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A Conversion of Worry and Love
Sam had told Bucky to just wear a coat instead of relying on the cybernetic mesh to hide his arm. But, no, Bucky wanted to test out the new tech himself.
It’s a gala, Sam, what could go wrong?
What a fucking asshole.
Sam skittered around a corner in the grand home of some shady diplomat, champagne and not much else sloshing in his stomach as he took off down the hall. The sounds of the chasing party were growing a little more distant--security guards trying to save face in front of the rest of the guests more than they were trying to catch Sam. He ducked down another hallway, a little darker, a little more off the path of the dinner, and leaned on his knees heavily to catch his breath.
Almost instantly, there were hands on him, yanking him off his feet and into a room. The door locked sinisterly behind him. When Sam tried to scramble away, he realized it was less a room and more of a closet. He fell into a shelf of furs and dust wafted into the air thickly, sending Sam into a coughing fit. It only earned a hand over his mouth.
But it was a hand he knew. Metal and gun oil and a slight golden glint in the light leaking in from the door.
“Mmmcky?” Sam asked and then gasped in a few more breaths when the hand finally fell away.
“I take it people saw the arm then?” Bucky said. Sam had never been so happy to hear a familiar voice. Sam heard Bucky shuffle around, more dust, and then a faint light from a small flashlight on one of the shelves. “I don’t want it to be visible under the door,” he explained.
“Yeah, people realized the Winter Soldier was at dinner with them,” Sam said drily. “And they came after Captain America when they couldn’t find you.”
Bucky tsked a little. “One day, someone’ll recognize us by face alone.” Suddenly he grimaced and reached for his side, sliding down the layers of shelves until he was sitting on the floor.
“Bucky? What’s wrong?” Sam asked as he tried to kneel by Bucky’s side. The closet was small and the protruding shelves didn’t help anything. Every shift of his body sent a shoulder or a knee crashing into something. The harder he tried to make sure that that something wasn’t Bucky, the more bruises he gave himself.
“It’s nothing, Sam,” Bucky answered. He fought Sam for a second when Sam reached over to pull his hand away from his side, but must’ve ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the effort and let Sam expose the tacky mess staining his shirt.
“Jesus, Barnes, you’ve been shot.”
“Grazed. I told you, it’s fine. It’ll heal.”
“Not if you bleed out all over this closet. Shit.” Sam shifted to straddle Bucky’s thighs, tugging his own jacket off and working on Bucky's button down shirt as carefully as he could. His knuckles scraped the wall, Bucky’s metal shoulder hit a shelf. They both smacked the door trying to get the shirt sleeve off of Bucky’s wrist.
Bucky couldn’t think about anything at all beyond the press of Sam’s legs against his, the brush of his arms as he worked, the touch of his fingers. He blamed all of it on the light headedness that was crawling through his skull.
“Can’t wait to tell the gossip rags about how you couldn’t wait to undress me at this dinner,” Bucky joked. He notably did not look down at the wound. Sam couldn’t look away from it.
“You don’t suppose there’s a first aid kit in here, do you?” he asked, chewing on his lower lip as he rifled through the stacks of coats and blankets around them.
“Oh, wait, I can probably help,” Bucky offered. He shifted and hissed in pain and reached into his pants pocket, producing three mini-bottles of alcohol.
“You’re kidding me,” Sam deadpanned.
“They were by the door! What, I wasn’t supposed to take any? You said we were supposed to act like this was just a party.”
Sam glared at him and grabbed the whisky bottle. “You couldn’t have grabbed water or something. There’s no soap or hand sanitizer in your endless pockets?”
“Someone said I couldn’t wear tac pants and soap isn’t as fun as alcohol,” Bucky defended.
They both stilled and fell silent as boots stormed past the door. Sam could feel Bucky’s breath on his cheek, his blood slick fingers curled around Sam's wrist, the heat pooling around them.
“All clear. Keep someone posted in the hall,” a voice barked and boots stormed past again.
Sam shifted away for a second, let Bucky’s hand fall to his thigh instead, and freed his shoulder holster. “Here, bite on this,” he ordered quietly. “We can’t risk you making noise while I work.”
Real terror flashed over Bucky’s face as he looked at the holster. His jaw tightened and he jerkily shook his head. “Could you just…” He trailed off and then reached for Sam’s wrist again, bringing Sam’s hand up to his mouth.
Sam let out an aggrieved breath and nodded, pressing his hand more firmly over Bucky’s mouth before opening the bottle with his teeth and then pouring the contents over Bucky’s side. Bucky strained under him, but Sam was able to hold him still enough until Bucky remembered that he was trained for this, that he could grit his teeth and fight through pain and be quiet .
“There’s got to be something in here we can shred and use as a bandage,” Sam said a few breaths later. His hand fell from Bucky’s mouth and Bucky dropped his head back against the shelf behind him. He tried to focus on the burning in his side and not the scalding memory of Sam’s palm over his jaw.
“All this fur isn’t gonna help shit,” Sam continued, tossing aside coats and wraps and scarves. “And all the rest is so damn dusty I’d probably give you an infection.”
“It’s fine,” Bucky reminded again. “I’ll heal.”
“Shut up, Barnes. Give me that jacket.” They'd both be bloody by the time they had to leave and ruining the jacket would mean they couldn't hide it, but it was the only material Sam had to work with
Bucky passed over Sam's jacket and Sam kneeled over Bucky’s thighs again, holding the balled up material against the wound firmly. Bucky’s hands fluttered over his before finally settling on Sam’s forearm.
The noise of a group walking down the far hallway floated under the door and then dissipated. “Why are you doing this? You’ve seen me take worse,” Bucky pointed out finally.
“Just because you can handle it doesn’t mean you have to. I have the training to make it hurt less,” Sam said. He looked away from Bucky’s face to watch the light strip under the door. In the blue glow of the flashlight, Bucky looked more pallid than he should and Sam didn’t want to see it.
“I have the training too. Sometimes resources don’t have to be wasted.”
Bucky felt something thrill all the way through him at the way Sam’s eyes snapped back to his face. “You’re not a waste of resources, Bucky,” he said so seriously that Bucky had to laugh. Sam’s hand was back over his mouth, warm and firm and grounding. “I’m serious. Be quiet.”
Bucky pulled Sam’s hand away. “You’d be the only person to think a man who can heal himself isn’t a waste of medical supplies.”
“I’m using a three ounce bottle of whisky and a ripped suit jacket. It’s hardly a hospital grade job we’re doing here. And even if I was…” Sam’s eyes slid away and he chewed on his lip again. “It’d still be worth it, alright?”
Bucky brought his fingers up to Sam’s jaw, tracing along the curve of it slowly. Then he patted Sam’s cheek and closed his eyes. “You’re insane,” he said.
Sam rolled his eyes and shifted around to grab the jacket again. He carefully wrapped it around Bucky’s waist and tied the pieces of what was left together to hold the ball in place. Bucky grabbed his arm again, one hand going to the back of Sam’s head to hold him close. Sam tensed for a second before he relaxed, dropped his head to Bucky’s shoulder, wrapped an arm around his back.
“Relax, Sam,” he sighed softly. “I’m fine.” Sam didn’t sit back, didn’t look over at Bucky. “You know, I had a little sister. And Steve, but if I panicked every time he got hurt, I’d have had an aneurysm before I turned fourteen. Anyway, I had a little sister. She was six years younger than me, which gave me a lot of time to worry about her when I didn’t know how to worry.
“Mom always said I never let anyone else hold her. I always said someone was hurting her head or pinching her arm. She said Becca never actually hit the ground when she was learning to walk because I was always there to catch her.”
Sam snorted and turned his head against Bucky’s shoulder. It was an awkward angle and he mostly got stubble in his line of sight. The closet was getting too warm to be sitting like this and he knew he shouldn’t be putting undue stress on Bucky’s abdomen but he couldn’t convince himself to peel away from being able to feel Bucky’s pulse under his cheek.
“I remember one time, when I was sixteen and working on the docks, I came home late. I’d been out with Steve or something. And no one had told me Becca was gonna be home alone and she’d hurt herself earlier the day. Cut up her leg something bad. She wouldn’t tell me what she’d done, so she’d probably been climbing in our parents’ closet, looking for hidden treasures, y’know. And I remember looking at her and this bruise crawling over her leg and then I passed out ‘cause I forgot to breathe.”
“Is there a point to this story, Barnes?”
“Yeah, yeah, the point is that she was just about totally fine. She’d been home all day, hadn’t gotten help from a neighbor, had cleaned the cuts herself, was running around with friends the day after while I was confined to my bed ‘cause they couldn’t tell if I had a concussion from hitting my head. The point is, all that worry didn’t do anyone any good. No amount of trynna protect her beforehand kept her from climbing in the house while she was alone. When I did get home and saw it, I wasn’t any use to her ‘cause I was panicking so bad, so it didn’t matter. She actually ended up running out on that bad leg to get Steve to help wake me up.
“I think--and stop me if I’m getting too deep for you, Wilson--but I think that worry is just an overflow of helplessness and...love. Loving something and knowing you can’t always be there to protect it. Her. Him. Me. Whatever. Maybe it would’ve been more useful to let Becca skin her knees while she was learning to walk so she’d know the perils of adventuring. Maybe I should’ve let someone else hold her and catch her for when I couldn’t be there. Maybe I should’ve let someone else share that worry, take some off my shoulders.
“Becca could scrap with the best of them. She was constantly bruised and scraped up, like a half-decade-younger Steve. No matter how many people I yanked aside by a collar or shouted at across the street, she always found trouble to get into. And she didn’t learn it on her own, y’know. She learned it from following me around. She was copying me. All that worry, all that protection, and she’d always rather just love me and be loved by me. She just wanted to spend time with her brother and grow up like him.
“I can’t change who we are, Sam. This profession we’re in, or the fact that people are gonna manage to spill their drinks on incredibly expensive cybernetic mesh when I didn’t even earn having a drink thrown in my face,” Bucky said, brushing his hand over the back of Sam’s head, down to his neck to massage a knot, and then back up. “But I can tell you that I’m not gonna try’n give you any more reason to worry about me than you need. I can tell you I know when I need to go get help from the neighbors and when I can just throw some rubbing alcohol on it and get back to looking for Christmas presents. It kinda feels like it’s just us sometimes. I don’t have a Steve to go run to when you pass out from anxiety over something that isn’t worth it. And, honestly Sammy, I can name about a thousand other ways you can put all that extra love to use.”
Sam hadn’t even realized his eyes had fallen shut listening to Bucky talk, that the racing of his heart had changed course from a building panic attack he hadn’t even been able to recognize to something that was blooming between his ribs. A heart not racing away from something but towards something, always towards the same thing recently.
He sat back enough to finally look at Bucky again. Some of the color had come back to cheeks during his speech and his eyes were damn near glowing in the light from the flashlight. “I don’t have panic attacks over you,” he lied, “but if I did, they’d be worth it. You’ve got to stop saying you’re not worth things. You’re worth it to a lot of people. You’re worth a lot of shit to a lot of people. And I don’t mean you’re a valuable...asset or whatever. You’re worth the worry and the love, Bucky. You’re worth taking care of. You always have been.”
Bucky brought his hand back to Sam’s cheek, curling the tips of his fingers behind his jaw and pulled him forward. Their mouths managed to meet without noses or teeth getting in the way. Sam’s hand found Bucky’s ribs, the opposite side of the graze, and Sam just about let himself melt against Bucky as Bucky leaned up into him.
Sam couldn’t tell if he gasped or Bucky, but they both pulled back enough to rest their foreheads together. “Do you feel better?” Bucky asked with a small smile.
“I think I’ve still got some of that excess love-worry to work through. Why don’t we try burning some more up?” he suggested with his own grin.
His mouth met Bucky’s again.