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The store is small, one-story, in need of a good bit of paint, and snuggled between two much larger, more modern buildings. It has the words WILSON FAMILY KNITTING written over the top in bright red against a white background, but the paint on that is chipping off too. Bucky looks down at the torn piece of paper in his hand, double-checking the name of the store, and then the address, and then the address on the physical store—
Yeah.
He's in the right place.
He can see the brightly colored piles of yarn all the way from the sidewalk, right through the surprisingly clean windows.
He pushes the store entrance door open, walking in even as the little bell on top of the door rings and announces his presence to the otherwise (mostly) unoccupied store. The first thing he notices is the baskets, plastic and woven and made out of fabric, everywhere in the shop, overflowing with bundles of wool and fabric and yarn. The walls were second, completely covered up with shelves and shelves full of more yarn, more fabric, but also quilts and blankets and piles of sewing materials Bucky wouldn't know what to do with if his life depended on it. There were also three tables shoved into the room between the narrow walls, filling up the space, and two of them were covered in patterns and machines that looked delicate and dangerous at the same time, sharp needles attached to them.
The last table had a cash register, a long measuring tape pulled taut across it, and a dark-skinned, stupidly attractive man leaning over it, wearing a bright yellow apron over his t-shirt and jeans, carefully using a pair of huge-ass scissors to cut a piece of yarn-woven fabric longer than Bucky and roughly four times as thick.
"What the hell is that?"
"Blanket," the man answers, cutting the last few inches, and then he leans up. "What are you doing here?"
"Came to find you, obviously."
Sam gives him a look, raising one eyebrow. "Mmhmm," he hums, and then, "Maybe I still haven't forgiven you."
Yeah, Bucky knows. Sam takes his fabric and quilting and thread and yarn and all very, very seriously, and that includes the old clothes he keeps in his closet.
"Look," Bucky starts, "I'm sorry. I didn't know that, uh, jacket meant so much to you. I promise I will never touch your stuff again."
More to the point: he'd never dig through Sam's closet looking for hidden weapons in the middle of the night, dump all his boxes of shit on the floor, leave it there on the ground (too busy sitting in the dark of the living room with his eyes wide open and his ears listening for intruders that were only in his head, waiting for them to attack, to take parts of him away and break him apart, one piece at a time—) and accidentally create the circumstances that let Alpine pee on Sam's stuff again.
It's not like Sam had actually lived with Bucky. Sure, he'd had his own drawer in Bucky's dresser, and the shelf in the closet filled with boxes of random shit, and he made dinner three nights out of seven, and they had a nightly routine – feed the cat, go for a run, cool down, cook dinner, eat dinner, watch television, have sex (sometimes), go to bed. But Sam still technically owned his family's old house in this tiny old town, and two weeks ago he'd blown up at Bucky, pissed as fuck when he'd found the weird, brownish… pelt-looking thing on the bedroom floor, smelling like Alpine's litter box, and he'd grabbed his stuff (what stuff he could carry, anyway) and just took off.
Bucky thought he'd come back in a few hours.
Then he thought he'd come back in a day or two.
Then a few more days.
Then it had been a week, and Bucky didn't know what he'd done that was so fucking bad that Sam would leave, and not come back, over the cat peeing on an old furry jacket that looked like it had seen better days fifty years ago when it was probably made.
Pissed, he'd sat it out for another week, and now… now he just wants Sam to come back.
Sam puts the scissors down on the table, and he pulls the eye-searingly bright yellow apron off as he yells, "Sarah, I'm heading out!" into the back. Sam's sister's familiar voice—Bucky has talked to her over the phone and she came into the city for Sam's birthday last year—echoes from the back room, "Yeah, alright, see you later!"
Then he looks at Bucky, face serious, and says, "Come on. I've got something to tell you."
Bucky sticks his hands in his pockets and follows Sam outside once Sam has collected his backpack and put the giant yarn-woven blanket fabric away on a shelf. It's not hot outside, exactly, but the sun is up and the sea is so close that Bucky can smell the salt water in the air. He follows Sam for a while, neither of them saying anything else. Eventually, just a few blocks down from Sam's family-run shop (run by his sister mostly, these days, since Sam is usually in the city), they reach the edges of a beach, part sand and part rock, all of it wet and rough. The smell of the sea is even stronger this close to it, and when Bucky looks, Sam has his eyes closed, facing the water, breathing it in.
Fuck, but Sam really is beautiful.
Bucky's chest tightens at the thought that Sam might be getting ready to tell him he's not coming back.
He waits. If there's one thing Bucky got from the army (instead of everything he lost), it's the ability to be patient. To stand, to sit, to watch without moving, without losing the awareness of every noise, every smell, every shift of movement around him for hours, even days at a time.
His life had depended on it.
Half the time, it still feels like it does, and Sam is the entire reason Bucky has recovered as much as he has.
He's not going to make Sam stay, if Sam doesn't want to.
He doesn't know how he'll cope when he's gone.
"Okay," Sam says, nodding. "I'm ready. I didn't know that I would be. I had to come back. Smell the sea, dip my toes back into it. But I thought about you, and that damn cat, and our apartment, and my job—I like it. I like us. I like being what we are, you know?"
Bucky isn't entirely sure he gets what brought this on, but he thinks he understands what Sam is saying.
That Sam wants to stay with him.
Nervous, (which is stupid, considering), Bucky says, "Yeah. I like us the way we are too. So you should come back."
Sam nods again, says, "I have something for you," and then, weirdly enough, tugs his bag up, pulling at the zipper, and inside, he pulls out a—
—a weird-ass furry pelt slash jacket, dark brown and soft-looking, absolutely huge and too big for either of them. It looks similar to the one Alpine had peed on, but different enough that Bucky knows it's an entirely different jacket. Sam hands it to him, and not knowing what else to do, Bucky lifts his arm and awkwardly takes it, holding onto it tightly.
He doesn't always hold things that well, let alone big, awkward, soft things that are a lot heavier than they initially look, and if Sam's reaction to the other one getting ruined was such a big deal, Bucky sure as hell doesn't want to drop this one on the wet, muddy sand-rock mixture of the beach they're standing on.
"It's nice," Bucky says, and tries to mean it, but there's a lilt that betrays his confusion.
Sam huffs a laugh at him.
"It's not a jacket, man. It's my pelt."
Bucky frowns. "Your what?"
"My pelt. It's—you know my family has always lived in this town, right? Well, this is why. We're, uh." Sam pauses, scrunching his face up. Bucky thinks it's cute, even if he's confused as hell about what Sam is saying right now. Then again, he always thinks Sam is cute. He just doesn't let Sam know it.
"We're not entirely, I guess, human."
Bucky almost drops the goddamn pelt-jacket.
"We're selkies. My mom was too. The one from last week, that your damn cat peed on, that was my mom's pelt."
Oh.
Well, that explains why Sam was so pissed about it, at least.
"You're a selkie," Bucky repeats, after a second, the word feeling funny in his mouth. He trusts Sam, is the thing. He trusts Sam not to lie to him, to make up some joke this crazy, just to laugh at Bucky later. So as crazy as it sounds—Bucky believes him. He does.
"Yeah."
"That's… like somebody who can turn into a seal, right?" Bucky's vaguely heard of it before, but hell if he knows more than that. It's not like he's a cryptologist, he's just a guy with a tablet and access to the internet with too much time on his hand.
"That's it. More or less. We need the pelts. It's complicated, I guess."
Bucky turns, just for a minute, looking at the water. It's calm, not a fish or seal in sight. Just a few boats far out in the dark water, and a few birds flying overhead. He asks, "But you're giving me your pelt?"
Sam rubs his face. "Yeah, I'm giving you my pelt. It's tradition, I guess. It means—for selkies, it's like getting—" He stops, starts again, "When someone has my pelt, it means they're... like we're... Fuck. It's supposed to mean I'm staying with you. I'm not about to leave, alright? This is," he gestures between them, "this is us. We're in it together now. For good."
"You could just tell me that," Bucky says, because God, he likes it when Sam says that they're in it together.
That he's staying. That he's not going to leave. That him, and Bucky, are something. The two of them together.
Sam shakes his head.
"Nah, you have to keep the pelt. And you have to do me a favor."
Bucky shifts, pulling the pelt over his arm so it's easier to hold and he's less likely to drop it.
"Anything," he says, voice rough. He means it.
"Hide it."
Before Bucky can even ask, Sam says, "Just promise me you'll hide it. Hide it somewhere I'm not going to find it, no matter how hard I look. Got that?" He looks serious, his mouth tight. "Bucky, you get that? I need you to hide it."
"Yeah," Bucky says. "Yeah, okay. I'll hide it.
Something in Sam seems to relax.
"Good. Alright, yeah. Shit, let's—let's go home. I'm ready to go home. I've missed you and that stupid-ass cat."
"Alpine's missed you too. She kept trying to steal your socks out of the dresser."
"Cat's a menace, Barnes."
"You know, I missed you too," Bucky says, keeping an eye on his feet as they walk on the rocky beach, but then looking up once they reach the sidewalk again. Sam smiles at him, a soft quirk to his lips.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, and then leans in and grabs Bucky—slowly, giving Bucky warning, the way he always does—before pulling him in for a kiss, softer and sweeter than Bucky was expecting. He melts into it, kissing back, and thinks about the pelt, about how he's going to hide it, and never ever give it back.
Not if it means the end of this.
He stands there, kissing Sam, the sun on his back and the sea at Sam's, and prays that Sam never asks for it back.