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“We got one room left,” says the front-desk attendant, “and it’s a single. Sorry.”
She does not sound sorry. She does not sound as if she particularly cares either way.
Bucky doesn’t really care either. He’d sleep right here on the lobby floor if it wasn’t so exposed. But Sam, who’s taken a deep breath and is clearly counting to ten in his head, probably feels differently. And Bucky wants to at least try to do right by him.
“Didn’t realize it was such a popular time to be visiting Baltimore,” Sam says. “You think we’d have better luck somewhere else?”
“’s not tourists,” replies the attendant. “After 11:00, we open up rooms to blip refugees. Most of the places around here do too. You’re lucky we’ve got anything left.”
Right. Because there are millions of people homeless months later, and not all of them are in camps. Plenty are just on the streets, waiting for their papers to get processed, or searching for some way to prove that they exist.
By all rights, Bucky should be one of them. It’s no more than what he deserves. And hell, he was a ghost for longer than he was a person; he could handle it.
But he isn’t one of them. And that’s not something he’s taken for granted, exactly, it’s just… not something he thinks about a lot.
Sort of like the fact that most of the refugees, they don’t look like him.
“Right,” Sam says. He glances at Bucky, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m fine with it if you are. I usually sleep on the floor anyway.”
“I’m too tired to deal with this. We’ll take it.”
They eschew the elevator by mutual unspoken agreement and walk up the stairs in a not-entirely-comfortable silence. Sam seems a sort of tired that exceeds tiredness. Haggard, maybe. Is that a word that people still use?
But that’s not the whole reason he’s not speaking to Bucky, of course. Probably not even half of it.
He’s pissed. He’s pissed, and Bucky knows that he deserves it: he went too far; he shouldn’t have thrown his baggage into Sam’s unwilling arms and expected him to shoulder it when Bucky himself could barely bear its weight most days.
It’s also more than that, though. He’s got a sinking sort of feeling that tells him he fucked up even before his outburst in front of Raynor—earlier that day, in front of the police, he feels like he got something wrong then, though he isn’t sure what. And even before that. The first confrontation with Sam at the airfield. Shit, maybe when he started ignoring Sam’s well-meaning texts.
Guilt prickles his skin, a hundred thousand brambles tying him down, pinning him into inaction. He doesn’t know how to make this right.
“You wanna rock-paper-scissors for the bed?” Sam asks, swiping the key and opening the door to an unremarkable hotel room.
“Hmm? Oh, no. I meant it earlier. I always sleep on the floor.”
Sam gives him a look that Bucky can’t read. After a moment, he asks, “Bed too soft?”
Bucky shrugs. It’s a lot of things.
“Like lying on a marshmallow,” Sam says, but it’s like the words are more for him than for Bucky.
He shakes his head before Bucky can ask what he means. “Right. Well, if I get the bed, you can get the shower first.”
Bucky sets his bag down. “I don’t mind if you wanna take it.”
Sam drops his bag too and then flops down on his bed, pausing only to plug his phone into the wall. “I want to get as much shuteye as I can. You go.”
He doesn’t want to argue with Sam anymore. It isn’t like he takes that long, anyway: he showers just long enough to get the sour and smoky smell of the cop car off his skin, then brushes his teeth even though he’s barely eaten all day.
He does pause for a moment before going back into the room, bracing himself against the sink, letting his head fall, trying to center himself.
In his early days of therapy, when he was still sussing out how vague he could be without getting reported for noncompliance, he had told Dr. Raynor, “The inside of my head feels like a forest sometimes.”
“How poetic,” she’d said blandly. “Do you want to elaborate?”
“It’s dark. There are a lot of wolves.”
She’d raised her eyebrow at him, looking extremely unimpressed, and he’d relented.
“I get—tangled. My head gets caught in a specific memory or thought, or a pattern of thoughts about a specific memory, and I can’t stop it. It’ll be on my mind for hours or days. It’s like I’m trying to make my way into a clearing, but the trees and the undergrowth are all too thick. I can’t move through.”
Raynor leaned forward, looking mildly intrigued. “This happens often?”
He nodded.
“Hmm. People with PTSD—don’t give me that look; you have it regardless of if you think a diagnosis is useful—people with PTSD are much more likely to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder than the general public. I’m not sure that’s exactly what you’re describing to me. But if you’re struggling with obsessive thoughts, you might benefit from some of the coping techniques that people with OCD use. Of course, the first step is going to be to actually tell me what some of those thoughts are…”
He’d gotten better at dealing with the thoughts in the ensuing months. Well. Somewhat better. Sometimes.
At the very least, he’s much more able to recognize the obsessive, intrusive thought patterns when they snag up his mind. So the fact is, he doesn’t really have any excuse for all the snipes he’s sent Sam’s way. He felt the branches reach out and drag him in the moment he saw Walker wielding the shield, and they haven’t loosened their grip since.
Nothing works. He’s “practicing mindfulness:” trying to disrupt the thoughts, trying to distract himself. And still they tangle around his chest, dig deep into his skin, wrap their roots around his feet and ensure he’ll never stumble his way out. Even now, even after his outburst, he’s still stuck in the woods.
If he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me.
“Shut up,” he hisses. Fuck.
He doesn’t need to pull himself out completely. He can lie on the floor and let himself spiral deeper and deeper if that’s what his brain says he needs to do. Just—he needs to apologize first. He needs to pull his head out of his own ass long enough to actually take responsibility for his shitty actions, and then he can let the forest take him.
Bucky takes a deep breath, counts to seven before letting it out, and repeats the process five times. Then he straightens up and heads out the door, “I’m sorry” poised on his lips. Two words are far from an adequate apology, and he’s not exactly sure where he’ll go from there, but he’ll figure it out.
But then he sees Sam, lying stretched out on the bed. Asleep? Shit. He can’t wake him up, not after the day he’s had—
“You really gonna stare at me while I’m trying to nap? That’s just creepy, man.”
Bucky relaxes. “Can’t stare at you when I’m on the floor. I gotta get my fill now.”
Sam snorts and sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and reaching over to turn on the lamp on the table. “You can take a pillow if you want. And a blanket, I guess.”
“Thanks.” He hesitates for a second. Is the moment gone? Is it weird to apologize when he’s looming in the bathroom door and Sam is sitting on the bed?
No, he’s probably overthinking it. “Look, Sam—”
Sam, who had been reaching for his phone, glances at the screen and lets out a quiet, empathetic, “Oh, shit.”
“What?” In half a second he’s across the room, reaching for his bag, ready to get out of here and go after whatever threat Sam’s seeing—
“Nothing—I forgot I put my phone on silent in the station, and then it died—I gotta make a call.”
And then he’s in the bathroom, door shut, and Bucky is alone.
“Okay,” he says to the empty room. “Take your time. Whatever you need.”
He doesn’t mean to listen in, really—actually, he actively tries not to, busying himself with setting up a pillow and the spare blanket from the foot of the bed in the room’s corner. He tries to focus on the ambient sounds: the shower running in the room next door, cars outside, a child crying somewhere down the hall.
But it’s just… his hearing is really fucking good thanks to the serum, and he’s really fucking bad at not paying attention to his surroundings thanks to all the trauma. Hypervigilance, Raynor calls it. Another symptom of the PTSD she insists he has.
It’s an explanation. It’s still not an excuse. He should leave the room, not slump into his corner, leaning his head back against the wall.
In the bathroom, Sam says, “Hey, Sar—”
The person who responds does so in a hushed voice, which makes it a lot easier to not actively listen in. He could definitely make out the words if he tried, but as it is, he only catches bits and pieces.
“—video is everywhere—boys haven’t seen it yet, but they’re going to—how will I explain this to them—if mom and dad had seen that—could’ve been killed—”
Sam stays quiet, much like he did when Bucky snapped at him in front of Raynor, only occasionally saying, “I know,” or, “I’m sorry.” But the woman on the phone says that last bit, he replies, “But I wasn’t. Believe me, I know exactly how bad it could’ve gone; I was there. But I’m okay.”
Bucky stands up and walks outside, the way he should’ve when Sam first made the call. This isn’t for him.
He leans against the door to their room, tired to his bones but not comfortable sitting in such an exposed space. He can still hear Sam, but his voice has lowered, and there are more ambient noises. Someone is watching a late-night talk show. A bed squeaks a few doors down. The child who was crying earlier has worn themselves down to hiccups and whimpers.
He tries to focus on his breathing again, but that’s never freed his thoughts before.
If he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me.
Christ, he’s an asshole.
Inside their room, Sam says in a more normal tone, “I’m gonna be out of the country for a few days—I don’t know. I don’t get a schedule for this kinda thing.”
There’s a pause, and then, “I’m sorry. I know, Sarah. Look, just promise me you won’t do anything until I get back, okay? I got a deposit hitting my account any day now; I can send you money if you need something to hold you over. We can figure something out.”
A beat. He knows he still shouldn’t be listening in; it’s just as invasive, even if he only gets one side of things, but he can’t bring himself to walk further down the hallway.
“There are other banks—look, I don’t have the answers right now and I’m sorry about that, but it’s only been a couple of days, and they’ve all been really shitty. And believe me, there’s nothing I want more than to be back down there, but I can’t right now. Please just promise me you won’t put them on the market. Not until I get back.”
The silence is longer this time, but finally Sam says, “Thank you. Tell the boys I’ll be back soon, okay? I love you all. Hey, c’mon. You know me. I’m always careful. I know. I know. Have a good night. I’ll call you as soon as I’m stateside again.”
The shower starts up a moment later. Bucky slips back inside and sits back in his corner. His head hurts, thorns and branches stabbing his brain.
He stands back up only when Sam comes out of the bathroom. Sam glances at him and raises an eyebrow. If possible, he seems even more tired than before.
“Were you listening in?” he asks.
“Not intentionally,” Bucky says, quashing the urge to lie. You can’t make amends if you aren’t being honest.
Sam lets out a huff that isn’t quite a laugh. “That’s exactly what Steve used to say.” He shakes his head. “Always listening, always staring—I guess nothing gets by you supersoldiers, huh?”
Bucky just shrugs, not really sure what to say.
Well, actually, he does know what to say, doesn’t he? The only thing worth saying at this point.
“Sam, I’m sorry.”
Sam looks at him for a long moment. “What for?” he finally asks.
He isn’t saying it in a way that sounds like, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. It’s more like, there’s a lot of things you should be sorry for, and I’m going to need to know what exactly you’re referring to before I decide if you deserve forgiveness.
That’s reasonable.
“What I said earlier wasn’t okay,” Bucky says carefully, trying to find the threads of clarity amid his overgrown thoughts. “About Steve and the shield, I mean. I was projecting, and that wasn’t fair.”
Sam snorts. “‘Projecting.’ Did you need Dr. Raynor to tell you that?”
“Nah, I got there on my own. She’s not that helpful.”
The smile Sam flashes is brief, but it seems genuine. Emboldened, he continues, “Look. I know my head is messed up, but that’s not your fault or your problem. And—and I think you were probably right that there are things that I just don’t understand. And I’m sorry about that. For not realizing before.”
He stops, not sure where to go. It occurs to him, from nowhere, that if Steve was right and Sam is worthy of the shield, then Sam rejecting him will still mean that Steve was wrong about Bucky.
Part of him says that this might not be the most logical thing to think. Part of him says that might not be a fair burden to place on Sam’s shoulders. But the idea wraps around him all the same, pinning him in place.
Finally, Sam nods. “Okay.”
“‘Okay?’” Bucky repeats.
There are too many things that could mean. As much as he knows deep down that Sam can’t help him out of the forest, he suddenly, desperately needs clarity.
“Yeah,” Sam says, and walks over to the bed.
“You can get mad at me,” Bucky says uncertainly. “I mean—I know I fucked up. In therapy, and before.”
That does get Sam to glare at him, but only for a second. He rubs his eyes, leaning against the bed.
“So first of all,” he says flatly, “I really don’t need you to come in and give me permission to feel how I feel. Like, ever. Second of all, yeah, there’s a lot of shit you don’t understand because you’re white, and I’m not. And I don’t expect a guy like you to just automatically get what it’s like for guys like me. I don’t, at all. I know better. But I do need you to understand that it’s not my job to erase whatever guilt you’re feeling.”
He’s used to anger when someone is upset with him. That was how it always was with Steve, steaming and stewing until one of them blew up at the other and let it all out, until it was okay again. And of course, there was only ever anger with HYDRA.
This response, in all its blunt honesty, is… unmooring. “I know. I’m sorry. I mean… yeah. You aren’t responsible for my hangups. I get that.”
Sam dips his head in acknowledgment, then continues, “And when I say it’s ‘okay,’ I’m not saying that I’m good with you telling me what to do, or trying to convince me I made the wrong choice. I’m saying I think you mean it when you say you’re sorry, and as long as you’re going to follow up your words by changing your attitude, I can work with that. Just—don’t ever tell me how to act in front of a cop again.”
Bucky closes his eyes, and swallows, and nods. “I—yeah. That was shitty. I won’t do it again. Any of it.”
Sam studies him for a moment longer, and then nods back. “Then, okay.”
“Okay,” Bucky replies, not really feeling the word at all. “Okay. Cool.”
Sam sits down on the bed. “Any other heart-to-hearts we gotta have, or can I get some beauty sleep before we go talk to a terrorist tomorrow?”
“Nah, I guess not. Wouldn’t want to deny you your beauty sleep. Not when it’s so obvious you haven’t been getting enough of it.”
“Wow,” Sam says, laughing a bit. “I see how it is. Screw you too, Barnes.”
He shuts off the beside lamp and climbs under the covers. Bucky lets himself drop onto the scratchy motel carpet, pulling the spare blanket over him. He curls one arm under his pillow, keeps the other on top, in reach of his bag should he need any weapons upon waking.
He breathes in, holds it for seven, breathes out. He wants to think that went okay. Sam says it is, and he’s not so self-absorbed as to not recognize that what Sam thinks is most important right now.
If he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me. If you can’t do right by Sam, Steve was wrong about you.
The thoughts tangle tight around him. He wants to scream. He wants to beg for forgiveness until he feels like things are actually okay, except he knows Sam spoke true when he said he wasn’t responsible for Bucky’s guilt. It’s not a burden Bucky should place on him besides; he’s got enough to deal with. He’s being selfish. He knows this. He knows this.
But the woods in his head are dark and deep, and Bucky can do nothing but lie there on the floor, letting them grown all the more wild around him, miles away from sleep.