Work Text:
“Why did you give up the shield, Sam?” Bucky asked, his right—human—arm resting over his eyes. The left—metal—one by his side, resting on the couch he’d draped his body across.
“You keep asking me that,” Sam replied. “Why are you never satisfied with my answer?” He looks down at Bucky laying across Sharon’s plush couch, 6 empty bottles of Tiger Beer sitting on the coffee table. “Are you drunk?” he asks.
“I can’t get drunk,” Bucky replied, rubbing his hand across his face like he’s trying desperately to wipe something away. “The serum.”
“The serum?” Sam’s eyebrows raised in wonder. “The serum makes it so you can’t get drunk?”
“Yeah. My cells regenerate at a rapid pace. Or something like that… that’s what … uh…Steve told me.” Steve. Bucky’s voice shakes as he says his name. Him and Sam don’t talk about Steve.
“So, you’re telling me Steve couldn’t get drunk either?” Sam laughs. “No wonder he could hold his liquor so well! That son of a bitch!” Sam looks back down at Bucky. He is not laughing. “You didn’t answer my first question. Why can’t you accept the reason I didn’t take the shield?”
“Because you’re being an idiot,” Bucky replied. “You gave up that shield and now some bigger idiot is walking around with it. Wearing Steve’s armour. Using Steve’s name. Using a handgun.”
“It is weird seeing Captain America with a gun,” Sam joked.
“Did you hear him on Good Morning America?” Bucky asked—completely ignoring Sam’s comment. “He said while he never knew Steve, he saw him as a brother—a brother!? How dare he.”
“Are you sure this is still about me, Buck?” Sam asked.
“Don’t call me that,” Bucky snapped back.
“Okay fine,” Sam said, raising his hands in innocence. “I won’t call you Buck because only Steve can call you that.”
“Could,” Bucky said. “Could call me that. I don’t know if you forgot, but Steve’s dead.”
“He’s not dead, Bucky. Just old.”
“So? What difference does it make?” Bucky asked, sitting up on the couch. “He’s not here.”
“No,” Sam said, looking down at the man—his eyebrows tight with concern. “Steve is not here.” Sam and Bucky don’t talk about Steve. This is why. “Do you want him here?” Sam asked. “We can get in contact with him, if that’s what you want. I know there’s rumours that he’s on a secret base on the moon, but that’s not true. Last I heard he was in Alaska.”
Bucky sighed, but said nothing. “He gave you the shield, Sam. Why did you give it up?”
“I told you, Bucky!” Sam replied, getting frustrated with the man sitting in front of him. “It felt like it belonged to someone else. I am not the Captain America the people need. Or want.”
“Then why did Steve give it to you?”
“Are you jealous?” Sam asked.
“Jealous?” Bucky’s eyebrows pinched with confusion, “Jealous of what?”
“Jealous that Steve gave me the shield. Do you want the shield? Do you want the be Captain America? Is that what this is all about? Because I would’ve given it to you if you asked, I’ll even get it from Walker and give it to you if it’ll make you leave me alone.”
Bucky chuckled, looking down at his hands, picking at his fingernails. “God, Sam,” he said. “Do you really think I would want to be Captain America? Do you really think America would want me to be Captain America? I assassinated one of their favourite presidents. I almost killed Captain America himself—"
“Wait you killed JFK!?!” Sam yelped; his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Not the point Sam,” Bucky said. “What I’m trying to say is: no. I’m not jealous that Steve gave you the shield. But I am mad that you gave it up.”
“But you won’t listen to me when I tell you why.”
“Because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Listen to yourself, Bucky,” Sam said, sitting down next to him on the couch. “You just explained why America wouldn’t want you to have the shield.”
“So?” Bucky replied, “What does that have to do with you.”
“You will never understand what it’s like to be me. You will never understand what it feels like to be persecuted by your own country, by a place you have called home your whole life.”
“Are you sure about that, Sam” Bucky asked.
“Maybe you get some of it. But you, and Steve, will never understand. I can’t take that mantle and just… just pretend that the country I’m calling myself the Captain of, isn’t also the country that maintains a rhetoric about people like me. A rhetoric that has almost gotten me killed just for… existing.”
“You’re right, Sam” Bucky said, looking up at him. “I’ll never understand. But also, don’t you think it would help people? Take the mantle and embrace it?”
“Even if I tried there’s no way I could be like Steve. I’m loud, I swear, I actually can get drunk and say stupid shit.”
“There’s no way you can be like Steve,” Bucky say, his face serious. “The people don’t need another Steve Rogers; they need another Captain America.” He looked past Sam, a small smile creeping past his lips. “And, for the record, Steve was loud, and he swore and before the serum he could not hold his liquor. We’d drink through a bottle of wine and then he’d play a record and dance around our little apartment, slurring the lyrics that he definitely didn’t know.” There’s a fondness in his voice. His eyes glaze over, as if he’s using them for something other than sight—replaying the memory in his mind like a movie. Over and over again. “No one else could be Steve.”
“Like I said, Bucky,” Sam says, placing a hand on his shoulder. “He’s not dead, you can see him. Talk to him. I think it would be good for you.”
“I wish he was dead,” Bucky said. “It would be easier if he was dead.”
Sam’s eyebrows pinched with confusion and concern, “What?”
“If he was dead, I could grieve properly. Try and forget him.”
“Do you remember much from… before?” Sam asked.
Before he was The Winter Soldier.
“I remember everything. But I don’t need to remember anything about Steve, I just know it. Even when Hydra had me, he was there, just didn’t know who he was yet. I tell myself he’s dead because then I can try and forget. But it’s hard. Everything else has been easy to forget. The day of the week. The year. Where I left my keys. But Steve is a constant in my brain. Never leaving, no matter how hard I try.”
“I miss him too you know?” Sam said, desperately trying to help his… Co-worker? Accomplice? Friend? “Steve was one of my best friends, it’s weird to not have him here.”
Bucky scoffed, “You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I see, now you’re using my words against me,” Sam laughed. “How could I not understand, Bucky?”
“I don’t just feel weird without Steve,” Bucky said, his eyes becoming wet. “I feel… empty,” his voice shaking on the last word.
“Okay Shakespeare,” Sam chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. “Don’t go writing a poem on me right now—”
“You don’t understand, Sam” Bucky said, a stray tear running down his cheek. “Living with Steve in the 40’s was… hard."
"Yeah, weren’t you guys super poor?” Sam asked, chuckling, “and Steve told me he was almost always sick.”'
“That is true,” Bucky said, a smile trying to fight the sadness in his face. “But that’s not why it was hard… for me at least,” the small smile now completely gone. “It was hard after too, after he found me strapped to a table in Azzano, after he let himself get pumped with the super soldier serum. He was like this… God… but he was still the Steve I knew and…” his voice trailed off.
“And what?” Sam asked.
“Loved.”
“Yeah well, I didn’t know Steve before he got the serum.” Sam replied. “But, if he was anything like he was after... he’s always been a good man. I loved him too.”
“No, Sam,” Bucky said, his voice tightening, tears now falling down his face in a steady stream. “I loved him. Still do.”
“Oh,” Sam said. Unsure of what to do in this situation.
“I’ve always been in love with him, since we were kids.”
“Did he know?” Sam asked. Hoping the answer was no. Certain that if Steve had known, he wouldn’t have gone back in time to be with Peggy.
“No,” Bucky replied. “Like I said, we lived in the 40s. And even once I got him back in this era, I’d been trying to get my brain back in Wakanda. And then Thanos happened. And the snap. And then, before I knew it, he slipped through my fingers again.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, placing a reassuring hand on Bucky’s shoulder.
“I miss him, Sam” Bucky said. He had really let his guard down with Sam, basically poured his soul out. Confessed the love he has had stuck in a locked box in the deepest part of his heart. But right now, those words held so much behind them—It even made Sam want to cry.
“I know,” Sam said, his voice tightening. “So do I… So do I.”