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More of a soldier than a spy, he’d told Nick Fury, but lately that hasn’t felt as true as it used to be. In any case, Sam is not a good spy, as Natasha has told him many times in truncated text messages interspersed with the eyes emoji over and over again. Sam doesn’t work alone, he only has the one objective, and he’s definitely not as good at lying as he needs to be, though at least he’s better than Steve on that one.
He and Steve have been looking for Bucky on and off, though mostly on, for the past year. Sam is pretty sure they are no closer than they were twelve months ago with the wreck of three helicarriers smoking in the Potomac and Bucky’s footprints in the mud next to Steve’s bleeding, half-drowned body.
(“I don’t think he’s the kind you save,” Sam had told Steve, but—he hadn’t believed that. Not really. That’s not the sort of thing you can believe if you want to stay human; but he had thought that Steve needed to hear it, for whatever reason. Just in case it turned out to be true. But mostly for when it turned out not to be.
Sam hadn’t believed it, but it had been the footprints in the mud next to Steve’s body—the shuffling, limping footprints that pressed deeper into the dirt beside Steve as if Bucky had stood there for a long moment, staring, torn between two selves, unsure of what to do except that he knew he had to drag Steve Rogers out of the murky water—it had been the footprints that convinced Sam, all at once, that he was going to follow Steve when Steve inevitably went after Bucky. Maybe that had always been true; maybe Sam has always been meant to follow Steve ever since Steve first ran laps around Sam at the Washington Mall, but Sam hadn’t known it for sure until this moment.)
They had thought it would only take a few months, tops. They’d had no idea what they were getting into. They didn’t know, yet, just how complicated and deep Hydra’s web had been woven. They didn’t know just how far they were going to have to cut their way through it, how the light behind them would go out long before the light at the end would come on. It still hasn’t, yet.
-
Steve has introduced Sam to the other Avengers a few time in the past year, just every once in a while, in pieces, as if Steve doesn’t want all of them together in the same place all at once. Steve doesn’t particularly like being around most of the other Avengers aside from Natasha as far as Sam can tell. There’s a chill to Steve’s interactions with Tony, with Bruce, with Clint, even with Thor, who as far as Sam can tell is relatively harmless. (Figuratively, at least. Literally, the guy is a brick shithouse.) But the other Avengers—they just don’t get it. Sometimes Sam thinks they see this whole Avenging business as something of a game—something new and exciting and fun, something they do because, why not?
It’s not fun at all for Steve.
Steve somehow landed himself the leader of this merry band of misfits, and he’s not exactly happy with it, but he has a duty to do and Steve is nothing if not driven by duty. Even now, with the military long behind him. Steve brings Sam to a few meetings with the Avengers—never introducing Sam as his date, or his boyfriend, or his whatever-they-are, even though that would be true. Natasha is the only other one there who knows. She makes kissy faces at Sam when the others aren’t looking, and Sam just blows her a kiss back, smiles when the lines around her eyes go soft.
Natasha is playing a game with these other Avengers that Sam doesn’t understand; he sees the way she plays them, toys with them. But Sam has never had to live the way that Natasha does, never had to protect himself in layers and layers of half-truths in order to survive. Natasha does what she thinks she needs to do to stay safe. All Sam can hope is that—one day—she will realize she already is safe; that she’s got Steve, and Sam, and everyone else can just fall in line.
u coming to dinner 2nite?? :x she texts him one day when he’s lying on his couch flipping through channels on the tv, waiting for Steve to come home.
what dinner, he texts back.
A pause. Then: i will yell at steve hold on, and a string of sparkle emojis.
Five minutes later Sam gets a text from Steve. why did you set tasha on me like this sam :( if you wanted to come all you had to do is ask
Sam doesn’t mention that Steve never even mentioned any dinner in the first place, which begs the question of how Sam is supposed to have known to ask at all. do i have to dress fancy, is all he says instead.
Natasha texts Sam a few minutes later, ur welcome :), and he just shakes his head, a smile tugging at his mouth. She can pretend she doesn’t care about him or Steve all she wants to the others, but she knows that Sam and Steve both know the truth.
-
Dinner with the Avengers is Weird. Capital ‘w’ for emphasis and everything. Sam doesn’t particularly enjoy it but he doesn’t dislike it, either; Rhodey is always good company, and no one really expects Sam to do much else aside from keep Natasha amused and keep Steve from biting through his tongue halfway through the conversation. Both of which Sam is well practiced at by now.
Natasha kisses Sam on the cheek when he arrives, pushes him into a chair, and—for some inexplicable reason—drags Banner over, as well, ignoring the pointed look that Sam gives her when she does so. Another one of her games. Sam is more than content to let her play it.
“How goes the hunt?” Natasha asks, sliding Sam a beer.
“As if you don’t know.”
“That bad, huh?” Her smile is half-sad, half-something that Sam cannot decipher.
Yeah, Sam thinks, that bad; but he tries not to let Steve ever hear him say that, so he just shrugs and spreads his hands.
It’s been a year since the Potomac, since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., since Bucky went completely off the grid, and Sam doesn’t know how the hell Bucky has been managing it. A year is a long damn time to be alone.
-
Two hours later, Steve catches Sam’s gaze from across the room and tilts his head towards the hallway. Sam watches as Steve puts down his beer, makes an excuse, and leaves the room; a few minutes later, Sam does the same.
He’s only a few steps into the hall when Steve wraps his arms around him and presses him up against the wall, just holding him close, burying his face in the crook of Sam’s neck. Sam brings his hands up around Steve’s shoulders, digs his fingertips into the muscle there, the tenseness. Steve is warm, and solid, and unsteady, and that last one surprises Sam more than perhaps it should.
“Hate this,” Steve mutters.
Sam slides one hand through Steve’s hair. “I know.”
Steve laughs drily, self-deprecating. “That obvious?”
“Nah,” Sam says. “Just to me.”
Steve clings to Sam for another long moment with no sign of letting go anytime soon. Sam is more than happy to allow Steve this, to stand here and let Steve hold onto him for as long as he wants. More than happy.
“I didn’t tell you about the dinner because I didn’t want you to come,” Steve says, finally. “Not because I don’t want you around—just—I hate this,” he offers up helplessly.
“’S okay,” Sam says, though he’s not sure he understands. Steve’s hands are tracing circles into Sam’s shoulders, very gently. An artist’s hands, an artist’s touch. Sometimes Sam feels as if he’s being painted when Steve merely touches him, runs his fingertips over Sam’s skin.
“I’m glad Tasha yelled at me, though,” Steve says. “I’m glad you’re here. I....”
He trails off. Steve never says everything that he wants to. Never ever. Instead, he tilts his head and kisses Sam on the mouth, gently, his fingertips still tracing circles, his tongue tracing delicate. Sam kisses back, one hand still in Steve’s hair, the other in the small of his back, pulling Steve close as Steve keeps Sam trapped against the wall. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, until Steve is flushed from it, his mouth red, his hair mussed, and at last he sighs and drops his head back to Sam’s shoulder.
“They’re gonna know we’ve been making out in the hallway,” Steve mutters. One of his hands plays lazily at the waistline of Sam’s pants.
“Nah,” Sam says; “you’re the one who’s all pink and debauched. I look just fine.”
Steve snorts a laugh. “Dick.” Then he sighs, long and slow, and presses his lips to Sam’s neck. Finally: “You should leave.”
Sam blinks. “Now?”
“No, fuck,” Steve says. “Sorry. I just...I’m gonna have to stay here and deal with some stuff,” he says. “I can tell already. And I’m—” pissed, furious, beyond fucking enraged about it “—it doesn’t matter. You know I don’t want you to leave, but....”
You want me to keep looking, Sam thinks. You don’t want me around these people.
It’s all right. He understands.
“So I can go back to the party, then?” Sam asks, and Steve huffs a laugh again, digs his fingers, just briefly, into the curve of Sam’s ass before pushing him away.
“Yeah,” Steve says. The color is high in his face, his eyes bright, his mouth still red from kissing, and Sam doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t ever want to leave, but he has a duty now, too—not just to Steve, but to Bucky; James Buchanan Barnes, who’s been alone and on the run for twelve goddamn months, and who needs someone out there looking for him, even if Sam never finds him.
-
Look: Sam isn’t the jealous type, nor the resentful type. It’s just not in his nature to think of people that way. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t wondered, every once in a while, if he’s just a stand-in for Bucky until Steve finds him again—if Steve is only with Sam because Steve is sad and alone and grieving and therefore Sam might possibly be kind of taking advantage of him, just a little; if Steve is using Sam, as it were.
Sam doesn’t really believe any of those things. But it’s hard not to think of them from time to time, when the main pastime that Steve and Sam do together as a couple is search the globe for Steve’s ex-something. Kind of weird, you might say. Probably a little unusual.
(“Please,” Natasha had said one night a few months ago, when Sam had too much to drink and maybe gotten a little too honest. “That boy is head over heels for you.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “I know,” because he does.
“You should see the shit he texts me,” Natasha says. “I’m collecting a whole bunch of embarrassing screenshots so I can make a slideshow of them at your wedding. Can I give the toast? I feel like I should be allowed to give the toast.”
Sam nudges her side, but she keeps going.
“’Oh Nat, I just don’t know what to get him for his birthday!’” she says in a terrible high-pitched imitation of Steve’s voice, and Sam breaks into giggles. “’I want to be sure it’s just perfect, he deserves something really nice after all he’s been doing for me, oh god Nat do you think he knows how much I love him, how can I tell him with one perfect gift!’”
“He did not say that,” Sam says.
Natasha shrugs. “Maybe I’m paraphrasing,” she says, and kisses Sam on the cheek.)
So Sam isn’t worried, or resentful, or jealous at all. More than anything, really, he’s curious—what will it mean when they finally find Bucky? Because they have to find him. Anything otherwise will destroy Steve, and Sam is not going to let that happen.
-
These are the things that Sam Wilson knows about James Barnes.
1. He fought in WWII with Steve and Peggy Carter. That one is easy and obvious. Everyone knows that about James Barnes. The only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country, and all that. But Sam digs deeper, finds stuff the history books aren’t so eager to talk about, like the fact that Bucky didn’t volunteer, he got drafted—like the fact that he would’ve turned his back on the whole damn war if Steve hadn’t shown up to fight.
Sam knows the feeling, of that.
2. James Barnes was declared KIA in the winter of ’45. Sometime in the days after he fell, he was recovered by Hydra. Sam doesn’t know what happened to him after that—what could have happened between the fall and saving Steve’s life in Washington D.C. nearly 70 years later.
3. He was—is—Steve Rogers’ best friend.
4. And he’s one of the loves of Steve Rogers’ life.
This one Sam doesn’t even think Steve knows. Not consciously. Or maybe Steve just tries to forget that he knows it. Sam knows that feeling, too. He doesn’t think much about Riley these days.
5. James Barnes has been on the run for the past twelve going on thirteen months, and he’s damn good at it, too, because no one—not Steve, not Sam, not any of the last vestiges of Hydra trying to recapture their lost asset—have been able to find him since.
-
Which is why when Sam—poring over pages and pages of data, possible leads, old contacts, trails gone long cold—finally puts a few of the pieces together and realizes he knows where James Buchanan Barnes is, he doesn’t fucking believe it.
Sam had promised himself that he wouldn’t go after Bucky alone, that he would wait until Steve got back before confronting Bucky, if he found him, but—they’ve had promising leads before. Not like this, but good ones, and they all went cold in a few hours. Sam can’t let that happen this time.
So he gets up from his desk and puts his jacket on, and then he goes to track down a lost ex-assassin.
-
Sam and Steve have been over the whole damn world looking for Bucky, it feels like. They’ve been to Bangkok, Zurich, to Delhi and Nanjing and Milan. Even though they have known, most of the time, that they were on the wrong track. It’s so obvious now, but only after the fact: of course Bucky is hiding in their almost backyard. And not even hiding, not really: he’s piecing back together a life, normality, a sense of self.
Natasha had helped Sam and Steve set up a filter that would catch anything on social media sites that might even vaguely be a reference to someone seeing Bucky. Even though S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra’s databases went completely public a year ago, the Winter Soldier program was so deeply hidden that it remains known only to a handful of people alive. So when someone sees, perhaps, a person with a metal hand, they don’t think, Winter Soldier or that’s who shot Captain America—they think, I’m gonna tell my friends about this, and tweet about it, because of course they do, and Natasha’s filter catches it.
After that, it’s surprisingly simple. A few hours drive to a small town in upstate New York, a S.H.I.E.L.D. program on Sam’s phone to alert him of any anomalies in the area, and it finds one: a place where every local map has been scrubbed clean, a place no one knows exists anymore.
And then Sam, standing on the doorstep of what must be Bucky’s safe house. He wonders, strangely, if he should knock.
Before he does, Bucky slides the door open.
He looks—better, is all Sam can think. The person he last saw a year ago, the person who ripped off Sam’s wings and threw him out into the empty sky, had been faceless, voiceless, senseless. The Bucky standing before Sam now looks tired and thinner and wary, but alive. Recognizable. His long hair pulled back, neatly, and his shirt tucked into the front of his jeans. A black glove completely covering the metal of his left hand.
“Hi,” Sam says, because it’s all he can think to say.
Bucky blinks at him, studying him. “How did you find me?” he says at last.
“Well, it took a damn long time, that’s for sure,” Sam says. He half-smiles. “That was pretty clever, letting someone see your hand earlier today and knowing they would tweet about it. People don’t know how to keep out of other people’s business.”
Bucky tilts his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure,” Sam says. But he knows he’s right. He has suspected for a long time now that the only way that he and Steve would find Bucky was if Bucky wanted to be found.
“Steve is worried about you,” Sam says next, because he doesn’t know how to explain why he is here and Steve isn’t.
Bucky’s mouth twists. “That’s the problem.” He considers Sam for another long moment. “Why are you here?”
Is it fair or even accurate for Sam to say that he’s worried about Bucky? He doesn’t even know him. He doesn’t know what to say.
“Well,” he says at last. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you could use a friend.”
“Is that what we are? I seem to remember trying to kill you a few times before.” Bucky sounds vaguely angry, tired.
“Yeah, well,” Sam says: “I won’t hold that against you.”
Bucky is shocked into a smile. It’s bright and startling and unexpected, and Sam thinks, oh. He thinks, all right, Rogers, I get it now.
Bucky—with his right hand, his right hand only—reaches out and takes Sam’s hand in his, studies his palm. “Sam,” he says; “right? Sam Wilson. Pararescue, two tours in Afghanistan. The Falcon. Most recently seen out with Captain America at Avengers Tower.”
“You’ve been doing your research.” Sam feels somehow flushed, warm. It has always driven him nuts that Steve can tell when Sam is blushing thanks to his heightened supersoldier senses whereas other people never have a clue, since a blush doesn’t show itself on Sam’s face. But Sam can tell, right now, that Bucky can sense this too—can feel the way Sam’s face grows hot, can maybe even feel the way his pulse quickens beneath the soft skin of his wrist.
Damn supersoldiers, always nosing in on Sam’s business.
“Bucky Barnes,” Sam says when Bucky won’t let go of his hand; “sharpshooter, one very, very long tour in Europe along the eastern front. Most recently seen out at Starbucks buying an extra sugar triple shot vanilla latte, where a nosy teenager texted about the guy with the weird hand and the pretentious drink.”
Bucky snorts, a shocked laugh. “They didn’t have pretentious drinks in the forties,” he says. “I think I deserve a few.”
“Fair enough.” Sam hesitates, then adds, “May I have my hand back now?”
Bucky releases him without any explanation, like he doesn’t think it’s weird at all that he just examined Sam’s hand for the past minute and a half. “So, Sam Wilson,” Bucky says. “Are you here to bring me back to New York?”
“I was thinking D.C.,” Sam says. “That’s where my apartment is. But only if you want to go.”
“If I said no,” Bucky says, “would you tell Steve where I am?”
Sam doesn’t know what to say to this—hadn’t been expecting the question. He loves Steve, and he knows Steve wants to see Bucky again more than anything else in the world. But Bucky deserves to decide how that happens, on his own terms. And Sam is not going to be yet another person who has taken Bucky’s choice away from him.
“Not if you asked me not to,” Sam says, because it’s true.
The surprise on Bucky’s face is brief and quickly hidden away, but Sam sees it nonetheless. They’re complicated, these 1940’s supersoldiers. But Sam thinks maybe he might understand them, just enough.
Bucky seems to make a decision all at once. He reaches back, grabs a jacket from a hook on the wall, and steps outside, closing the door shut behind him. He shrugs into the jacket despite the fair May weather, looking up at Sam, a few strands of long hair getting into his eyes.
“Let’s go,” he says quietly.
Sam can’t help but break into a smile. “Steve is gonna be so pissed that I found you without him.”
“I think maybe he will forgive you,” Bucky says, and smiles back at Sam, gentle.