Work Text:
Sarah was first to scream when she started awake to find a figure looming over her in the night.
“Oh,” she clutched at her chest. “Oh, Cassidy,”
Cassidy blinked down at her like a little owl. His eyes were huge and bright in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hugging Bunny closer.
“Thas ok, you just scared me baby, oh,”
Sarah sunk back down into her pillows, blinking gunk out of her eyes.
“Do you want to hop in?”
“Ok,”
She pulled back the sheet on her bed and Cassidy climbed in beside her, cuddling a little too close for comfort on this low of 85 degrees night.
“I heard a noise,” Cassidy said, “I was downstairs getting water because there’s this, like, rough bit at the back of my mouth,”
“Oh,”
“It’s Bucky. He’s making this noise. It’s like he’s crying or something, but I dunno, it didn’t sound like crying crying, like, something is wrong,”
Sarah made affirmative humming noises while she waited for her sleepy brain to catch up and process what she was being told.
“What, what should we do?”
“Hm?” Sarah jolted back awake.
“You should, should talk to your uncle. You know he’s Mr. PTSD with his counseling and. . .”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, talk to your uncle, A.J.”
“I’m Cassidy,”
“Sorry,”
“That’s OK. I’m sorry I woke you,”
Cassidy slid out of bed, pulling the sheet back in place behind him. He tucked his mother in. On soft bare feet he turned to leave. Only then did Sarah’s brain catch up.
“Cassidy,” she said, a sudden sharpness in her voice, “listen to your uncle. Don’t bother Bucky, OK? You tell Uncle Sam and then head back to bed. Uncle Sam can take care of this. Yeah?”
Cassidy blinked once.
“I know,”
Then he padded away.
‘No you don’t,’ Sarah thought.
It wasn’t that Sarah didn’t trust Bucky; it was the opposite. She believed he was exactly who he said he was. He was a man who used to be a terrorist. You count the bodies, he was a mass murderer. He was a guy who had to file a request to a committee two weeks in advance of crossing state lines. He was also a nice guy with his heart in the right place who had been through too much. Sarah loved that her little big brother had Bucky as a friend. But she loved her son more.
Sam was the second one to scream. If asked later, he would probably say it was more of a yelp. A yelp of discomfort at being woken by a tiny ghost at circa three in the morning. In fact, it was not a yelp.
“Jeez! Cass!”
“I’m sorry!”
“That’s fine. Phew!”
The little wave of adrenaline that had woken him was already starting to crash.
“What’s up, hey?”
“Well,”
Cassidy rubbed his leg with the back of one of his feet.
“I was downstairs and Bucky was making this noise,”
Sam waited a beat.
“What, uh, what sort of noise?”
“I dunno, it was like he was crying, but his eyes were closed and his mouth was closed too so it sounded kind of weird. He sounded, it wasn’t like normal crying. I think something’s wrong. I thought maybe we should call an ambulance. He’s,”
Cassidy squeezed Bunny, pressing Bunny’s yellow crochet head against his mouth.
“Hey, it’s OK,” Sam said, sitting up.
“You know Bucky’s, well, Bucky has been hurt,”
Sam very carefully weighed his words.
“Hydra hurt him, and he’s still healing from that, he’s come a heck of a long way-”
“-but he’s still hurt,” Cassidy finished.
“Yes,” Sam agreed. “And some hurts, well, they won’t heal as good as new. And then you deal with it and you make it OK. Maybe you’ll always be-”
“I get that!”
Cassidy was on the verge of tears.
“But he’s so upset Uncle Sam. It’s, he’s, something’s wrong. Please!”
“OK, hey, Cassidy, it’s OK. I hear you. I- it’ll be OK,”
“Just go check on him. Just go see. He’s not OK Uncle Sam,”
“OK, OK, Cassidy, here’s what we’re gonna do, right? You’re gonna go back to bed. I’m gonna go downstairs and I’m gonna talk to Bucky, make sure he’s OK,”
“But what if he’s not OK?”
“We’ll deal with it.” Sam said firmly.
He watched Cassidy’s face. Cassidy gave one tentative nod. He sniffed.
“OK,” he agreed.
Sam hauled himself out of bed and herded Cassidy back to his room.
“Wait,” Cassidy said, just before Sam closed the door.
Cassidy selected a manatee stuffy from the end of his bed and presented it to Sam.
“Give Mike to Bucky,”
Sam took the manatee.
“Tell him he needs a stuffy. He can rename Mike if he wants. And if he wants to reassign Mike’s gender, that’s OK too. He should keep him.”
“That’s generous of you Cassidy, but you don’t have to give up Mike,”
“I want to,”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. His sweater’s kind of ugly,”
Mike’s little orange sweater was indeed hideous.
“OK,” Sam said, stifling the smile in his words.
“Goodnight Cassidy,”
“Goodnight Uncle Sam,”
Sam softly closed Cassidy’s door and faced the stairs. Mike tucked under one arm, he was ready to do battle.
When he got to the landing, he understood what Cassidy ment.
Bucky was in distress.
Riga was the first time Sam had seen Bucky sleep. Travel tends to do that, cramps dignity and privacy. Sam had thought it was cute. The ex-terrorist slept in the foetal possition, curled up like a little bean with his hands clasped to his forehead on his pillow, as if he’d fallen asleep praying. Or protecting his face, it occurred to Sam now. A vibranium forearm between the world and Bucky’s head.
And he was making a sound.
Some single, childless people have cats or dogs to dote on. Sam had nephews. When A.J. and later Cass had come along, Sam had swooped down to fill the cool uncle role. He’d put their art up in his office at the VA, he’d booked off all his vacation time for visits to Delacroix, he’d been the one driving Cassidy to preschool those last few weeks when Sarah spent every day in the hospital holding vigil.
He knew all the sounds babies made before they could talk. He knew the cry for attention and the cry for food and the cry for sleep and the cry for a diaper change. He knew crying because of hurt and crying because of fear and crying because of grief. That wasn’t what he was hearing.
It was a cry he’d only ever heard in active war zones. Never, God, never from Cassidy or A.J. It was a cry that meant ‘I’m going to die’.
Sam woke Bucky up.
Bucky didn’t scream when Sam said his name, said it louder, sat beside the couch and reached up to touch his shoulder. Bucky just curled in on himself tighter, almost six feet of super soldier looking all of a sudden very small on Sarah’s couch. And maybe Bucky wouldn’t die at the end of this dream, but something would, something had.
“Bucky,” Sam said, a little louder than normal speaking volume.
“Buck,”
The noise stopped. Bucky swung up, like a vampire emerging from his coffin. He gasped for breath, grasped for the side table lamp’s switch, illuminating them both in warm light. For a second he just sat, kneading his eye sockets with the heels of his hands, stripped of all his usual sangfroid. He looked his age.
“I’m OK,” he muttered to himself.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
Suddenly Bucky noticed him.
“What, why?” Bucky demanded, spinning on him. He didn’t need to raise his voice for Sam to know he was yelling, screaming.
Suddenly Bucky was crying, sobbing big angry tears.
“Why?!” he demanded, glaring at Sam with a terrible look of betrayal and pure hatred that Sam knew wasn’t really directed at him.
“Buck, I-”
“Leave! What, have you come to look at me like this?! Does this make you feel better, Sam?! Why?!” Bucky snarled in his face, looking ruddy and tear streaked and suddenly more than his five feet, ten inches.
He was on his feet, leaning into Sam’s personal space with that stance that he knew made mortal’s lizard brains scream ‘play dead!’ Bucky was trying to scare Sam. But Sam was no mere mortal.
“Because I care about you,” he replied evenly, sitting down on the coffee table.
“No. No you don’t.”
Bucky laughed, shaking his head and smiling an awful sardonic smile full of teeth.
“No one cares about anyone, Sam. It’s all just chemicals in the brain. Neurons and chemicals and electrical signals. It doesn’t mean anything!”
“I care about you. You’re a good person and I care about you,”
“I don’t care! I don’t care about you! It doesn’t make any difference!”
“That’s not true. You know that’s not true. You care a lot.”
“What does it matter?! Jesus Christ, you’re naive! Look what they can do to me, Sam! I cared and they took that away and there’s nothing you can’t take from a person! Nothing! My mind was their goddamn computer program! Look what they turned me into!”
“What did they turn you into,”
“I killed them, Sam! I killed them! I killed them! Don’t you get it?!”
And then Bucky couldn’t talk, because he was crying. Bucky broke, and it wasn’t pretty. He put his arms around Sam and he cried and he cried and he cried.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky choked.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,”
Sam hugged him tight.
“I hate it. I hate it.”
“Me too.” Sam said, holding him until he could breathe.
Then Bucky pulled away, folding up his feelings and cramming them out of Sam’s sight.
“I’m sorry, Sam,”
Sorry for what?! Sorry for crying? Sorry for being hurt? Sorry for needing help?
“You’re OK, Buck,”
“They aren’t.”
Above, Cassidy drew back from his perch at the top of the stairs. Legs trembling, he crawled back in bed.
When Sam came down for their morning jog four hours later, old screen door squealing shut behind him, somehow he wasn’t surprised at all to see Bucky already in his running clothes, sitting silent as stone in one of Sarah’s faded plastic adirondack chairs. Sam couldn’t tell how long he’d been there, long enough that he was just another part of the scenery of the cluttered back porch. His footprints hadn’t disturbed the silvery glittering of dew. He stood up when he saw Sam. He was kind of pulled in on himself, slouching like he was trying to look small. He didn’t look angry, or particularly sad either. He didn’t look like much of anything. Maybe that was intentional.
“I’m-”
Bucky cleared his throat.
“I shouldn’t have flipped out on you like that. Last night. It wasn’t fair for me to get angry at you. That wasn’t ok.”
“Yes Bucky, your feelings offend me. You should be apologizing. Just crush those problems down and ignore ‘em. It makes everything better.” Sam quipped back as he leaned into a good hamstring stretch.
“It was unprofessional of me,” Bucky defended.
“Then it was unprofessional of me to invite you to stay on my sister’s couch.” Sam countered, leaning deeper into the pose.
“It was unprofessional of me to come into your sleeping area at three o’clock in the morning in my jimmy-jams.”
Sam dropped the stretch with a grunt.
“That was a lousy thing for me to do and I’m trying to say, I’m sorry,”
Sam stopped his warm-up and just looked Bucky in the eye.
“Then stop it. Don’t be sorry.”
Bucky squirmed under his gaze. Sam smiled.
“Let’s go for a run,” he said, slapping Bucky on the back.
They set off at a speed walk together, Sam taking the lead into the misty morning.
There was a way they did things. Sam liked to start and end every run walking. Bucky liked to stop to pet all pettable animals they encountered. Sam liked to use exercise as a reason to eat gummy bears. They give him energy. Bucky liked to help Sam with his energy gummy bears. They had their routes looping through the Leblanc’s back lot. Bucky would wander away at the second turn off and come back later to join Sam for the cool down. Their feet knew the way. It left their brains free for talking, or not thinking at all, just feeling the rolling of the earth under shoes and breath in lungs. That was how they ran together.
They eased into a jog after a few seconds.
“I get worked up about it all, after dreams like that. You know. But I shouldn’t have, God, I-”
“You have a right to feel angry,” Sam replied quietly between breaths.
That made Bucky smile a little.
“You’re very American, Sam.”
“I’m very right, is what I am.”
“Case and point,”
Bucky smiled a little more at the inside joke he didn’t expect Sam to get. Sam got it, he just didn’t find it funny.
“And I’m right that you have feelings and that’s ok. And sometimes you won’t feel ok, that’s allowed too.”
“I don’t think anyone wants to see the semi-stable ex-hydra Super Soldier get mad. I donno, but something about it tends to make people uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, I get that,”
People don’t like seeing Black men get angry either. But this wasn’t about him. They could have that conversation later. Right now was about helping Bucky chew on his own problems. So Sam just listened. Bucky rewarded him a second later.
“I guess you would, actually.”
Sam was pleasantly surprised. So he did have more insight than a teaspoon. You learn something new every day.
“Listen, about what I said last night,”
Bucky scrunched up his face at the memory.
“I didn’t really mean what I said. I, well, ok, I did.” he admitted.
“But I do care. I do care about you. . .And intellectually, I know I’m probably never going back there. I am never going back there. But, I still, it’s like my heart can’t believe it’s over. I know I’m fine. I am fine. It’s done. I’m out. I will never, I will never be that thing again. I will never hurt people like that again. I’m fine. I know that. But it was like a live it now, pay for it emotionally later sort of deal, I think. And I don’t know how much debt I have racked up. A lot,”
Bucky laughed bitterly.
“And in that way it’s not really over. I don’t know if it’ll ever, really, be over. And maybe that’s, maybe that’s how it should be,”
“Well,” Sam replied.
“Are you askin’ for the tough love?”
Bucky smiled nervously.
“The tough love. Am I?”
“Are you?”
“Say it.”
Sam nodded.
“You have PTSD?” he asked.
“Sam, I have enough disorders that we could play disorder BINGO. You put some random disorders on a sheet and I’ll call out what I have and we can see how long it takes for you to get four in a row. Yes, I have PTSD.”
“I could put all the disorders I have on a sheet, you call out yours. It would be a very short game.” Sam amended.
“That sounds like fun. You might be surprised, though. I’ve got some weird brain stuff going on,”
“Yeah?”
“Tip of the iceberg, Sam, what you’ve seen?”
“I believe you. Well, moving away from mental health BINGO, let’s talk about trauma.” Sam said.
Bucky barked a laugh.
“I think the thing that really sucks, what happened is not your fault. That’s on Hydra, one hundred present. OK? You didn’t deserve to be in this pain in 1945 and you don’t deserve it now. You don’t. Bucky, you’re a good person. I mean it. I’m going to keep telling you that until you believe it too, because it’s true. You’re a good person. But, and here’s the big but, it’s up to you to do the work. It’s up to you to heal. I can’t do that for you, Raynor can’t do that for you, you’re little basil plant, what’s it’s name?”
“It doesn’t have a name,”
“Why doesn’t it have a name?” Sam demanded.
“. . .it’s a plant?”
“It’ll think you don’t love it. You need to give it a name.”
“I eat it.”
“So? When I was a kid I used to name all my chocolate easter bunnies.”
Bucky stared at him.
“So what? And maybe I still do. It’s a free world. Look, that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that any other people or. . . inanimate people substitutes you have in your life can’t do it for you either. Just like how I can’t get stronger if you do the workout for me. Which is why I’m suffering right now,”
“You want to slow down?”
“Shut up. I’m fine. Look, it’s not right that you’re suffering. That’s not ok. You don’t deserve that. You deserve to feel better because how you feel matters. You’ve got emotions, own em! The fact that you care matters. You’re a person and you’re a good person, own that too! And maybe you’ll never “get over” what they made you do, or what they did to you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. You just need to decide that happy is something you want to be, deserve to be. That and-”
“-put in the work?”
“Exactly. It’s like you can read my mind. Does the serum let you do that too? Oh, by the way, I have another inanimate object for you to befriend. His name is Mike. You and him have a very similar level of style, I think you’ll get along great.”
They passed the second turn off. Bucky didn’t move from Sam’s side.
“What, you’re not running off on me today?”
“I didn’t come to Delacroix for the running, Sam,”
By the time they got home Bucky had fully rejoined the land of the living. He was smiling again and had stopped trying to take up less space. Did Sam’s heart good.
Sam stopped Bucky in his path to the kitchen.
“So this is Mike,” Sam said, retrieving Mike from the armchair where he’d left him last night.
Sam made the introductions.
“Mike, this is Bucky. He’s gonna be your person now,”
“MMMmmmMm” Sam spoke for Mike.
Bucky was trying to give Sam a dead stair but his mouth couldn't stop itself from smiling at him.
“Kind’a weird beast,” Bucky said.
“What is it? A whale? A dog embryo?”
“A dog embryo?” Sam repeated.
“I don’t know! People have weird teddy bears these days. You know I saw a strep throat bacteria teddy in the airport,”
“You’re hurting Mike’s feelings, Buck. He’s a manatee.”
“A what?”
“A sea cow,”
“MmmMMmMM” Mike added with help from Sam.
“That a real thing?”
Bucky pulled out his phone.
“What does Google say?” Sam had the pleasure of throwing back. Bucky grimaced.
“They’re kinda cute,”
“MmmMMmM,” Mike replied appreciatively.
Sam gently pushed Mike into Bucky’s arms while he was distracted having his heart melted by chubbly marine mammals. Then that protective, caregiving switch went off in Bucky’s brain and he started hugging the manatee.
“There you go,” Sam said.
He smiled.
Bucky still had Mike cradled in one arm when the Wilson family sat down for breakfast. Unfortunately Cassidy was not there to see it.
“Where’s Cass?” Sam asked as he measured out the dose of lactase he’d need to make the milk in his morning cereal’s journey though his digestive track uneventful.
“Still in his room,” A.J. said. “I donno, I tried to get him up but he’s all mopey,”
Sam frowned.
“I think he heard your little domestic last night,” Sarah said, eyebrows climbing, eyes fixed on her cup of coffee.
“Crap,” Bucky muttered, which was Sam’s feeling exactly.
Poor gentil hearted Cassidy. Sam cursed himself for. . .he wasn’t quite sure what.
“Domestic?” A.J. repeated.
“Sam. We should talk to Cassidy,” Bucky said.
“Yes,” Sam agreed.
They left the table together and headed up stairs. Bucky led the way.
“Cass,” he called softly.
A.J. had left Cassidy’s door open and his blind up and his clock radio on in an effort to get him moving. It wasn’t working. Cass lay curled up in his bed with his face turned away so they couldn’t see his expression.
“Hey,” Bucky said, not moving from his spot in the doorway.
“You know I’m not actually angry with your Uncle Sam,”
No response.
“And I’m not angry with Bucky,” Sam added.
No response.
Bucky looked down, then away, then back at the lump under the dinosaur print sheets that was Cassidy.
“You know I love your Uncle very much,”
He met Sam’s eyes.
“And I felt angry last night because I don’t like when people know I’m hurting. It made me feel, not safe. I had, I had a very bad dream, that was a memory, and when I woke up I felt, really scared. And hopeless. And I took that out on your Uncle which wasn’t fair to him. At all. I know you guys were trying to help, I know that, thank you. Thank you for Mike, too. He’s very cuddleable,”
“You can rename him if you want,” Cassidy told him, without turning around.
Sam’s mouth twitched up.
“I like Mike,” Bucky reflected. “The double ‘M’, has a nice ring to it,”
“Alliteration,” Cassidy said.
“MmmMMmmM,” Bucky spoke for Mike.
Cassidy finally turned around to look at them, emerging from his cocoon.
“You’re OK?” he asked Bucky, sharp eyes watching him carefully.
Bucky thought about it.
“Middling, is what my dad would say,” he told Cass.
“Getting better all the time. Except the times that I’m not.” he said, smiling a little.
“I’m sorry I scared you. Both of you.”
“That’s OK,” Cassidy told him.
Sam’s eyes caught Bucky’s. Sam gave him a soft nod that said a thousand things more than a nod.
“Thanks,”