Work Text:
Sarah Wilson loved her brother deeply. The kind of soul crushing love that could only be formed through family, loss, and approximately four thousand brawls around the living room throughout their life. She looked up to her brother more than she could ever imagine looking up to anyone. Even when they were fighting or picking on each other, she couldn’t help but feel a swell in her chest when he came into her line of sight.
That didn’t mean she understood him. In fact, from the age of eight, watching her brother interact with the world had become her go-to pastime. Why did he have to roll every pea around the plate individually before eating them? Why did he and his friends spend seven years socking each other in the arm to prove friendship? Why did he talk to himself in the mirror, even when he knew Sarah or someone else was standing in the doorway?
Sam Wilson was just deeply weird. She had no idea how he had tricked the Avengers, a plethora of bad guys, and half of the media world into thinking he was remotely cool. She saw a news story once that had King T’Challa standing on a platform with Sam and the newscasters talked about how impressive Sam’s suit was. It was unnatural, the effect he had on people.
And in all her years, she never thought she’d see anyone weirder than Sam. But then James Barnes had showed up. It was like a complete reversal of Sam. Sarah was taken in for approximately three hours by his charm and face before she realized he too was deeply, deeply weird.
She justified sitting on the edge of the Paul and Darlene , watching her brother and James Barnes spar off about some dumb trivia fact, by deciding it was an anthropological expedition. The North American Superhero in a Domestic Situation. She watched Sam watch Barnes take a long pull off his beer. She watched Barnes kick his feet up near Sam’s legs and then draw them back quickly when a current jolted the boat. She watched Barnes’ fingers tap-tap-tap against the edge of the boat, inching closer to Sam’s shoulder before he chickened out and brought his hand back to his own lap. She watched Sam suggest Bucky take his jacket off, ‘unless you plan on sun blinding me with the robocop arm.’ She watched Sam look away when Barnes did shrug his jacket off.
When she was seventeen and Sam was fifteen, she had found Sam crying in his room, pillow pressed to his face to muffle the noise. They were at the age where going into each other’s rooms uninvited started international conflicts, but Sarah, who watched her brother intently, felt like she knew what was going on. So she let herself in through their Jack-and-Jill bathroom and shut the door behind her.
Sam didn’t stop crying, not even to yell at her to get out, so she sat on the end of his bed and rolled a baseball under her foot for a while. Finally, she’d said, “You don’t have to tell Mom and Dad, y’know.”
Sam had just about wailed and bit the corner of his pillow to stop himself.
“That’s gross, stop it,” Sarah ordered and pushed Sam’s shoulder back enough to yank his pillow free and then reached over to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I should make you do the laundry this week so I know I’m not touching your snot germs,” she teased softly.
“How did you know?” Sam hiccuped out. Tears were still brimming at his eyes, but they didn’t fall.
“I’m your older sister. I made you. Like a doll. You think there’s something about you that I don’t know?” she joked. And when the tears did spill over his long lashes, she sighed and pulled him closer to her side. “I just know the way you interact with that boy from the basketball team ain’t just friendly.”
“Jesus, do you think he can tell?” Sam asked and she could hear the mortification in his voice.
“Sam, he’s a freshman in high school. The only thing he knows is that he’s scared of everything too. No one’s paying that much attention to you.”
“Screw you,” Sam muttered.
“What’re all these tears for you if you didn’t make a move and get shot down?”
“God, Sarah, can you not say things like that?”
“Watch your mouth,” Sarah warned with no heat in her voice. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong. I’m not leaving until you do.”
“I just…” Sam sat up and worked his jaw for a while. His chin dimpled and his eyes watered but he managed to control himself. “I’m scared, Sarah. I’m scared of never being in love. Of having to leave if I am. I’m scared to say something and I’m scared not to say something. I’m so scared of...losing any of it.”
“Sam,” Sarah sighed and pulled Sam into another hug. “You’re fifteen. You’re not supposed to be in love yet. You don’t have to think about any of that. You just have to focus on passing Geometry, alright? Mom’ll whoop your ass more for failing than anything else.”
“I have a B+, that’s not failing!” Sam snapped. He kept his face against her shoulder for a second long before he sat up and wiped his tears away. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Who am I gonna tell? I told you, my friends don’t like you as much as you think they do.”
“Your friends like me more than they like you,” Sam shot back and he almost sounded normal.
Sarah smiled softly and patted Sam’s cheek. “I won’t tell Mom or Dad. Of course not. That’s for you to do. But--”
“I’m always going to tell them when you sneak out the window.”
“No! Sam! You can’t! You owe me now!”
“Going to field parties is not the same thing!” Sam said in a shriek as Sarah leaned over to pinch his sides. They grappled for a second before Sam managed to push Sarah off the bed.
“You owe me,” she reminded him as she walked back to the bathroom.
Sam wiped his eyes again and nodded. “Sure, Sarah. I do.”
Sam almost had the same look on his face now. Like there was something he wanted to reach for that he thought was too impossible to hold. The Older Sister Instinct to Antagonize into a Solution kicked in.
“Two bros, chilling on a boat, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay,” she sing-songed. Sam looked mortified again but masked his face into something more irritated with a roll of his eyes when Barnes looked over at him.
“Ignore her. It’s this old video--” Sam started.
But Bucky interrupted to say, “Actually I am gay,” as he looked back over at Sarah. “Sorry if I got your hopes up,” he added with a grin that really did get the hopes up.
“What?” Sam asked and Sarah, ever watchful, could see the beer bottle shaking in his hand.
“What?” Bucky repeated innocently.
“He said he’s gay,” Sarah clarified.
“Thank you, Sarah,” Sam ground out. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Bucky snorted. “When would I have said anything? ‘Sorry for ripping your wings off and kicking you off of a hellicarrier, by the way I’m gay.’?”
“You did what?” Sarah asked.
“‘Sorry for claiming I didn’t bomb the UN only to be reverted back to the assassin who would have done that and then fighting you again. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Thanks for saving my life. Sorry about the giant undersea prison. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘There’s an imminent battle with weird ass space dogs that want to eat our faces. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Sorry about Tony Stark, whose life I kind of ruined. Lovely funeral. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘I’m in the middle of being pissed at you about the Shield. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Maybe don’t take me rolling through a field of flowers. It does things to me ‘cause I’m gay.’ ‘John Walker’s fucking insane. I’m gay, but definitely not for this bullshit.’ I mean, come on, Sam.”
“Flowers?” Sarah asked.
“Besides, why would you care? I don’t make it a habit of telling straight guys I’m into guys.”
“You don’t seem to make a habit of telling many people that,” Sarah pointed out. “I googled you. Nothing suggesting that came up.”
Bucky shrugged. “I’m a guy from the 30s. It was trained out of me.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sarah said quickly. “Back up away from that because we’re not gonna try to Oppression Olympics our way through our histories. Did you just say Sam was straight?”
“Sarah!” Sam hissed.
“Sure. I mean, I saw him with Romanov. Hill. He has Tinder on his phone.”
“Samuel Thomas, you better not,” Sarah warned lightly. “You’re better than that.”
“He’s a lady-killer.”
Sarah snorted and had to bring her hand up to her face. “He definitely is not. There has been no lady-killing on his end for a long time.”
“Sarah!” Sam tried again.
“You explain it to him then. Mr. 30s is gonna need the long way round explanation.”
Sam sighed and dragged his hand over his face. “Dammit. Fine. I’m not straight either, alright? I’m...bi, or something. It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about it.”
“What?” Bucky asked, not unlike Sam had.
“He said he’s bisexual. Interested in both parties. Swings either way. Hit a homerun and then hasn’t really swung since.”
“Sarah, Jesus Christ,” Sam groaned.
“What?” Bucky asked again.
“I was engaged. To a man,” Sam said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked, clearly missing the irony.
“Oh, it was inconvenient for you but I had plenty of opportunities, huh?” Sam asked. “Ms. Tell-It-All over there wasn’t joking. I haven’t swung any direction in a while. Not since before I met Steve. My fiance died. And then it never came up.”
Bucky blinked at Sam. He kept bringing the bottle halfway up his body and then setting it back on his leg without ever taking a drink. “Fuck, Sam, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, which was not what Sarah was expecting and it clearly wasn’t what Sam was expecting because Sam finally moved closer to Bucky on the bench.
“What for? You didn’t do anything. This time.”
“Yeah, but if I’d known you were into me too, I woulda kissed you in Germany.”
“Oh, I am so not into you,” Sam denied. “And I wouldn’t have our first kiss ruined by immediately running into the government’s roving show monkey.”
“That’s the worst,” Bucky agreed and also finally moved over on the bench until they were pressed thigh to thigh. “Tell me how much you don’t like me again,” he challenged.
“I can’t stand you,” Sam answered and brought his hand up to Bucky’s jaw.
Sarah couldn’t fight down the grin that came to her face and turned to prop her feet on the pier, back to Sam and Bucky. Just this once, she didn’t need to watch her brother to understand him.