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“I’m not going to lie to you, Barnes,” Sam says. “This is some cartoon-ass shit.”
They’ve tried just about everything. Sam’s ears are still ringing painfully from the last three times Bucky, having given up on the shield, has thrown himself—vibranium arm first—at the metal door, to no avail. Just an oddly-shaped, shallow dent to show for his efforts. That is to say nothing of how fucking cold it is, the kind of cold that’s somehow surreal, too intense to be believed.
Bucky exhales, reaching up with one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. It’s possible hitting the door repeatedly might have shaken some things loose, but Sam knows this gesture is more for his benefit than anything. “Sam,” Bucky says, “I could really do without the commentary.”
“Well, you’re going to get it,” Sam says, crossing his arms, both to express displeasure and to discreetly shove his hands into the relative warmth of his armpits. “You’re the one who came barreling in here Fred Flintstone-style.”
Bucky shoots him a befuddled look, so Sam elaborates, “From The Flintstones. When he runs, it makes a funny noise.”
“‘When he runs, it makes a funny noise,’” Bucky repeats, as though awed. “Thank you for that.”
Sam sighs; a cloud of frost rises from his mouth. “Look, Sharon knows where we are,” he says. “When we don’t check in, she’ll get worried.”
“Yeah, and it could take her a while to figure out what happened to us, let alone stage a rescue,” Bucky says. “Because if I can’t get through that goddamn door, you can bet your ass nobody can hear us outside this room.”
Their signals are being jammed. The commlinks aren’t working; Sam’s cell phone isn’t picking up any bars, and Bucky never remembers to carry his anyway. Sam can’t even reach Redwing without some kind of signal. Poor guy is probably hovering in the hallway where he was left.
The walls look like plain, frosty steel, but they’ve got to be made of stronger stuff if repeated slams with vibranium are barely having an effect—not to mention with every hit to the door something groans ominously, something structural. It could be nothing, or even fake—something played through a speaker to scare them out of trying to escape. Or the wall could be load-bearing and Bucky could bring the goddamn ceiling down on them.
They can’t fire any weapons without risking a ricochet, and explosives are out, not with only the shield to cower behind. Because they’d been expecting tight quarters, close combat in the bowels of an old industrial building, Sam doesn’t even have the wings, which—if he had something with which to strip the heat-protectant panels, or if he grit his teeth and let Bucky whale on them—could at least put off some heat.
“Yeah, we’re in some shit,” Sam says. “Some really, really, dumb shit.”
Bucky gives their surroundings another thorough once-over, but it’s useless; they’re in a 20x20 room, by Sam’s estimation, with blank metal walls and one strip of fluorescent lights hanging overhead, the whole place humming softly like a big-ass walk-in freezer.
“There’s no way,” Bucky says, “the son of a bitch got enough vibranium to build a room like this without somebody noticing.”
“Doesn’t have to be vibranium to be strong,” Sam points out, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as discreetly as he can, as though wiggling in his clothes might generate some warmth. His new gear is heavy-duty, sure, and thankfully full-coverage except for fingerless gloves, but it’s also designed to be as breathable as possible to keep him from overheating during combat or flight. It’s warm and heavy because it can’t not be, not because it’s designed to retain body heat.
“I guess it doesn’t matter so much what it is,” Bucky says, “what matters is that he’s got us pinned.”
Bucky is, unusually, the more animated of the two of them at the moment. He’s moving constantly, less to keep himself warm than to search for any flaw in the structure that he can exploit. He seems nervous, Sam notes—not a comforting realization to have given the circumstances.
“Bucky,” Sam says, and Bucky stills briefly, one palm resting on the wall next to the handle-less door, as if checking for weak spots. He’s already tried squeezing his fingers into the thin cracks around the door, presumably planning to rip it off its hinges. “Zemo doesn’t think he can trigger you, does he? By making it cold?”
By freezing him, like Hydra did again and again, pulling him out of deep freeze whenever it came time for a regime change somewhere in the world. Sam doesn’t like to think about it. Under ordinary circumstances, thinking about it makes his blood boil, but right now he can barely manage a low simmer.
Bucky seems to have been expecting this question. He doesn’t move, just exhales through his nose. “I doubt it,” he says. “Besides, it won’t. I think this is just a cruel joke.”
“It’s torture,” Sam says, feeling strangely calm, perhaps because he needs to be that way, needs to keep Bucky on an even keel right now. “You know he’s good at mind games. The worst thing we can do right now is give him what he wants.”
Bucky glances at him, expression serious, difficult to read. “It’s torture, alright,” he says. “But if he keeps us in here, it’ll be a lot worse than that. It’s too fucking cold.”
“He won’t keep us in here,” Sam says. “Where’s the fun in freezing us to death?”
Bucky’s studying him now. “Won’t be an us, Sam.”
Sam blinks. “Steve froze,” he says, “in water, and you—”
“And we lived,” Bucky says, sharply. “Steve walked it off, and so did I—when I fell off that train, and every time Hydra put me on ice. I run hot and I’m durable. I can live through this, indefinitely, if I freeze.”
The unspoken assumption, unfortunately correct, being that Sam won’t. So Bucky thinks Zemo’s plan is to torture them—both of them, as well as Bucky specifically, two birds with one shitty stone—by freezing them. He’ll die, Bucky will watch and then either die or go hypothermic himself, forced into hibernation like a goddamn polar bear. Isn’t that just swell.
Sam does not voice any of this, feeling it best not to validate what Bucky’s thinking, even if it might be accurate. “Well, don’t write me off yet,” he says dryly. “It’s only been what—twenty minutes?”
He unfolds his arms to check the time and temperature readouts from the screen at his forearm, but all he gets are some nonsensical readings and an error message. His fingers are well past numb already, the joints stiff and uncooperative; it’s fucking cold. “Goddamn,” he says. “The bastard really thinks of everything.”
Bucky makes a wry face and carries on with tapping the walls around the door, each rap of his hand making a solid, unpromising thud. “He doesn’t know about Carter,” he says. “Or maybe he does, and we’re fucked.”
Sam huffs but ignores this. Really, it’s sort of touching that Bucky is this worked up about the odds of Sam freezing to death in here—and his worries aren’t exactly unreasonable—but he could at least try to feign some optimism here. Sam has faith in Sharon, at least.
He’s felt the beginnings of shivers for several minutes now, querulous spasms in his hamstrings, his calves, tickling up his back; he’s surprised he’s able to suppress them as well as he is. His face is numb, even with his helmet covering most of his head. He took his goggles off when they first realized they were stuck, wary of any moisture on his skin freezing and sticking them to him, so now even his eyeballs are cold.
He forces himself not to think about this, to stay calm, rational, but allows himself to pace around for a bit in an effort to raise his body temperature even slightly. He looks upwards, then into the corners of the room, but he finds no visible cameras. If they have an audience, they’re not meant to know it. Surely Zemo doesn’t intend to leave them in here. One way or another, either when Sharon finds them or Zemo comes for them, someone will come.
The sole air vent above their heads is much too tiny for either himself or Barnes to get through, even if they could reach it. There’s no furniture, nothing to put on the floor or wrap around themselves to keep warm, no safe way to light a fire that wouldn’t smoke them out; they’d probably have a hell of a lot more resources had they been dropped in the middle of a tundra somewhere.
Sam experiments with his tech for a while, only succeeding in frustrating himself when his fingers are too numb to manipulate the screen properly. Bucky keeps banging on the walls in the meantime, intermittently punching them or slamming the shield against them, to no avail. The thudding is so loud that Sam’s ears start to ache, hollowly at first, then sharply.
“Barnes,” he says. “Give it a rest, would you?”
Bucky stops immediately, and the look he tosses Sam is shockingly heartsick. He looks pale, his lips ashen—next they’ll turn blue, Sam knows—and a faint sheen of perspiration from exertion or anxiety has frozen at his hairline. His eyes are blue and fretful, and something shifts in Sam’s chest, something unreasonably warm given the circumstances.
“Shit, Sam,” Bucky says. “Sorry. I just—I should be able to get us out of here.”
“C-can’t smash through everything,” Sam says, juddering with a shiver too strong to muscle through. “Listen, it’s not your fault. I thought we had him, too.”
Bucky nods, although whether he believes this is unclear. Sam’s teeth clack together painfully, but he manages to speak steadily when he says, “We’ve got to stay calm. I don’t know if that vent up there’s working, but if it isn’t, we’ll use up all our good air in here panicking. Plus, the longer we’re in here, the more energy reserves your body’s going to need to keep you going.”
Bucky nods again. “You feeling alright?” he asks, approaching, crossing the ten feet between them as though he needs a better look. His boots thud heavily on the floor, a weirdly comforting sound.
“Freezing my ass off, but that’s to be expected,” Sam says, shuddering again, this time violently enough that Bucky swings out a hand to grab his elbow. “I’m alright.”
“Should we—I don’t know, people always joke about body heat,” Bucky says, grimacing sympathetically. He lets go of Sam’s arm as he says this, quickly, as though not wanting to be accused of anything untoward. Ironic, considering they’re pretty well past rubbing elbows.
“Yeah, tempting, but I don’t think so,” Sam says, gritting his teeth, fighting another onset of shivers, though he knows it’s his body’s attempt at generating warmth. “That would mean taking off our gear, and we’ve got no blankets to wrap up in to t-trap heat.”
Bucky nods, then gives Sam a weak half-smile. “Shame,” he says. “Blanket would make things nice and cozy, huh.”
“Shut up,” Sam huffs, rolling his eyes, and the next bout of shivers catches him hard, the muscles in his thighs, stomach, and upper arms spasming hard enough that he hunches over, grunting. “Fuck, it’s cold.”
Bucky’s hands are back, grabbing gently at his shoulders. “Maybe you should sit before you fall,” he says. Then, in a weirdly soothing tone, “We’ll sit down together.”
Sam is briefly torn; instinct says to keep moving, try to get warm, but logic reminds him that he’s not going to get substantially warmer, he’s only going to waste strength. Better to sit for a minute, see if an idea comes to him.
The floor is cold, even through his armor. Bucky sits down next to him, although Sam was expecting them to sit back-to-back for support, as leaning up against an equally cold and unfriendly wall seems pretty unappealing right about now. Sam wishes his fucking equipment would work so he could get a temp readout on this place; it’s got to be well below zero. He wishes he could think of anything to do but hope for Sharon—or, hell, Zemo himself—to arrive, but it’s pretty difficult to focus on anything except how cold it is.
I’m hypothermic, Sam thinks. My brain can’t work as well under these conditions. He remembers the symptoms well enough from field training, and before that from as early as Boy Scouts. He’s only going to get stupider from here on out. If they're here long enough, it’ll be his cardiac and respiratory functions going into decline next.
“Fuckin’ A,” Bucky says. “You’re shaking like a leaf, Sam.”
Their shoulders are brushing, their thighs, too, but Sam can barely feel the contact, and it’s not because of the thickness of his gear. “You d-d-don’t say.”
It’s miserable, and they’ve been in here for, what, an hour? Maybe less? Sam’s lost track of time without a functioning clock or natural light to go by. He’s wracked by another bout of hard shivering, and this time Bucky slings an arm around him and says, “Hey, it’s going to be alright,” like Sam’s crying or something.
“Not going to lie, this kinda makes a N-New York winter seem like a cakewalk,” Sam says, shoulders hunched slightly in Bucky’s grip. Talking is difficult; his face is numb, muscles gone spastic, the joints of his jaw achy. His teeth fucking hurt. “Granted, I’ve never sat outside in the winter for no reason.”
His gear rustles as he shudders within it like a Mexican jumping bean; Bucky tuts under his breath, then shifts abruptly, letting go of Sam and scooting backwards. “What’re you—?” Sam begins, but stops, astonished, when Bucky scooches up behind him, legs slotting on either side of Sam’s, and wraps his arms around Sam’s torso as best he can given their bulky equipment.
“While I appreciate the effort,” Sam says, “this isn’t g-gonna help much.”
“Who said I’m doing this for your benefit, sweetheart?” Bucky says, in the vicinity of Sam’s right ear, and Sam resists the urge to turn his head and gawk at him. He’s vaguely surprised he doesn’t flush, until he remembers that his body is currently rerouting all of his blood to center mass, unable to spare anything for silliness.
“What a pretty picture we make,” Sam says. “Two sitting ducks freezing their balls off.”
Bucky shifts, letting go of Sam with one arm in order to draw his gun, the handle of which he keeps a loose grip on as he rests it on the floor next to his thigh. They’re sitting at a slight angle from the door; if anyone enters, there might be a split second before they can take aim themselves. “Just hope you haven’t got frostbite,” Sam says, “so you can shoot that thing.”
“Friend of mine once told me,” Bucky says mildly, “that I could shoot the pollen off a bee’s ass.”
Sam laughs, a hoarse noise that bounces off the metal walls, ugly but genuine. “Let me guess,” he says. “Dugan?”
“The very same,” Bucky says. “Bet Steve told you plenty about him.”
“Steve, hell, he was in my history textbooks,” Sam says, but he doesn’t really want to go there. All of those men are dead now, and they all probably lived long lives thinking Bucky was already dead.
Sam shivers again, less violently this time, and Bucky gives him a little squeeze, pulling him closer, so that his back is tight to Bucky’s chest. Now he does flush, weakly, the sensation more mental than anything. There’s absolutely nothing erotic about their circumstances right now, but nevertheless there’s an intimacy to this position that they’ve otherwise managed to avoid, even during moments that would normally be considered pretty damn intimate.
No, Sam thinks, firm. This isn’t intimate. It’s not even practical; it’s a coping mechanism, Bucky’s way of dealing with his sense of helplessness and whatever else this icebox of a room has stirred up. They can do intimate later. The ideal setting for this, Sam decides, would be a tub, one filled with hot, silky water. Barnes does run hot; Sam notices it every time they so much as brush against each other. His hands are always pleasantly warm. In a bath, he could let Barnes spoon up behind him and hold him like this, maybe kiss his neck, call him sweetheart.
He doesn’t mean to shut his eyes, thinking of that tub full of warm water, but then Bucky gives him a shake and says, “Hey. Don’t go to sleep on me.”
“Roger that,” Sam says, squeezing his eyes shut for a second and opening them again, forcing himself back to alertness. Maybe he’s imagining it, but Bucky’s grip on him does seem to have helped with the shivering—that, he realizes with a dull sense of dread, or he’s moving past shivering and onto the next stage of death by exposure. He no longer feels cold so much as he feels pain, constant, achy, and exhausting. Thinking of the bath again, of Bucky’s bare skin, is much more pleasant.
Bucky, he realizes, is trembling—not as spastically as Sam is, but finely, all over, like an engine idling. “How’re you feeling?” Sam asks.
“Cold,” Bucky says. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Got to, it’s my job,” Sam says distractedly, trying to flex his fingers where they’re stuffed under his arms and finding that he can’t unclench his fists.
“Boy,” Bucky says, deadpan. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”
“You know what I mean,” Sam says, lacking the energy for a comeback. “I take care of you, you take care of me, that’s how this whole partners thing works.”
“Partners, huh,” Bucky says. “I’ve sucked your dick, the least you could do is call me a friend.”
Sam laughs. “Alright, sure,” he says. “I know I said this isn’t your fault, but as my friend and all, you owe me one after this.”
Bucky gives him a little squeeze, barely discernible through their clothes. “Whatever you want,” he says. “Buddy.”
Something in Sam, the echo of a field training session long past, warns that this lighthearted mood is not a good sign; he’s losing focus, losing energy, and it’s only making him weaker.
He starts running over their circumstances in his mind. They traced a heat signature to this room; that must’ve been faked, one way or another, because there’s clearly no other body in this room. There are no weak spots, no loose panels, no exposed wires—nothing. Maybe if he and Barnes were geniuses, Stark or Banner-level, they’d be able to fix their tech, but now there isn’t even a way to call for help.
Thinking of all this keeps Sam alert at first, but he can’t focus for too long. He realizes when Bucky gives him another little shake that he’s relaxed slightly, leaning more of his weight back on Bucky. “Stay awake, soldier,” Bucky says, a little too softly for any kind of military discipline. “C’mon, name, rank, and number.”
Sam rolls his eyes but rattles it off anyway, aiming for breezy—I’m not that bad off, relax, man, I’m not dead yet—and ending up at tired.
Bucky does not seem appeased by this. “I gotta get us out of here, Sam,” he says. “You’re not doing so hot.”
“That was a shitty pun,” Sam says, but Bucky doesn’t laugh.
“There has to be a way,” he says, the muscles in his thighs and arms tensing briefly, like he means to let go of Sam and get up.
“No,” Sam says, instinctively, “don’t.”
The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t want Bucky to let him go. Maybe Bucky is keeping him warm somehow; it’s pretty well impossible, but it’s a nice thought. He’s stopped shivering, at least. He doesn’t want to start again, and he doesn’t want Bucky up banging around. He wants to sit here and wait for help and think about warm sheets, hot coffee, clothes fresh out of the dryer.
Bucky relaxes slightly, but he doesn’t seem happy about it. Nevertheless, his tone gets low again, soothing. Too fucking tender by half. “Alright,” he says. “Just a minute longer. Then we’ve gotta get up. You need to take a lap, or something.”
“First of all,” Sam says, “since when do you give me orders?” There’s no real heat to it, though. No pun intended.
Bucky doesn’t answer this, but he does lean forward enough to rest his chin on Sam’s shoulder. “I’ve never enjoyed hurting someone,” he says after a beat or two. “Ever. But I’d love to rip this motherfucker apart.”
“You and me both,” Sam says, not nearly as off-put by this kind of talk as he probably should be.
He likes it when Bucky curses; it has a mild, earthy charm to it. He likes it best when Bucky curses under his breath, little mutters of fuck, shit, oh God, his eyes shut, jaw tight. He wishes Bucky would hold him tighter, feels a weird need for an anchor right about now.
Bucky’s humming starts quietly, is so soft and unfocused that Sam thinks at first that it’s just a nervous tic, another coping mechanism. It’s something slow, bluesy, but Sam can’t place it. Then Bucky lets his head tip to nudge lightly against Sam’s, companionable and affectionate. Sam doesn’t mind; it feels nice. It’d take too much energy to be fussed about Bucky taking this liberty with him, even if it is a pretty flagrant violation of their usual pattern.
“Thought you were trying to keep me awake,” Sam says, “not put me to sleep.”
“Sorry,” Bucky says, and stops.
“No, it’s alright,” Sam says. “I like it.”
“C’mon, darlin’, you promised,” Bucky says, with that fretful tone to his voice, needling at Sam until he opens his eyes again. He doesn’t remember having shut them again, gets the impression he may have actually dropped out of consciousness, though for how long he isn’t sure. “Sam—”
The lights flicker slightly; Sam writes it off as his eyes playing tricks on him but Bucky stiffens up, lifting his head to look upwards. They flicker again, more distinctly this time, and then abruptly cut off altogether, plunging them into total darkness. The mechanical freezer hum of the room suddenly goes quiet, the silence disconcerting. Then something gives a metallic thud, like a bolt dropping. Or a door unlocking.
Sam feels Bucky fumble, movements clumsy but quick, with his gun; it occurs to Sam belatedly that he should draw down, too, but he can’t move for how tightly Bucky’s holding him, all his muscles tautening, like he’s prepared to either fling Sam aside or tuck and roll with him. Then the door swings open and low, dingy light spills in.
“Don’t shoot,” Sharon says. “It’s Carter.”
“Bucky,” Sam says, but Bucky is already moving, propelling them both to their feet like it’s nothing. Sam’s nearly dead on his feet, his muscles locked and joints stiff, but Bucky half-pushes, half-walks him forward, both of them staggering past a wide-eyed Sharon into a muggy warmth that has Sam swooning almost instantly. They’ve gone too fast; the temperature differential is too much. “I’m going to pass out,” he hears himself say, in a tone of strange calm, and in short order his vision grays out completely.
The next several minutes pass in a fog, though he quickly comes to. I’m in shock, he thinks vaguely, but it’ll pass. This keeps him calm. He feels feverish, his nervous system overtaxed and misfiring. He speaks to Sharon; her expression is one of tightly-controlled urgency, unhappy about something. He strips down to his under-armor, his uniform stiff as a board from the cold, and lets Bucky guide him into the back of a car, cognizant of Bucky saying, you’re alright—it’s alright, I’ve got you. He gives a grunt of assent and Bucky stops pestering him.
Sam comes out of it after what seems like a long while, and then he realizes why it’s taken so long; he must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because he wakes lying on his stomach under heavy blankets. He inhales, finding himself surrounded by the ubiquitous, clean-but-stale scent of hotel bed linens. Someone shifts next to him—someone lying on the bed with him, atop the covers.
“Sam?” Sharon says, but not from right next to him—no, that would be Bucky, Sam realizes, opening his eyes and lifting his head. Bucky is lying on the double bed with him, upright with his back leaning against the headboard, watching Sam closely. Sam turns his head and finds Sharon sitting on the edge of another bed to his right, holding her phone in her hands but looking up at him.
“Where are we?” Sam asks, muddled, having some difficulty comprehending this arrangement and pulling himself out of a deep sleep at the same time. He feels like he slept the sleep of the dead; his muscles are strangely sore. Thank God he’s warm, at least, warmer than seems possible without being uncomfortable.
“Motel,” Bucky says, stating the obvious, as Sharon says, “Just outside the city.”
“Zemo?”
“In the wind,” Sharon says. “If he was ever close at all.”
Sam lifts his torso up enough to pull a hand out from under the blankets and rubs at his face. He’s still wearing his under-armor, the slick material clingy and sort of uncomfortable, but someone has buried him under multiple hotel comforters. He finds he remembers coming here, getting into bed; after that, nothing.
The clock reads 4:47 PM; it was mid-morning when they went into that building. “How long was I asleep? Did we go to a hospital?” Sam asks.
Sharon shoots Bucky a look. “No,” she says. “We should’ve. Still can.”
Bucky is looking at Sam, earnest. “You told me not to.”
“And you listened?” Sam says, dumbfounded. “I was basically delirious.”
“I know,” Bucky says, “but I didn’t want to upset you.”
Sharon sighs. “You were pretty damn adamant,” she says. “Barnes is just softer on you than I am.”
Sam resists the urge to glance over at Bucky, but can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, guilelessly obvious in his attentions. Sam rolls over onto his back, then sits up, letting the covers puddle over his lap. The room itself is warm, too; the heater is blasting. Sharon has taken off her light jacket, wearing only a t-shirt and jeans. Bucky, by contrast, is in sweats.
“You alright?” Sam asks, looking over at him.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Bucky says, still studying him. Sam’s not sure why they’re in the same bed, given that Sharon could easily sit in the ratty armchair in the corner of the room. Then he remembers the slightly shy way Bucky had mentioned body heat earlier, and then the way Bucky had held him in that room, accomplishing precious little in terms of sharing warmth but a good deal in raising morale, at least. He has a panicky thought of Bucky spooning him under the covers with Sharon in the room, but dismisses it. It’s not that he thinks Sharon would care if Bucky did, or even if she knew that he and Bucky mess around sometimes, but it’s still not the kind of thing Sam wants an audience for.
“So, what?” Sam says, looking back at Sharon, who is watching them with a calm but serious expression. “How’d you get us out? Thanks, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it,” she says. “I EMP-ed the door a few times. Once I found Redwing, it was almost laughably easy.”
Sam holds her gaze for a moment, sure her mind’s on the same track as his; the whole thing contradicts itself. It would have taken some effort to make a large, superstrength-proof room, but to what end—some lazy torture that Zemo wouldn’t even be physically present for? Lazy torture that would’ve killed them, sure, but there are quicker, more painful ways of doing that. To Sam’s mind, either Zemo had been on his way to their location and Sharon beat him there—unlikely—or he did all this simply to remind them of exactly how tricksy he is, how subtly powerful.
“Maybe he was trying to draw you out,” Sam says. “See if we had any accomplices.”
“Maybe,” Sharon says. “You didn’t see any cameras in there, did you?”
She sounds like she’s already sure of what he’s going to say, but he answers anyway. “No.”
“Doesn’t mean there weren’t any, though,” Bucky points out, gaze flicking between the two of them, his brow furrowed. “Hidden so we wouldn’t destroy them, probably.”
“Probably,” Sharon says. “The whole thing’s too cut-and-dried.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Sam says, rubbing at his face again. He needs cool water splashed on his face, needs to pee, but lacks the energy to get up. He feels totally wiped out, though thankfully not as awful as he had in that room.
As though sensing this, Sharon says, “There’s some terrible free coffee in the lobby, but since you almost died and all, I could be troubled to go to the 7/11 down the road,” she says, giving him a wry smile as she stands up. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m alright,” Sam says, returning her smile. “Thanks.”
Sharon shrugs on her jacket and steps out with another don’t mention it. Sam watches her go, truly immensely grateful for her, and not only because she saved his ass—if not for her, Bucky might still be sitting in that freezer, horribly, unbearably alone, maybe still holding onto Sam. That thought is almost too awful to stomach, strangely more unsettling than the idea of his own death.
Once the door clicks shut, Sam expects Bucky to get up, even if only to move aimlessly around the room—anything to restore the platonic distance that, he now realizes, they’ve actually worked to maintain. It’s taken effort, effort he hasn’t even noticed he’s been expending, to avoid eye contact, to make their touches short and brisk and to-the-point. You can’t not become intimate with a person when you spend damn near twenty-four hours a day with them, but this—this is a whole different animal now. Maybe it always has been.
But Bucky stays where he is, leaning against the headboard, watching Sam. His legs are spread comfortably, the space between his thighs not wide enough for Sam to sit in but wide enough to be evocative, to make him think of other things even as he tries hard not to. He flushes, suddenly overheated under all the covers, as he thinks of how he’d acted in that room, how easy it had been to fall into daydreams. But he was hypothermic at the time—dying—and those thoughts can easily be written off now as the cold decreasing his brain function, leading him to retreat into fantasy rather than expend valuable energy trying to find a way out.
Still, he thinks, looking at Bucky, it’s not like he was fantasizing about cuddling up in his childhood bed with the space heater cranked up or something.
“You sure you’re alright?” Bucky asks. “Or d’you just like what you see?”
Sam snaps out of his reverie. “Stop flirting with me,” he says, too quickly. “We’ve got shit to figure out.”
Someone less attuned to the subtleties of Bucky’s mannerisms might not have noticed any reaction other than the slight clench of his jaw, but Sam can see it, the way something immediately begins to wall off in him, a shutter closing at his eyes. The sight of it inspires a small burst of panic in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just—it’s been a long day. You can flirt with me if you want.”
Bucky blinks at him, then one corner of his mouth lifts and Sam relaxes. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “What’ve we got to figure out?”
“Everything, really,” Sam says. “Nothing about this feels weird to you? Too easy?”
“Wasn’t easy for us,” Bucky points out, with a little shrug that causes Sam to feel a flare of something that might be affection for him. “I think Zemo just wanted to watch. Lock us up somewhere we couldn’t get out of, torture us, see how we handled it.”
How had they handled it? Well, in that they hadn’t gone to pieces or done anything crazy, but also badly, in that they pretty easily surrendered to their situation. And now?
“So how are you handling it?” Sam asks. “Really, I mean.”
Bucky keeps his expression neutral; he can be pretty good at that when he tries. Sam supposes he’s had quite a bit of practice at it. “I’m alright.”
“It’s okay if you’re a little shook up,” Sam says, because surely he is, surely if Sam feels this discombobulated, Bucky must feel it, too. And Bucky had behaved more anxiously in that room than Sam had.
“I told you,” Bucky says, calm, “it was never about me.”
When Sam says nothing, Bucky surprises him by reaching out, letting his hand catch loosely at Sam’s forearm. Two grown men in a narrow ass bed; there’s not much distance to cover. “Sam,” he says.
Sam just watches him, hardly cognizant of whether he’s controlling his expression or not. He ought to pull away, to tell Bucky to forget it, to focus on their next move. But he doesn’t, compelled by a breathless sort of curiosity to see where this goes.
“If things had gone down differently,” Bucky says, “I would’ve—I don’t know. I wouldn’t be alright. At all.”
Sam recognizes this, the stilted but earnest way Bucky speaks, the watchful look in his eyes as he waits for Sam to respond. He’s counseled enough soldiers to understand the cautiously-handled emotions of a man who’s forgotten how to express them. Hell, he sees plenty of that in himself, which is a vaguely uncomfortable realization to have right now.
“Well, I should hope so,” Sam says, unable to help himself, and is gratified when Bucky gives him a smile.
“Don’t be a wiseass,” Bucky says.
“How can I not, you make it so easy.”
“I’m serious,” Bucky says, quieter now. Still watchful. “D’you understand?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “I do.”
Bucky has let his hand go slack on Sam’s arm, but then he moves it, reaching up to touch Sam’s cheek with the palm of his hand. His palm is warm, calloused, and familiar, though he’s never touched Sam’s face before, at least not like this.
Bucky smiles, maybe at the surprised look on Sam’s face, and drops his hand, leaning back against the headboard again.
“Alright,” he says, expression returning to baseline. “So what’s the plan?”
Sam blinks, momentarily dumbfounded, aware that he probably looks it. It occurs to him that—assuming there had been hidden cameras in that room—he has some idea now of what Zemo might’ve seen, what conclusions he might be drawing at this very moment, wherever he is. The thought is frightening enough that he shoves it away; it’ll be easier to set his jaw and muscle through that fear later, when he’s further removed from this moment.
A moment which, he thinks, they can linger in for at least a little bit longer. They probably deserve it.
“Well, for one, we wait for Sharon to get back, see what she thinks,” Sam says. “Three heads are better than two, and you and I seem to be having an off day.”
Bucky nods, easy but serious. “You should probably rest some more.”
Sam doesn’t argue with this; it’s true, he probably should. He ruminates for a moment. “Does this place have a nice tub, you think?”
Bucky frowns slightly, confused. “I didn’t really look,” he says. “Why?”
Sam shrugs, then smiles, enjoys the way Bucky seems to catch his drift slowly and then all at once. “No reason. Just a thought.”