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Steve Rogers exists to pump heart-attack fuel straight into Sam's heart. Swear to God, he's done nothing but since the moment they met. Sam would have started suspecting a conspiracy, if Steve wasn't so gosh-darn nice about the whole thing, offering up hovering, mocking and being a little shit in return: the perfect remedy for pain and suffering. So, not so nice Sam's not getting an advanced degree in exasperation, but nice enough. Nice to the point that Sam has been reduced to dramatic sighs as means of communication, because angry yelling would have crossed the line.
"Sam, Bucky's been sighted in Budapest, I packed your toothbrush with your socks by accident."
Sigh.
"Sam, we're out of milk, I'm so sorry, I ate all of your mom's cookies as well. I will buy more as soon as we reach civilization. I know it's not the same, but I'll try to make up for it in quantity."
Sigh.
"Sam, we are being shot at."
Sigh.
"Sam, someone is shooting potentially nuclear rockets at what seems like empty space in Azerbeijan, I think that's where Bucky is. Grab your passport and let's go."
You better believe it – sigh.
Sam is a good pal, all in all. He has that in writing. Well, in text-form, delivered by the increasingly unreliable cellular networks – thanks so much, Barnes, for being a cryptic little shit and always choosing the road untraveled – at four in the morning (but only midnight according to his biological clock, thank you, jet lag) on day forty-six of their Where on Earth Is the Winter Soldier World Tour.
You're a good pal, the text reads in its entirety. It makes Sam smile. It makes him smile more when Natasha promises swift reunion, and backup, up to and including armored vans, if needed. He smiles because he is a good pal and he loves Steve, but man, at this point that boy needs a Care Bear Stare to the face, if he's ever going to be content, never mind happy. And hey – Sam would totally supply, unfortunately, Steve seems allergic to bears. Or hugs. Or, in fact, happiness.
That one time in Ohio, when a cute child in twin, curly pigtails approached with a Bucky Bear for Steve to sign? Oh boy. Sam is rather glad he left his own (much loved, nearly bald) childhood partner in crime at his mother's house before Steve visited.
The problem with the op Steve running right now – other than the fact that the op is running Steve far more than vice-versa – is that it has only one inevitable ending, and that is an explosion. Whether it comes through Steve burning himself out, Hydra finally getting a breather and starting to fight back in earnest, Steve is on a collision course with destiny and the destiny's got his number. Sam hates the words "I told you so", but he's called Mama and asked to have them embroidered on a pillow, just in case, so that he can make Steve's bed in his guest bedroom special, when the World Tour inevitably goes to hell.
And it does.
The end starts with Sam biting back the phrase "I told you so", biting it back so hard he can barely breathe because it's stuck in his throat high enough to trigger his gag reflex. It starts with Captain America on his knees, with half a dozen bruised ribs and a nasty gash just under his ribcage, one that coats his entire side in thick, dark blood. It starts with Steve shoving Sam to the floor and getting a faceful of experimental Hydra tear gas, a concoction that leaves him weeping tears of blood for two hours. It starts with an explosion that ensures Sam hears nothing but distant ringing through several layers of pressed cotton. Sam hauls them both out, by some miracle, and it is only thanks to Natasha's suggestion of a safe-house in the vicinity that they manage to catch their breath, and Sam, for one, feels done.
He's not quite so ready to admit it, however.
"This is rustic," Sam comments when the door gives and he gets to take a look inside. "I don't know whether to run screaming or… no, actually, I want to run screaming. This looks like a place ritual sacrifices are routinely performed, wouldn't you say?" God, but his voice sounds weird when he can't actually hear it.
"I can't see, Sam," Steve tells him wryly, which Sam knows only because he can read lips.
"Right. Sorry."
"Is there running water?" Steve carefully makes his way inside, moving along the wall and feeling for obstacles. He's in luck there; the place is virtually empty, save for a narrow table by the tiny window, and a three-legged stool.
"There's a tub and there is a bucket. It's like the twentieth century took one look at this dump and decided to give it a miss, my god." In addition to all the other fabulous advantages, it is also freezing. There is an enormous open fireplace in the middle, with a cauldron hanging over it, and the aforementioned tin bathtub is in the corner, separated from the rest of the room with a crude screen. On the bright side, Sam thinks, there are no hiding spaces.
"Is it okay if I…" Steve gestures vaguely to his side, the bloody gash and its consequences that, surprisingly, Sam is actually pretty mellow about. He's seen Steve get shanked. It only rarely took long enough to give him pause, and this was done by a perfectly ordinary knife. A casual inspection revealed that yep, nothing to worry about there, unlike the greenish goo that caused bloody tears. Sam was still unsure how to deal with that one. He'd removed the worst of it with a tissue, but neither water nor rubbing alcohol seemed to have much effect on the residue, which is worrying.
"Sure, gimme a minute to heat up some water." Maybe the shit is frozen. Who knows. Heat can't hurt. "Remember to give me time to look at you before you start speaking."
"Sure," Steve says and staggers outside, to participate in the great circle of life by pissing on foliage. Sam is not looking forward to that, goddamned temperature is unreal.
He keeps himself warm by first setting up the fire (he'd say one good thing about Siberia: it's got wood) and then hauling buckets of snow into the cauldron, one after the other. It's cold as fuck and he's looking forward to a nice, hot bath, soon as he gets Steve rinsed and tucked into some bubble-wrap. He's a bucket short of a full cauldron – a fucking cauldron – and he's busy punching the loose snow into something worth dragging inside, volume wise, which is why he feels he is completely excused from noticing anything.
Does it matter, in the long run, that when he tries to get into the cabin with the bucket full of snow, he walks into the Winter Soldier's back? No. No it doesn't.
It won't, either, if the knife that is poking his tender carotid areas doesn't stay exactly where it is.
Sam sighs.
"Good morning to you too," he says after a long, tense moment, as quietly as he can, not at all panicky-like. The wind probably swallows that up, anyway. "You owe me a pair of wings, asshole."
"Sam?" Steve's mouth says, and rises from his perch. Sam's kinda glad he can't hear the faint sound of wood scraping against wood.
The Winter Soldier doesn't twitch. If it wasn't for the subtle movement of his chest, Sam wouldn't be sure he was breathing. Only his eyes are mobile, darting back and forth, wide and frightened, like a cornered animal, as if he wasn't the deadliest thing in the fucking tundra. There's a bag hanging off his shoulder and in it there's a can with Hydra's mythologically challenged logo, and a metal box that reeks, metaphorically, of medical supplies.
"Steve, sit the fuck down," Sam orders. "You've done enough."
"Are you okay? I thought I heard something."
The knife at his throat twitches and Sam rolls his eyes. Hard. "You know the saying 'if you love something, set it free'?"
If he says he doesn't, Sam vows, he, Samuel Wilson, will strangle Captain fucking America. The phrase has been the cornerstone of his many rants on the general subject of Steve's sad, fairy-tale love life or lack thereof. "Sam…"
"Because I think something of yours just rolled in."
Steve clearly forgets he's blind and in an unfamiliar environment; he rushes forward, only his foot catches on the stones surrounding the fireplace and it is only because the actual fucking Winter Soldier whirls in place and throws himself to intercept that Steve avoids landing face-first in the currently lukewarm cauldron.
"Bucky," Steve very clearly enunciates, and Sam is this close to slamming his head against the wall. They've talked about this. Well, no, now that he thinks about it. He talked about this in Steve's general direction, while Steve nodded, hummed, and planned the stake-out of yet another place Barnes could have been sighted, while tenderly hypnotizing himself to sleep by repeating that name over and over. Sam's starting to suspect his comic book collection may have lied to him when it came to just how brotherly that relationship was, but hey, no judgement. Only mild concern. "Bucky."
"Why don't you just kiss him?" Sam suggests, and tries not to flinch when the Winter Soldier turns to glare at him. Somehow, it's less effective when the big bad killing machine is very tenderly lifting Captain America off the floor and depositing him on the rocky stool, to better bestow his extremely efficient affections.
The Hydra-made can turns out to contain turquoise-colored goo, which smells chiefly of eucalyptus, but when applied to the residue of the tear-gas coaxes a deep sigh out of its unfortunate test subject. Barnes dabs it carefully around Steve's eyes, spreading a thin layer over his eyelids, then from eyebrows to cheekbones, and covering it up with a loose layer of bandage. He's kneeling on the dusty floor, his ribcage framed by Steve's knees, and Sam should maybe worry, but for the moment his eyes are still and focused, instead of mad and trigger-happy, and his hands are tender. They remain so when he pushes Steve back, unzips the parka Steve appropriated from the Hydra storage, and tears through the bloodied cotton and flannel that stuck to Steve's wound.
Sam inches forward, just to make sure, but the cut is no more than an inch deep, and five inches wide. The corners already knitted themselves together. The wound is narrow, painful, but not life-threatening. In Captain America terms, it's an inconvenience. Clearly, Barnes arrives at the same conclusion, because he lets out a snort that sounds like a noise that a parrot would make after you carefully explained what a snort is and when it should be employed. Sam has a vague premonition, when his tired eyes register the split-second shift in Barnes' expression, from blank focus to exasperated, furious affection, back into blankness, and the premonition is of gallons of beer the two of them will share over Steve's reckless heroics. He's rather looking forward to that.
"No," Steve says when Barnes lifts himself off his knees and tries to move away. "Don't leave. Please don't leave me."
Barnes looks at Sam and rolls his eyes. He points at the metal box which is still in the bag he placed on the table, out of reach in his current position.
"Shut up, Steve," Sam translates obediently. "He's got going anywhere."
Barnes glares.
Sam shrugs. "Yeah, I dare you," he says.
Barnes glares harder, and hey, it was impressive five minutes ago, before Florence Nightinbarnes showed his uncombed head.
"You still owe me a pair of wings," Sam says lightly. "I'm assuming it's okay for him to wash up?"
Barnes continues to glare and simultaneously rolls his eyes, which is on a whole another level of impressive. Sam makes a mental note to ask for pointers, because good God, this man's eyebrow game is strong.
He empties the snow into the cauldron and goes back outside, so he doesn't hear the pained hiss indicative of antiseptic being applied to an open wound. Suits him just fine, that. All quiet on the cabin front, says the deaf guys. Har-fucking-har. When he returns Steve's got his ruined t-shirt and shirts bunched up around his armpits, and Barnes has his head stuck up his winter coat and is carefully applying neat, even stitches to his side, holding the edges of the wound closed with his metal hand.
Sam can't help but notice that the fingers of Steve's right hand are tangled in Barnes' hair, by which of course he means he takes a couple of minutes to carefully study the twist of Steve's torso and the trembling of his fingers, and the dark strands wound around the bruised knuckles.
Outside the sun is setting and the snow begins to fall. Sam fetches the last of their supplies from the trunk of their car and parks it in what might have been a shed in its previous life. He takes a walk around the cabin, gun at the ready, but once the shed doors are closed the whole thing looks inconspicuous, lost in time; a sturdy monument to the ingenuity of the middle ages, or whenever that hut was built. The heavy snowfall will hide the smoke and cover their tracks within minutes, looks like, which is probably how it survived undisturbed for so long.
Speaking of, what the fuck. Sam marches back into the cabin and, foolishly, challenges Barnes to a glare-off, which Barnes concedes immediately, since his head is pillowed on Steve's knee.
"How did you know we're going to be here? How did you get here?" Sam asks. "You can't tell me you walked. There are no tracks on the snow, other than our car."
Barnes shrugs. Steve's fingertips – his gloves are on the table, the idiot – are stroking the skin behind his ear.
"He hitched a ride with us," Steve says slowly, tracing Barnes' ear. He adds something, looking down, which Sam obviously can't hear, but he has a pretty good idea it's "Didn't you, Bucky?"
It explains so much about the state of Sam's life that he's not even surprised. "You know, if you had bothered to tell me he was following us, I would have knifed you myself, saved us at least the clusterfuck that was Budapest."
"I didn't know," Steve says and shudders. Barnes is on his feet between frames of the imaginary movie Sam is shooting in his head, and plunging his whole goddamned metal hand into the steaming cauldron. He uses the hot towel to wipe down the mess coating the side of Steve's body, like a good nurse, while Sam busies himself with the inflatable mattress and several packets of lyophilized stew.
By the time he got the water to boil in his camp cooking set – some of us were boy scouts, Cap, he thinks proudly – Barnes manages to eviscerate the rest of their bags, in search of spare clothes for Steve to wear, barricade the door and set out the sleeping bags.
"Where's your gear?" Sam asks, once the math comes back with negative one sleeping bag.
Barnes shrugs.
"You know it would be more helpful if you talked, right?"
Barnes shrugs again.
"You can talk, though? Bucky?" Steve reaches out, head barely out of the hoodie, fingers reaching into ether for Barnes, only pausing when they find his face. "You talked before."
"Yes," Barnes says roughly, turns his cheek into Steve's touch.
Sam waits, but that's the extent of information they're going to get verbally, looks like, and now Barnes' just commits to being a disgustingly adorable mute mutt for Steve to fret over, even as he's manhandling Mr. Muscle back into his parka. "Oh hey, food is ready," Sam says.
"Are you okay?" Steve asks anxiously, completely ignoring the fact that Sam's heaping hot stew into a bowl. "Are you injured? I know I hurt you."
Barnes offers a half shrug and maneuvers Steve onto the chair, then drapes the parka around his shoulders. He looks down at the food Sam's holding out, narrows his eyes and sniffs, but it seems to pass muster, since he immediately hands it over to Steve.
The second bowl garners an incredulous look.
"Do you want me to draw you a picture?" Sam asks, when Barnes continues to stare at the proffered food, and then Sam wants to kick himself. "You need to eat, man," he says, winding down the wariness. Barnes is staring at the edible offering like a starved dog stares at a juicy bone; he wants it, it's evident in the tense lines of his body, but he won't take it, for fear of what will follow.
"When was the last time you've eaten?" Sam asks kindly. "What have you eaten, for that matter? Do you have any food on you?"
Barnes' mouth twitches, and his teeth clench. He pats his sides and withdraws a packet of Soylent powder. Then another. By the time he's done patting himself down, there's a stack of the stuff high enough to sustain a grown man through a Russian winter.
"Wow."
"What?" Steve tries to follow the exchange as best he can, at the expense of heat running straight out of his stew.
"Eat your food, Steve," Sam says. "Barnes, you too."
Barnes' eyes flicker to Steve, glare at his bowl, then back to Sam.
"It's sweet that you worry, but we have a lot. Enough for all of us. Eat."
Barnes folds his arms and stares at Sam with what looks like a faint trace of smugness under the façade of complete emotional detachment, and his eyes flicker to the Soylent.
Well, fuck you too, Sam thinks and looks at Steve. "Steve," he says, "your boy is refusing hot food in favor of a cold nutrient cocktail."
He can pull off smug, too, he tells Barnes with a casual lift of his eyebrow.
Barnes growls. It's a short growl, instantly quenched when Steve slides from the chair and lands practically in his lap, spoon at the ready. "You've got to eat, Buck," he says. "Please? We have plenty."
Barnes shakes his head, close enough that Steve feels the air move.
Despite the bandages, Sam can see Steve's eyebrow man battle stations. "I'm not going to eat until you do."
"I can't," Barnes admits after a long moment of Steve trying to blindly stuff the spoon into his mouth, which is oddly endearing, considering Steve's presently blinded and wears a blind-fold, to top it off. It's like watching a youtube video of a puffy kitten trying to lick itself clean: it tries its darndest, but the fluff keeps sticking up all over the place. "I'll throw up." The sparse communication coincidentally reveals another facet of his silence: his voice sounds rough, well beyond what it should be even if he hadn't spoken for seventy years. Sam's betting on noxious fume inhalation.
Steve drops the spoon in horror at either of the revelations, probably both, but Sam understands. "Screwed up stomach, eh? Throw me one of those packets." He's already opening a water bottle when two servings land in his lap. "That many? Sure, no problem." A few minutes of vigorous mixing later he hands the cup over and watches Barnes slowly sip the contents, his expression indicating that either he finds it bland and hardly worth the effort, or it's the best thing he ever tasted and his taste buds are having a group orgasm. Sam makes a mental note to never challenge him to a poker game.
On the bright side, with Barnes in charge of his own nutrient intake Steve is finally persuaded to feed himself, and Sam snatches up the bowl he fixed for Bucky and starts eating, too. He made too much, but what the hell, Steve can deal with it, bottomless pit that he is. He does, too, eating for Barnes' sake, mostly, as if he could somehow convey the warmth and taste by inhaling every last crumb.
Sam washes up after dinner, tidies up as best he can, then packs the essentials in case they need to abandon the hut in a hurry. There's a narrow door that leads from the cabin's single room into the shed, so the car is in easy reach, and it's strong enough to drive straight through the shed door, in case they need to run. The likelihood they'll need it is small, however. They're safe tonight, he thinks, staring out of the tiny window into the Russian winter night. Considering it's pitch black outside he's essentially looking at his reflection, which makes it all the more humiliating when he turns and Barnes is staring at him from a scant distance of about a foot.
"What?" Sam asks once his heartbeat settles. "What do you want?"
Barnes cocks his head and a ghost of a smile crosses his face. He points at Steve, who looks utterly bereft, with his face half-hidden by the bandages as he brushes his teeth, then at the mattress.
"You know we only have two sleeping bags, right? On the other hand, they do zip together, we should all fit."
Barnes raises a brow and stands at attention for a couple of seconds, before relaxing into what Sam easily recognizes as "I'll be at your throat faster than you can blink" posture.
"I don't think it's necessary to stand guard."
Barnes disagrees.
"Unless I'm very much mistaken, the explosion that took out most of the base was your doing – which, thanks, by the way, my ears are grateful – so I've every confidence it was thorough."
Barnes has the good grace to look contrite. He gestures to Sam's ears and makes a vague motion with his left hand, bites his lip and looks down.
"I'm not worried," Sam says (not without a sigh, he is not the goddamned Mother Teresa), because Barnes probably doesn't need any more shit right now. Life like theirs, Sam will have reasons to rib him in the future, for one reason or another. "It's just shock, I can hear a lot better now." By which he means the layers and layers of cotton around his head are gradually being reduced, one by one, so he's down to about seventy. "You did well."
Barnes nods sharply and moves back to Steve's side, curls up into him, like a kitten seeking warmth. He half-carries Steve to the mattress and tucks him in, while he remains kneeling on the side, watching the door. It's so cute Sam can't resist taking a photo and sending it to Natasha, before shedding his shoes and slipping into the double sleeping bag besides Steve.
It's less cute when it becomes apparent Barnes slipped into some sort of a sniper-trance, and fully intends to spend the night in that position. Considering it's only five p.m., this has all the marks of a fun night for all involved, if Steve's desperate grip on Barnes' ankle is any indication (because Sam is a gentleman and he ignores the desperate curl of Steve's whole enormous body around an imaginary war-buddy), especially since Barnes' right hand is twitching in close proximity, just shy of touching.
Sam sighs. At some point in the future those two losers had better treat him to a dinner that didn't involve carefully stirring the contents of a plastic packet into hot water. There had better be goddamned lobster, is all Sam's saying, served by someone cute that Sam doesn't know.
"Steve, you must be cold," he says, propping himself on his elbow so that he can see Steve's lips move.
"I'm fine," Steve replies, a little puzzled, while Barnes blinks himself awake and frowns.
"The water in the cauldron is already freezing, and the sleeping bags aren't exactly Russian-grade."
"I really am fine, thank you," the complete idiot continues, like Sam isn't trying to play the goddamned fairy godmother here.
"Steve," he tries again, praying for patience to whoever is listening. "You're injured. You need all the body heat you can spare."
Uh oh, Barnes cottoned on, going by the nasty glare he's sending Sam's way. It looks particularly menacing when the only thing making it visible is the faint orange glow of the fire, except whatever menace there is, the sheer naked need renders it moot.
"I don't get sick anymore, and I've had worse." Steve, miserable as anything, burrows into his imaginary bed-mate, who is curled up two feet away on the cold floor and dying to be burrowed into.
"Why me?" Sam asks the ceiling. And this violent refusal to cuddle is coming from the guy who spent seventy years buried in ice. "Steve… pay attention. I know you can't see right now, but trust me when I say my eyebrows are going up and down. There is a definite waggling quality to the motion. We're snowed in. The fire is dying. The sleeping bags are really meant for late autumn. It's about to get arctic-cold in here. Do the words 'sharing body heat' mean anything to you?"
Barnes makes a strangled noise, and it's quite possible that's what finally clues the poor dumb blond in.
"Oh!" Steve says, twists his head back and, were it not for the blindfold, he'd have been staring imploringly just to the right of Barnes' tense back. "Bucky," Steve breathes. "It's cold. Get in here."
It's going to be an interesting morning, Sam thinks. Interesting in the Chinese way, considering the look Barnes casts his way before complying. Steve elbows Sam in the gut in the effort to make space for the not inconsiderable bulk of the Winter Soldier, who melts into Steve on contact. Far as threesomes go, Sam's feeling a little left out, especially when Steve's pretending not to sob with relief, but whatever, he's warm, sated and temporarily deaf, so he can pretend the undulating mattress is a cradle on the sunny lake, which image always sends him to sleep.
When he wakes the sun is already up, his breath is a small, puffy cloud over his head, and his entire back is toasty warm, where it's pressed against Steve's. Sam shifts, sighs in bliss and almost drops right back into sleep, when ice-cold metal fingers come in contact with the back of his neck, causing him to screech and shoot up.
Not a good plan for one out of three people occupying the same sleeping bag. The mattress bounces, Sam loses control of his limbs and, three very confusing minutes later, ends up on the bottom of a supersoldier pile.
"Ow," he says dutifully when the back of his head makes contact with the floor and someone's knee makes itself at home an unfortunately short distance from his groin. "Whoever's on top of me had better not move too fast."
"Fuck you," Barnes' gravelly, but healthy-sounding voice rumbles through Sam's head.
Steve snores. Because of course Steve fucking Rogers managed to sleep through the dryer cycle of the sleeping bag.
"Wow," says a female voice, filled with equal measure with glee, benign venomous amusement and boundless mirth. "I suspected I made the wrong call, not coming with you two. Had I known you were having this much fun, I would have dropped everything."
Sam is very surprised to find out he heard most of that, with decent sound quality, to boot; lots of the cotton insulation got unwrapped during the long-ass sleep, which is good, if unexpected, news. He's so surprised by this delightful development that he almost misses the fact that Barnes is not surprised in the slightest, as evidenced by the fact that his knee remains exactly where it was.
"Natasha," Sam says. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Oh, just walked in, don't mind me."
"Two hours, thirty-six minutes," Barnes amends, and either there's a gun in his pocket, or Steve definitely will kill Sam when he wakes up. If he even bothers. He's got his arms locked around Barnes' torso pretty tight. Sam might not be supersoldier-grade fit, but he's pretty sure he can run a mile before this amalgam of Barnes-and-Rogers manages to sort out its legs.
"I'm in the middle of a particularly good book, I don't mind the wait." Natasha stands, and Sam notes with some envy that while her coat looks like a garbage bag full of straw, her cheeks are rosy and her hands move with ease, suggesting she's warm and cozy inside. To be fair Sam also feels warm and cozy, but he is sharing a sleeping bag with a pair of overmetabolizing supersoldiers, so it's not his equipment that deserves the thumbs up.
"I shot you," Barnes says meanwhile, staring at her.
"Indeed."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't mention it." Natasha waves her hand, sets her phone aside and begins stacking wood in the fireplace. "Anyone for breakfast? I brought bacon, eggs and a percolator."
Sam's day is perking up already, and the process is greatly accelerated by Barnes carefully rolling over Steve and back onto the mattress, with Steve's lightly snoring body on top of him, allowing Sam enough space to crawl out of the sleeping bag and into his parka, only to discover Natasha also brought orange juice, fresh bread, milk, butter, and cottage cheese. She waves aside offers of help and instead directs him behind the screen, where Sam does his best to wipe himself down with a damp rag without getting out of his winter clothes.
It's almost worth the acrobatics he has to perform when he pokes his head back into the main portion of the room, mouth full of toothpaste foam, and takes in how Where on Earth Is the Winter Soldier World Tour ends: it ends with the Black Widow frying up a mountain of bacon over an ancient fire with her own two deadly hands, while a whole bowl of eggs awaits its turn. It ends with a soft whistling of wind outside and the smell of pine inside, while over on Sam's inflatable mattress Captain America is finally at peace, clutching Bucky Barnes to his chest and combing his fingers through Barnes' dark hair.
It ends. And fuck if it doesn't end well.
THE END