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It’s quiet in the house. There’s no light leaking in through the windows, all of the curtains are drawn to a strict close. The cream wallpaper should provide something, some break in the monotony of darkness that he has created for himself, but it doesn’t. There’s no breaks. There’s no sound. When he leaves this darkness, this cave, this carved out thing, he has to wear sunglasses. He keeps his headphones in. He listens to interviews with Bucky, and the historical podcasts that use voice recording overlays of the Howling Commandos. He turns them off when it gets to be too much.
Bucky sits on top of the nearest counter most days. He knows that Sam doesn’t see him, knows that Sam doesn’t usually want to see him, but he stays anyway. It’s his fault that the love of his life is falling apart, and he might as well stick around to watch it happen.
It’s not like there’s much else he can do anyway.
“Hey Sammy. You can do this,” he whispers even though Sam can’t hear him, giving in to the impulse to stroke Sam’s back. Sam won’t feel it, but it’ll make Bucky feel better anyway. As soon as his hand touches his love, however, there’s quite a different reaction than the nonreaction Bucky expected: Sam nearly startles out of his skin.
“Bucky?” Sam asks, his voice high and thin as it cracks under the pressure of a thousand unsaid things. Bucky keeps rubbing Sam’s back.
“I’m right here, baby. I’m always right here,” he breathes, calm and yet not calm at all. It’s been months, and he’s just realising that this is the first attempt he’s made to touch Sam, to lay hands on him and reconcile the feeling of loss he keeps behind his teeth, even if he’s the one that left.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Sam mutters, his face pressing against his knee. Bucky wants nothing more than to drag him out of his half-fetal position half-crouch and onto their bed, onto the couch, but he doesn’t know how far this touching thing goes. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed, and when everything will go away again.
“I’m right here, Sammy. Let’s stand up. Let’s get to bed,” Bucky coaxes, his fragile hold moving to Sam’s bicep in an effort to influence the movement. Sam comes with him willingly, bewildered and obstinately not looking in his direction, though Bucky isn’t really sure that Sam can hear him, let alone see him. It doesn’t matter. If Sam can feel him, that’s more of him than Bucky has been able to have since that mission, since that horrible fucking mission. He keeps his hands on Sam.
“Bed. Bedtime. Bucky?” Sam asks again, sounding lost. Bucky slips his hand from Sam’s bicep to Sam’s own hand, lacing their fingers as he begins the journey to their bedroom. He hasn’t slept in months, only kept watch over the man he loves, but he still knows the journey blind and asleep.
“Can you hear me, honey?” Bucky asks, his want to know suddenly desperate, his need to communicate choking his unnecessary breathing. It feels like he’s alive again when Sam just nods, rugged.
“I can… I can hear you. How can I hear you?” Sam begs, fingers squeezing Bucky’s uncomfortably tight. Bucky doesn’t mind. The tightness is the closest he’s come to pain, the closest he’s come to true sensation in all these months, in all of these countless days where all he could do was watch the love of his life.
“I don’t know, Sam. I’ve been tryna talk to you for months, I swear. Can you see me?” he asks next, loosening his grip on Sam’s hand just a little so that he can stroke at the heel of it with his thumb. Sam makes a noise that’s half way between a snort and something suffering, something sad, something small.
“I’m scared to check, Buck. I don’t want you to go,” he admits, voice breaking again. Bucky squeezes his fingers as much as he possibly can without hurting him or disappearing or whatever the consequences are for his actions now, consequences so surreal he doesn’t know if he’ll ever understand. He can’t afford to break Sam again, can’t stand leaving him again, doesn’t want to go. He just wants Sam. He just wants them. He just wants here. If there’s an afterlife, he’s glad he’s here. He doesn’t want an after Sam.
“Look at me,” he whispers, his most reassuring tone taking him over, and he nearly breaks himself in half when Sam looks. Sam can see him. Sam can see him.
“Oh, honey,” Sam says, a hand coming up to brush over the bullet wound that still oozes sometimes, the one that goes straight through his temple, execution style. HYDRA caught up with them all those months ago, killed Bucky and Sam outrun them again, hiding away in the house in D.C. that they had decided was home a year ago. All of Bucky’s things are here, hoodies that Sam still wears, plants that Sam keeps alive even if before Bucky died, he could kill a rose bush with a look.
“Is not so bad,” Bucky insists, lopsided smile taking his face as his hand takes Sam’s, cupping his jaw. Sam just barely smiles back.
“Couldn’t bury you. Steve says they burned you. But you’re… you’re here. You’re here, Bucky. You’re here,” Sam repeats it like he’s assuring himself more than Bucky, and Bucky can hardly help moving forward, pressing their lips together. Kissing Sam feels just as much like home as it does like grief, the barest edge of what neither of them can truly have anymore because… there’s no way that this can last. No one lets the Winter Soldier have good things. No one gives them anything good. He kisses Sam harder anyway, pulls sounds from him that feel the closest to God that Bucky will ever want to be, holds him close, holds him real. Nothing ever felt real before Sam.
“I’ll stay as long as I can,” he promises, his forehead against Sam’s. And he will. Sam kisses him again, softer, careful, like he’s afraid that Bucky will slip right through his fingertips all over again.
“You better,” Sam sasses, the palest ghost of the firecracker that Bucky knows he can be, but they’ll get there.