Chapter Text
The moment Sam wakes up, he knows that something is wrong. That might sound impressive, but it isn’t, really; not when he can feel his sleep shirt in tatters around him, cool air and an alien sensation tickling his bare skin; not with the weight of something unfamiliarly warm and heavy pressing down on him. Tensing, readying for a fight, he cracks his eyes open to the sight of sunlight streaming through a curtain of tawny feathers - and his first thought is ‘what’s happened to my pillows?’ until he shifts to sit up and the feathers shift with him, moving around him, parting and spreading and -
“What the fuck?” Sam shouts as his wings - his wings, his wings, his wings?! - snap open and feathers as long as his forearm sweep everything on his nightstand straight onto the floor.
He rolls out of bed and his wings roll right with him; muscles moving under skin; skin moving under feathers. Sam grabs a handful, tugs, and immediately regrets it.
“Ow, ow, fuck. Okay, definitely attached. Somehow, definitely attached to me.”
Still wincing, he stands in front of his mirror, twisting his spine and craning his neck to peer at the spot between his shoulders that had been plain old human skin when he went to best last night and now, this morning, was not. He reaches an arm around and touches it: the place where that plain old human skin transitions seamlessly into - well, yet more skin, but wrapped around brand new bone and cartilage, extending from his shoulder blades, a part of him.
He grabs hold of another feather and pulls again - keeps on pulling through the sting of it, even as his eyes well up with tears, like the moment before you sneeze - until he plucks it out. That stings, too, when it leaves his body. A huge, tawny brown feather, with black and grey markings. It looks like the feather of a hawk or some other bird of prey. A part of him.
Sam sits down on the edge of his bed. He fishes around in the pile of books he’d knocked from his nightstand until he finds his cell phone. He texts Bucky, ‘you in the area?’
Bucky’s reply comes 7 seconds later: ‘I can be.’
*
In the time it takes for Bucky to arrive - only 15 minutes, telling Sam that either Bucky was lurking around in Washington and didn’t want to admit it or he had just straight up stolen a Quinjet; he really doesn’t know which is more likely - Sam starts to get dressed; realises he can’t pull any shirts on with these wings in the way; splashes cold water on his face; screams into his towel; and spends a few minutes standing before his bathroom mirror, telling himself everything is fine.
Then the buzzer rings, and Sam drapes the towel around his shoulders to go answer the door.
Bucky greets him with a raised eyebrow, a laconic kind of expression on his face that morphs into something flat and heavy as Sam ushers him inside, the towel cinched round his neck not enough - nowhere near enough - to mask Sam’s strange new bulk, his inhuman silhouette. Feathers sweep the floor around his ankles like he’s a walking, talking feather duster.
“Don’t freak out,” Sam says once they’re standing in the kitchen.
Bucky doesn’t reply, his expression growing more blank by the second. With a sigh, Sam shrugs the towel away and lets the wings unfurl. Muscles flex of their own accord, feathers settling and resettling with a sensation as satisfying as scratching a hard to reach itch.
Saying nothing, Bucky stares. The floorboards creak under his heavily booted feet as he begins to slowly circle Sam, pacing around him with the speed and bearing of a wary dog, his head tilted at an angle that reminds Sam too damn much of Zemo.
“Remember,” Sam says, as Bucky disappears from view behind the curtain of feathers, “I told you not to freak out.”
“I am not freaking out.”
“You’re making that face you make when you’re pretending not to freak out.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.” Sam points at him, tracing Bucky’s frown in the air with one finger “You absolutely are.”
Bucky glowers, jerking his head back and swatting Sam’s hand away; he looks somewhat human again, with his mouth downturned, with that deep furrow between his brows that Sam always wants to fit his thumb into and smooth the line away.
“I’m not freaking out,” Bucky says again, irritable enough for Sam to believe him this time. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“Oh, believe me, I am freaking out. I just woke up like this! At least if Thanos was back and snapping his fingers in my bedroom, I’d know why I just up and sprouted wings.” Sam shrugs and then immediately hates himself for it - for the skin-crawling sensation of these alien muscles flexing and shifting along with his shoulders. His mouth twists in discomfort; Bucky’s eyes snap to the movement, whilst Bucky keeps on slowly circling. Not like a dog, no; like a wolf.
“I screamed into my towel for a solid minute before you got here,” Sam admits. “Buck, you’re staring.”
“Sorry.”
Bucky shakes himself, turns to the fridge and grabs a couple beers. He flicks the caps off with one metal finger before passing a bottle over to Sam.
“I’d say thanks, but it’s my beer anyway,” Sam says.
“Hey, I opened it.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a regular fucking sommelier.”
Snorting, Bucky pats Sam’s shoulder with his free hand, and then his hand drifts upwards to stroke along the radial bone, his fingers running through the covert feathers. It tickles a little, but mainly the touch is gentle, grounding. Sam’s skin stops crawling. Bucky’s hand is warm.
“Jesus,” Bucky says. “Wings.”
“Yep.”
*
After indulging in a little bit of totally understandable day-drinking, Bucky figures out how to cut a couple slits up the back of one of Sam’s old t-shirts so he can wear something, at least, and they wind up in Sam’s backyard, where the fence is high enough that any neighbours who spot his wings will hopefully just mistake them for his usual wings. The folk on Sam’s street have gotten used to dealing with superheroes, in much the same way that New Yorkers in the old days proudly never batted an eye if they saw Tony Stark getting an ice-cream in full Iron Man get-up.
While Bucky’s lounges on the porch stairs, leaning back with legs crossed and his elbows propped on the top step, looking as relaxed as if this happens every day, Sam paces back and forth across his lawn. He walks a little unsteadily - a new weight on his shoulders, a new centre of gravity, and every time he begins to wobble his wings flap to steady himself; instinctive, but not his instincts. It’s beginning to piss him off.
“You realise I’m not even gonna be able to wear my suit now?”
“Shuri can redesign,” Bucky says.
“And I liked this shirt,” Sam grouses, tugging at the hem of his bastardised tee.
“Come on, you’d give old Ms. H next-door a heart attack if you didn’t put a shirt on.”
“At least she’d die happy, though, right?”
Bucky laughs up at him, wide-mouthed, his eyes a little squinted in the bright morning light. With a groan, Sam sits down beside him on the porch steps, spreading his wings over both their heads to shade them from the sun. He knocks their boots together and Bucky nudges him in the side in reply, leaves his arm resting there, elbow a warm point of contact against Sam’s hip.
“Well,” Bucky says, “I think we can rule out androids.”
“Oh, ya think?”
“Now, aliens…” Bucky seesaws his hand up and down indecisively. “Maybe?”
“And why the hell would aliens be giving me wings?”
“I don’t know, man. Thor’s brother’s an asshole, right?”
“Last I heard, Loki was dead.”
“Death’s kinda lost its meaning, these last few years, wouldn’t you say?”
“True,” Sam sighs. He props his chin in one hand and frowns up at the sky. The birds are singing and somewhere not too far away kids are playing, shouting and shrieking at each other, and close beside him Bucky is breathing steadily, his knee pressed against Sam’s knee.
“Shuri can redesign, I know,” Sam says. “But I don’t know if even Wakanda can make armour for birds. My wings - my wings, I mean, not these,” he adds with a shrug of his shoulders that rustles his feathers against the back of Bucky’s head. “My wings are bulletproof. These are flesh and blood. Cartilage? Hell, I don’t even know what wings are made of.”
“Feathers?”
“Feathers. Thanks, Buck.”
“Any time,” Bucky says, rapping his knuckles against Sam’s thigh. “Hey, have you taken them for a spin yet?”
“No,” Sam admits.
“Illusion is Loki’s whole deal, right? So if he is alive and he is the one behind this, for whatever reason, hell if I know - point is, illusory wings probably can’t actually fly. Plus,” he adds, “it might be fun.”
“You just want to see me eat dirt, don’t you?”
“That, too.”
Groaning again, Sam stands, stretching his trapezius muscles and swinging his arms while Bucky smirks up at him. Bucky’s eyebrows are raised, his hands spread as if to say ‘well, go on then’. It might be fun.
Sam takes a deep breath, his face tilted to the sun.
When he flaps his wings, it feel instinctive for a moment, like something his body was always meant to be able to do - and he is meant to be able to fly, after all, isn’t he - and he whoops in elation as he feels the lift, wings beating, air rushing. Then his feet leave the ground and he comes crashing right back down again.
“Oh hell, no. No, nope, that’s not--” Sam doubles over, gagging, with his hands braced on his knees; he thinks about throwing up until Bucky’s hand lands on his shoulder.
“Okay?” Bucky asks.
Sam straightens back up, wiping his mouth. Bucky’s hand lingers on his shoulder, a warm weight gently squeezing, until Sam nods and Bucky steps back again.
“That was like… the opposite of a phantom limb, you know?” Sam says, or tries to. “I can’t - I don’t know how to describe it. It just felt wrong, like this isn’t a part of my body, just a stranger hitching a ride.”
“I get you,” Bucky says ruefully, and he flexes his metal fingers.
“Yeah.” Sam sags back against the nearest tree, folding his wings and wrapping his arms around himself; he looks at Bucky while Bucky looks down at his hands. “You still get that feeling?”
“No. Not anymore, not really. It’s not a stranger anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yeah.” Bucky grins. “We’re carpooling.”
“You - what?”
“You said - like a stranger hitching a ride, so instead it’s… a carpool.”
“Jackass.” Sam shakes his head at him, while Bucky’s piss-poor attempt at a poker face crumples into laughter. “Where’d you even learn about carpooling anyway, grandpa?”
“Hey, I watch TV,” Bucky giggles.
Sam’s mouth twists, biting his lips to keep from cracking, but the expression on his face just makes Bucky laugh harder, his head thrown back: feared former assassin, hundred-year-old super soldier with a metal arm, giggling in his backyard. Fondness bubbles up in Sam at the sight of it, and he feels lighter than he has all day - even in that moment when he was flying - watching Bucky wipe his eyes.
“Okay,” Bucky says, once his face is straight again. “So, who do we talk to about wing removal? Thor’s still in space, right?”
“Yeah, I think so. I can check, lemme text Selvig. Wanda’s still AWOL. That leaves us… Dr. Strange, I guess.”
While Sam pushes away from the tree trunk, fishing his cell out of his pocket, Bucky makes an indignant noise and circles round behind him; seconds later, Sam feels the soft touch of fingers between his feathers, and he jolts so hard he almost drops his phone.
“You’ve got bark all over…” Bucky mutters.
It tickles.
No, that’s not it. The sensation fizzes, like a mouthful of popping candy. Like something sweet, savoured against the tongue. And as he scrolls through his contacts and taps out a text message, Sam finds that he can’t help but savour it: the sun shining in his eyes; the nearby buzz of a lawnmower and the scent of fresh cut grass it carries with it into the air; and Bucky, humming some half-recognised tune to himself while his warm, careful hands pick through quills and barbs, setting things right.
He almost jolts again when Bucky’s hand touches his elbow and Bucky’s voice, close to his ear, says, “Sam? I think you got a reply.”
“Right,” Sam says, and then, “Yeah,” and then he clears his throat and remembers to look down at the phone he had half-forgotten he was still holding. “Uh, Selvig can’t help, says we should speak to Darcy Lewis.”
“Then let’s go speak to Darcy Lewis.”
“Yeah.”
Bucky gives Sam’s elbow a squeeze and Sam shakes himself back into action, firing off another quick text while Bucky herds him out of the yard and through the house, grabbing his wallet and keys and grabbing his jacket too, before he remembers it’s not going to fit unless he cuts it up. With a sigh, he tosses it back onto the couch and follows Bucky out the front door.
Even after that, it takes him all the way up to his truck with his hand on driver’s door handle until it hits him that he won’t fit in the driver’s seat either. Can’t wear his suit, can’t wear a jacket without vandalising it, and now can’t even drive his own damn truck.
“God dammit,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You all right?” Bucky says from the passenger side.
“Not gonna be able to drive. Hell, I won’t even fit in shotgun. I’m in the back, you drive.”
He tosses Bucky the keys over the roof of the truck, says goodbye to whatever remained of his dignity and half-crawls into the back-seat. It takes some doing, and some cursing, to get comfortable, by which point Bucky has already slipped with ease into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the driveway.
“You could always ride in the truck bed,” Bucky says.
“And ruin all your hard work getting my feathers tidy?”
Sam stretches out as best he can, sprawled out across both seats, because there isn’t room to sit up straight, and he watches Bucky’s face in profile while Bucky concentrates on driving. They turn out onto the main road, Bucky drumming his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel and glancing up in the rear-view mirror to meet Sam’s eyes, before Sam adds, “Besides, I could get used to this, having a super-soldier as my own personal super-chauffeur.”
“You gonna buy me a little chauffeur’s cap?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“That’s fine by me. Where we headed?”
Sam checks his cell to find that Darcy has sent him her location, along with an incomprehensible string of emojis. “New Jersey, alien face, shooting star, fireworks, thumbs up. And I’m opening eBay... and I’m adding a chauffeur’s cap to my shopping basket…”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“Uh-huh. See, you’re forgetting, Sam,” Bucky says, holding Sam’s gaze in the mirror again as he tugs his own cell phone out of his pocket, “driver picks the music, right?”
“Oh no. No, no, Buck, come on --”
Bucky slots his cell into the dock and enunciates with cheerful malice, “Play Enya, Orinoco Flow.”
Sam lets his head fall back against the window with a feather-muffled thud while music fills the vehicle. Bucky, laughing, sings along off-key; his eyes crinkled, nose creased, his stupid face splitting into a wide, lopsided grin every time he catches Sam’s eye and Sam shakes his head at him.
It’s not so bad, Sam grudgingly has to admit to himself, watching Bucky belt out the chorus as they leave the city behind them.
It’s not bad at all.