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Sam knew it was dangerous. What he did for a living. The whole guns, enhanced soldiers, and high surfaces shtick. But he had his guns, his wings, and Torres with his team watching over him on almost every mission. He could handle himself. He was fucking capable, a full-ass grown man who could take care of himself no matter how dangerous the situation was. He wasn't bulletproof, enhanced, didn't have a healing factor but it's not like he couldn't take a bullet.
Of course, Barnes said fuck all of that and everything beyond.
It happened fast. One of those enhanced persons lifted their gun from a long distance - they were all the way across the parking lot where shit was going down - and maybe Sam didn't notice but that's because he was busy trying to stop a blonde girl from ripping his wings off. He heard the shot, knew, he fucking felt it in his gut, that it was coming for him and he was getting ready to cover his side with a wing even if it meant that extending it gave the very very angry and strong girl with really bright and young green eyes an opportunity to grab it easier because losing it was not going to be as painful as getting a bullet to the shoulder or his arm but it never came.
He was confused for a second, terrified for one more as he watched how that same girl who was coming towards him with the usual villain murder strut stopped and her eyes went wide for a second - she lost her mask a while ago and it was somehow worse because now he could see how young she was - before realizing that the bullet never hit him but he heard how it hit something. Or someone, rather.
Sam allowed his eyes to leave his enemy for a second because the girl didn't seem so determined to murder him anymore as her eyes were watching someone. He turned to the left side and his eyes caught those bright ones which seemed a bit darker in the late evening light. Barnes was facing him, his back towards the gun which fired and he was still. Still as a fucking string and it didn't take Sam long to realize that the fucking bullet which was coming for him and which would have hit his wing hit Barnes in the back. Because the fucking asshole jumped in front of it.
He watched how Barnes' hand quickly grabbed a gun from his thigh holster as he turned around way too fast for Sam to comprehend and shot the gun straight out of the guys' hands while blasting a couple of his fingers as well. Now that Sam could see his back he realized that the bullet hit just below his shoulder and he was a lucky fucking bastard because that's probably where the metal of his arm still covered him.
Before Sam could start his own fight with the girl again Barnes turned around and send a knife straight into the blonde's thigh. It went deep enough that he could see how the pointy end of the knife stuck out the back of her leg as she crumbled to her knees.
Barnes had a weird fascination with knives. Sam wasn't sure whether it was the leftovers of the Winter Soldier thing or a new hobby but it was unsettling sometimes. Especially when he sat on the plane, in his dark and brooding corner and polished them in complete silence. The asshole had at least a dozen knives on him at all times and only one gun.
He also had a death wish.
"What the-"
"Go," Barnes tilted his head towards their plane while still holding up his gun in his left hand extended and, surprise, surprise, a brand new knife in his right hand.
As Sam started to run towards the plane he could hear how the hard soles of Barnes’ boots hit the ground right behind him. Sam's eyes were searching the left side of the parking lot where he was sure Torres was supposed to be because he saw him leave the plane and didn't catch him coming back but maybe he was too focused on the fight because Joaquin was waving at them from the plane just as it started to take off. Sam extended his wings and kicked off the ground just as Barnes picked up his speed and ran past him. They reached the plane in the next couple of minutes and maybe they didn't even need to be quick because Barnes injured the last of the Flash Smashers who were still on their feet and they didn’t really seem that determined to follow them.
Knowing Barnes he would probably take a fucking stroll in the middle of the gunfight since his self-preservation skills were non-existent.
"What the fuck was that?" Sam spit out just as Torres closed the opening behind them and Barnes fit his gun back into its holster before dropping the knife to the bench. His fingers quickly scrambled to unbuckle and unbutton his vest.
Fuck.
The bullet didn't hit his metal shoulder.
"I fucking broke the second rule. Shit, shit," Sam tried to ignore Barnes' muttering, but he couldn't help but take in the frantic movement of his hands as he practically ripped his vest off and how terrified his voice sounded as he dropped it near the knife. "Get it out," his fingers grabbed the said knife and put it into Sam's hand.
Sam was standing there, still as a rock and he was pretty sure that if you looked closely enough you could see steam rising off of him. He was fuming with rage, his hands were shaking from anger as he closed his fingers around the knife handle and Torres was watching him with a careful look as he took a step back. Smart move because Sam's ready to lose his shit and unleash hell on that fucking asshole who wasn't even looking at him but digging into his bag on the bench as blood seeped into his dark shirt.
"Barnes, what the fuck?" Sam finally managed to spit out as he got over the short shock moment at how nonchalant the guy was acting. He recognized the behavior - he could remember how Steve got stabbed to the gut on the mission and didn't care to mention it until Wanda pointed out whether that was his blood on the uniform. What's with the super soldiers and their inability to see their own value and vulnerability?
"It missed my spine, thank fucking god, but it hit one of the wires connecting my arm to it and if I don't get it out right now my whole arm will be a dead weight in about three to five minutes. So get a move on and get it out before it starts to heal," Barnes turned around and tossed him a dark lighter just as he lifted his shirt over his head and sat down, or rather collapsed, on the bench with his back turned towards them. Sam cursed under his breath and tried to snap out of his fuming anger to detach his wings, drop them on the ground, and collapse on the bench too.
His fingers worked clinically, it's not like it's the first time he had to remove a bullet from someone with a healing factor in a shitty situation, as he held the end of the knife above the small flame. He wasn't sure if Barnes could even get infected but he wasn't Steve and he still had time to learn.
Only if the asshole didn't risk his own life to save his. What the fuck was that about.
"What happened?" Joaquin finally dared to open his mouth and step forward just as Sam grabbed the knife in his hand tightly and allowed his eyes to observe the vulnerable back presented to him. He never got an opportunity to see Barnes without a shirt off, and he tried really hard not to think about that especially now, but now he could see why he stuck to long-sleeved shirts and a lot of layers. The metal plates covered his left shoulder and the way they dig into his skin wouldn’t have looked painful if not for the scaring which covered the skin. It looked old – very old to be exact – and it didn’t look like it hurt him. Well, it sure as hell is going to hurt now since the bullet hit just below the metal. Apparently, he wasn’t as lucky as Sam had thought.
“Got shot,” Barnes muttered as Sam finally dropped the lighter and pushed the tip of the knife into the wound.
“Or jumped in front of a bullet,” his eyes were focused on the wound as he tried to fish out the bullet. It was near the surface and didn’t go in too deep. Small mercies.
“You sure you don’t need a kit? Because it’s bleeding like crazy,” Torres bent over Sam’s shoulder to look at the wound and only then Sam noticed the amount of blood covering Barnes’ back to the point it covered the top of his jeans and his holster straps. But who could blame him when all of his attention was divided between being fucking furious, but still determined to dig out the bullet as painlessly as he could while also admiring how dark plates of the vibranium contrasted with the white of skin.
“I’m going to heal before you can even find it, kid,” he couldn’t tell from Barnes’ voice whether his search for a bullet hurt at all. He wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t – he barely reacted when he got shot, his face a blank mask, and Sam knew how much it hurt. Apparently, one measly bullet didn’t do anything to him but who could blame the guy when everything in his life up until this point resulted in him getting hurt in some way.
“Right, super soldier,” Torres murmured while he watched, with a fascination which Sam understood because he was the same the first time he watched how Steve patched himself up, as Sam finally pushed the bullet out with the tip of the knife letting it fall on the hard floor with a clink.
Barnes let out a loud breath and lifted his flesh hand to massage his shoulder before getting up and grabbing his very bloody and discarded shirt.
“You want to explain that to me?” Sam wasn’t to back down before he got a verbal response to what the fuck just happened instead of a shrug of shoulders and easy dismissal. He lifted himself off the bench quickly making Torres take a couple of steps back so he didn’t get hit with the force of it. Sam watched how Barnes put on his shirt before turning around, thank fucking god, and lifted his eyebrows. His face was still a blank mask which he had perfected to the point where it never wavered but a glimpse of confusion shined in his eyes even in such shitty lighting.
“I don’t get-”
“Why did you jump in front of me?” out of the corner of his eye Sam could see how understanding, what sort Sam didn’t know, dawned on Torres's face and made him take a couple of steps back till he reached the pilot's cabin.
“Because I have a healing factor?” Barnes sounded genuinely confused but that didn’t make Sam any less angry.
“What if it was your head or your spine? I’d love to see how you would heal from a headshot,” he could distantly hear how the cabin’s door closed so now he was able to focus his full attention and anger towards the man who was standing in front of him, strapping on his not so bulletproof kevlar vest on and looking like he had no idea why Sam was freaking out.
“Look, Sam,” he hated the way Barnes said his name. The biggest reason why was because he actually enjoyed it and he hated that feeling. Certainly didn’t want to associate it with the man who stared him down every single time their eyes met and who aggravated him to the point where he was considering the idea that maybe he was actually losing his goddamn mind. “I don’t get why you’re angry. I saved your ass so what’s the big issue?”
“I don’t need you to do that because I can take care of my-”
“Oh, yeah?” Barnes finally secured his bloody knife, which he wiped on his already bloody jeans, in its rightful place on his side, and looked him straight in the eyes. He hated that blank look - clean as newly bought canvas and as see-through as a fucking brick wall. “Well, the way I see it I’m the one who’s enhan-”
“Cut the crap,” Barnes exhaled and he could see how his tongue pushed against his cheek inside his mouth out of annoyance. “Let’s get this straight. You don’t jump in front of bullets, knives, whatever it is to save me because I don’t need you saving me.”
“Better me than you, Wilson.”
Sam stared at him. His eyes narrowed and brows furrowed and he was pretty sure that his ears were malfunctioning. He and Barnes had a difficult relationship on a good day and were at each other’s throats on a bad one but he couldn’t help but notice how despite all of the shit coming out of their mouths they still carried on. He couldn’t remember a day in these few weeks where Barnes wasn’t by his side, always at his back in fights. And always jumping in front of whatever shot was fired at him - this time was just less subtle and Sam actually noticed it. But before this bullet, there were knives which were stopped with his flesh hand catching them by the blade and throwing them back with a fancy maneuver and double force. There were numerous wounds when he wasn’t able to catch them because he was so focused on stopping the bullets coming for Sam and since none of them hit him or at least didn’t hit anywhere important Sam didn’t notice.
Barnes’ problem of self-sacrifice and self-worth was even more deep-rooted than Steve’s. Steve never put himself in a position of a headshot just to stop Sam from having a small bullet graze or a wound that would heal in time.
“So what you’re trying to tell me is that all of his time you just put yourself in front of me so I wouldn’t get hurt?” Sam was trying to make sense of it, he really was. But maybe being so far away from his VA days had left him a bit rusty or maybe Barnes was just a special case because he couldn’t. The man didn’t even like him - they were fighting more often than not, Torres always pointed out their bickering was hilarious at best and worrisome at worst. But here he was putting his life, which he just got back from decades of being constantly erased, just so Sam wouldn’t get even a small scratch.
“You’re vulnerable and I’m not,” he rolled his eyes like it was as obvious as a fact that the sky is blue and grabbed the abandoned lighter before going back to his bag. He stuffed it in under Sam’s watchful eye and started zipping up small departments which he opened in the haste of his search for it. Sam caught how he was not moving his left arm as much as he right one and hopefully wished that that’s only because he didn’t want to get plates grinding on his wound. If it was something bigger, like his wires malfunctioning. Sam’s going to lose his shit completely and take Barnes’ non-existent brain with him.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Sam spit out while Barnes, Bucky, straightened his back and rolled his left shoulder a bit before turning his blank look on him. Or not so blank because there was a shift in atmosphere as he took a couple of steps just so he could stand in front of Sam. “I don’t want you to protect me or whatever the fuck you’re doing, okay? I’m not Steve back in the day and I can handle myself.”
Maybe mentioning Steve was a bad idea because suddenly those eyes didn’t look so bright and so light. He knew that Steve was a delicate topic which he usually side-stepped because Bucky looked in pain whenever he was mentioned. And he got it, kind of. Or at least tried to because Bucky was such a difficult and complicated person in a sense where he could never figure him out completely. The reason why was probably the same reason as to why Bucky never talked about himself or what was going in his head. He didn’t understand himself so how the hell Sam could.
“I owe you. Just,” he sighed and lifted his flesh hand just so he could pinch the bridge of his nose as he let out hot air which Sam could feel on his face from their proximity. “Just let me make my stupid amends and protect you, okay? You gotta have someone watching your back and not that kid from afar who couldn’t stop a bullet but only take it out.”
“I don’t mind you watching my back only if you watch yours. Do you have any idea how fucking scary it was to think that you got shot straight to the spine?” he wasn’t sure how well Bucky’s serum worked since it wasn’t the same as Steve’s but something like cracked spine didn’t seem that easy to heal. And he certainly didn’t want to go through those couple seconds when he turned around and saw his eyes just before realization, why the bullet didn’t hit him, came to him. Because it wasn’t only anger that was boiling underneath his skin but also that bone-chilling terror which made his heart drop to his stomach.
“I already have enough guilt and certainly don’t need the knowledge that I let you get hurt when I could stop it on my conscience.”
“You can’t do that, man,” Sam sighed and closed his eyes for a second. He needed to get his head straight and maybe find the right words because so far whatever he tried to say went right over Bucky’s head. “I don’t want you to get hurt the same way you don’t want me getting hurt, do you get that? So how about we come to an agreement that you stop sacrificing your safety in order to ensure mine, huh?” and your life. He didn’t dare mention it out loud because treading such dark waters when they were high in the sky with no escape from each other if shit got too difficult to deal with and they needed to cool down was a bad idea.
Bucky’s eyes were watching him. They didn’t waver, didn’t move from his and it was as if they were searching for something. Sam wasn’t trained like that - he had no idea what you could get from looking into somebody’s eyes but Bucky certainly did. Sometimes he wondered how much of his training he still used but in moments like this one, Sam had to admit to himself that one thing which Steve always avoided - the Winter Soldier was as much a part of him as an old Bucky Barnes from the 40s was. Maybe an even bigger one because it stole away seven decades of free will and being a person.
“No,” Bucky took a couple of steps back and turned around just so he could collapse on the bench and rest the back of his head against the cold metal of the plane. Sam stared at him as incredulity swarmed him and he wanted to argue but his mouth just refused to open and cooperate with him. He looked at Bucky’s bulky form taking space on the bench, his closed eyes as he crossed his arms across his chest and the easy way the breaths escaped his slightly parted lips and decided to leave it for this moment. This moment when his wound was still clearly healing if the way he held his left shoulder lower than the right one was any indicator and when he also probably still felt the aftershocks of that terrific fear. Sam could still feel his own anger running in calm waves beneath his skin and he wanted to embrace them but as he sat down near the other man he allowed himself to relax.
He would lose his shit later and somehow find a way to convince the stubborn bastard that his life meant just as much as anybody else's.