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“I got it,” Bucky snapped as Sam put the car in park and reached over to try and unbuckle Bucky’s seatbelt. He pulled his hand back and glared at Bucky for a second before getting out and coming around to the passenger side.
He opened the door and stepped back, watching as Bucky struggled to get out of the front seat. It reminded Sam of the time he picked his sister up from a party when she was in high school. She was so drunk she couldn’t even figure out how to move her feet out of the footwell, much less get up. Sam pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow as he watched Bucky struggle in a frighteningly similar way. Bucky finally looked up and narrowed his eyes, waiting for Sam to help him.
“Oh, no, go ahead, I wanna watch you get out of the car,” Sam said, waving a hand in Bucky’s direction and smiling. Bucky rolled his eyes and reached up for the plastic handle above the door. His grip faltered and he squeezed his eyes shut in pain.
Sam’s smile quickly faded and he leaned forward, grabbing Bucky’s arm and lifting him up out of the seat. He winced as Sam’s hand accidentally brushed the right side of his body. Even through the thick layer of zip hoodie beneath, Bucky’s burnt skin still registered the pressure. He squeezed his eyes shut and his Vibranium hand balled into a fist against the pain.
“You shoulda stayed in the hospital, man.” Sam admonished, his hand hovering over Bucky’s injured side. Bucky sighed and grunted, shaking his head in disgust.
“I’ll be fine,” Bucky lied, sounding like a broken record. If Sam had a nickel for every time Bucky said he was fine he would have enough to open a charity in the man’s name.
The burns had been bad; deep. When the explosion happened, Sam tried to fling the Vibranium wings around them both, but he wasn’t quite fast enough and the C4 took a good portion of Bucky’s jacket and most of the skin off his right side and chest. 3rd degree burns splattered across his ribs and up over his right pectoral. The second degree burns extended down his hip and around his lower back. Even with super soldier healing, Bucky was a mess.
Now, less than 24 hours later, Bucky limped slowly toward Sam’s apartment door. He held his right arm, protectively, around the burns, but was careful not to actually touch his side. Sam watched him out of the corner of his eye, not quite offering help, but ready to swoop in if he needed to again.
Bucky was both quiet and stoic in a way that Sam had not seen in anyone else except Steve. He wondered if it was the era he grew up in or if it was the centuries that followed that made them both that way. Whatever the cause, he wasn’t one to suffer the mother hen routine, so Sam mostly kept it to himself unless he expressly asked, or looked like he was going to faceplate onto the concrete. Over time, he’d learned that Bucky could absolutely handle himself. After all, he had 70 years on Sam and a lot of experience. Unfortunately, that experience was mostly with things that Sam didn’t really want to think about for too long.
“Yes, I’ve been burned this bad before,” Bucky said as Sam stopped in front of the apartment door. He jingled the keys, absently, in his hand, cocking a thoughtful eyebrow. “I could hear you thinking the entire walk from the car.” Bucky sounded very tired.
Sam nodded and opened the door, motioning for Bucky to go in first. “I was just wondering how long you’re gonna be bleeding on my couch, that’s all.”
Bucky ambled into the house, his right hand leaving his side only to ghost over the moulding of the doorway as he passed. He didn’t answer. Sam didn’t expect him to.
Sam trailed Bucky as he slowly made his way down the hall and into the living room. He stopped walking and winced, just standing in the middle of the room as if he didn’t know what to do next. Sam walked around him and headed into the kitchen, flicking on the lights as he went.
“I know you already turned Sarah down about Christmas, but I’m headed to Louisiana for a few days,” Sam called from the kitchen, reaching into the drainboard for two glasses and filling them from the tap. “If you need a ride back to New York, I can ask Torres to set something up for you.”
Sam didn’t hear a reply, or anything for that matter, from Bucky, so when he came back out into the living room, he expected the super soldier to be already asleep on his couch. Instead, he was still standing in the middle of the room. He was looking at Sam with that sour expression he often got when he didn’t like what he was hearing.
“What?” Sam asked, looking stupidly at Bucky and holding two glasses of water like an idiot. Bucky looked like he was about to say something, but he just shook his head instead.
“Nothing,” Bucky replied, finally making an agonizing move toward the couch.
“Oh, we’re gonna do this now?”
“Do what?” Bucky asked, reaching out his Vibranium hand to the back of the couch to steady himself.
“Pout,” he said, passing Bucky and putting the two glasses of water on the coffee table.
“I’m not pouting,” he replied shortly, narrowing his eyes and slowly lowering himself onto the couch. Sam sat down opposite him in the armchair.
“You are pouting,” Sam said, waggling an accusatory finger in his direction.
“I just…” Bucky started, hissing and leaning forward as he tried to get comfortable against the cushions. Sam watched him struggle, repressing the urge to get up and help. “I was kind of hoping to wait a few more days.”
“That’s the only smart thing you’ve said today,” Sam agreed. Bucky scowled at him, leaning forward for his glass of water and taking a few generous sips.
“Alright, I’ll tell Sarah I can’t make it,” Sam decided, leaning back in the chair so he could reach into his jeans pocket and grab his phone. Bucky made a small noise of protest.
“You don’t have to—“
“You’re damn right I don’t have to. I’m giving up my Christmas to babysit your cranky ass,” Sam said, tapping out a message. Bucky scowled again and curled his lip.
“I don’t need a babysitter, I just—,” he muttered. Sam snorted and looked down at his phone.
“I’m joking, man," he explained, typing quickly with his thumbs. "It’s fine, really. Sarah will understand. It wont be the first time I miss Christmas and it wont be the last.”
Bucky didn’t say anything to that. He assumed the pouting had resumed in full force, but when Sam looked up, he saw that Bucky’s eyes were now a thousand miles away. The glass in his metal hand hung limply and his lips were parted softly. He’d seen this look before. This was the look of Bucky remembering something.
“You good?” Sam asked, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. Bucky didn’t look up or reply, he just nodded, absently.
Sam wanted to ask Bucky, sometimes, what it was that he was remembering when he got like this. When the Thousand-Yard-Stare took over and Bucky looked like he was so far down memory lane he would probably need a map to find his way back, Sam always found himself becoming increasingly curious. But, memories were a tricky thing for Bucky and Sam had made himself a promise not to ask.
“We used to burn a Yule log,” Bucky said, softly. Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise. He very rarely shared the things he remembered with Sam. He was pretty sure he rarely shared anything with anyone. Bucky blinked and looked up. “At Christmas. It was a…thing.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” Sam nodded.
“Before,” Bucky said, his eyes drifting off past Sam. “When my parents were still alive and Rebecca…”
He trailed off, his face twisting a little, as if remembering hurt.
“Hey,” Sam said, softly. “You don’t have to—“
“She burned her hand by accident,” Bucky continued, not hearing Sam or not listening. His eyes started to look wet and sad. “Rebecca was so small, but she wanted to light it and I couldn't say no to her. So I—”
Bucky stopped and the room filled with a choking silence that made Sam uneasy. He didn’t know very much about Bucky’s life before HYDRA, except that his parents had died when he was young and he became a ward of the state. That was one of the reasons he was recruited by the military. At some point, he was separated from his younger sister, Rebecca.
Sam cleared his throat, breaking the silence. He shifted in the armchair again. Bucky’s head snapped up with a sniff and he looked at Sam. He’d started crying a little.
“Sorry,” he said with a meek smile. Sam shook his head.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
Bucky nodded and drew in a deep breath. He blinked a few times to clear the tears and leaned back into the cushions before Sam could stop him. He gasped and lurched forward, growling a little in frustration. His right hand spasmed close to his side, the fingers twitching in an aborted effort to soothe the pain.
“Alright, I can’t sit here and watch this any more,” Sam said, shaking his head and standing up. Bucky looked a little surprised as he watched Sam march around the coffee table. He stood there for a moment, assessing, before making a vague motion with his hand.
“Stand up,” he said. Bucky narrowed his eyes, but didn’t move. Sam shook his head again and leaned down, reaching out for his friend’s arm. Bucky flinched away and Sam quickly held his hands up in front of him.
“I just want to help you out of your sweatshirt,” he clarified, nodding a little as if to try and convince Bucky to let him. “If you’re gonna crash on the couch, you gotta do it the right way.”
“Sorry,” Bucky sighed, again apologizing for, essentially, existing.
“Just stand up and let me help you,” Sam grumbled, stepping back to give Bucky room to actually get up. Sam knew he was breaking the “don’t help Bucky” rule, but he just couldn’t watch the man suffer anymore. The poor guy was a mess and the least he could do was make him a little more comfortable, even if he had to actuallymake him.
“Yeah, ok,” Bucky sighed.
“Ok,” Sam agreed. Finally.
As he moved to stand, Bucky’s right arm remained caged around his side, protecting but still not touching. He pushed at the cushions with his left hand, stumbling a little as he tried to get his feet under him. He looked absolutely worn out.
When he was finally upright, it took Sam a few minutes of gentle maneuvering to get Bucky out of his sweatshirt. By the time Sam tossed it onto the floor next to the couch, Bucky was sweating through the black t-shirt he was wearing underneath. Cautiously, he reached out for the hem and began to ease it up and over the white bandages beneath.
“I’m gonna take a quick look at this before you lay down, alright?” Sam explained, looking up to make sure Bucky was still ok with what he was doing. He half expected Bucky to protest, but, instead, the super soldier just nodded and looked down at the strips of white covering his side.
With as much care as possible, Sam teased one of the adhesive strips away from his skin and peeled it back to show the slowly healing burn beneath. It had only been a little over 24 hours, but the burns already looked better than they had. The deeper burns were still so red that they looked almost black, but the shallower wounds had already scabbed over with cherry-red granulation tissue. Some of the milder blast burns that splattered across Bucky’s back were already pink and peeling with scabs. If he'd been just a little quicker...
Absently, Sam touched the edge of one of the burns and Bucky jumped, his Vibranium hand balling into a fist.
“Sorry,” Sam said, quickly. “Sorry.”
Bucky took a step back and dropped his shirt back over the bandages, nodding and looking like he desperately needed to sit down. Sam let him.
“It’s not your fault,” Bucky said, reaching out to rearrange the pillows on the couch to one side.
“Who said it was?”
“You have that look on your face,” Bucky replied with a shrug.
“What look?”
Bucky turned to face him, a pillow in his hand, and gave him a hard stare. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Sam pursed his lips and looked away as Bucky tossed the pillow onto the growing pile near one end of the couch. He didn’t know how Bucky knew what he was thinking sometimes, but maybe Sam wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he had hoped he was. It was true, he did blame himself and maybe letting Bucky stay on his couch for Christmas was kind of his way of atoning.
“Yeah, ok,” Sam agreed, walking back over to the armchair and sitting down as Bucky arranged himself on his uninjured left side. It was like watching a fish get comfortable out of water, but Sam didn’t offer to help again. He knew he had used up all of his helpful points just getting Bucky out of his sweatshirt.
Before long, Bucky was open-mouth drooling into Sam’s couch cushions, making the kinds of sounds old sleeping men in nursing homes made and twitching every now and then with soft grunts. Sam stuck around for a few more minutes before deciding that sitting and staring at a sleeping super soldier was just this side of creepy.
As he stood up, he looked down at the TV remote and suddenly got an idea. He switched on the TV and flipped over to YouTube. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for and the crackling fire came up on the screen with a flicker. He adjusted the volume and then set the remote down on the coffee table, right next to Bucky's half-empty glass of water and within his reach.
“Burning The Yule log?” Sam heard Bucky read off the screen. Sam turned around, surprised to see him awake. Even with his face smashed into the pillows, Sam could see the confusion.
“Yeah,” Sam said, looking back at the TV. “I don’t have a real fireplace and this says it’s a few hours long. I’m not sure how long you guys used to burn the log for but—.”
“Sam,” Bucky interrupted. He looked back down at the man on his couch, expecting another argument. Instead, he just saw Bucky smiling stupidly into the pile of pillows beneath his head. "Thank you."
Sam smiled and gave Bucky a little nod before heading to his bedroom.