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Bucky Barnes was a light sleeper. He hadn’t always been. When he was younger, his mother used to say he could sleep through a hurricane. As it turned out, what he could not sleep through was war. And, after the war, the silence that never really felt like silence. Not that there had been a lot of quiet since that first night on the front.
Sam Wilson, it seemed, was not a light sleeper. He was not even a medium sleeper because even a medium sleeper would have woken up by now. He must’ve been putting bruises onto his own elbows and knees for how often he was turning over into Bucky. And Bucky wasn’t exactly a soft and cuddly guy.
At first, he thought Sam must’ve been doing it on purpose–pretending to be asleep and knocking into him just to see how long it would take for Bucky to yell. But when Bucky did finally snap at him to cut it out, Sam didn’t even twitch. Just turned over again and smashed his face back into his pillow.
They’d shared beds before. In Wakanda mostly, when Sam came to visit him. There wasn’t room not to in Bucky’s lodgings. But even in the palace, one of them would creep out of their own room and slip under the blankets of the other’s bed. They never talked about it–why would they?--so Bucky had no idea why Sam did it. But Bucky liked to listen to him breathe, liked the way he warmed the space around him, liked to wake up not alone.
Maybe the beds were bigger in Wakanda. Maybe Bucky passed out more easily. But he was pretty sure, barring those two options, that Sam hadn’t tossed and turned like this before. True, the bed they were in was smaller than usual. Typically they didn’t have to even brush shoulders if they didn’t want to, whereas here they were practically touching all the way down their sides. Even so, Bucky would’ve noticed.
Sam whimpered then, hands twitching against his chest and he turned over towards Bucky for the umpteenth time. His face was pinched and worried, a deep frown pulling at his mouth. Without thinking, Bucky reached over to smooth his thumb over the crease between his eyebrows, then over each eyebrow in turn until his forehead relaxed.
Bucky had often thought it before–usually when Sam was in the process of irritating him or he was in the process of irritating Sam–that Sam Wilson was really one of the most handsome men in the entire world. Bucky could spend an eternity staring at the fire in his eyes and the swoop of his cheekbones and the wry curve of his mouth when he grinned. He liked Sam’s long fingers and broad palms and he liked the way his chest rose and fell with each breath. He knew all of the scars on Sam’s torso and arms, knew about the one on his knee that was actually several scars piled on top of each other. He liked Sam’s face when he slept and he liked it when he was angry and he really liked it when he was laughing.
His thumb went to Sam’s eyebrow again, imagining it raised in a challenge the way it usually was around Bucky. He thought about the way Sam always crossed his arms over his chest when he raised an eyebrow. Always had to stop what he was doing to make the picture whole, really let Bucky know how dumb he thought the idea-du-jour was.
His fingers fell to Sam’s hand, working between Sam’s fingers until the tight fists he’d curled against his chest were looser, clinging onto Bucky’s touch instead. He slid his other hand to Sam’s back, hoped it had warmed beneath the blankets enough not to shock him, and gently rubbed the tension from his spine, his shoulders, the coil of his ribs.
Sam’s breath stuttered and he whimpered again, softer this time, face pressing into his pillow. Hiding. Seeking comfort or warmth. Bucky wasn’t sure, wasn’t in Sam’s head. He just kept gently working out the tightness of his back, smoothing his thumb over the friction burns from the jet-paack he always got. He’d forgotten to put the lotion on that he normally wore. Its sharp, medicinal smell hadn’t followed him from the bathroom earlier.
The lake house wasn’t small, but there were a lot more people seeking a night of rest. Bucky wasn’t even sure if anyone had put him and Sam together or if they’d just ducked into the same room on their own. He wondered if Steve had expected either one of them to bunk with him. Sam, probably, since they’d just spent several years on the run together.
But Bucky was pretty sure–hopeful, at least–that Sam was getting the same comfort and familiarity from him that Bucky was drawing from Sam. They’d both been spat out in the middle of a fight five years later, seen each other first thing. Bucky had lost time before–more than he could count–but there was no getting used to it. He’d felt off kilter all day, one step behind everyone else, head spinning in a vertigo rush.
But there’d been Sam, saying his name before Bucky even really remembered it. And there was Sam at the end of the fight, bleeding from above his eye in a way that made Bucky’s heart catch in his throat until Sam grinned at him, victorious and sad in equal measure. And there was Sam, in a warm, quiet room with him, changing into sleep clothes that weren’t theirs, just like they had dozens of nights before.
Sam jarred against Bucky’s side again and Bucky finally shifted to shake his shoulder gently. “Sam,” he murmured, moving to touch his ribs. “It’s just a dream. Hey, Sam, wake up.”
Sam did with a start, dark eyes darting around the room before landing on Bucky’s face and finally stilling. “Bucky,” he said in a breath. It didn’t quite release the tension from his back, but it brought his shoulders down from around his ears. “Sorry. What time is it?”
Bucky shrugged and let go of Sam’s fingers when he sat up. “I don’t know. A few hours after you fell asleep.”
“You slept yet?” Sam asked without quite looking at him.
“Not really.” He didn’t sleep that often. A few hours a night here and there. Usually more when Sam was around, but the energy of the fight, the chaotic fervor of the Snap and its repercussions, hadn’t left his body. He didn’t even want to close his eyes.
Sam rubbed sleep from his own eyes, still keeping his back to Bucky. “Sorry for keeping you up.”
“You’re not keeping me up,” he said. “Just can’t sleep.”
“I’m going to go get something to drink. Do you want anything?” But then he kept sitting on the side of the bed, not moving.
Bucky reached over to curl his fingers around Sam’s wrist and pulled him back down into the bed. “You wanna talk about it?”
Finally, Sam turned to face Bucky, curling up small and almost leaning into Bucky’s space. “You ever get recurring dreams but they change just a little bit?” he asked.
“Kind of,” Bucky said. “I mostly figured they were bad memories.”
Sam hummed, seemed to realize Bucky was still holding onto his wrist, and opened his hand under Bucky’s fingers, tracing along the inside of Bucky’s wrist. “I dream about Riley all the time. Used to lie and tell people it had stopped or eased up, but it was never true. Certain things would change–what we were talking about, how high we were, what the ground below us looked like. Stupid shit that doesn’t mean anything. Just enough to let me think it’d be different this time.
“But when I met Steve, and you, suddenly it was different every time. You’d be there or he’d be the Winter Soldier or we’d be helping Steve on a mission or he was Captain America. Sometimes we were in the desert, in New York, in DC, in Louisiana. Just…weird shit. And it always ended the same way. Somehow we were in the sky. Somehow he was falling back out of it.
“Tonight it was all of it. Over and over. Like someone was fucking with me with the Stones or something. But instead of getting shot down, he…dissolved. Like we did. Always right as I noticed him. It’s stupid, I know. I should know better by now. Should be able to control it, or at least my reactions to it. I just…lose it every time.”
Bucky frowned and brought his hand up to Sam’s cheek. “It’s not stupid, Sam. You’d never say that about anyone else’s nightmares.”
Sam snorted out a breath and his eyes closed for a few seconds. “It keeps happening. I’m up there just to watch. I do as much as I can but someone always dies. It’s never enough.”
Bucky pulled Sam close, curling his arms around Sam’s back and holding tighter when Sam started to shake against him. He felt the tears when Sam started to cry, which was funny because he didn’t feel his own when he followed suit. He’d cried more often in the last handful of years (give or take five that didn’t count) than he had in his whole life previously and it always hit him like this, where he didn’t realize it was happening until his cheeks were wet.
“I wanna go home,” Sam eventually got out, arms going around Bucky’s ribs, clutching at the sleep shirt he was wearing. “I wanna see my family. I should’ve been there for them.”
Bucky knew about Sam’s family, his sister and two nephews, one just about brand new the last time Bucky had heard. Earlier this day, he’d finally gotten to put voices with names while Sam spent a long while on the phone with possibly everyone in his hometown. They were all more than thrilled to hear from Sam and Bucky had watched Sam quietly break down with every new voice that told him to come home.
“You should,” he murmured finally. He knew Sam hadn’t fallen asleep in the several moments it took Bucky to find his voice again. “You should go home. There’s no way there’s gonna be more superheroing to do. You’ll get a pardon and you should go home.”
Sam shook his head. “There’ll…there will be more to do. Ramifications of all of this, people or organizations who will want to take advantage of the chaos–”
“When’s the last time you were actually happy, Sam? When’s the last time you got to slow down and breathe? Sleep for more than three hours at a time?” Bucky interrupted.
“There’s work to be–”
“Go home. The world will wait for you.”
“It hasn’t waited this whole time,” Sam pointed out, bitterness tinging his voice. “There’s so much to do. So much to catch up on.”
“Then catch up at home.” Bucky held his hand over the back of Sam’s head, rubbing his thumb along the base of his skull. “Actually do something for yourself. You’re not a machine, Sam. And the weight of the world shouldn’t be rested on your shoulders. You need a break.”
Sam pressed his face closer to Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky closed his eyes. “You’re a good man, Sam,” he murmured softly. “You always will be, even when you take time to eat and breathe and sleep. I’ve got you, alright? I’ll pick up what you drop, handle what you can’t.”
“Be there when I can’t sleep?” Sam asked a little drily.
“That’s a safe bet,” Bucky agreed. “You call, I’ll be up.”
Sam nodded against Bucky’s shoulder, his hair scruffing Bucky’s skin in a way that made Bucky’s arm and neck erupt with goosebumps. He hoped Sam didn’t notice. “Go to sleep, Barnes.”
“You first, Wilson,” Bucky answered on reflex. His arms tightened around Sam momentarily and Sam was already holding onto him again too. Bucky couldn’t make it go away, but at least he could hold him through the tossing and turning.