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one.
the new normal.
There were a lot of great things that came with being friends Steve Rogers. Most of it came from Steve just being himself, throwing out a general air of being earnest and compassionate then turning it around and being sarcastic and winding everyone up without them even knowing it. It involved caricatures of yourself showing up on the fridge, reliving your favourite television shows with someone discovering them for the first time with blatant delight and helping him come up with fake autocorrects to further convince Stark that he didn’t know how to text properly. Then there were the things that came with being friends with Captain America in addition to Steve. You have not lived till you’ve seen Captain America berate someone in a bar for inappropriate behaviour and making people uncomfortable, seen him consume pretty much the whole menu of a diner as people look on in awe or walking deliberately slowly past a gay rights protest wearing a pride button on his uniform, just goading a reporter to come and talk to him about it.
Okay, that was one was a little more Steve than anything else but the point stood. Lot of good things to being friends with him.
There were a lot of bad things too. He had no sense of self preservation. He took forever in the shower. He slept about as well as Sam did, maybe a little worse considering his habit of dropping out of the sky lent itself more to dreams and he still wasn’t going to talk about it when he was clearly. On that point, he was needlessly dramatic. He was toxic to spend ten hours in a car with after a burrito run. He loved running right into the thick of everything without thinking, whether it was a fire on the street or taking down an alien invasion.There was never any juice left in the fridge, ever. He had no sense of volume control with headphones when doing the housework. He was obsessive about freezer organisation. Sam was also no longer the coolest person his niece had ever met.
But what took the cake? He couldn’t get sick. So combine that with the world’s only other super soldier (as far as he knew), and it meant he was the only one who ended up stuck in bed for three weeks when shit went down.
They were entering month four of the extended, violent road trip that Sam was mentally calling Up All Night To Get Bucky when the man himself showed up.
Sam let them both figure out their own terms; they were both big boys and they knew how to use their words, at least in theory. He just took it in stride, as much as anyone could, when Bucky Barnes and possibly whatever was left of what he had been before started showing up before they would hit the evil bases that HYDRA had left scattered around the globe. It was like a vacation, but involved hotels, motels and a frankly disturbing b&b run by a couple determined to beat a supersoldier appetite and smiling like they got something to hide.
When the sixth month mark came and went, Steve and Sam packed up their things and went back to D.C. It was both a surprise and not to come out the second morning and find Steve on the couch and Barnes curled up beside it. They’d said they were going back, but there had been no formal agreement he would come with. Just an invitation.
One that was being taken up, by the looks of it.
While Sam was making juice and trying not to think about feeding his desire for caffeine after living on it for months, Steve snuffled in his sleep. Then he rolled over and landed on the floor next to Barnes.
It was a toss up who looked more startled.
For a moment, Sam felt a pang of genuine worry when Barnes moved in that razor sharp and precise way towards Steve, but apparently it was just to clip him around the ear. Steve looked like he was going to burst into the happy crying.
Sam abandoned the juice. He was definitely going to need so much coffee to deal with their idiot drama.
So the new normal turned out to be that Sam had two roommates three nights of the week and one the rest of the time. Only one of them had a key. That didn’t sit right with him, so around the third week of break in’s, he’d sat down across from Barnes and handed him a key and said to keep the wild partying to a minimum.
If anything, Barnes seemed amused by it all but after that, he was generally only gone a night, two at most and always came back with information.
On one such occasion, Barnes flopped himself down and Sam had to bite back praising him for using the door instead of the window. He never sat with them on the couch, he liked his distance but he leant forward and took a piece of pizza. Sam sent a prayer to the pizza gods he (or more likely, an apologetic Steve) wouldn’t be cleaning pizza vomit off the tiles in the morning.
Without so much as a hello, he stated, “There’s a base in Brooklyn.”
Barnes seemed to use words the same way people used weapons: sparingly and with purpose only. He relied on his expressions, which mostly seemed to involve disparraging looks and rolling in Steve’s general direction.
If he hadn’t had Steve’s rapt attention before (and who’re we kidding, of course he did), he did now.
“HYDRA?” Steve glowered, as if the pepperoni in Barnes’ hand was a HYDRA agent in disguise.
“Dunno,” Barnes said, devouring the pizza. They’d tried before to get him to sit put, maybe see an actual doctor and try and sort himself out but he wasn’t ready. He was still in survival mode and shit, did it show when he stopped to eat. “Know a way to find out.”
Steve smiled daggers. There was something about HYDRA that tore into everything he was, making him cold and angry and calculating. Sam wasn’t a fan of it, but he got it.
Besides, a trip to New York would mean he could see his sister and try to convince his niece that he was cooler than Captain America, even if he couldn’t really believe it himself when they reached for the third pizza.
So there we found our intrepid heroes, storming into a base and trying to take down what looks like a bunch of guys in bee suits. This was a new one on him. Evil bee keepers. He was pretty sure HYDRA wasn’t behind the bee’s dying, but he wasn’t willing to rule it out.
This kind of close quarter combat had never been his favourite thing, but since Steve liked to trash the labs and Barnes had panic attacks in them that usually led to trashing them, Sam was going to check they were empty and get any unwitting scientists the hell out. He took down two guards, dealt with being thanked profusely by someone in a lab coat who looked scared out of their wits and was heading out when the alarm began to blare.
The firing hit when they turned to leave the lab and the scientist went down in front of him. His breath caught, as it always did now with that horribly familiar feeling of loss, even something like this and then caught again when the body fell on the table, smashing whatever was being worked on to pieces. So much for not wrecking the labs. He really hoped that wasn’t important.
When he caught back up with Steve and Barnes, they were standing still in that superhero pose look that they did between combat and calming down. The place was underground, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that Sam was starting to feel really hot and uncomfortable after all that. He figured tonight would be one of those nights where he’d join the insomnia patrol because he could practically hear the impending nightmares.
“Are we good here?” he asked, eager to get back up into the fresh air.
Barnes nodded, yanking the shield out of the wall one handed. Sam was finding out he was kind of a show off.
“Yeah,” Steve said, eyes lighting up in that gross and ridiculous way they did when Barnes handed him his shield. “It was AIM. Tony’s already called to get someone to deal with any hazards.”
“Tony...Stark?” Sam inquired, trying not to let his eyes bug out. It was easy to forget you were living with an icon or two when you saw them everyday. “What kind of hazards are we talking about here?”
“That’s the one.” Steve placed his shield onto his back in that way he did, and Barnes holstered his weapons suspiciously. “Last time, they developed --” He looked to Barnes suddenly, and pressed his lips together. “They injected people and it made them breathe fire, among other things.”
Dragon people. What was his life.
“Labs?” Barnes grunted, looking more peevish than usual if that was even possible. It was hard to tell if that was Steve being over protective or the fact they were standing about.
“Secure,” Sam stopped for a beat, “Had what I’m guessing was a scientist down there but -- they didn’t make it.”
Steve seemed to read into it the exact right and exact wrong amount, because he placed his hand on his shoulder. It made him very aware of the level of sweat under his clothes being more than what he would consider natural. Fuck, it was warm in here.
That was the last thought that crossed his mind before there was a sudden wave of darkness.
two.
waiting is the hardest part.
“I can’t believe the nerve of them!” Tony Stark could be impressively shrill and was not impressed by AIM bringing their business to New York. “Brooklyn, I know, but --”
Steve bit down on his tongue so hard he was sure he could taste copper. He was already on the verge of panic and Tony Stark was not the person you wanted to be around when you were panicking. Sam had collapsed in the base, Bucky had disappeared as soon as Stark’s medical team had shown up and Steve was ready to climb the walls.
“Tony,” Bruce interrupted Tony’s rambles, taking the doctors reports on the lab material from him gently. Thank god for Bruce. “If I’m reading these right, the doctors believe they were experimenting with an airborne contagion. It’s not extremis.”
Tony’s wince wasn’t lost on Steve.
Bruce flicked through the papers with an irritated expression. “We’re picking through looking for a vaccine, but that doesn’t seem to have been a high priority.”
“So what does that mean for Sam?” Steve asked, feeling his heart slamming into his chest harder than he could imagine. It was such a stupid thing, such a stupid reason for someone to be hurt. He should have gone down to the labs. Sam was human. He should have thought of it.
“It means we’re working on it,” Bruce gave one of his best reassuring smiles. “It’s mostly affecting core temperature and nervous system. There’s a chance he’ll just ride it out.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Steve’s jaw clenched.
“We’re looking,” Bruce said, carefully calm. “We’ll figure it out.”
Steve was not surprised to find that when he came back to the private room that Stark had set up Sam with, Bucky was sitting on one of the chairs. He was no longer dressed for combat. Steve recognised the clothes as his, as they hung on Bucky enough that it was instantly noticeable. He had his own clothes at Sam’s, but Steve hadn’t had the chance yet to bring clothes his size to the tower. He wasn’t even sure if Bucky would have been welcome in the tower. It was likely that J.A.R.V.I.S. had noted the intrusion and hadn’t felt the need to alert anyone, so he took that as a good sign. Steve didn’t think he could possibly be more grateful for a good sign right now.
When Bucky looked at him, there was a flicker of thinly veiled panic written over his face before going into what he thought was worry. He had always been so expressive and his usual level of blank continued to be jarring. It was better than this. He’d had that look directed at him more times than he could count, that worry that everything wouldn’t be okay. He hadn’t realised that he and Sam were particularly close, but he did wake up some mornings to see them sitting with a coffee and a smile of a private joke and Bucky stayed close to Sam when watching them jog. Maybe he worried for them both while they worried about him.
“They’re working on it,” Steve said, trying to muster up a smile.
Bucky just nodded and went back to what Steve suspected was measuring Sam’s breathing. He looked harsh under the lighting, sweat beds still clumping and wiring betraying this is as more than just sleep. They’d all discovered the hard way that Bucky despisedbeing hooked up to anything, even being in the same room as it so that he had taken up the vigil…If he weren’t so damn worried about Sam himself, Steve would have felt proud of that. It wasn’t so long ago Bucky was insistent that there wasn’t much humanity left.
Steve sat down next to them and tried to ignore the obtrusive silence between them.
Sam’s mother was an impressive woman, so seeing her rattled wasn’t something Steve enjoyed. “Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”
“We can do that,” Pepper Potts said, giving a sad smile. She had her own experiences with AIM and he knew that all of this was dredging that up for her by the fact she looked uncomfortable for once. “We have doctors with experience here, but if you’d prefer we can move him.”
Mrs Wilson seemed to make a decision, “I’d like to see him, first.”
Pepper hesitated, “He’s in quarantine but if we follow procedure, we can arrange that.”
Steve had to drag down the urge to apologise with every last breath in his body for dragging her son into this. It brought up memories of writing a letter he wasn’t sure was ever sent to Bucky’s parents and his sisters, apologising to them and explaining as much as he could of what happened. He always seemed to be apologising for getting the people he cared about in grave danger.
It was never enough.
“You know, I hear my tower has a ghost,” Tony said.
Steve was on his third consecutive day awake and didn’t have the patience for this. He didn’t want to have to justify Bucky’s comings and goings through the tower. If he wanted to sit with Sam, he was going to sit with Sam and Stark was not going to say a damn thing about it. “Is it a problem?” he said, noting that even to his ears he sounded spoiling for a fight.
“Hey,” Tony put up his hands, “Just saying, he doesn’t have to bolt every time someone comes into the room.”
Steve downed the coffee, which was in no way strong enough. He felt like shit. “Tell him that,” he said.
“I would if he wouldn’t bolt every time I went to go in,” Tony shrugged. “At least then one of you could sleep instead of both of you looking like death warmed over.”
Steve glared at him, but it didn’t have nearly the power he wanted it to. Tony had never had much self preservation instinct. Case in point, his last run in with AIM. “I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” Tony scoffed.
“The medication isn’t working,” Bruce said, blunt and honest. “We’re going to try something else, but the key is finding another dose to synthesize a vaccine.”
Steve was ready to put his fist through a wall.
It didn’t help, but looking up fixing drywall gave him something else to do that wasn’t sitting around being useless.
Natasha cornered him when he went out to take a leak. “Are you going for a record?”
“The medication isn’t working,” Steve said, harshly. The light was hurting his eyes and he was starting to lose track of time while he was sitting there like a useless lump, probably micro-sleeping. If he was, nothing seemed to change between sleep and waking. He just hated the idea of leaving Bucky or Sam alone and them both in the one room helped that. He just wanted to be ready when there was something he could do.
“And ending up in the room next to him will help that?” she said, crossing her arms. “James won’t know where to sit.”
“When did you start calling him James?” Steve sniped, then stopped and looked her over. She was in civilian clothes, so maybe she’d been here a while. Had she cornered Bucky when he came out to take a bathroom break? Come to think of it, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Bucky take a bathroom break. Maybe he did that during possible sleeping.
“Don’t change the subject,” she said.
“What about AIM?” Steve asked.
Natasha smiled brightly, “Clint’s taking the name literally and has gone with Tony to play target practice.”
After practically manhandling him out of the room and promising she would call the second they knew something, Steve collapsed into bed and didn’t dream for the first time in what felt like forever.
Steve woke up almost five hours later to find Bucky sitting at the end of his bed.
Bucky looked drawn, tired. It was obvious even in the low light that he wasn’t doing so hot either. “I told you about the base.”
Steve reached across his face, rubbing it to try and ward off the much needed sleep. He felt stiff all over, but this was as physically close as Bucky had gotten to him without being in contact. That alone made him think this was important. “Buck?” He asked, hoarsely.
Bucky looked at him in the early morning dimness, searching over his body like he was trying to find the words written there. It was surreal to see him, a silhouette tightly wound and looking ready to explode. “I told you about the base. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not yours either,” Steve said, though his voice was hoarse with sleep and felt a little further away. Besides, he disagreed. Sam had said he’d follow him. He bore responsibility for the people that followed him and the fact that Sam had now spent almost a week in a medical bed due to some AIM virus was no one’s fault but his.
Bucky shook his head, and like that, he was gone. Steve could’ve imagined the whole thing. In his tired state, it wouldn’t surprise him if he had.
Steve woke up again to the smell of food wafting through his apartment in the tower. When he stumbled out of the bedroom, he noticed that to his disappointment, the place was empty. However, sitting on the table was eggs, sausage, bacon and pancakes. They were all still hot. The coffee maker had been turned on, too. That was probably what had woken him up. There was a piece of paper with something in Russian in it, but he was hardly fluent enough to know what.
After breakfast, he decided to try and do something productive before going to see Sam. It wasn't the same, running in the gym and he had never felt Sam's absence quite so keenly. He just kept thinking Sam would know what to do in this situation.
It did give him an idea, though. Sam had played him music. He could read to him. Darcy had told him once he should do audio books with his voice and that sounded like it might have been a compliment. Maybe it would help him to hear someone.
When he came back to the apartment, the tablet wasn't on the kitchen side where he'd left it. Come to think of it, he didn't remember looking at the wikihow for How to Wrap a Person in a Burrito Blanket either.
When he got down to Sam's room, Sam definitely did look he was wrapped in a burrito. He was also blinking awake.
“Hey,” Steve said, brightening almost immediately as he sat down.
three.
chicken soup for the soul.
The soldier sometimes known as (James, Barnes, Bucky) was in the ventilation system of the building when he heard the noise. It sounded like a small explosive device, but there didn’t appear to be any alarms going off. That didn’t make sense. The building was controlled by an artificial intelligence who would have contained an explosion. Why was it not stepping in? Was the building compromised? Was AIM stronger than he had imagined? He would need to obtain more weaponry if this was the case. Steve--
For a moment, he was still in his panic before he pushed his way out of the ceiling and into Steve’s living area.
He was confronted by a sudden influx of data: the room was smokey, but there appeared to be damage only in the kitchen area. There was no fire. The kitchen area damage appeared superficial and related to the food stuffs that were peppering the top of the cupboard. Rogers was also covered in both food and what he imagined was an emergency sprinkler system. The mixture of grumpy, wet and ingredients reminded him of Hawkeye’s dog the last time it had rained. It had jumped into the thai food believing it to be pizza.
Rogers blinked in his general direction.
He echoed it. “What happened?”
(”Out!”
“You’ve been working all day, I can’t expect you to--”
“Out, now!”
“I can do my part!”
“Your part is setting the table. Go.”
A bop to the hips; playful, non-confrontational.
“Bucky--”
“I’m not letting you near this kitchen when you’re half dead already, something’ll explode.”)
The soldier blinked again.
It looked as if Steve had already answered. He hated those moments when he went away without asking; he had never quite gotten the hang of going away when he wanted to and resented this being inflicted on him at moments when he wanted to stay. He didn’t want to ask Steve to repeat himself. He didn’t really need to, either. The smell told him Steve, in his current state, had attempted to cook something.
The soldier -- Barnes strode up to the counter, keeping a few feet of difference between himself and Steve. It took a minute for him to process what he was trying to do. “Chicken soup?”
“It always helped when you made it,” Steve said, managing to sound both irritated and miserable. He was getting better at identifying the emotional bundle that was Steven Rogers. Water was dripping off of his nose.
“It didn’t explode when I made it.” Barnes stated, looking at the mess Rogers had made. He was too tired for this shit, but Steve was probably in a worse state. At least he was used to exhaustion. Steve was morning person.
Steve shook his head in response, but he brightened perceptibly.
Fuck, now he could see it in his eyes. That fucking hope whenever Steve thought he might remember something. Like he was waiting for him to wake up like a real boy just cause his strings got cut. He couldn’t handle him looking like that. It was one of the reasons he was never able to stay.
He picked up a towel and started to clean up the mess.
“You don’t have to--” Steve started, moving after the towel and his hand brushing against him.
Barnes flinched hard, but refrained from panicking.
Steve looked mortified. “I didn’t think, sorry, fuck, sorry.”
“S’fine,” he said, though his mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls (rubber--bite --- blood--) He looked down at the knives and shoved them in Steve’s direction. “Chop.” He shouldn’t have sharp things now. He was enough of a sharp thing himself.
Steve looked at him quizzically.
“Clean,” He said, rolling his eyes. “Then we’re gonna learn to do it properly.”
Steve had asked him to come down to give Sam the soup.
He’d left.
( He’d told them about the base. )
Steve’s apartment was spotless, so Barnes turned himself to looking through the fridge. It turned out that Steve was eating out of take-out boxes, despite the raw ingredients in multitude. This made something inside him shriek in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It was good to know he could do it inside without it happening outside.
Barnes set to work, making reheatable breakfast foods from something called “pinterest” and meals to shove in the oven where even an exhausted Rogers couldn’t screw it up. He made his own board and called ‘Rogers Proof Recipes’.
Time was inconsequential when he had a task. It was only when he was putting things away that he noticed it had been several hours. Rogers was likely asleep beside Sam’s bed. The last time this had happened, Sam had put put cutlery on his face and taken a picture. He put the containers into the fridge and freezer, labelled with ‘eat me’ as he had done with the breakfast before. No good food, not enough sleep and worrying. No wonder Rogers felt like shit.
He was halfway through sorting out another soup batch when the building interrupted. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, but it seems Agent Romanoff is insistent about entering.”
Barnes stopped, flickering mentally. He could run, but if he did that, the chicken would burn. “Fine,” He grunted.
He scoped out the Black Widow when she walked down, looking none the worse for wear. She was in civilian clothes, but he could count the weapons on her.
“You made cookies?” She asked, indicating the cooling ginger cookies (aiding digestion). “There’s flour in your hair.”
He looked around at his reflection on instinct. Romanoff was a threat, yes, but there were enough weapons between them that he wasn’t worried. He could see no flour, but when he turned around, Romanoff was beside the counter, eating one of the cookies. Clearly he should have put the weapons between her and the cookies.
He scowled at her.
She smiled brightly and took another bite.
He put the cookies by Sam’s bedside, then tucked his feet in so he didn’t get cold.
He left.
Whoever he was these days, apparently they were a fucking coward.
Barnes checked on Rogers after showering.
He could have gone to find clothes that fit, but there was still something about dressing in Steve’s that reminded him that he was okay here. He wasn’t being told to go and he wasn’t being forced to stay. He was just wanted there, not for his skills but him.
(Maybe a little for his cookies, given that they were gone when he checked on Sam again.)
Steve’s clothes were also warm and he was always cold.
He wrapped himself up in them and shoved his hair back out of the way. He was also pleased to smell one of the casseroles he’d left when he returned to Rogers’ apartment. He put one of the soup bags into the microwave and sat down outside Steve’s bedroom door with his knitting. He could hear Steve’s steady, sleep breathing from there. He would know if he needed to wake him. He didn’t require sleep tonight. He would sleep later.
The knitting was something he’d found helped when he felt the need for a weapon (the needles would do) but couldn’t justify carrying more than his minimum. There seemed some kind of muscle memory to it, so maybe he’d done it before. He didn’t care. This wasn’t about who he’d been. He just felt it was more productive than staring at a wall or trying to get the courage up to go and see Sam.
Besides, winter was coming and Steve needed a good pair of socks.
Sam was doing better, but apparently being unconscious without ice for a long time made you tired. Maybe ice made you tired too, and he just couldn’t remember it. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Sam was tired. He left him a hot water bottle he had found in the cupboard.
Steve read to him from a book about people going around the galaxy with fish in their ears. When he slept, he drew and mostly fell asleep in funny position. Sam made fun of his hair when he woke up.
He had to leave when Sam made Steve promise to thank him for the soup.
He just--
(He should have handled it himself.)
This was how Barnes found himself wandering around in Manhattan. He could still see the alien damage even now, but people didn’t seem to. People didn’t notice anything. He wasn’t a person, so he noticed everything and that made this both good and bad. As much as the crowd made his skin crawl, there was something about getting lost in a crowd that made him feel safer. He went into shops for clothes, for food, tourist traps and finally found himself outside one he didn’t expect.
Greetings cards.
Without really thinking about it, he picked up one of the blank ones. He had been planning to say he was sorry, that his need to eradicate HYDRA was affecting Sam’s life and that despite the fact he’d never been anything but patient and sarcastic with them, Barnes had gotten him hurt. That he was sorry that Steve was probably not even going to let him be alone to piss. He’d tried to write it till his hands shook. Nothing would come out.
Then it did.
For the first time, he noticed that he wasn’t writing in English. He promptly went to go and throw up in Steve’s toilet.
It took three times, but he got the card done just in time for Sam to come back to the apartment. Writing in English was harder, with each word pried out by pliers. He knitted a lot to calm down.
Finally, he left a card on the side.
‘I will be sad until you feel better.’
It wasn’t right exactly, but it would do. That was a theme with him, these days.
When Steve brought Sam back to the apartment, Barnes made sure there were fresh flowers to go with his card. He also made sure there was juice ready for him to take his pills. Sam was probably still taking medications. Bucky -- No, Bucky would take a look at those. Steve was terrible at medications. He had always refused to take them unless he was at deaths door, which if his memories weren’t even worse than he thought, seemed a lot more frequent than he would like. Leaving a drink out always helped Steve remember, even if he only ‘forgot’.
“Was he always like this?” He could hear Sam talking, but he still sounded a little out of it. He sounded -- amused?.
“When I let him.” Steve sounded something else. Something warm.
“Which was never,” Sam commented, making an aching, cracked sound. Then there was a noise that Barnes interpreted as sitting down on the couch.
He heard Steve snort, but obviously not deny it. He knew it was true. Barnes knew it was true. He was pretty sure the building knew that was true. Steven Grant Rogers, stubborn asshole even when he was tiny asshole.
Steve’s socks were done after midnight.
He slipped into his room and put them on, surprised to find his feet weren’t that cold.
He started on a pair for Sam.
There was something on top of him. Barnes woke up with a sharp jolt, grabbing at -- a blanket? His needles were gone, but he was still outside Steve’s door. Someone had covered him in a blanket. Had Steve woken up?
He looked around sharply.
Sam was moving slowly around the kitchen area with what smelled like the minty tea that Stark’s handler -- minder -- girlfriend drank. He was a better colour now, but his movements were stiff and awkward. He moved towards Barnes, carrying something. He tensed, but all Sam did was hand him a cup too.
“I can’t sit there,” Sam said, with his voice soft enough that he imagined that unenhanced people would have trouble hearing him. “Turns out not every lab accident makes you a superhero.”
Barnes nodded, cracking his back a little when he tried to move. He really needed to sleep somewhere else. He still didn't see the needles either. “Did you take my needles?” He asked, noticing that his voice had a sleepy, rough quality to it. Maybe he was running his sleep debt a little high.
“They’re over there,” Sam gestured to the table. He waited to take a sip, then followed up. “What are you making?”
“Nothing,” Barnes mumbled into his cup, suddenly embarrassed.
“If you say so,” Sam said, giving him his trademark smile. “Thank you, by the way.”
Barnes shook his head. It was nothing.
“No, man, really.” Sam insisted. “You saved me from hospital food. Those cookies were almost as good as my Mom’s.” He leaned forward, and his voice moved to a loud whisper. “You should know this is a very high compliment and if asked in front of her, I will deny it.”
“Acknowledged,” Barnes nodded, solemnly.
Barnes slept on the couch for the rest of the night. It turned out to only be two hours, but two hours but neck wasn't sore in the morning. He only panicked for a moment, before being able to reorient himself. The shower helped a lot. Then he made breakfast.
Stark came in to check on (also known as spy on) how Sam was doing. He talked too much. He tried not to pay attention, but he seemed to be following him about. Barnes ended up having to chase him out of the kitchen with a spatula when he kept eating the bacon.
Steve wandered out of his room before Sam. He was looking down quizzically, as if trying to make sense of his own feet. However, when he saw Barnes was cooking, he smiled and took his seat at the table. Barnes handed him juice.
He didn’t talk much. Barnes appreciated that.
“That better be bacon,” came a groan as Sam plodded into the room. “I am not getting up this early for anything less than bacon.”
Barnes was sitting at the table, taking small bites of his omelette while Steve consumed his weight in eggs. He decided this time that he would stay, so he brought out his knitting and was working away at the red material in between bites.
“There’s coffee too,” Steve smiled, the sunshine smile that he did so rarely. It had been worth it to leave himself sitting there exposed to see it in such close proximity again.
Sam walked over to pour himself some, but Barnes was too quick. He moved to the counter, while Sam was still hobbling and banished him wordlessly to the table while he poured him a cup of coffee.
“Nice socks,” he heard Sam say behind him.
“My feet are very cosy,” Steve said, with a hint of showing off in his tone.
Barnes carried the coffee back for Sam, but took Rogers’ away and replaced it with orange juice. He didn’t need any more caffeine when he looked that manically happy. He must be run down enough that it was affecting him.
“Aw, man,” Sam smiled, before taking some of his coffee and some of the bacon Barnes had protected from the Stark invasion. “Now, I’m jealous.”
Barnes sat down again, picking up a baby tomato and popping it into his mouth. “I’m working on it.”
Sam smiled, warmly. "Can't wait."
The sofa cushions were made up on the floor into a bed that night.
He didn’t leave.