know how many kinds of cereal they had when I was a kid?”
“The cheerios are cheaper,” Sam said to himself, ignoring Bucky, “but the other one’s got more stuff in it. Granola and shit.”
“Two. Two kinds of cereal,” Bucky informed him. “Hot cereal and cold cereal. If you were lucky—really, really lucky—you got fruit to put in it.”
“Ah, screw it—I’m a grown ass man and I’m getting Lucky Charms.” Sam tipped the box into the cart and shoved off down the aisle, Bucky trailing in his wake, still complaining.
“Nobody needs six hundred types of—Sam, are you listening to me—”)
The highlight of the trip was the fruit aisle, of course. Bucky—and Sam would not have believed this if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes—Bucky picked up a bunch of bananas, pulled one off the bunch, and then opened it and took a bite. Right there in the open. Then—then—he spat! Spat it out! All over the floor! Right in front of everyone!
Sam could not even.
He tried to pretend like he didn’t know Bucky, but that was difficult to do, considering that he was following him around complaining (loudly, Sam might add) about the banana, and how there was, apparently, something seriously wrong with it. Having gone through all this bullshit with Steve already, Sam was perfectly aware of the history of the banana varieties, and if Bucky hadn’t just spat chewed-up banana all over the floor, Sam might have considered explaining it to him. Might.
Seriously, who does that?
Bucky, apparently.
Ugh.
Then, when they were standing in line for the checkout, Bucky came right up behind him and draped himself all over Sam’s shoulders, pointing past him at the candy rack with one hand.
“I want one of those,” he said, poking his chin into Sam’s shoulder, gesturing at the York peppermints.
“Get off me, man,” Sam grumbled, shaking him loose.
“C’mon, Sam,” Bucky whined. “I like ‘em.”
“What are you—five years old? Knock it off.”
Bucky attached himself to Sam’s back again, wrapping the metal arm around his waist so he couldn’t escape again. “It’s my birthday,” he said sullenly.
“Fuckin’...” Sam took a deep breath. “I hate you. Fine. You want the stupid candy, you can have it.” Bucky grinned and leaned into him, pushing him into the conveyer belt to reach up and tip the patty off the rack and onto their groceries. Sam was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of their closeness—of the pressure of Bucky’s hips against his, of the heat radiating from his chest, of his hand sliding around and coming to rest so lightly just over Sam’s stomach. A shudder ran through his body at the touch, and Bucky instantly pulled away, stepping back to the other side of the checkout aisle.
Sam watched him carefully, frowning slightly. Bucky seemed to be running hot and cold—he’d been playful and vibrant just moments ago, but now, he’d suddenly withdrawn in on himself, gloomy and silent. Mood swings were a normal reaction to trauma, but they were slightly more concerning when a downswing had the potential to turn into a murderous rage. Sam kept a wary eye on Bucky as he went through the checkout; Bucky glowered behind him, visibly unnerving the cashier as Sam attempted to make small talk with her.
In the car, he insisted on sitting right behind the driver’s seat, and when Sam refused to move his chair up, he dug his knee into the middle of Sam’s back, leaving it there for the entire drive home. By the time they pulled into his driveway, Bucky was on Sam’s last nerve; he was holding onto his patience by his self-preservation instinct and the skin of his teeth.
Bucky slunk up the sidewalk behind him as Sam stomped into his house, sidling into the front hall with a pout on his face. Sam could feel Bucky’s eyes on the back of his head as he followed him into the kitchen, skulking in a corner on the other side of the room and watching as Sam unpacked the bags and put everything away. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be so annoyed; after all, Bucky hadn’t actually done anything wrong. But he was too frustrated to care. Neither could he make up his mind which Bucky irritated him more: the childish, teasing version that had gone to such an effort to make an ass of himself in the supermarket, or the silent, menacing supersoldier version that Sam could no longer find it in him to fear.
The latter version continued skulking, lurking in the far corners of whatever room Sam happened to be in. He tolerated it, going about his morning as usual. Bucky followed him, slinking from room to room like a living shadow, watching him intently.
When midday rolled around, Bucky followed Sam into the kitchen, staring plaintively as he assembled a sandwich for lunch. His mournful gaze turned wide in surprise when Sam handed him the plate, turning away to make a second one for himself. By the time his own lunch was finished, Bucky was halfway through his; he started and looked up, chipmunk-cheeked, when Sam sat down heavily across from him at the kitchen table.
“Don’t mind me,” Sam told him, hiding a smile. Bucky swallowed, looking guilty.
“S’good,” he muttered softly before shoving another big bite into his mouth.
Sam shrugged. “Nothin’ special. I’ll get started on the cake after we’ve washed up from lunch.”
“Really?” Bucky lit up, the storm clouds clearing away from his face.
“Yes, really. I promised, didn’t I? Anyway, it’s—”
“—My birthday,” Bucky finished, grinning. He demolished the rest of his sandwich in record time, clearing his plate over to the sink. Sam twisted around in his chair at the sound of water running. Bucky had turned on the tap; he was holding his plate in one hand and a sponge in the other, frowning in concentration as he stared between the two of them.
“Just stick it in the dishwasher,” Sam called over his shoulder; a muscle was quivering in Bucky’s jaw.
“I know how to do this,” he said desperately, staring down at his hands. “I used to know how to do this.”
“Okay,” Sam said cautiously. “Okay.” He pushed his chair away from the table and came up next to Bucky. “It’s all right, man. It doesn’t matter. You can leave it in the sink, even.”
“I know how to do this,” Bucky insisted, his fist tightening around the sponge, squeezing water out between his knuckles.
Sam shut his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath. “Fine. So what are you forgetting?”
“I dunno,” Bucky muttered resentfully.
“Yes, you do. Washing dishes, you need what? Sponge, water, and what’s the third thing?”
“I…” Bucky bit his lip. “Bubbles, it’s supposed to...because my sisters and I would flick ‘em at each other, and Ma would…”
“Right,” Sam prodded when Bucky trailed off, “and the bubbles come from…?”
“From...from…”
“It’s right there on your left,” Sam said in a conspiratorial stage whisper.
Bucky looked, and squinted resentfully at the bottle of dish soap on the rim of the sink.
“It looks different,” he grumbled. Sam rolled his eyes.
“Tough shit, dude, deal with it.”
“S’not supposed to be liquid. S’posed to be a powder.”
“Two minutes ago you couldn’t remember you needed soap at all, and now you’re gettin’ uppity about what it looks like?”
“Where’s the drain plug?”
“I don’t have one. Just put it—the soap goes on the—on the sponge, dude, the sponge—no, put the plate down first. Put it down. You can’t hold three things at once, Bucky! You’re gonna—fine, just break all my dishes. That’s great.”
Bucky retrieved the plate from the sink where he’d dropped it, squinting at it closely. “It’s not broken,” he announced.
“Don’t sound so proud of yourself,” Sam told him.
Crisis averted, Bucky managed to scrub his plate clean without further incident, and balanced it in the drying rack with exaggerated care. Sam very pointedly took his time finishing his own lunch; when he was done, he stuck it into the dishwasher, glaring at Bucky out of the corner of his eye.
“Flour’s in the cabinet right over your head.” Sam bent down to search through the cupboard, retrieving the mixing bowls. When he straightened up, Bucky had fetched not only the flour, but the sugar, baking powder and salt as well, and was hovering by the counter, looking contrite.
“What?”
“So you’re still gonna make it?” Bucky asked anxiously.
“This again? You serious? Why would you think I’d changed my mind?”
Bucky shrugged and turned away, heading for the fridge. “We need eggs, right? For the recipe?”
He rummaged around on the shelf far longer than necessary, but not long enough. Sam was still staring him down, eyebrows raised and arms folded across his chest. Bucky matched him, stare for stare, lower lip jutting out just a little bit.
This time, Sam ran out of patience first. “Look,” he told Bucky curtly, “you and Steve want to play your little emotionally repressed conceal-don’t-feel game with each other, I literally could not give less of a shit. But if you’re gonna make it my problem, well, then, y’know, now it’s my problem, isn’t it. Can’t have it both ways.”
“I thought…” Bucky looked down at the floor. “I kinda thought you were mad at me, in the grocery.”
“Of course I was mad at you! You spat chewed-up banana all over the floor!” Bucky snorted and looked up at him, suddenly grinning as much from surprise as from amusement. Sam scowled. “It’s not funny, you know,” he told him, a warning tone in his voice. “Somebody had to clean that shit up.”
“I didn’t mean that.” The amusement that filled Bucky’s voice disappeared all too quickly, and his face once again softened into the mournful, hang-dog expression he’d been wearing since they got back from the store. “I meant… After. Later.”
Sam made no attempt to conceal his bewilderment. “Later? After what?”
Bucky just shrugged, picking at the label of the egg carton. Sam racked his brain, trying to remember what else Bucky had done that he could reasonably expect Sam to be angry about; finally, he recalled what had happened, just before Bucky’s behavior had changed in the checkout line. He was about to ask, but something—he wasn’t sure what—stopped him. Maybe it was the faintest tinge of a blush reddening Bucky’s cheeks, or maybe the memory of how Bucky’s fingers had curled into his shirt so gently. Whatever it was, the lingering vague suspicion it left behind made him unwilling to clarify, for fear of having it denied.
“Uh...yeah, we need eggs,” he said instead, shaking off the sensation. “Three. Here, here’s a bowl, do you wanna crack ‘em?”
“I’m not a kid,” Bucky grumbled.
“Coulda fooled me, way you been acting,” Sam retorted loudly, and Bucky hid a smile. He pulled the proffered mixing bowl in front of him, opening the carton of eggs with his left hand and fishing one out. Sam watched him, marveling, as he cracked it carefully into the bowl, tossing the shell into the sink.
“It’s so...delicate,” he offered by way of explanation when Bucky caught him staring. “I’m surprised you can pick up an egg without crushing it, honestly.”
Bucky lifted his metal hand up closer to his face, twiddling his fingers a little. “Pressure sensors in the plating,” he explained. “They’re sensitive enough that I can even feel if a piece of fruit is ripe or not without bruising it. It’s not the same as feeling with my real hand—I have trouble with textures, for one thing—but I get by. And my fine motor control is better than anything else on the market.”
Nodding, Sam swallowed the rest of his questions. Better not to interrogate Bucky, especially on his ‘birthday’; satisfying his curiosity wouldn’t be worth it. Instead, he fetched the can opener and went to work on the pineapple.
They cooked together in a comfortable silence, Bucky mixing the batter while Sam prepared the pan. Before long, the cake was in the oven, the dirty dishes loaded into the dishwasher (Sam whacked Bucky gently on the back of the head when he tried to do them by hand), and the timer set. The cake, when it was ready, turned out perfectly: Sam tipped it upside-down onto the plate, smacking Bucky’s hand away when he tried to pinch one of the pineapple slices.
“It’s my birthday,” Bucky pouted, trying again and getting another smack for his efforts.
“You can have a piece after it’s cooled down. Hand me that jar of cherries.”
Bucky obeyed, and Sam put the finishing touches on the cake, dropping one cherry into each ring of pineapple. Task complete, he covered the cake and shooed a protesting Bucky out of the kitchen. Once the cake was out of his sight, however, he made no further attempts. Quietly cheerful now, he seemed perfectly content to follow Sam like a living shadow as he puttered around the house, doing chores, tidying up, passing the time.
Sam hadn’t had any plans for the afternoon; it was a Sunday, so he had no obligations at the VA. Eventually, he ran out of busywork, and settled down in the living room, switching on the TV. To his surprise, Bucky hunkered down in a corner, crouched on his haunches.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
Bucky looked up, an expression on his face like he’d been caught misbehaving, and shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly.
“Can you even see the TV from there?”
He pulled a face that clearly indicated it didn’t matter much one way or another.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Get your melodramatic ass up on this couch before I kick it from here to Hawai’i.”
Bucky had the good grace to look sheepish as he obeyed. He perched himself on the far end of the couch, shifting awkwardly; he couldn’t quite seem to decide what to do with his hands. Sam watched in quiet amusement, with no intention whatsoever of making him feel more comfortable. He put on a random kung fu movie instead, and settled in. At first, Bucky seemed to be ignoring the TV entirely, but minute by minute he became more and more engrossed.
Some forty-five minutes in, he abruptly announced, “This is wrong.”
Sam looked back and forth between Bucky and the TV screen, where two characters were having a sword fight, flying through the air and balancing on the tips of trees. “It’s a movie, it’s not supposed to be realistic.”
“Not that—the dialogue. The subtitles are wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
What do I—I mean, the words on the screen don’t match what the people are saying,” Bucky said impatiently, glaring at him.
Sam sat up. “You speak Chinese?”
“It’s Cantonese, but yeah. Among other things.”
“So what are they really saying?” Sam asked, ignoring the way Bucky glanced at him sidelong, as if checking to see whether Sam was impressed by his subtle brag.
“Well…” Bucky pursed his lips, “it’s not really...it’s kind of subjective. It doesn’t translate well to English.”
“So they’re not actually wrong. You just disagree with their choices.”
Bucky glowered. Sam smirked. They watched the rest of the movie in silence, Bucky pretending not to sulk. When it ended, Sam offered him the remote as an olive branch. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting Bucky to pick, but he wasn’t disappointed. Star Trek was an old favorite of his; and apparently of Bucky’s too, considering that he didn’t start from the beginning, but in the middle of season two.
“You like that, huh?” Sam asked, mostly rhetorically; Bucky was humming along to the theme song over the end credits.
“Reminds me of home,” he answered, smiling absently. “I think I used to be like that—all hopeful, expecting the future to hold good things.”
Sam swallowed hard around the sudden lump in his throat as Bucky started the next episode. They sat together, just watching, until Sam’s stomach started growling.
“What do you want for dinner?” he asked when the next episode ended.
“Cake,” Bucky said instantly.
“You can’t have cake for dinner.”
“It’s my birthday.”
“I don’t fuckin’ care, you have to eat actual food.”
“I want cake.”
“You can have as much cake as you want after you eat a real dinner.”
Bucky grumbled something inaudible under his breath.
“Fine—I’ll make whatever I want, and you can just deal with it.”
Sam levered himself up from the couch, groaning—he wasn’t as young as he used to be—and shuffled off into the kitchen. Behind him, he heard another episode starting up; apparently Bucky had found something more entertaining than following Sam through the house. Well, that was fine. Steve hadn’t had an update since breakfast, and he was probably climbing the walls by now. Without Bucky breathing down his neck, he could actually have a conversation, let him know what was going on.
He fished his phone out of his pocket, and...yep, there it was, nineteen missed texts from Steve, and one from Natasha. He read that one first; it was brief and to the point. Apparently, Steve had turned to her when Sam didn’t answer his messages, and she wasn’t too pleased about it. He fired off a string of eye-roll emojis in response, then switched over to read through Steve’s.
They ranged from reasonable to hysterical. Some had advice, or suggestions, ways Sam could try to get through to Bucky or things from his past that he might remember. Others were increasingly desperate pleas for information, which Sam felt guilty about ignoring, while the rest were comically dire suppositions about what was going on, which made him roll his eyes again.
He dialed Steve’s number, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder while he headed for the fridge; he’d picked up a nice salmon fillet at the store, that and some salad sounded like the perfect dinner. Steve picked up before the first ring had even ended.
“Sam! What’s going on, are you all right? Is Bucky still there?”
“I’m fine, I’m making dinner, he’s in the living room watching Star Trek.”
“What the hell have you been doing?! I haven’t heard from you all day!”
“Yeah, well, your boy practically followed me into the bathroom, so I haven’t exactly had the chance to call.”
Sam could hear the expression on Steve’s face in the silence that followed.
“So he’s...okay?”
“More okay than I would have expected. We went grocery shopping, baked a cake, and then we’ve just been hanging around my place all day.”
“And you couldn’t find thirty seconds to let me know you were still alive?” Steve demanded sharply, then sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just—I’ve been going cock-eyed all day not knowing what was going on. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Steve, really. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“And he hasn’t—did he say anything else? About—why doesn’t he want to see me?”
The pleading in Steve’s voice twisted a knot in Sam’s stomach. “We talked about it a little bit,” he said slowly, “but I don’t think I should tell you what he said without his permission. Just give him time, man. And...maybe, maybe relax a little. You can’t force these things, and you’re puttin’ a lot of pressure on him. Now you know that he’s safe, that he knows who he is—”
“He remembers?” Steve interrupted, eager, hopeful.
“Yeah. Not everything, but—he told me some things, about growing up back in the day, things he couldn’t have read in a museum. He had a temper tantrum in the grocery store about processed cheese, I can tell you that.”
“Of course he did, that stuff is disgusting. Did you tell him about the bananas? Tell him about the bananas, he’s gonna be so pissed—”
“I do not want to hear about the bananas again, Rogers,” Sam warned him. “I have had it up to my neck with the bananas.”
“Okay, okay.” Steve was smiling, Sam could hear it in his voice. “I guess I’ll...I should leave you to it, then. You’ll…”
“I will,” Sam promised him. “If I can’t get the chance to call you again tonight, it’ll be first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
Sam set his phone on the counter, focusing his attention on the food. The salad could wait until the salmon was almost finished baking...he’d seasoned it while he was talking to Steve, but he felt like he was forgetting something. He went over the list again in his head: thyme, garlic powder, basil, oregano...right! A pinch of paprika, and the fish went into the oven.
He set the timer on his phone and headed back out into the living room. Bucky glanced up and smiled as he came back in.
“Dinner’ll be ready in about twenty minutes,” Sam announced, reclaiming his spot on the couch. Bucky grunted.
“What are we having?”
“Food.”
“That’s cute.”
“What can I say, I’m a charmer.”
Bucky sniffed the air. “Fish?” he guessed. Sam nodded.
“Baked salmon, and I was gonna throw a salad together.”
“And then cake after?”
“Yes, then cake after.”
He settled back against the couch, satisfied. “It smells good.”
“Thanks.”
When the timer sounded, Bucky followed Sam into the kitchen, not bothering to turn off the TV first. Sam retrieved the pan from the oven and put the finishing touch of lemon juice over the fish, then turned around, only to see Bucky destroying an entire head of lettuce with terrifying speed and precision. He paused, mid-slice, when he realized Sam was watching.
“Two things: one, I wasn’t gonna cut up the whole thing for just the two of us. Second, what the hell is that knife?!”
Bucky looked down at the massive buck knife in his hand as if noticing it for the first time. “It’s sharper than your kitchen knives,” he explained.
“I have absolutely no doubt of that!” Sam snapped. “Where were you hiding it?!”
“In a holster on my back, under the jacket?”
“Is that—do you—at least tell me you washed it first.”
Bucky looked sheepish.
Growling, Sam stomped over and swept the lettuce into the compost bin. Bucky would have protested, but clearly thought better of it; Sam glared at him as he stomped back to the counter. He turned off the oven and slid the pan of salmon back inside to keep it warm, then headed to the fridge.
“Waste of good food,” he grumbled, just loud enough for Bucky to hear.
“I would still have eaten it,” Bucky grumbled right back.
Sam snorted. “We are not eating salad garnished with dried-up Hydra blood!”
“I got all the blood off after the last time I used it!”
“I don’t want to hear it, man.”
Still scowling, Sam stomped over to the sink with a double fistful of green beans. He rinsed them off in the sink and fetched a kitchen knife from the stand, clipping off the ends. He tipped them into a skillet with butter and diced garlic, sautéing them until they were soft. Bucky glowered at him from across the room, watching while he retrieved the fish and served out two plates.
“I was going to make a casserole to take over to the VA on Tuesday,” Sam said pointedly, “but I guess I can make another trip to the store tomorrow to get more green beans.” He sat down at the table, sliding one plate over; Bucky came and sat down across from him, mouth puckered up. Sam took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly. When he opened them, Bucky was staring down at the table, looking to be near tears.
“C’mon, man,” he said wearily. Bucky looked up at him through damp eyelashes—such pretty eyes, Sam suddenly noticed. A clarity and intensity to them that you didn’t often see. And now they were miserable with a hangdog, pleading guilt, and Sam was rudely reminded of the usual consequences for a mistake or a failure to which Bucky was accustomed.
“Bucky, it’s fine,” he said, as gently as he could while keeping his voice steady. “Lettuce is, like, a buck-fifty, tops. And I’ll need to go to the store tomorrow anyway, I realized earlier that I forgot a couple things.”
He was lying about that last part, and he was pretty sure that Bucky knew he was lying, since he wasn’t very good at it. But it had the desired effect: Bucky pulled the plate closer to himself and started to eat, still watching Sam as though he expected at any moment for him to change his mind. For his part, Sam started in on his own meal, forcing himself to be nonchalant. They ate in silence, and over time, Bucky relaxed, the tension leaving his shoulders as he seemed to remember he was safe. The excellence of the food helped with that, no doubt; Sam had always been a great cook, and even an impromptu side dish turned out well.
When their plates were clean, Sam couldn’t miss Bucky’s plaintive glances over to where the cake was sitting, hidden by its cover.
“How ‘bout you make yourself useful and clear the table,” he suggested over his shoulder, heading for the counter. He heard the rattling of plates behind him, then water running—it seemed Bucky still didn’t trust the dishwasher, which would annoy him, if it didn’t afford him such good cover for his plan.
Sam rummaged in a drawer, carefully angling his body to hide what he was doing from Bucky’s field of vision. He found what he was looking for and turned to the cake, working as quickly as he could to finish before Bucky finished the dishes.
The sound of the water stopped—he was ready just in time. When he turned around, Bucky was leaning over, drying his hands on a towel. He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.
The flames from the leftover birthday candles Sam had found were lighting his face, their glow flickering over his features. Bucky tucked his hands under the towel, conscious of the way they were trembling.
“Breathe, dude, it’s just a cake,” Sam told him, cutting through his reverie. Bucky ducked his head, smiling at the amusement in Sam’s voice; Sam nodded towards the table. “Go on, sit. You gotta make a wish before these crappy candles burn all the way down.”
Bucky obeyed eagerly; Sam set the plate down right in front of him, hiding a laugh at Bucky’s scrunched-up concentrating face. Finally, he opened his eyes, and blew the candles out in one breath. Sam clapped him on the shoulder and reached over to pluck the candle stubs from the top of the cake. He tossed them carelessly in the sink, and returned with a clean knife and two plates and forks.
“How big of a piece do you want?”
“...How big of a piece can I have?”
“...How about I just take a piece for myself, and then you can eat the rest of it.”
Bucky grinned, and Sam did just that, taking a nice big slice and handing Bucky one of the forks. To his utter lack of surprise, Bucky devoured the entire rest of the cake in less time than it took Sam to finish his piece.
(Sam had gone out to eat with Steve before. Sam knew a thing or two about supersoldier metabolisms.)
“Good?” he asked around a mouthful, and Bucky nodded.
“Don’t tell Stevie I said this, but it was a lot better than his mom’s,” he answered, and Sam burst out laughing. “No, seriously! Sarah Rogers was a great lady—a hell of a dame—but she was no kinda cook. No telling Steve that, though.”
“Yeah, he’s a little pig-headed,” Sam said fondly. “But it’s part of his charm.”
Bucky snorted and rolled his eyes. “You got weird taste in friends, Wilson.”
“I’m hangin’ out with you, aren’t I? And anyway, he was your friend first.”
“Fair point.” Bucky shrugged. “She used to make this every year, y’know. Pineapple was expensive back then, but she’d save up the money.”
“For your birthday or for Steve’s?”
Bucky shrugged. “I can’t remember,” he said softly. “I just remember watching while she turned the pan over.”
“Sounds like a good memory, anyway.” Sam offered Bucky the last maraschino cherry. “You want? I don’t actually like ‘em that much.”
He took the fruit, tucking it into his mouth along with the end of his index finger, sucking the sweet, sticky syrup from the tip. Unconsciously, Sam mirrored the motion, tracing his lower lip with his thumb. He didn’t realize what he was doing until he inadvertently poked his tongue out, startling himself when he felt the wetness on his skin. Hastily, he gathered up the plates and forks, turning his back on Bucky to hide his blush.
Either he wasn’t fast enough, or Bucky picked up on the vibes anyway. Either way, he came up behind Sam while he was fussing with the sink, and draped himself all over his shoulders again, just as he had done in the grocery store line. Sam laughed and elbowed him, but he just plopped his chin down on Sam’s shoulder, nosing at his ear.
“Do we have any ice cream?”
“You cannot possibly still be hungry,” Sam said, studiously ignoring the ‘we’.
“Sam,” Bucky begged, drawing out the ‘A’, and Sam sighed.
“I don’t know, check the freezer.”
Bucky huffed a dramatic sigh and slouched over to the fridge, checked the freezer, and slouched right back over to Sam, flopping onto his shoulders again.
“Nothin’,” he pouted.
“Bummer,” Sam told him, keeping his voice flat, hoping Bucky couldn’t feel the way his heart was pounding in his chest.
“Aw, Sam.”
“What’re you whinin’ at me for?”
“I want ice cream!”
“Tough shit, you should have thought of that this morning when we were at the store.”
“C’mon…”
“I am not going out at ass o’clock at night to get you ice cream.”
“But it’s my birthday…”
“Three guesses how much I give a shit, and the first two don’t count.”
Bucky sighed again, exasperated, and squeezed Sam around the middle, then let go. He shuffled back into the living room; Sam followed and joined him on the couch, watching Bucky shoot him little sidelong glances that were obviously designed to make him feel guilty for his cruelty. About ten minutes into the next episode, Bucky realized it was having no effect, and gave up, settling in to watch.
Evening wore on into night, and Bucky showed no signs of leaving. When Sam couldn’t fight his yawns anymore, he switched off the TV at the end of the episode, standing up and stretching his back out.
“You, uh, you stayin’ the night?” he asked, when Bucky didn’t move.
“Is that...okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I mean, of course. Lemme go check the guest bedroom, I don’t know if the bed’s made up.”
“I was just going to hang out here, if that’s all right.”
“What, in the living room?” Bucky nodded. “Well, do you, man, but the bed’s a lot more comfortable than the couch.”
“Won’t be a problem.” Bucky hesitated, then explained, “I don’t really...sleep.”
“Like, at all?”
Bucky raised and lowered one shoulder, avoiding meeting Sam’s gaze.
“Is this a supersoldier thing? Because I know that Steve sleeps.”
“It’s not as if...I can sleep, I just…”
“You don’t need to?”
“I can go longer without it than most people.”
It was an answer, but somehow still not. Sam closed his eyes for a minute, reminded himself that whatever was going on in Bucky’s head was not his problem, and said, “G’night, then. Bedroom’s down the hall there if you change your mind, if you wanna put the TV back on just keep the volume low, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow—if you’re still here, I guess.”
He gave a little half-hearted wave of one hand, and walked away. Just before he made it out into the hall, a quiet voice behind him said: “I have nightmares.”
Stopping in his tracks, he turned around; Bucky was studiously staring at the wall opposite. Sam waited.
After a moment, he continued: “I didn’t—Hydra didn’t let me sleep. On long missions, they would—would tranq me if they had to, or else give me stims, push me until I collapsed and then stick me back on ice. Until I ran away last summer, I hadn’t actually slept even once since the night before the train. And now...every time I close my eyes I can see—I hear the—I have nightmares. Every time.”
“But you do still have to rest?” Sam asked softly, and Bucky nodded, forlorn.
“I push myself as far as I can in-between, is all. I figure I can last another two days before I—before things start getting fuzzy again.”
“That ain’t healthy, man.”
Bucky shrugged.
“Okay, well…is there anything I can do to help?”
No response. Sam waited what he felt was a respectable amount of time, then shrugged and turned away again. Again, just as he moved to step into the hall, Bucky’s voice rang out, sharper and clearer than before.
“Can I sleep with you?”
Sam froze.
It took some time for the short-circuit in his brain to clear, but when it did, he pivoted slowly on his heel. Bucky had stood up and was watching him with a panicked, wide-eyed stare that clearly showed that he was already regretting saying it.
He played out a couple of responses in his head, but what eventually came out was, “You wanna run that by me again?”
“...No?”
Sam raised his eyebrows, and Bucky quailed.
“I just thought, maybe, it would help. If there was somebody else there with me, I dunno.”
“And there’s no other reason?” Bucky gave a halfhearted shimmy. “No other reason you just asked if you can come sleep, with me, in my own bed? Maybe connected to the way you’ve been eyeballing me all day?”
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—I didn’t do that.”
“Oh yeah?”
Bucky at least had the decency to look embarrassed. Patiently, Sam strode back into the room and sat down on the couch, folding his hands over his knee and waiting expectantly. Bucky wrestled with himself, turmoil on his features, before taking a seat next to him.
“I used to be good at this,” he told Sam plaintively. “I was good with people. I was good at talking to people. I used to be charming.”
“That’s the way Steve tells it,” Sam agreed. Bucky made a face.
“When I was a kid…” he began, and paused, collecting his thoughts. “I’m a city boy, always been a city boy, but one year in the summer my ma and pa sent all of us kids off to my cousin’s farm, out in the country. I was pissy about it, mostly ‘cause Steve couldn’t come with us, but once we got there it was all right.”
Sam sat quietly, listening to Bucky describe the farm and the various farm-related activities he and his sisters had gotten up to, waiting for him to get to the point. In a circuitous, rambling way, forgetting things, contradicting himself, he wound around to it.
“It was the smell,” he explained, finally. “It’s...you remind me of the smell there.”
“You’re saying I smell like a farm,” Sam stated flatly, and Bucky turned beet red.
“No! No, not like that, no. It wasn’t—not the farm smell, the smell of—of the woods around it, the smell of, of, of, o-o-f…” He stammered, sputtered, and Sam put a gentle hand on Bucky’s arm.
“Relax, man, it’s okay,” he told him, reassuring. “Don’t try to force it.”
Bucky nodded and took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths, steadying himself. After a couple of false starts, he managed, “G-green.”
“Green?” Sam asked encouragingly.
“Green,” Bucky confirmed. “You—growth. Growing things. You smell like—like life, like the way green things smell, like plants budding after a rainstorm. You smell like life. It’s not the actual smell, it’s just—it’s the way you feel, when you’re around, you feel like the same way life smells.”
Sam was staring at him, dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open. Bucky was still blushing like crazy, gazing up at him from the corner of his eyes.
“You glow,” Bucky told him earnestly. “You have this—light. Like lying in the middle of a field in summertime. You make me feel...warm.”
“Oh,” Sam said weakly.
Bucky shrugged.
“So…” he said halfheartedly. “Anyway. I guess I’ll just...you said it’s okay if I have the TV on while you’re sleeping?”
The fluttering in Sam’s stomach had worked its way up into his chest. He stood up suddenly; startled, Bucky did the same.
“Look. If I let you—” he faltered, stunned by the wild hope that flashed into Bucky’s face— “if you come sleep in my room, do you think you’ll actually, y’know...sleep?”
“If sleeping’s really what you have in mind,” Bucky said hopefully, and pressed forward. His kiss was clumsy and artless, but sincere in a way Sam couldn’t help but be charmed by. He accepted it, kissing back, drinking in the sweetness, slow and gentle and honey-gold. Bucky’s arms came up to circle his waist; when his hands drifted lower, Sam pulled back, pushing his shoulders away.
“Now you stop that,” he told him, clearing his hoarse throat. Bucky was already scrambling backwards, looking panicked.
“I’m sorry, I thought—I thought you—”
“I’m not saying I don’t, I just—I barely know you, man! I’ve met you, like, three times, and the first two times you were trying to kill me.” That got the ghost of a smile, and Sam smiled back, encouraging. “Come on to bed, but we’re both keeping all our clothes on, and no hands below the waist. We can cuddle, and you’re gonna get some rest, and I will be telling Steve about all this tomorrow whether you like it or not, ‘cause he’s my best friend and I ain’t lyin’ to him about something so important, and you can just live with that. Deal?”
“Deal,” Bucky promised, then asked hesitantly, “can we kiss more?”
“You like that, huh?” Sam teased him, grinning when Bucky nodded eagerly, completely shameless. “Maybe. We’re gonna talk about things tomorrow, though.”
He lead the way down the hall to his bedroom, feeling Bucky’s hand creep shyly into his. Explaining this was going to be hell, but that was a problem for tomorrow. For now, he had an armful of supersoldier, and a warm bed, and safety.