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“You look tired,“ Bucky didn’t react, didn’t turn his eyes or head towards the man sitting next to him. There was a big space between them and suddenly he was glad because Sam couldn’t tell or feel how his whole body stiffened from that far. Bucky closed his eyes and let out a loud breath through his nose just because his teeth were clenched. He intertwined his hands together, for a moment enjoying how the cool metal felt against his flesh fingers and how his gloves were hidden in his jacket’s pockets. At the very least, despite how many of Sam’s quirks annoyed him he didn’t need to hide in front of him.
Partly. Some parts he would really like to keep to himself.
“Why do you care?” he murmured while leaning his head back against the cold side of the plane. The bench underneath his ass was fucking uncomfortable which brought him a sense of familiarity. The floors in his apartment were also uncomfortable and so was the bed in his and Steve’s apartment back in the day. His eyes were closed because the bright lights inside of the plane were hurting them and the last few days of absolutely no sleep, not even a couple of hours spent drifting in and out of consciousness, were catching up to him. He was pretty sure that even his eyelashes were in pain, but he also tended to be dramatic.
His thoughts were all over the place and he couldn’t catch up to everything that was happening. On most days he barely managed to function like an actual human being, a civilian as Dr. Raynor had put it, so everything that happened during the past couple of days left him on edge. And he still couldn’t sleep so he couldn’t even take the edge off. He also couldn’t get drunk so that was fucking fun.
“Feel like I have no choice when you look like you’ll kneel over,” maybe that was only his imagination or Sam actually moved over and was sitting closer to him. Maybe he did that when Bucky was having his inner monologue about fuck knows what. He couldn’t follow his train of thoughts anymore and remembering what he was thinking about minutes ago took too much energy.
“I don’t sleep. Satisfied?” he opened his eyes and turned his head to the right side just so he could actually look at Sam. He liked looking at Sam but that thought could never escape his head. He would have to disappear from the grid if his mouth ever decided to say that aloud. Good thing he was excellent at the whole disappear, ignore and forget department. Except forget nowadays.
Sam was pretty hard to forget no matter how hard he tried.
“I can see that, genius. Wanna tell me why?” Sam was leaning on his heavy bag behind him so his whole body was turned towards Bucky. His arms were covered by a dark blue shirt and crossed across his chest and his eyes didn’t leave Bucky’s face the whole time. He blinked but never wavered.
And Bucky didn’t feel any inclinations to look away so he stared right back at him. The eye contact should probably be uncomfortable but it was the opposite as he could feel how an unfamiliar warmth spread across his chest and made him want to press his hand to that area to tame it down.
“Oh, you know. Seven decades of forced assassinations and brainwashing,” whenever he mentioned this, what happened straight under S.H.I.E.L.D’s noses, the government officials and even Dr. Raynor got uncomfortable, wiggled around in their chairs as if the thought alone made them nauseous, looked at him with such pity filled eyes it awakened something primal in him and tried to maneuver around the topic. Sam just lifted his eyebrows, nodded one single tiny time, and continued to look at him with those big, brown eyes of his. Bucky frowned.
Sam lifted his eyebrows again, but more mockingly rather than sympathetically this time and Bucky caught how the left corner of his mouth lifted up and lowered down just as quickly. He stared again not allowing his watering eyes to blink just in case he missed another mocking smile.
“You know that it wasn’t you right?” okay, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Sam was supposed to take him joking about it in stride, reply in a similar manner and set off another bickering session. This wasn’t supposed to be a serious heart-to-heart but since when Bucky got what he wanted.
“I do,” apparently his short and quick-cut answer wasn’t enough because Sam finally lowered his eyes but just so he could move further on the bench and stop once he reached Bucky’s right side and sat close enough that their tights brushed and elbows knocked together. This was nothing compared to how close they were in the interrogation room or even in that fucking field, which Bucky tried to forget or at least block his mind from thinking about because he didn’t need it especially when Sam was sitting so close to him, but it still made his flesh hand sweat and his blood boil. That was bad.
“Look, about what you said-”
“No, nope. We are not going there,” Bucky turned his eyes away and let his head hit the plane side behind him quite hard. He stared ahead and refused to look to the side even if Sam’s eyes were burning a fucking hole in his face. He wished that Sam would give up but no matter how little time they actually spent together and the only major thing connecting them was gone, he knew him well enough to know that he isn’t letting this go.
And Bucky broke the second rule. He hated the rules but he hated breaking them even more.
“I’m sorry,” his voice was uncertain. Fucking hell. He didn’t want to sound like he was whining or groveling when he was actually apologetic. It’s just been a really long time since he needed to apologize to someone and doing such human things like remembering the fact that he should eat and whatever shit Hydra pumped into him to keep him vigil and alert at all times was no longer coursing through his veins or that he actually needed to sleep and avoiding nightmares slash memories won’t make them disappear. These days just being was difficult. Let alone appearing as a normal, civilized human being. A citizen. “About being an insensitive dick. You’re right, you know? Who am I to talk about it. Steve left the shield to you, it belongs to you and I shouldn’t-“
“If it was anyone else, and I mean anyone else in this world, who made that whole thing about themselves I would have barely stopped myself from knocking their teeth out,” Sam’s eyes finally left his profile and Bucky felt like he could exhale. The other man was still too close to him but no matter how stressful the contact was, feeling Sam so close to him was nice. He probably should have chosen a fancier word to describe it but he was in distress so fuck that. “But I don’t think you have had a chance to make anything about yourself in almost a century so I’m not angry. And we were in a therapy session where the whole point is talking about yourself. You don’t have to apologize,” Bucky flexed his vibranium fingers and for a second missed the soft whirring sound of his previous arm. That was the sound that followed him everywhere he went. He heard it in his every nightmare whether he was dismembering someone, taking orders from his handler, giving mission reports, or screaming.
He tried to push that thought away because missing something that Hydra forced on him made him nauseous. He had to swallow bile crawling up his throat before he spoke.
“I don’t need your pity, Wilson,” Bucky didn’t dare to lift his eyes. He wanted to. Sam was one of those people who gave you a calming effect whenever you were close to them. He didn’t judge, didn’t misjudge, tried to understand. That was more than the majority of people were capable of. Including him.
But he couldn’t look at Sam and fool himself with a false sense of security. They were flying to see Zemo after all. Bucky’s trigger finger already itched but it has been itching the whole day so he knew how to control it, swallow it down, don’t show it.
He really did have a thing for holy trinities, huh.
“It’s not pity, asshole. It’s understanding. I know you didn’t mean it or at least didn’t mean it in the way it came out,” fuck Sam Wilson.
Honestly, the guy was irritating. Bucky could see why Steve chose as clear as midday skies. There was no doubt that that stupid shield that had so much significance attached to it belonged to him. Maybe that was the reason why Bucky was so angry – because Sam deserved it and the other guy whose face irritated him to the point where he was brimming with anger didn’t.
“I’m still sorry, though,” he probably was. Feelings were very, very complicated but as long as he got the right message out he guessed it was okay.
“I accept it then,” why Sam was still staring at him was beyond him but Bucky finally dared to open his eyes and turn his head to the side. His eyes instantly caught the round brown ones which hadn’t left his face in a long time. He didn’t want to think about the implications of why’s and how’s. Neither of them said anything and maybe for someone else the whole deep and meaningful eye contact thing would have been awkward but Bucky lacked specific social cues. He wondered why Dr. Raynor never mentioned that to him but maybe she was aware of the fact that he knew. Developing his own specific body language which was his and not installed by Hydra was something he was still learning to do so recognizing other people’s was difficult.
And he did enjoy making certain people uncomfortable with his murder glare, James, that’s what this is.
Bucky allowed his eyes to leave Sam’s and let his gaze wander. Over long and curled lashes, dark eyebrows which the man loved to lift mockingly, and just before his eyes went lower he realized that those fucking eyebrows did lift up mockingly just now. Bucky rolled his eyes and bit down on a smile that wanted to break out on his face before turning his whole head away. His eyes were a bit wet and he wasn’t sure whether it was because Sam Wilson was really beautiful or because his sleep deprivation was about to make him scrape out his own eyes.
“Smooth, Barnes. Really smooth,” he could hear the smile in Sam’s voice and for a moment Bucky allowed himself to smile too before he once again closed his eyes and lifted his flesh hand to rub at his closed eyelids with his fingers. One time he did that with a brand new vibranium arm and almost went blind so no thanks. Now he knew how to control his strength better but he wasn’t risking his eyes.
“Who said I was smooth, Wilson?” Bucky allowed his knee to lightly hit Sam’s as he spread his legs further. He didn’t dare to open his eyes partly because the lights were really fucking bright and they hurt way too much for someone like him and partly because he didn’t want to catch Sam’s eyes. “Maybe I’m trying to be really fucking obvious because you’re being really fucking blind.”
He will surely regret that once he had a couple of hours of shut-eye but know it felt good. One less thing to carry on his chest in form of baggage. Maybe there was nothing here. That was probably the biggest possibility and the most obvious outcome but Bucky allowed himself to lose his dignity over the rolling around in the flowers memory. It would have been romantic if he hadn’t almost crushed Sam under his weight but it would have been his own fault because he didn’t let go of Bucky once they crashed onto the grass.
Why the hell he allowed his thoughts to wonder he didn’t know but now that those words left his mouth he didn’t worry that much. It’s not like he had no filter and would just spit out whatever came to his mind once Sam fluttered his lashes in his direction. He probably would but it’s not like Sam knew it.
Bucky would make sure that he would never found out.
“Real smooth, Buck,” Sam laughed, that asshole, and he allowed himself to smile again. He did want to open his eyes and see the other man smiling after the whole shit-show which today indeed was but he knew that if he did it he wouldn’t able to control himself and would send a couple of knives which he always had on his person towards those fucking lights.
“Yeah, I’m trying,” he didn’t need to open his eyes to feel how Sam’s palm splayed on his knee which made him flinch which was a natural reaction when the only people who ever touched him willingly were his handlers and Steve. He felt a momentary warmth but the palm disappeared the instant second Sam felt the flinch so Bucky extended his arm and grabbed it.
Sam was sitting on his right so of course, it had to be his flesh hand. Bucky could feel how his cool skin warmed up instantly as Sam’s fingers intertwined with his slowly. He let out a loud breath through his nose because he didn’t trust his mouth.
Bucky was not one for spilling his thoughts out loud nowadays but this was Sam. Whatever rules he had unknowingly created for himself in the midst of his recovery as he crafted his personality and tried to dig out the old buried parts didn’t exist, just fucking evaporated, once Sam Wilson made an appearance.
Maybe it was better when he was avoiding the guy but it didn’t seem like it when Sam rested their intertwined hands on his thigh and continued to look at him. Bucky didn’t need to open his eyes to feel that gaze on him. And maybe he won’t drift off to sleep with those bright lights still flickering above their heads but holding Sam’s hand felt nice, he was sure that his vocabulary was broader but at that moment he couldn’t pick out another word since the other man stole them all away, and even if he did drift off he probably won’t break it as another memory will wake him up gasping with a scream buried deep in his throat.