Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When he looks back and tries to trace all the threads that brought them here, Sam realizes – with a disbelieving chuckle, to be sure – that the beginning of the end started with, of all things, Redwing.

Bucky sounds distracted when he answers the phone. “Hey, Cap,” he mumbles by way of greeting. He has an uncanny knack for knowing when he’s getting a phone call from Sam, and when he’s getting a phone call from Captain America. “Saw you on the news.”  Or, the media does the heavy lifting for him. “Got another crisis already?”

“Hm, crisis, no, but I might need your help.” Sam stares down at the case with the wings he’s got opened up on the desk of his D.C. hotel room, lips pursed in frustration. “You any good with Wakandan tech?”

There’s a bit of shuffling from the other end of the line, like Bucky’s putting away whatever had him occupied. “Might could be. What’s in it for me?”

For the sake of his sanity, and maybe self-preservation, Sam decides he’s imagining the lascivious insinuation subtly underlying Bucky’s tone. “The peace of mind knowing that the guy who’s often got your six is up to full fighting capacity?”

Bucky barks out a laugh. “Oh, you’ve got my six, huh?”

“The social currency gained by a personal visit from Captain America?” he tries again.

The laugh turns into a snort. “Let’s stick with the first one.”

“The self-fulfillment of doing your part to serve your country?”

Bucky hangs up on him.

When he arrives at Bucky’s place that afternoon, it’s… well. It’s not that it’s messy, by any means. And it’s still eclectically furnished in that fuck societal expectations kind of way, but it’s… lived in, in a way Sam has never yet seen when he’s had occasion to pass through.

There’s a half-completed puzzle coming together on the breakfast bar.

There’s dirty dishes in the sink, and a small collection of spices and seasonings on the counter by the stove.

There’s a new shelf beside the television, sporting two completed Lego sets, and an unopened box with a third.

There’s magnets on the fridge, one of them holding an intricate mandala design coloring page, completed with painstaking care.

Sam can’t tear his eyes from it. “What happened in here?” he asks as Bucky closes and locks the door behind them.

“Wow, rude.” He follows Sam’s gaze, chuckles and shrugs, and maybe gets a bit pink in the cheeks. “I’m trying something new. Shrink-endorsed.”

“Art therapy?”

Bucky makes air-quotes and recites dutifully, “Seeing my hands as agents of creation rather than destruction.” Yeah, he’s definitely got some color rising in his cheeks. “She said I should find some hands-on hobbies.”

“And you bought a coloring book,” Sam nods, and tries to not let it sound like it’s the most endearing thing he’s ever encountered in his storied life to date. Bought a coloring book and tacked the page to the fridge like a grade school art project.

If HYDRA could see Bucky now.

“Some days call for more mindless hobbies than others,” Bucky sniffs primly. He moves the puzzle box to the stool and carefully slides the partially-constructed puzzle itself down to the far end of the counter to make room for the case with Sam’s wings. “Now – what’s the problem?”

Sam presses his thumbprint over the sensor and pops open the case. “Your best buds are being a bit temperamental.” Bucky groans, but it’s at least ninety percent just maintaining appearances, Sam can tell. “The nav interface is glitching out when they separate. Just about lost one of them yesterday.”

“You try turning it off and back on again?” Bucky deadpans, but he takes one of the Redwing drones in careful hands and looks it over. “Maybe bang it hard on something, see if that sorts it out?”

“Gonna knock Redwing against your thick skull,” Sam tells him. “Sort you out.”

Bucky glances up at him, grinning, eyes crinkled in amusement. “Mm-hm. Gimme the… yeah,” he takes the control unit from Sam and straps it around his vibranium wrist.

It takes him a minute to familiarize himself with the particular controls at hand, but he does indeed seem to have a better understanding of the inner workings than Sam. They work in relative silence for a couple minutes, Sam passing over little tools from the maintenance kit at the bottom of the case, Bucky unscrewing the tiny access hatch and peering at the connections.

“Hold on,” Bucky says after a minute, before rising and disappearing into the bedroom. There’s some indecipherable muttering through the door, and he resurfaces with a tablet that looks far more expensive than anything Sam could buy at an Apple store. He takes that and plugs it into a socket in the case itself and gnaws on his lip while he scans the readout. “You get hit hard in the wing pack?” he asks distractedly.

“Mm…”

Bucky looks up, frowning – and then grins, all teeth. “You fall hard on the wing pack?”

“…maybe.”

“I think you got a loose connection in the port, not the drones themselves.” Which at least explained why his own efforts to troubleshoot the issue had come to naught. “Here.”

Sam watches him work, any pretense of him actually helping long gone by the wayside. But in the end, it’s just one warped little connector Bucky swaps out, exchanging it for a spare from the kit, and Sam appreciates Shuri’s foresight, even if his own tech skills aren’t quite up to Wakandan standards.

Once Bucky’s got the hatch panel screwed back on the pack and Sam does the same for the drone they’d opened, Bucky slots it back in to the port and passes the control band back over. “Take ‘em for a spin.”

The two drones disengage seamlessly that time. “Recon sweep,” Sam says, and they take off in opposite directions around the apartment.

They’ve almost made it back to Sam, when one of them pauses and doubles back, swooping low to scan the space under the armchair that sits opposite the television. “Oh, hell -” Bucky starts to say, before a white blur of a shape is lunging out from underneath the chair and pouncing on his drone, hissing and spitting and wrestling it across the hard floor.

“What the fuck is that?” Sam absolutely does not shriek, no sir.

Bucky doubles over laughing, watching the damn cat try to sink its little demon teeth into Redwing’s wing and kick it furiously with its little demon back paws. “Come here, dumbass,” he says entirely too fondly, reaching into the fray with his vibranium hand and prying the creature away from its prey. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.” And then a little worriedly he confirms with Sam, “Those things are disarmed, right?”

Sam rolls his eyes, like he’d let them fly around a shoebox Brooklyn apartment without the proverbial safety on. “Bucky, what the fuck.”

Bucky holds the thing out by the scruff of its neck; it looks pathetic, and a little murderous. “This is Alpine; don’t pet her, she’ll claw your face off.” Sam very quickly retracts the hand that had been reaching out, and diverts instead to collect his poor, mauled drone. “She’s a foster.”

“You’re fostering a cat.”

He shrugs, plops her back on the ground, and watches her dart back under the chair. “Hoarding rescue. No one else could get near her.” He waggles his metal fingers demonstratively. “Wasn’t gonna let ‘em put her down.”

“Look at you; big softie.”

Bucky doesn’t quite meet his eyes when he mumbles, “S’not her fault what she comes from,” and oh, well ouch, okay.

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Barnes, are we boring you?”

Sam twists his head around to follow Fury’s line of sight to Bucky, who is… sitting on the piano bench across the room and, far as Sam can tell from this distance, reading a book of sheet music like it’s a riveting murder mystery.

He goes very still for a moment, and then lifts a hand to the keys and taps out three notes in time with a singsong, “It’s. Just. Bucky.”

“Fine, Barnes then -”

“This is weird,” Bucky explodes all at once, and their eclectic collection of meeting companions seems to let out a tense breath all at once. “I can’t be the only one who thinks this is weird.” He’s not wrong. But then Bucky narrows his eyes and points at Fury and asks, “And didn’t I kill you one time?”

Parker chokes on air, because kid’s got skills like that.

“Barnes, you probably damn near killed half the people in this room at some point.”

Sam would find it in him to be rankled on Bucky’s behalf at that, but, well… Bucky started it.

It wasn’t a question and, if it were it’d have certainly been rhetorical, but Bucky takes a long, hard look around the gathered assembly before shaking his head and countering, “No, just you and Sam.” Which brings him back around to the initial point of, “This is weird. HYDRA used to do this, you know. Whole big business façade, hiding an operating base in the damn basement?”

To be fair, they’re not in the basement, just… sitting around a midscale hotel lobby in the city, and ignoring the sign on the door that says booked for private event and the fact that the smiling desk attendant and bellhop are most definitely agents of something or other.

“Maybe HYDRA got the idea from me,” Fury counters Bucky coldly.

Bucky laughs and goes back to reading his book.

Of sheet music.

Sam rubs at his temples and wills down the budding headache.

“It’s time to tighten the game back up,” Fury fixes his eye on each of them in turn. “We lost some good leaders, some heavy-hitters, and some of you are stepping up to fill the void but you’re everywhere all at once and it’s chaos. I need you all to start thinking like you’re part of something bigger again.”

Sam sighs and looks around. Rhodey’s in the chair beside him, looking almost as nonplussed as Bucky. There’s Parker with Stark’s man, Happy. Scott Lang, and, as ever, he just looks thrilled to be there but also not entirely sure why he’s there. Banner, in all his hulking glory, but he made it very clear upon arrival that his was a more… advisory role. Maria Hill, sitting with a couple of young women Sam’s never seen before, introduced only as Monica and Darcy.

And him.

And Bucky.

The piano pings another note. Fury looks like he’s contemplating murder. “Yes, Barnes?” he grits out.

“I’m not really about the whole team thing. Not really Avenger material.”

“Barnes, you went gallivanting across the world with Wilson to stop a new flock of super soldiers.”

“Yeah.”

Fury stares at him. “Wilson’s our new Cap.”

“I mean, he is now.”

Sam thunks his head down on the table. Rhodey leans over to pat him on the shoulder.

Like he’s speaking to a rather incalcitrant child, Fury spells out, “Captain America is an Avenger.” Bucky hums a vague agreement, or at least acknowledgement. “You have… aligned yourself with Captain America.”

“Mm-hm.”

“So that makes you…”

“Nope.”

Fury groans.

“This is fun,” Lang says. “You’re fun. I like you.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Bucky assures them, fingers tickling idly across the keys again, trilling out a random melody. “World’s upside-down. Embrace it.”

He spends the rest of the meeting absorbed in his phone.

Sam throws himself on the other end of the piano bench an hour later that feels something more like three days. “I don’t know how many friends you made today,” he tells Bucky, “but I think Lang’s applying to be the president of your one-man fan club.” Bucky just kind of grunts at him and Sam glances over, sees him concentrating on the book propped up on the stand, fingers of his right hand shifting in the air. He’s got three fresh claw marks running across the top of his hand disappearing under his sleeve. “How’s Alpine?”

“Not on the executive board of my fan club, as yet.”

He just keeps on… dancing his hand through the air, eyes fixed on the book, occasionally darting to the phone he has sitting next to it. “What are you doing?”

“Teaching myself how to play piano.”

“…I don’t think that’s how it works.” Admittedly, Sam hasn’t touched an instrument since probably the eighth grade, but he’s pretty sure you can’t theorize yourself into musical proficiency, much less in a damn hour.

Bucky lowers his hand to the keys and taps out a halting but recognizable opening to Beautiful Blue Danube.

“Well,” Sam says, mildly flustered.

Bucky shrugs. “It’s a language, Sam, and I’m good with those.”

“Could get a keyboard for your place, Mister Hands-on Hobbies.”   

“Nah.” Bucky brings his vibranium hand to the keys and starts the opening line of the song again, except this time he adds in the left hand and –

Sam can’t help the pitying laugh. “Your fingers are too big.” His metal fingers keep catching on multiple keys at once, sending the whole thing into dissonant chaos.

A shadow falls over them, and they look up in tandem to see Hill standing and staring at them, expectant and impatient. “Are you two done?”

“Beautiful Blue Danube,” Bucky tells her, starting the thing over, left-handed missteps and all. “Famous song; nice river.”

Sam possibly whips out his phone and records him. Possibly.

Hill beckons him aside and he stands, leaves Bucky clunking away for another ten seconds before he gives up on the vibranium hand and goes back to picking out just the right-handed side of the piece. “This may be a stupid question, Sam,” she leans in and murmurs, “but…if he’s got no interest in playing ball, why did he come?”

“Because I came, and he doesn’t trust any of you further than he could throw you. Actually,” he stops and considers, “he could probably throw you pretty far.”

“I would love to see him try,” Hill deadpans, and Sam doesn’t miss the corner of Bucky’s mouth curling up in amusement. Hill doesn’t either, by the way her lips press together in chagrin. But she sighs after a moment, eyes flickering once between him and Bucky, and relents. “I’ll keep Nick off his back.”

“Thanks, Maria.”

Bucky tells him as they’re finally leaving, “She’s alright. Hill.” Sam cocks an intrigued brow, but Bucky doesn’t elaborate. He does, however, tell Sam, “Delete that video before I delete it for you.”

He does. And he maybe doesn’t tell Bucky that he’s already sent it to Shuri with the message, Princess, this is tragic on the number she’d forwarded on to him for tech troubleshooting after the mishap with Redwing.

When he wakes up the next morning to a response, he can hear the sardonic exasperation: Wow, Mr. Wilson, I cannot believe that when I considered every possible dimension of utility and safety when designing a one-of-a-kind, incredibly complex prosthesis, I did not take into account the ratio of finger size to the width of a standard piano key.

About three minutes later, he gets the follow up: I’ll mock up some redesign ideas to have ready for the next time he comes to Wakanda.

About three minutes after that, he gets from Bucky: Sam what the actual fuck.  

Chapter Text

The next time Sam makes it up to the city, it’s for an event – one he not only agreed to, but chose. And so he’s looking forward to it, looking forward to going somewhere as Captain America without donning the full regalia, just schmoozing and speeches in a nice suit instead of a combat one, guilting money out of greedy hands and doing it with a smile on his face…

The picture he’d let shape up in his mind falls far shy of the reality. In the reality, he’s got in an earpiece, and it’s difficult to focus on his various conversations when he’s got one ear listening for threat assessment updates from Bucky and instead mostly just hears him flirting. Full-out, shameless, no-holds barred charm, and he can’t believe he’d once felt threatened on his sister’s behalf over an appreciative smile and a hi.

Obnoxiously, the flirting has a purpose, and so he has to tolerate it.

More obnoxiously, it works, and Bucky manages to get into the venue’s main office, where he wastes no time hacking his way into the computer system and perusing the staff records.

This night was supposed to be fun. Fulfilling.

So naturally, he’d received a call from Maria three days ago informing him, “We’ve picked up some chatter suggesting LAF might try and take a shot at you at the fundraiser, but we’re having trouble honing in on it.”

And so instead of fun, he gets to shake hands and smile for cameras, while listening to Bucky on the phone with Maria pouring over personnel records and run schedules and known contacts. And getting no hits.

Eventually, inevitably, this leads to Bucky telling him, “You should put on the suit, Sam.”

“I’m not going to put on the suit,” he mutters through gritted teeth, smiling for a picture with the CFO of a company that makes software or foot wear or… something, they’re starting to run together overtop the running commentary in his ear.

“Your speech is in fifteen minutes and I can’t find any-”

Sam turns away after releasing the oblivious woman’s hand and whisper shouts at no one, “They’re raising money for wounded and traumatized veterans, Bucky, I’m not giving a speech armed to the teeth and itching for a fight!”  

Bucky just makes an incoherent, “Gahh,” noise and goes radio silent.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s standing on a stage at the end of a long ballroom. Lights and cameras, excited chatter, attendees making their ways to tables. The quiet motions of security, taking up places around the perimeter. Fully vetted serving staff Maria swapped out from the venue’s usual team once the threat pinged her radar, bustling around with a few last drinks, preparing to start serving the meal once Sam’s speech was done. Bucky… somewhere in the noise, doing whatever he does and being high-strung doing it.

“If you’ll give us just a moment, Mr. Wilson,” the event coordinator smiles at him overtop her binder, flustered and red under the hot lights, the excitement of running around and herding these well-connected cats, “we’re just waiting on your ASL interpreter.”

“Sure, yeah,” he says amiably, if a bit distractedly, “no rush.”

The room’s still settling. He’s still doing his own last sweep of the space, however limited from here.

Bucky’s quiet in his ear.

It’s not a long speech he has prepared, but it’s one from the heart. From experience. He puts aside the nerves, puts his trust in his partner, and talks to the room. Excitedly. Passionately. Beseechingly. He puts his all in it.

So it maybe catches him more off-guard than he’ll later like to admit when, as he’s pacing a little while he talks, as he’s turning his back on the young man who’d emerged looking nervous and a little starstruck only a brief minute after the coordinator begged his patience, the interpreter lunges at him with a knife like he’s got a bright red target on the back of his fine suit.

It’s the rippling gasp from the crowd that alerts him in time to pivot away, just enough. The would-be assassin stumbles past him, Sam catching the knife-arm with his forearm to block a glancing blow.

There’s a moment of stunned stillness, except for the security caught entirely off their guard and now trying to judge the math of taking a shot in a crowded room and also the not insignificant fact that Sam himself is probably in several of their lines of fire.

The man’s grip on the knife shifts, eyes narrowing; he flips it around, like he’s going to throw it…

And then two hands, one of them decidedly vibranium, reach out from behind the curtain and seize him and haul him backstage and out of sight.

The microphone doesn’t miss the grunts and thuds that ensue; Sam’s earpiece picks up the rest, Bucky’s hard breathing, the repeated clang of blades coming up against an impenetrable arm, a hissing gasp and he’s not sure who that comes from – and then there’s a last loud thump and it goes quiet.

Sam stares at the shocked crowd, at something of a loss.

Bucky emerges from the divide in the curtain and jerks a thumb over his shoulder and tells the security team running up onto the stage, “He’s all yours.” And then he catches Sam’s eyes, gestures meaningfully, if a bit impatiently over the crowd, and says, “Well? Carry on, then.”

“Um. Right. Sorry about… that,” he manages.

He carries on, because he’s not really sure what else to do. Bucky sits himself with his legs dangling off the stage, off to the side, a glare fixed on his face that, from what Sam can see of his profile, dares anyone else in the room, Come and try it.

All things considered, he’s very distracted as he tries to get back into the groove of his speech, and so it takes him a few minutes to notice, and only when several eyes in the room keep flickering between him and Bucky, that Bucky’s picked up where the assassin left off and is signing Sam’s speech for the crowd and the cameras.

Sam stutters mid-sentence. Bucky glances up, sees him watching him, flashes a dry little smirk, and waits him out.

The attention Bucky was getting from the crowd, Sam will later realize and only after Bucky climbs slowly back to his feet, probably had less to do with his unexpected ASL fluency and more to do with the blood slowly soaking one side of his pants leg.

“It’s fine,” he says to Sam’s bug-eyed expression. “He got in a lucky stab.”

“I never want to hear the phrase lucky stab come out of yours or anyone’s mouth ever again.” Sam hustles him back behind the curtain, where they can sneak out whatever back way Bucky had found himself on the stage to begin with. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“The speech was important to you!”

“Bucky,” Sam pinches at the bridge of his nose, begging some higher power for patience. “Even if the speech was more important to me than you bleeding out on the stage -”

“I’m not bleeding out, Samuel, you are so goddamn dramatic -”

“- you realize that half the stories about tonight are just going to say that I rambled on like an asshole while you bled out on the stage?”

Bucky’s mouth clicks shut. “Ah.” Sam glares. “Hm. Well.” There’s an awkward pause. “Clever idea there, using the interpreter.”

“Gah,” Sam throws up his hands.

x---x

There’s a very alarmed couple passing through the lobby of Bucky’s building when the car drops them off. Because of course he’d refused a hospital.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Beying,” Bucky says cheerfully, if a little tiredly, because blood loss is a bitch. “Hi, Mrs. Beying,” he says aloud, and with his hands.

She smiles and gives him a long reply that involves gesturing at Bucky’s bloody leg with a scolding finger jab, and gesturing more than a few times at Sam while Bucky bursts into laughter and nods in earnest agreement, before the pair head on their way and Sam and Bucky head upstairs.

“Are you going to at least let me look at that?” Sam asks, senses alert and wary for the claw-happy cat.

Bucky waves him off. “Nah, I got it.”

“Bucky.”

“Stop trying to get me out of my pants, Sam,” he calls, already disappearing through the bedroom. He leaves the door open but after banging around a couple of dresser drawers, shuts himself in the bathroom and leaves Sam to hope he doesn’t pass out.

Or that, if he does, he makes a loud enough thump to alert Sam he needs help.

He takes a moment to take stock of the apartment. He turns in place, eyeing the two new coloring pages pinned to the fridge, the half-assembled model airplane on the counter, the new Lego set prominently displayed on the –

He double takes.

There’s a couch.

The cat is on the couch. Curled up like she’d been asleep, one eye cracked open and glaring at Sam. “Uh. Hi, there,” he says, stepping forward.

She hisses and he steps back.

“You bought a couch,” he remarks, when Bucky emerges five minutes later with a bandage wrapped around his thigh, barely visible below the hem of a pair of athletic shorts.

“Alpine likes to sit where she can see me, but only in like… my general vicinity, so the chair’s no good,” Bucky informs him while digging around in the cupboard for a can of cat food.

“You bought a couch… for your foster cat.” Bucky stills as he reaches in a drawer for a spoon. “You adopted the cat.”

“I adopted the cat, yes.”

Sam watches him divvy out a portion of the gruel into a little dish. “Okay, but you still bought a couch for your cat.”

“I contain multitudes, Sam.” He carries the dish around and back into the bedroom. Alpine hops off the couch and, with a last suspicious glare at Sam, follows for her dinner. “Also, not to be a bad host or anything, but I’m going to pass out in like, forty-five seconds.”

Not literally, Sam decides while watching him cover the can back up and put it away in the fridge, he’s too alert for that. He’s serious about the time frame though, doesn’t even wait for Sam to respond before sprawling out across the couch.

For a hilarious moment, Sam wonders if he bought the bed for the cat, too. He restrains himself from asking. “You want me to stay?”

“Nope,” Bucky says, firm without being sharp. “Go to your fancy hotel, Wilson.”

“I’m coming back to check on you in the morning.” Bucky chuckles and throws an arm over his eyes. Sam takes the cue and flips off the lights.

He almost makes it out the door before finally remembering to ask, “When did you learn sign language?” He’s as certain as can be that HYDRA hadn’t included ASL in their skills indoctrination repertoire.

“Hands-on hobbies, Sam,” Bucky slurs tiredly.

“You learn it for your neighbor?”

There’s a brief pause, before Bucky grumbles, “Speak every other language in the building, it only seemed sporting.”

Sam smiles stupidly into the darkness until Alpine comes to hop up on the counter and stare at him until he backs slowly out of the apartment.

Chapter Text

“Didn’t you ever cook with your mama?” is what Sam comes downstairs to on Thanksgiving morning.

He’s not sure if he should run, or make popcorn.

Bucky’s cracking eggs into a bowl on the island counter; Sarah’s got her arm shoved up inside the turkey cavity, and some things are just too graphic for seven a.m.

“It’s not the mechanics of cooking,” Bucky defends, “so much as the… intuition of it. And the timing of it.”

Sam stares around at the mess as they prepare for the holiday feast marathon, and kind of has to give Bucky that one.

“I can follow the specifications of a recipe,” Bucky continues. “But somehow, the recipe is usually just kind of… the baseline? Like I’m missing the final part of the equation, but no one wants to share the secret?”

Sam thinks about that little fledgling collection of seasonings he’d noticed in Bucky’s kitchen all those months ago, and wonders how long he’s been at this.

Sarah glances over her shoulder and considers him for a moment. Bucky cracks the last of the eggs and closes up the carton and takes it to the fridge, oblivious to the scrutiny. “We should start you with baking,” Sarah decides.

“Yeah?” Bucky smiles wryly, returning his bowl and grabbing the waiting whisk.

“Hm. Cooking is art,” Sarah tells him. “Baking is science.”

Bucky mulls that one for a minute, brows furrowed and lips turned down. Contemplative. “Maybe that’s the problem, then,” he muses, returning to his steady whisking. “Don’t know how much art there was to it in the ‘30s. We just kind of…” He frowns, eyes distant, searching for the word.

“Boiled everything?” Sam supplies helpfully.

“Yes,” Bucky points at him. “That. That is exactly what we did, thank you.”

Sarah laughs; Bucky smiles.

Sam pushes away that old melancholy ache before it can encroach too far on his heart.

The scrambled eggs come out… fine.

“I know how to scramble eggs, Samuel,” Bucky huffs, and entirely misses Cass adding copious amounts of pepper to his and AJ drowning his in cheese.

The pies were made the day before, so there’s not a whole lot of baking activity they can foist off on Bucky. But what Sarah does learn quickly enough is that what Bucky lacks in bringing a dish together, he makes up for tenfold in meal prep. “If there was an award for evenly-diced vegetables,” she damn near swoons.

Bucky winks.

Sam narrows his eyes. “Show-off. You know they make all kinds of contraptions that can do that for you nowadays?” Hell, he’s pretty sure they have one somewhere in a drawer.

“Hey,” Bucky jabs a knife in his general direction. “If anyone from HYDRA could see what I’m choosing to use my very impressive knife skills for, eighty years on, they would have an aneurysm, and that is the absolute sweetest form of revenge.”

Sarah maybe goes a little heart-eyed at that.

Sarah’s maybe not the only one.

x---x

The last evening he’s in Louisiana, Bucky kicks everyone out of the kitchen after dinner and makes dessert.

“I’m nervous,” Sam admits to Sarah as they settle in the living room with the boys for a movie. “Should I be nervous?”

Sarah’s answering laugh is pitying. “I feel like maybe yes, but not about whatever it is you think you’re nervous about,” she says cryptically, and then absolutely refuses to elaborate over the sounds of Cass and AJ arguing over what to watch.

Admittedly, the house smells phenomenal by the time Bucky emerges from the kitchen with flour stains on his shirt and the edges of his sleeves damp from washing the dishes. There’s no timer that Sam hears for whatever’s in the oven, but Bucky stands abruptly when he deems it done, and then makes them wait through the rest of the movie.

…And then makes them wait even longer while he puts on whatever finishing touches before finally summoning them into the kitchen. “Wasn’t really cooled enough yet, so the frosting’s a bit… melting. But.” He waves vaguely at the table set with five pieces of cake. “A dessert where I’m from.”

“Pretty sure chocolate cake’s universal,” Sam points out.

“Ah ah,” Bucky wags his finger at him. “Not just chocolate cake. Depression cake.”

For an awful moment, Sam thinks he’s referring to the state of being depressed – but Sarah exclaims her delight and sits down. “No eggs, no milk, no butter?”

“The height of luxury,” Bucky drawls. “Just like ma made it.” And then he kind of pauses and frowns and admits, “The frosting’s out of a can, so.”

“We won’t tell,” Sarah assures him.

It’s good; maybe not as rich as they’re used to, but good.

(Better than the eggs.)

An hour later, Sarah sends the boys up to get ready for bed. Bucky waits until she’s occupied tidying up some toys, and then corners Sam on a pass through the kitchen for a glass of water. “Sam, I think I messed up.”

The urgency in his voice takes him aback. “What? What’s wrong?”

Bucky gnaws on his lip anxiously, checks over his shoulder, and whispers, “My ma made her cake with coffee.”

Sam blinks at him. Just like ma made it, Bucky had said.

The sounds of the boys horsing around and decidedly not settling down for bed carry down the stairs, and he claps Bucky on the shoulder and laughs until he cries.

Chapter Text

“You gotta breathe, kid.”

It strikes Sam in a vague, surreal kind of way, that their roles have reversed beyond any reasonable precedent or expectation. It’s not that Bucky hates Joaquin or anything – he doesn’t think. He just… doesn’t usually have the patience, nor the bandwidth, to deal with Joaquin’s wide-eyed, somewhat naïve, and just on this side of hero-worship attitude he is somehow, still, trying to shake off.

Today’s events might just do the trick.

They’re in a safehouse in Vancouver at Bucky’s direction, and Sam isn’t asking any questions. Trying to wrap his own head around what just happened, listening to Bucky try to calm Joaquin, and wondering where the hell to even start wading through the shitshow.

“All those people,” Joaquin groans, and Sam wonders if he’s going to be sick. Bucky doesn’t wonder, just hauls him around with a firm grip on the collar of his uniform and aims him in the vague direction of the kitchen sink.

Sam comes over to murmur low at Bucky’s side while Joaquin dry-heaves in the background, “That was a set-up.”

“No shit,” Bucky mumbles back. He nods at Joaquin’s back. “I want a list of everyone in his direct chain-of-command and everyone on the logistical team.”

“Yeah.”

“Why,” Joaquin moans, still bent over the sink. Sam thinks at first he’s overheard them, but then he coughs and starts over. “Why’d he do that? He didn’t have to… all those people.”

Bucky presses his lips together and shakes his head, eyes tight and tired. “Some people just like to watch the world burn, kid.”

Because Joaquin hasn’t connected those dots, yet. Doesn’t yet grasp the gravity of what they’d walked into. What they’d been walked into, intentionally, by someone.

Sam knows the look of determination in Bucky’s eyes; knows he’ll tear down whatever he has to in order to find out who. For his part, he just focuses on his own breathing, his own heartrate – he’s not sure he’s come that close to dying since Thanos actually killed him that one time.

He’d say Joaquin should be jaded against this shit by now, but… well. He’s Air Force, and everything always looks a lot cleaner from thirty thousand feet. Something he’ll have to grapple with, if he wants to continue training with the wings.

“I’m gonna step out, make a call,” he tells Bucky.

That sends Joaquin into a fresh wave of panicked gasps for breath. Sam hesitates, but Bucky waves him on, and sets about trying to calm him once more.

When Sam steps back in the room barely five minutes later, Bucky’s got Joaquin sat down next to him on the sofa, leaning in towards the coffee table, both of their heads bowed in concentration. Bucky’s murmuring low, calm and soothing, working on something on the table, demonstrating and then watching Joaquin copy his movements.

Sam circles around to the adjacent armchair and watches Bucky walk Joaquin through folding an origami box.

There’s a pair of cranes already sitting in the middle of the table, next to a stack of white printer paper Bucky must have dug up from somewhere, cut into rough squares.

Sam picks up a piece for the next one, and lets Bucky walk them through a butterfly.

Then a heart.

Then a rabbit that doesn’t really look like a rabbit; Bucky frowns at it a minute, trying to remember whatever step he might have missed, coming up empty, and shrugging, before moving on to the next one (flower).

It works. Joaquin’s breathing has evened out by the time they get through the heart, and he looks like he’s actually concentrating on making the flower, not just mindlessly copying movements and hoping for the best.

“You alright?” Bucky nudges him; gets a stilted nod in return, but he does look better. Some color restored to his face, some tension dropped from his shoulders. “Want to splash some water on your face? Maybe lie down?”

Joaquin lets himself be managed; Sam watches Bucky manage him. Watches Bucky then shut himself in the bathroom for a few minutes after getting Joaquin settled in the bedroom, and rises to go into the kitchen and grab a bottle of water from the suspiciously well-stocked fridge.

Seriously, he’s not going to ask.

When Bucky emerges, he follows suit and for a long minute they stand across the counter watching each other. Until Bucky sucks down the last of his water, crunches the plastic under his human hand, and tosses it in the sink. “You call Maria?”

“Yeah. She’s getting a message to Sarah.” Bucky nods, slow. Eyes dark and assessing. “God, Buck…”

“He’s alright.” Sam lets out a harsh breath and fixes his eyes up at the ceiling, shakes his head. “I’m alright.”

“Near thing.”

“You,” Bucky circles around and takes him by the elbow, “are not alright. Come on.”

Bucky marches him halfway across the room before Sam collects himself, plants his feet. “Stop, just… wait.”

“Gonna be doing plenty of waiting in the next day or two.”

“Goddammit, Bucky, can you just…”

Bucky frowns at him, shakes his head a little – and then his eyes soften and he tugs Sam into a firm embrace. “Hey.” He fists his hands into the back of Bucky’s shirt, lets his head fall on his shoulder. “S’alright.”

“It’s not.”

“No, I guess not.”

Some battles, you lose. It’s just math. Balance of probability.

Some losses are harder to accept than others, though.

“Thank you. For getting us here. Taking charge with Torres.”

Bucky huffs softly under his breath and carefully extracts himself from the hold. “Yeah, well. Mindless hobbies; time and place.”

It’s more than that; so much more than that, and Sam grasps desperately for Bucky’s hand as he pulls away. “Bucky.”

An edge of wariness settles into Bucky’s eyes and he returns a slow, cautious, “…Sam.”

He steps back into Bucky’s space; doesn’t miss the way his posture straightens, his spine stiffens, but he doesn’t retreat, doesn’t bat away the hand that Sam moves to his hip, doesn’t flinch back from the one that curls around the back of his neck, fingers tickling through the hair at Bucky’s nape as he holds him there steady, leans in…

“No.”

The air all rushes out of Sam’s lungs at once, it’s like deflating, and he slumps forward, face pressed into Bucky’s shoulder again and breathes, “I’m sorry.”

Strong arms wrap around him, and that’s nice, he thinks; thinks maybe he hasn’t broken anything here. Tentatively, hopefully, affirms that when Bucky murmurs softly, “Don’t gotta be sorry. S’just…”

He trails off, goes silent until Sam looks up and catches his hot stare; sees the way his eyes rove over Sam’s face, the way his tongue darts out, nervously wetting his lips. “The first time you kiss me, Sam?” He swallows hard, throat bobbing distractingly as Sam’s brain shorts out on the word first. “It’s not gonna be because you’re high on adrenaline, thinking how we near about died.”

“…Oh,” Sam croaks. And when is it gonna be, then? he can’t quite find his voice to ask.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth curls up, slow and wicked. He brings his hands up to cup Sam’s face, thumbs stroking along his cheekbones, and leans in to murmur low and hot against his ear: “You’ll know.”

And he steps away. So abrupt, it’s like nothing even happened.

“Oh,” Sam croaks.

Chapter Text

You’ll know.

Sam would be lying if he claimed those words didn’t occupy approximately ninety-eight percent of his waking thoughts once they’d emerged from the crisis at hand.

Bucky carries on like nothing’s happened at all. And, in a way, Sam supposes it hasn’t.

Life goes on.

They run an op in D.C. Simple, more surveillance than anything, and he watches Bucky before and after and tries to decide what he’s supposed to know and how he’s supposed to know it. Bucky comes to Louisiana and practices his cooking skills with Sarah, works on the boat with Sam, helps the boys build a bonfire in the pit in the yard and they roast hot dogs and marshmallows, stay up late, and the two of them stay up even later drinking and talking about anything and nothing, and Sam thinks about it but…

But he thinks and he wonders; he doesn’t know. And Bucky said he’d know.

Life goes on.

He comes up to New York to meet with Hill, Parker, and Hogan at the new facility coming together. Bucky declines to join, has apparently decided that the Spider-kid doesn’t pose any imminent threat to Sam’s safety. But he does tell Sam he could maybe tolerate his company afterwards if he wanted to stop by and say hi, because Bucky is sentimental like that.

On his way, he texts Bucky, Is your cat gonna claw my face off?

Bucky sends back a picture of the thing lurking up on top of the kitchen cabinets, peering out from behind a cereal box (Cocoa Pebbles, Bucky has the cereal taste of an eight-year-old), eyes gleaming through the shadow, and the message, Once she’s done with mine, maybe.

Except when he answers the door, the damn thing is actually perched on his shoulder, the left one, claws buried in the thick fabric of a hoodie to keep herself from slipping, and Sam can’t help but blink in wonderment. “You’ve domesticated her.”

“Think she might’ve domesticated me.” He sounds like he’s only sort of half-joking. “Wanna pet her?”

“I’m not going to push my luck, if it’s all the same.”

Alpine chooses that moment to offer a little, “Mrrp,” and hop down to the floor by way of the kitchen counter and slink out of sight, so Sam figures he chose wisely.

A quick glance around the place finds it more or less the same from the last time Sam had occasion to drop by, save the glaring exception of the fact that most of the free floor space in the living area has been taken over by a jigsaw puzzle. And, by puzzle, he means a half-dozen piles of loosely sorted pieces, a few short fragments of straight edges that haven’t yet begun to take shape into the frame, and most of the pieces still sitting in jumbled mess in the open box.

The lid’s off, propped up so Bucky can look at it for reference while he sorts, and Sam figures he must be a glutton for punishment because half the thing is just a star-scape, shades of black and blues and purples, and also, it’s 1500 pieces.

Sam considers this for a moment, and asks, “Doesn’t the cat ever make off with the pieces.”

Bucky sniffs. “It’s a sore subject.”

He laughs, and then laughs harder at Bucky’s pout. “Want any help?”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to refuse, Sam can tell – but he catches himself, reconsiders, and proposes, “Dinner first?”

“That depends, you cooking?”

Bucky opens his mouth, pauses, closes it, and tilts his head, confused. “Am I supposed to say no or yes here?”

Sam laughs some more.

They get takeout.

They sprawl on their stomachs on the hard floor, and Sam thinks he’s maybe getting too old for this. Can’t admit that to the centenarian at his side though. Bucky tackles puzzles with the same focus he’d used to get a crash course in playing the piano. Sam finds himself watching Bucky instead of sorting his own pieces more often than he can keep track. By the way the corner of Bucky’s mouth keeps tugging up, his distraction hasn’t gone unnoticed, but it does go unremarked upon.

Alpine takes issue with Bucky’s focus being too long directed at something that isn’t her. She walks up his back and sticks her nose against his ear (“Argh,” Bucky’s shoulders hunch up and Sam can practically see his soul leaving his body). After a few minutes of unsuccessful diversionary maneuvers, she changes tack and slinks her way up Sam’s side, butting her head into his elbow.

“You’re shameless,” he murmurs, reaching over to scratch her behind the ears. She takes the win and flops over on her side, stretching out and baring her stomach.

“It’s a trap,” Bucky mutters warningly at his side, eyes never leaving his growing collection of pieces slowly taking shape into one side of the border.

Sam aborts his move to rub the cat’s belly.

And then he realizes that he touched the cat, and the cat came to him, and he still has his face and hasn’t seen any sign of a claw, and she’s displaying her belly and purring like a little maniac and –

Emotion slams into him so fast he goes hot behind the eyes, slams into him so fast he can’t even identify what, precisely, it is. Not the damn cat, he swears, except it kind of is the damn cat, and Bucky’s refusal to let the world give up on her just because she was neglected and abused and lashed out accordingly.

And it’s Bucky embracing the skills that were forced on him and repurposing them for the benefit of himself and others. Repurposing them just because he can and he wants to, because it’s useful or he’s just curious, or he’s just bored.

It’s the boundaries he’s established, on his time and his space and his heart, and the courage and self-assurance to set his terms and say no.  

Sam loves him for it.

And lying there on the floor of Bucky’s apartment, working in silence save Alpine’s rhythmic purrs, watching Bucky pick out the minutest of details and tackle a jigsaw puzzle with all the intensity of a sniper staring through a scope, Sam knows.

He shifts his weight onto one elbow and reaches across with the other hand to touch his fingers gently to Bucky’s face. Bucky blinks over at him, startled – and then the corner of his mouth pulls up slow, almost taunting, and Sam –

He leans over and presses their lips together. A little slow, a little cautious. Curious. The angle’s awkward, noses bumping, and he could not possibly care less.

Bucky’s tongue darts out and wets their lips, teasing, just before he pulls away. They look at each other there, balanced on some kind of edge, waiting…

And then a goofy grin settles on Bucky’s face before he can quite catch it, and he ducks his head down, color rising in his cheeks, and he’s bashful and Sam thinks his heart might explode. “How’d you know?” Bucky mumbles at the floor.

“…Is it weird if I say it was the cat? Because I think it might have been the cat.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh, eyes still fixed down – and then he laughs harder, shoulders shaking. And then… the shaking doesn’t stop, and a wet sound tears out of him just before he pushes himself up off the floor, maneuvers himself to sitting, and presses one hand over his eyes.

“Hey, whoa.” Sam scrambles up after him, scooches close alongside so he can try and get a look at his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky gasps raggedly.

Sam gets his arms around him and holds him, firm, until Bucky relents and collapses against his chest.

They stay like that for… a while. Long enough that Sam’s butt starts to go numb and he is definitely too old for this. But it’s worth it. And he gets it, he thinks, and he thinks Bucky probably gets it too, even if he doesn’t have or won’t search for the words to explain. And that’s okay.

Bucky cries himself out eventually. Sam rubs his back while he catches his breath, and soon enough he stirs and shifts, raises his eyes and searches Sam’s face, stares at him like he’s memorizing every line and detail before pressing his lips back up into his. “Buck – ” Sam tries to get a word in; Bucky just chases him, greedy and impatient, hands coming up to frame Sam’s face while he kisses at the corners of his mouth, bites lightly at his bottom lip.

He surrenders to it. Curls a firm hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, trying to slow him down, but he surrenders to it, to the lingering taste of salt on Bucky’s lips from his tears, to the desperate way Bucky fists a hand in the front of his shirt, to the intoxicating and helpless little moan that slips out of him when Sam drags his thumb in slow circles beneath his ear.

Sam wants to find every last spot on Bucky’s body, every last touch, that will earn him that noise again.

But not yet; certainly not tonight. Not while he can still taste the tears in Bucky’s kisses.

He squeezes lightly at the nape of Bucky’s neck and pulls away with a regretful sigh. Bucky lets him go this time, but doesn’t drop his hand from Sam’s shirt. They sit like that a moment, trying to calm their breathing, searching for words to convey the everything about what’s just transpired.

“I think we scared Alpine away,” is what Bucky comes up with eventually.

“I think my ass has gone numb,” is how Sam replies. Bucky bites his lip on the grin and climbs to his feet, entirely too spry for his age, and extends a hand to help Sam up.

He can see a certain amount of nervousness start to creep into Bucky’s eyes. Like he’s not quite sure what’s supposed to come next in the script. Like he’s sitting at an intersection and uncertain which direction to turn, caught at a crossroad of what he wants and what’s expected of him and what he’s comfortable with.

Sam spares him the dilemma; steps up to him, rests his hands on Bucky’s hips, and tips his forehead forward to press against Bucky’s. “I’ve got an early flight.” Bucky exhales a long, steady breath and nods against him. “Should start figuring out a hotel.”

A sharp laugh has Bucky pulling back, staring at him incredulously. “Now you’re gonna set me up like that?”

“Bucky,” Sam chides gently. “You think I never noticed that you’re not as comfortable bringing people into your space as I am bringing people into mine? It’s okay.”

He gnaws on his lip; it makes Sam want to bite it some more and yeah, he needs to find a hotel. “Alpine’s accepted you, Sam, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“…Yes.” Sam narrows his eyes at the hesitation, and Bucky clarifies, “You’re sleeping on the couch.”

“It’s a nice couch.”

“So long as that’s settled.” Bucky turns away, takes two steps towards the kitchen, pauses, and turns, and tells him haltingly, “Actually? I’ll be real honest here, I sleep better on the couch so, at the risk of sounding forward… you’re sleeping in the bed?”

Sam just shakes his head.

He sleeps in the bed. Bucky sleeps on the couch. He wakes to the shuffling of movement around the small apartment as Bucky feeds the cat at the damn crack of dawn, but his alarm goes off all of ten minutes later anyway.

They share a quiet morning, but a comfortable one, moving around one another getting ready for the day, sitting close side-by-side, thigh-to-thigh, at the bar eating breakfast. Toast and eggs – Sam cooks, and Bucky takes a bite, pauses, presses his lips together looking annoyed, breathing through the nose and staring at his plate, before inhaling the rest of them with gusto.

And then he kisses Sam again when they go to put their dishes in the sink, backs him into the counter and braces his arms on either side so he’s got him a bit pinned there, and Sam would be lying if he said that wasn’t incredibly hot, and they make out there in the kitchen, slow and lazy, Bucky’s arms trapping him in place and Sam’s hands curled in Bucky’s hair, until Sam’s other alarm goes off.

Bucky huffs a soft chuckle against his lips before trailing his mouth down along Sam’s jaw and murmuring hot against his ear, “Thanks for breakfast.”

“That good, huh?” Teeth catch on his earlobe, there and gone again, and fuck he’s got to go before he never leaves. “Gonna miss my flight.”

“You’ve got wings in a suitcase in the next room, Samuel.”

“Not flying myself to Louisiana,” he deadpans.

“Spoilsport.” The arms move instead to wrap around him, hands sliding up his back, Bucky’s face still pressed in against his neck. “Come back soon?”

“You bet your ass.”

Except… it’s actually Bucky who comes to him. Which is mostly Sarah’s doing, she watches him from the corner of her eye, texting Bucky on the ride home from the airport and eventually just sighs, “Oh, Samuel.”

“What?” She shakes her head and keeps her eyes fixed on the road. “What?”

There’s a brief standoff over Alpine. “You’re not bringing your cat. Ask your shelter friend to come feed her.”

“I’m not leaving her alone for a whole week.”

“Bucky, it’s a cat.”

“She’s my emotional support cat.”

“You’re her emotional support human,” Sam snarks back.

The line goes quiet for a long moment, and Sam starts to think he’s mis-stepped, or overstepped, or some kind of stepped, but then Bucky just comes back with a simple, stubborn, “Sarah says I can bring the cat.”

“No, she did n -” Sam glances sideways to where Sarah’s been sitting quietly at the table through the whole argument, sees her slide her phone with affected nonchalance under the shopping list she’s working on, pick up a pen, and keep on like nothing happened.

He knows when he’s been overruled.

“Gah.”

The sight of Bucky Barnes strolling casually through the airport with a cat backpack slung around his shoulders and clipped across his chest possibly makes up for any reservations Sam might’ve had about the whole thing. “Well, hi there,” Sam acknowledges Alpine first, because he’s an asshole like that. He rubs his fingers across the mesh opening and she bumps her nose against it by way of greeting.

They settle Alpine at the house, leave her to explore, and meet Sarah and the boys at the boat. Help out where they can, entertain the boys when there’s nothing much to do, and Bucky reiterates Sam’s warnings to them about letting Alpine come to them and not chasing her around the house.

Bucky helps with dinner while Sam takes homework duty.

They stay up late, take beers out to the dock, and Bucky kisses him out there by the water, slow and sweet and a little filthy, until Sam can’t quite see straight.

Bucky sleeps on the couch.

Sam sleeps in the bed.

He wakes up early the third morning Bucky’s there, still dark outside early. Wakes up to careful footsteps on old creaking floors, and the quiet click of the door closing. “Y’okay?” he slurs, half-awake, and then quickly more awake when Bucky ignores the question in favor of climbing in under the blankets and pressing his body up close against Sam’s. “Hi.”

“S’cold downstairs,” Bucky says, draping his flesh arm around Sam’s waist and burying his nose against Sam’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

“Wait, you missed me and just so happened to also be cold, or you missed me because you were cold?”

Bucky shifts from where he’s lying on his vibranium arm so he can slip that hand under the hem of Sam’s shirt and press it against his skin, and every muscle in Sam’s body clenches up as he instinctively tries to retreat from the shock of cold and finds himself locked in place by the arm thrown around his middle. “Rude.”

Bucky doesn’t move the hand, lets Sam get used to it, lets the heat of Sam’s body help it warm up a little. After a couple of minutes, he sucks in a deep breath, presses his mouth against Sam’s shoulder, and murmurs into his shirt, “I want to touch you.”

“You are touching me.”

“Sam.”

Sam studies him as best in can in the dark. Hooded eyes and parted lips, the long, hard line of his body pressing as tight against him as he can get. Breathing coming a little faster than usual, and Sam bets that if he felt for it, he’d find his heart skittering along at a quick little nervous clip.

He shifts over more onto his side and curls a firm hand along Bucky’s jaw, fingers pressing into the back of his neck, thumb tracing slow circles under his ear. Bucky whines low in his throat, and then looks like he wants to be embarrassed about the sound.

Sam doesn’t give him the chance. “Yeah,” he mutters, ducking his head forward and finding Bucky’s mouth in the dark. “Yeah, c’mere.”

It’s all the cue Bucky needs. He immediately slings one leg around both of Sam’s and shoves, rolls him back over onto his back so Bucky’s half on top of him. His lips barely leave Sam’s through the maneuver, and his hands slip back under his shirt, dueling sensations of warm skin and cool vibranium doing some kind of something to Sam’s brain.

He keeps his own hands at Bucky’s face, because Bucky said he wanted to touch Sam and nothing about wanting Sam to touch him, and he doesn’t dare assume one single goddamn thing on that front. But it’s enough – God, it’s enough, it’s everything, the way Bucky pants into him while tracing careful, almost curious fingers over his stomach, over his chest. The way his hands tighten around Sam’s ribs, clutching desperately, when Sam stills him with firm hands and holds him steady so he can trail his lips down over his jaw, under his ear, the side of his throat, sucking wet kisses gently into his skin.

The way he shifts and the hardness Sam can feel against his hip. The way his own presses against one strong thigh and he has to fight against the urge to buck up and chase the feeling, settles instead for slamming his head back into the pillow with a harsh, “Fuck.”

Bucky pulls away and for a moment Sam thinks he’s scared him off, that Bucky’s misread his tone. But he just centers himself better so he can sit back, put some of his weight on Sam’s thighs. He gets his hands around Sam’s biceps and tugs him up to sitting, Bucky’s knees bracketing his thighs, practically kneeling in his lap.

Sam lets his arms drift around Bucky’s waist to hold them steady there. The sounds of early morning start drifting through the cracked open window, birds chirping and insects buzzing, mixing with the soft gasps of Bucky’s stuttered breathing, the rush of his own blood in his ears as they sit like that, watching one another and waiting.

Whatever he’s looking for in Sam’s eyes, his face, Bucky must find. He reaches back and grabs a fistful of his own shirt, pulls it up and over his head and tosses it aside uncaringly somewhere on the floor, and then goes back to sitting there in watchful silence, except it’s a silence that says so much.

Because this? This is Bucky putting his vulnerability on display.

Putting it on display and communicating his trust in Sam with it. Because sometimes finding the words can be hard.

And that’s okay.

Sam lifts a careful hand to Bucky’s face, and Bucky intercepts it with his vibranium one, holds Sam’s hand against his cheek and presses into it, eyes closed. And then he lowers Sam’s hand down to his chest, presses it there where he can feel the quick but steady thrum of his heart. Sam splays his fingers apart, feels the hard muscles beneath his hand twitch, feels Bucky’s chest rise faster as he skims questing fingertips along one collarbone, as his thumb brushes gently against the scarring on his left side.

Goosebumps break out across Bucky’s skin and he trembles and whines a hapless little, “Sam…”

Sam tugs him back in close and Bucky’s arms go back around his middle, sliding up under his shirt, clinging tight while he presses his face in the crook of Sam’s neck and gasps ragged breaths. “Hey, come back,” Sam ducks down, puts slow, careful kisses against Bucky’s temple and down the side of his face until Bucky turns his head to meet him. “Don’t get shy on me now.”

He drags his lips down the right side of Bucky’s jaw, down his neck, presses sucking kisses along one broad shoulder; goes back to his mouth and starts over on the left side. “This okay?” he asks softly into sweat-damp skin before he reaches the join of flesh and vibranium.

“Yeah,” Bucky manages, strangled and hoarse, and he can feel the first crack in Bucky’s composure with the tensing of the muscles beneath his hands. “God, Sam.”

When he works his way back up to Bucky’s face, he isn’t surprised to find that salt taste of tears on his cheeks again. And while he isn’t sure he’d quite call them happy tears, he’s confident they aren’t exactly sad either. “Fuck,” Bucky slumps back in against his shoulder, wipes his face on Sam’s shirt. “I don’t know why I keep…”

Because when you claw your way free of hell itself, everything’s like a miracle, Sam doesn’t say. Especially the things most people take for granted.

“C’mere,” he does say, pulls Bucky back down and over off of him, except for one leg still draped over Sam’s, keeping them pressed close. Sam reaches over to tug the blanket back over them, and they lie there face-to-face for some minutes with their legs entwined, lazily making out, Bucky’s hand rubbing aimless circles against Sam’s hip. Eventually the warmth and contentment have him relaxing back on the pillow, huffing out soft laughter until Bucky stops trying to chase his lips and settles down himself.

The first light’s coming through the window when Bucky finally closes his eyes and nestles in close. Sam blinks sleepily over at him and wonders at the threads that brought them here, in this suspended moment of blissful comfort, thinks about the way –

– a blur of movement on the nightstand and a pitiful, “Mraaaaow,” cutting through the air startle him back into full consciousness, and Sam pulls away and jerks upright.

“What the fuck?” he shrieks, but quiet-like because Sarah and Cass and AJ are still asleep down the hall. “She’s been in here this whole time?”

“Ughhh,” Bucky groans and rolls over. “I gotta feed the damn cat.”

The damn cat, Sam reluctantly concedes, is a substantial factor in getting them to this moment.

But he still resents the fuck out of her happy little trill when Bucky rises to collect his shirt, taking far too much of their shared body heat with him. “You coming back?” He tries not to sound too forlorn.

“Dunno,” Bucky yawns as he pads across the room. “What’s in it for me?”

Anything and everything you want, Sam doesn’t say. But by the wink and sleepy smile Bucky casts his way before slipping out the door… he’s pretty sure Bucky knows, too.