Work Text:
**
It was a sultry summer night in Delacroix when Sam found Bucky smoking for the first time. He stood leaned on the balustrade of the porch, metal arm gleaming dimly in the moonlight, his human fingers curled delicately around the cigarette in his mouth. The butt glimmered in the darkness and Bucky ashed it off into the gravel of the driveway.
“Don’t let Sarah see that” Sam said, leaning next to him and wrinkling his nose at the smoke travelling into his airways with every breath. “Don’t let Sarah smell that, either” he added, waving a hand before his face.
Bucky didn’t acknowledge him and just took another drag, held it in, let it out through his nose.
“Didn’t know you smoked” Sam tried again. Sometimes Bucky needed a little time to decide if he was feeling social that day or not. He’d been exceptionally quiet recently, even for his standards, and though Sam knew Bucky had bad days something about this particular brand of silence just didn’t sit right with him.
“Didn’t used to,” Bucky shrugged. “Couldn’t, with Steve around. The punk nearly asphyxiated every time we entered a bar.”
Right, smoking in bars. Another reason to be glad Sam wasn’t born in the 1910s. Though, between the wars and the Great Depression and the racism, segregation and lynchings it seemed like more of a minor drawbrack.
“So what, you trying a new hobby?” Sam inquired. “‘Cause if so, bad choice, dude. Smoking kills.”
“Supersoldier,” Bucky said, deadpan.
“Ever heard of passive smoking?” Sam shot back.
Bucky shrugged and threw him a skeptical glance.
“All those bars you went to with Steve? You were passive smoking all night long, pal.”
“I won’t do it around the boys.”
“Better not. Sarah might have your other arm for that.”
“You making fun of a cripple, Wilson?” Bucky grunted, but Sam could tell even in the darkness that a smile tugged at Bucky’s lips.
“Seriously, though. If it isn’t an old habit, why are you trying to make it a new one?” Sam pushed.
“Never said it wasn’t an old habit,” Bucky shrugged, blowing smoke in Sam’s face.
“Man, sometimes I really don’t get how your brain works,” Sam sighed, trying to snatch the cigarette butt from Bucky’s hand—unsuccessfully so. “You just said you didn’t use to smoke!”
“Yeah” Bucky nodded, turning to lean with his back against the balustrade instead. “Didn’t use to before the war . Smoked plenty in the trenches of France. And Italy. And Poland, once. In London, too. Not in the trenches of course, just in the bars.”
“Okay, I get it, you’re a worldly man who has smoked all across the European theater.”
“Worldly indeed” Bucky grunted. “I swear, by 1944 I could distinguish German mud from Austrian and Austrian from French.”
Sam snorted and waved another plume of smoke away from his face. “Still doesn’t explain why you're smoking now ” he pointed out. “Feeling nostalgic?”
Bucky cast him a sour look. “No,” he said tersely. “Not particularly.”
Sam sighed. The past was and always would be a particularly touchy subject when it came to Bucky. If he was in the mood, he could reminisce for hours, AJ and Cass practically glued to his lips, Sarah and Sam pretending to be busy while they carefully listened in. He shouldn’t be the only one who knows his story Sarah always said, making Sam wonder when his baby sister had grown to be so wise. When Bucky wasn’t in the mood, however, one simple comment could be enough to make him retreat for the rest of the day. Sam hadn’t quite figured out yet how to tell what kind of day it was at any particular time.
“I don’t gotta be concerned, though, right, Buck?” he said eventually. “Cause smoking is a phenomenally bad coping mechanism.”
“I’m fine, Sam.” He said it in that final way of his that brooked no argument.
“I know, Bucky,” Sam sighed. “You’re always fine. That’s the problem.”
**
The second time he found Bucky smoking they were in New York, crashing at Bucky’s apartment after a two week stint in Japan. Bucky had left almost the second he turned the key in the lock, closed the door behind him with a short “Be back later, make yourself at home” and returned after four hours with a taut face and windswept hair and his fingers already in the packet of cigarettes.
He stomped past Sam and climbed out the window onto the fire escape where he cupped his hands against the wind to protect the fire and took a deep, long first drag. It was three more of those before the line of his shoulders relaxed and he sank back against the brick wall of the brownstone.
Sam hesitated, then grabbed his own jacket and joined him on the iron steps, making sure to sit upwind from Bucky so he wouldn’t inhale too much of the smoke. It wasn’t so much the idea of smoking than the smell that he hated.
“I smoked in Russia, too” Bucky said after a while and it was so unexpected Sam almost hit his head on the metal railing as he looked up. “I worked with this one guy for a while. Alexei. He always had a packet of Belomorkanals, and he didn’t mind sharing. They were awful, of course, but fortunately I didn’t remember Lucky Strikes, so they were okay.” He laughed quietly and inspected the butt between his fingers.
“The Winter Soldier didn’t strike me as someone who indulged in a lot of vices,” Sam said.
“He could be” Bucky replied, a weird, dark undertone to his voice that Sam couldn’t quite interpret. “When they allowed me to be. Belomorkanals, they had this—hollow mouthpiece” he said, gesturing at his own cigarette to indicate exactly what he meant. “And you used to pinch it, before lighting the thing, so it would hold better in your mouth. They constantly quenched, those things. Couldn’t talk for too long or it would just die on you and you had to constantly relight it.”
“You almost sound like you miss it,” Sam said warily.
Bucky shrugged, blew smoke out his nose, sucked it back in through his mouth. “Most of the memories I have aren’t really ones I’m particularly eager to think back to” he said slowly. “But…there are a few that aren’t so awful, and they usually contain me smoking some sort of nail with one person or another. During the war. Then with Hydra. Well, Alexei wasn’t really Hydra. Doesn’t matter.”
“Nail?” Sam asked, hung up on the wording.
Bucky laughed. “Yeah, nail. Coffin nail. Cigarette. Everyone with a bit of sense in their noggin’ knew they were bad even in the ‘40s, Sam, we just had so much shit to worry about that it didn’t really matter. If you’re struggling to feed your family through the week, you don't tend to spend a lot of thought on the lung cancer you might get in a decade. They don’t use that word anymore?”
“Don’t know, you’re the only smoker I’ve ever met,” Sam shrugged. “So who’d you smoke with during the war? Steve?”
“Ha” Bucky snorted, stubbing out his cigarette butt in the palm of his vibranium hand. “No, Steve hated it, even once he had no trouble getting a full lungful of oxygen past his windpipe. But Dernier always smoked Gitanes—he’d curse us stupid when they sent Gauloises instead. I never much cared about the difference, but the French are peculiar about that sort of thing. Or maybe that was just Dernier” he shrugged. “He insisted on getting French rations even once he was with the Howlies and technically under US command. Didn’t like any of the American brands. Like I said, he was peculiar about that sort of thing.”
Sam couldn’t help but listen raptly as Bucky spoke, and he felt a tiny little bit like young Sammy Wilson hearing about the exploits of the Howling Commandos for the first time in school. Only this was the sort of thing that you couldn’t learn from history books. The sort of thing that made people real and tangible and that made it very easy to imagine Steve and Bucky hunkered down somewhere in a forest in Europe, rifles at their backs, debating who got to eat the best of what their rations had to offer.
“Is that why you started smoking again?” Sam asked, determined to get to the bottom of it. “Good memories?”
“Quit asking, Wilson,” Bucky said in slight annoyance. “It ain’t that deep.”
**
The third time it wasn’t just Lucky Strikes anymore. They were stranded somewhere in Eastern Europe—with their comms down and Redwing out of commission it was impossible to tell if they were still in Poland or had crossed the border to Slovakia by now. Maybe they were somewhere completely off course and trudging through the westernmost part of Ukraine. Bucky had insisted they were on the right track, however (something to do with stars and the sun and shit).
“What, you can’t tell by the mud?” Sam had teased and been met with an unamused grunt.
Bucky pushed steadily forward, one hand pressed grimly to his side where he’d cracked a rib just hours earlier. He didn’t say a word other than to warn Sam of low hanging branches and uneven ground. Just as dusk began to set in he stopped and released a long breath.
“Well, we’re definitely not in Ukraine,” he said grimly. Sam followed his gaze until his eyes caught on the ragged outline of ancient ruins rising into the night sky on a hill some five hundred yards ahead of them. He could just make out the remains of a square tower, the crumbled walls of which still reached several dozen feet high into the air.
“How are you so sure?” he asked as they climbed up the incline.
For a while, Bucky didn’t reply. Then he said, “Been here before”, picking up branches of dry wood from the ground to start a fire.
“These old ass European castles all look the same to me,” Sam said. “You certain it was this one?” He looked around them, from the old stones to the left to the old stones in front of him to the old stones on the right.
Bucky tossed the wood onto a big pile and freed a box of matches from the inside pocket of his jacket. At least the smoking was good for something, Sam supposed. Bucky struck one and tossed it at the firewood, then he struck another and lit a cigarette. It had appeared between his lips without Sam seeing him place it there.
“This one…was particularly memorable” Bucky said eventually, swapping his box of matches for a small flask.
“You drinking now, too?” Sam asked, brows raised.
“Not like I can get drunk” Bucky said drily, offering the flask to him. Sam declined with a shake of his head.
“Are you gonna be okay staying here?” he frowned in consternation. “I mean is it…particularly good memorable or particularly bad memorable?”
Bucky thought for second, then shrugged and tipped some of his drink onto the fire, which hissed and burned a little brighter. “All things considered, neither” he said eventually. “It wasn’t any more or less awful than usual. It was just…different.”
“Different how?” Sam ventured to ask.
“Only time I managed to run away” Bucky said and they left it at that.
Bucky smoked a lot that night, dismissing Sam’s suggestion to switch the watch halfway through with a simple wave of his hand and a mildly amused look that said you need more sleep than me, Sam, don’t even fight me on this . As always, Sam tried to fight him on it anyways and also as always he eventually gave up and simply tried to make as comfortable a bed as possible out of the grassy ground beneath them. It took him a while to fall asleep, however and so he watched the glimmer at the end of Bucky’s cigarette glow everytime he took a drag and he watched Bucky light a new one two, three, four times before Sam fell asleep.
The next morning he rose with the sun and Bucky had barely moved from his position. He just greeted Sam with a lazy wave and they packed up their things and trekked back down the hill on the opposite side of where they’d come from.
“How long was it before they found you?” Sam asked around midday, the silhouettes of a small town rising in the distance.
“Three days,” Bucky said. “This was night one” he pointed back at the ruins of the castle somewhere behind them. “Was pretty early on, I think. Later, I wouldn’t even have thought about running anymore. Actually…” he paused, turned in a circle, his eyes scanning the horizon. “Yeah” he said finally and fell back into step, heading further east, not west. Sam followed him wordlessly.
After about fifteen minutes march, Bucky stopped once more in the shadow of a copse of trees and crouched down before a large boulder, running his human hand across the stone. “Would you look at that” he muttered, and Sam did, his eyes finding the spot in the granite that Bucky’s finger was pointing at. There, very faint after decades of erosion, was a small, five-point star etched into the stone.
“I put that there,” Bucky said. “Thought if I got it out of my head somehow it might make more sense. Didn’t, of course. I scratched it into the walls of my cell all the time in the beginning, too. Luckily for me, they just assumed it was the communist star they had plastered onto my shoulder.” His right hand ghosted along the spot on his vibranium arm where the bright red star had been on the old one. “It wasn’t, though. This” he said, tapping the markings, “this was for Steve.”
**
After the fourth time, Sam decided to investigate what was really going on. It was a pattern by now, that whenever they weren’t on assignment and staying in New York, Bucky would go out for hours, return with an even more tense expression than usual, and vanish straight to the fire escape to smoke and down forty year old vodka. If they weren’t staying in New York he would simply go silent. Not quiet, like he often did, but silent. He’d be responsive and present—not the dissociation Sam had witnessed often enough. Just withdrawn. Ruminating.
So when they were in New York again and Bucky went out at the exact same time he always did (3.30pm on the dot), Sam grabbed Redwing from his pack, slid on the gauntlet, and sent the little drone flying after him. He stayed high, so the people on the street wouldn’t notice—although he doubted anyone would, this was New York, they were used to alien invasions and spider-boys and Tony Stark testing questionable tech over the city skyline. People probably wouldn’t bat an eye at a tiny drone. Still, he stayed high, but not so high to disturb the airspace, and he followed Bucky halfway across Brooklyn before he descended into the subway (really, now , after walking seven miles?) and Sam lost track of him.
The next time, he tried to follow Bucky personally. He left the house first, on the pretense that he was going on a run, and he slipped into a coffee shop along the way Bucky had gone the last time before heading underground, in the hopes that he wouldn’t stray from his path now. He didn’t, and Sam slipped out of the coffee shop and merged into the crowds along the sidewalk, weaving his way past people with a deliberate distance maintained between him and Bucky. This time, Bucky walked past the subway station and instead turned into a small sidealley. When Sam rounded the corner, he was met with a solid wall of muscle and stumbled a few steps back, staring right into Bucky’s face.
“You really think I don’t know when I’m being followed?” Bucky said.
“You didn’t notice last time” Sam shot back.
“Didn’t I? You think I’m a big fan of using the subway?” he raised a challenging eyebrow.
Sam went through it in his head: crowded, cramped, loud, limited exits—all things Bucky wasn’t particularly fond of and tended to avoid wherever possible (besides moving away from New York, that was somehow not up for debate). Oh, and of course there was the whole falling-off-a-train-to-his-almost-death thing.
“You only took the subway to get away from Redwing” Sam sighed, feeling a little guilty that Bucky had felt pressured into such measures.
“Yeah, and I was reminded exactly why I don’t do that shit” Bucky bit back.
“You really don’t want me knowing where you’re always disappearing off to, huh?”
“No, Sam, I don’t. Otherwise I would have told you . It’s none of your damn business.”
“Except that cigarettes and vodka have become a staple of your already abysmal diet.”
“Neither of which is going to kill me.”
“That’s not the point, Bucky! I know you’re not gonna get lung cancer, and I know your liver could probably metabolize whale piss if it needed to, but the point is that you’re trying very hard to smoke and drink yourself to death and I’m worried about you, man! You won’t talk to me!”
There was a beat of silence and then Bucky cracked a smirk. “ Whale piss ?” he repeated, clearly royally amused.
“I needed something outlandish” Sam gritted out. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m fine, Sam, I promise.”
“See, the problem is that I want to believe you, but I can’t. You’ve told me you’re fine while you were literally bleeding to death internally. You understand my predicament here?”
Bucky sighed, ran a gloved hand through his hair, let it drop back to his side. “I get it, Sam. And I appreciate the concern. But I need to do this on my own. I…I need this for myself. And I don’t got a whole lot of time here, so can you just accept that and go home, please?”
Sam shifted his weight onto his right leg, arms crossed before his chest. “Alright, fine” he acceded eventually. “Can I just ask you one question?”
“What?”
“Is this an amends thing? Is it something that’s gonna pull you into a hole after it’s over? Or is it something permanent?”
“That’s three questions, technically” Bucky grouched, but he put on his thinking face. “I don’t know where I’m gonna end up once it’s…over. But it’s not an amends thing, no. Not amending, more just…mending.” His face went a little soft as he spoke, his voice a little brittle.
“Okay” Sam said, not really satisfied but acutely aware of the way Bucky kept glancing at his wristwatch. “Well, take care, man. And don’t forget you got people in your corner now. People that care about you.”
Bucky nodded tersely and then turned the corner and vanished in the crowds.
**
“He’s been smoking an awful lot” Sarah said to him one day when he and Bucky were over for the weekend. “I mean at first it was a little weird, now it's just outright worrying. You sure he can’t get cancer from those things?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Sam sighed, watching the shape of Bucky’s shoulders through the living room window. “He seems pretty certain, but cancer isn’t exactly a bacterial infection. His cells don’t do anything different from ours, they just do it better, faster. Don’t mean they can’t spontaneously mutate.”
“And he won’t tell you at all what’s going on with him?” Sarah frowned, tucking another bedsheet under her chin to fold it.
“ I’m fine, Sam, don’t worry about me ” Sam mockingly dropped his voice into a passable impression of Bucky’s. “ I’m a big, strong supersoldier, I’ve survived the unthinkable, I’m practically invincible. I’m fine as a peach. ”
Sarah tried to throw him a reprimanding look, but she devolved into laughter too soon for it to be in any way believable. Used to, she couldn’t get with Sam’s dark humor when he came back from Afghanistan, but after losing their parents, her husband, her brother for five years—and after having Bucky around the house for weeks at a time—she had soon caught on to joking about the things that actually scared the shit out of you.
“You better hope he didn’t hear that” she got out between bouts of laughter.
“I did!” came Bucky’s voice from outside, slighty raised. “Never in my life have I said that I’m fine as a peach !” He came inside then, toeing off his shoes and dropping onto the couch next to Sam.
“Ugh, you reek of the stuff” Sam grimaced. “Seriously, Buck, this shit can’t go on forever. Come on.”
“Uncle Sam said ‘shit’!” crowed AJ from the bottom of the stairs, triumphant. “Now you’ve gotta put a dollar in the swear jar!”
Sam faked a broken heart over the one buck he had to sacrifice for his dirty language and patted AJ’s shoulder as he passed him by. The boys had been delighted as always when Sam and Bucky turned up more or less unannounced on their doorstep, and as always they made it their sole task to squeeze Bucky like a lemon until he played with them or told them stories or let them use him as a human jungle gym—whatever tickled their fancy most on that particular day. But even the boys had noticed that recently, Bucky’s heart wasn’t really in it.
“It’s not something we did, is it?” Cass asked that evening after dinner, when Bucky had already excused himself and was back out on the porch. The kids both looked at their mother with wide, worried eyes, and Sarah looked at Sam as if he was supposed to have all the answers.
“No, buddy” he shook his head, aiming for a tone more reassuring that he felt he could be. “I don’t know what’s going on with him. I’m working on it. In the meantime, just don’t let him forget he’s still got us, yes?”
“Okay” Cass nodded and AJ did, too, and they all helped Sarah clear away the dishes. Once that was done and the boys had picked out ‘Coco’ for movie night, Sam grabbed two blankets and two bottles of beer and joined Bucky outside, dropping onto the outdoor sofa along the wall of the house.
Bucky turned around to him, stubbing out his cigarette and dropping it in the ashtray Sarah had placed on the balustrade a month earlier, when it had become clear that Bucky’s smoking habit wouldn’t soon go away. He accepted a bottle from Sam and sat down next to him.
“I thought you didn’t want me drinking,” Bucky said.
“Well, if you’re gonna do it anyway I might as well join in for a little while. It’s sad to drink alone, you know. Did no one ever tell you that when you were growing up?”
“You never had to drink alone when I was growing up,” Bucky retorted. “My Dad used to say he always had his ghosts drinking with him.”
“That sounds healthy,” Sam snorted. “You drinking with your ghosts, too?”
“Yeah, actually” Bucky nodded solemnly. “There’s this particularly persistent one who just won’t leave me alone. Keeps pestering me about my unhealthy coping mechanisms.”
“Maybe you should just tell him what’s going on, to shut him up,” Sam shrugged with a smirk.
Bucky huffed and took a long swig from his beer. “I’m not gonna talk, Sam,” he said eventually. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“That’s okay. We’ll just sit here in comfortable silence and drink our beer, like real men.”
“Oh, don’t fucking start with that again. This isn’t about me growing up with—what do you call it?—‘antiquated male stereotypes’. This is just about me not wanting to share every single aspect of my life with you.”
“Alright then” Sam said easily, leaning back with his legs stretched out before him, crossed over at the ankles.
“It’s not—” Bucky started before cutting himself off. His vibranium hand fiddled with the label of the beer bottle and Sam found himself staring at the movements. Even after all this time he was still fascinated with the dexterity of those mechanical fingers.
“It’s not what?” he then prompted cautiously when Bucky didn’t continue.
Bucky shifted a little, tried to press the little corner of the label he’d peeled off back onto the wet glass. “It’s not gonna be much longer, anyway” he finally said with a thick voice that sent alarm bells ringing in Sam’s brain.
“Somehow that doesn’t sound like a good thing” he pointed out slowly.
“It’s…it’s not” Bucky conceded, lighting another cigarette.
“You don’t want it to be over—whatever it is?”
“No,” Bucky whispered. “No, I don’t.”
“But it has to end?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it has to end.”
**
“My Dad fought in the war” Bucky said as they were sitting on the fire escape once more. “That’s the ghosts he drank with. Don’t even know what he was like, before. My Ma always said he was a jokester. Played a lot of pranks, that kind of stuff.”
“You’ve never really talked about your folks before,” Sam said gently.
Bucky looked at him and shrugged, blowing smoking into the night. “I think that’s why I didn’t get it when Steve wouldn’t shut up about joining the army,” he said. “I just…I mean Steve knew my Dad. But he was different, when people were around, you know. Tried to pull himself together. Tried to pretend like he wasn’t wrecked. Everyone knew, of course. But you didn’t talk about it. The men had gone to war, and the sons were gonna go after them, and there was nothin’ anybody could do about it.”
“Buck…where’s all this coming from?” Sam asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just…you’ve been talking about your past a whole lot recently. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s…unlike you.”
Bucky let out a long breath and tipped his head back to look at the sky. It was cloudy tonight—not that you’d usually get a lot of stars over New York City.
“A lot of stuff’s been coming back, recently” Bucky said eventually. “Things I didn’t remember before.”
“Oh” Sam said, something heavy settling in his chest. “That’s good though, isn’t it? Means your brain’s still healing, even now.”
“Sure” Bucky nodded absently. “It’s just weird, is all.”
“Weird how?”
“I don’t know,” Bucky shrugged. “It’s sort of hard to explain. Probably makes zero sense” he scoffed at his own words and downed the last remains of vodka in a bottle he’d only started the day before.
“Try me” Sam offered, pulling his legs close and scooting over to his right so he sat directly opposite Bucky, studying the other man’s thoughtful face.
“Fine” Bucky sighed, twirling the empty bottle in his hands. “It makes it weirder, me being here. Like—I had this whole life planned out, you know? Steve always wanted to be some hotshot, but I just wanted to take care of my family, help out where I could. Provide, I guess—and I know it sounds mundane, or stereotypical or whatever, so no need to point that out.”
“I wasn’t gonna” Sam grunted. Much as he loved teasing Bucky and winding him up, he would never sink so low as to make fun of the life he never got to live.
“Just weird to think they went on without me, you know?” Bucky continued. “They went on vacations and got married and had kids and—” he choked on his own voice then and clenched his jaw. He reached for his pack of Lucky Strikes and slipped one between his lips, savoring the first drag as though the nicotine actually had any effect on him.
Sam thought about Sarah. Thought about how much she’d changed in the many years Sam had been overseas, the many more he’d been nothing but dust. He thought about AJ who had gone from a toddler to a fully fledged person with hobbies and ideas and opinions, all in the blink of an eye for Sam. He thought about Cass, who had grown up so much in so little time. He still sometimes felt a little out of step with the rest of his family. There were still moments where Sarah would tell stories about the boys when they were little and Carlos would laugh with her, but Sam didn’t understand. There were still moments where he caught himself talking to Cass like he was six.
In five little years of non-existence he had missed so much life. But at least he got to catch up now, he got to make new memories, be part of new inside jokes, see the boys grow slowly but surely into men. He got to be there for birthdays and proms, he got to look at their embarrassed faces when he gave them The Talk. Bucky just got a bucket full of memories and a whole lot of What Ifs.
“I’m sorry, man” Sam said, switching to sit next to Bucky instead, shoulder to human shoulder. “If you ever wanna…I mean I know Steve got a bunch of his old stuff back from the Smithsonian when he came off the ice. Some of it was with the army, too, or private collectors. Tony even still had a few pictures lying around, from his Dad. So if you ever wanted to dig up something of yours, I could reach out, make a few calls. I’m sure somebody’s gotta have something that should be back where it belongs.”
Bucky pinned him with that piercing stare of his and smirked a little. “Thanks, Sam. But I think I’m good.”
**
“You know, I really wouldn’t’ve pegged you for a vodka man” Sam remarked once, on a rooftop looking over Tunis. “Doesn’t seem…all-american, somehow.”
Bucky snorted and offered him the bottle of Stolichnaya.
“No thank you” Sam grimaced. “I haven’t had vodka since my college days and I can’t remember the reason why.”
Bucky shrugged and washed the rest of his cigarette down with a drink. “Tastes change” he said after he’s swallowed. “Think of the Russians what you will, but they know how to drink. Although this shit?” he pointed at the bottle with his human hand. “Not the same you get in Russia.”
“What is it with supersoldiers and trying to get wasted?” Sam sighed. “Steve tried his best at that, too. Succeeded once, with some Asgardian stuff that Thor handed around at a party. I’ve never seen anything more pathetic than Steve Rogers whining about how he doesn’t understand why the Dodgers ever left Brooklyn.”
“Hey, don’t joke about that,” Bucky said seriously. “That was a hard blow straight to the fuckin’ heart, finding out about that.”
Sam laughed and when he caught Bucky’s face in the dim light of the street lamps below, he laughed even more. “Okay, I’m sorry!” he snorted, trying to school his face into a somewhat sympathetic expression. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been—” Nope, couldn’t do it. He cracked up again and laughed until his ribs hurt from the effort.
“Glad you find such a deeply personal betrayal so amusing” Bucky muttered with a barely-hidden smirk. Then he grew somber again and there was something almost like longing in the lines of his face. “When…when was that?” he asked, fiddling with his lighter. “The party.”
“Oh” Sam said and he could feel his stomach drop a little. “That was…well, you were hiding out somewhere in Europe. It was right around Ultron. You know, Sokovia, that whole ordeal.”
“So…when exactly? I was a little out of it for a while after DC.”
“Right. Dunno, not too long after the whole Insight thing. Maybe a year? Why?”
For a while Bucky didn’t answer and they just sat in silence, listening to the sounds of the city below.
“It’s stupid, really,” he said eventually. “Just…I’d’ve loved to see Steve drunk, just once. When he was still…Before the serum he was such a lightweight because of how sick he was that he’d go from sober to unconscious in the span of two beers. And after—well, obviously he couldn’t get drunk anymore. So all I ever got was serious, righteous, stoic Steve Rogers. And I loved that guy, but I would have enjoyed hearing him whine a little about the Dodgers, too.”
Sam studied Bucky’s face as best he could, trying to parse what was going on inside the man’s head—although he’d learned pretty early on that that wasn’t always a good idea.
“He talked about you a lot, too, during that party,” Sam said slowly. “Wasn’t really all that coherent all the time, but he had a lot of plans of what he wanted to show you when we found you.”
“Hm,” Bucky grunted. “And what happened to those plans, huh? Fuckall.”
“Also, he asked Tony to buy the Dodgers and bring them back to Brooklyn” Sam suddenly remembered with a grin.
Bucky laughed at that and the echoes of his amusement settled on his face in a fond smile. “One of his better ideas, that one” he said. “What did Stark say?”
“Nothing,” Sam grinned. “He was busy puking his guts out.”
“Oh God. Now I’m kind of glad I wasn’t there.”
Sam hesitated before asking the next question, unwilling to break the good mood. It was one he’d been asking himself for a long time, and there had never been a better opening for asking it than now.
“What were you doing, while you were on the run?” Sam asked eventually, watching Bucky closely. “I mean…what did life look like for you, back then?”
Bucky met his eyes with a thoughtful frown, metal fingers plucking absently at the crumbling tip of his cigarette, pulling the ash free and releasing it into the night sky in a snow of cooled-off embers. “I…” he paused, leaned over the edge of the roof to watch the nightlife below them.
“My memory is sort of spotty, for most of that time. When Steve came to get me in Bucharest I’d barely just gotten my shit together, really. I didn’t know what was real or imagined, which memories were really mine and which ones they’d planted. I was scared out of my mind because I knew they could put me right back at their heel with ten little words. Once I figured out I was going through withdrawal from all the shit they pumped into my veins, I started shooting up—sometimes seven, eight times a day. Tried a bunch of different stuff. Still don’t know what they used to keep me on, but nothing I ever tried put so much as a dent in it. So I went cold turkey. Didn’t really matter if I was hopped up on drugs or not, I was still seeing things either way.
“I started writing down whatever I thought were the real memories, tried to parse through what made sense together. They’d implanted so many different things into my head over the years that much of it just didn’t go together. Came up with about three different explanations for who I was. Then Steve showed up and I just went with it. Chose to believe that version of the story, because at least that meant I had someone on my side.
“After Shuri fixed my brain and I was mostly certain of what reality I was living in, I went back through my notebooks. I figure I got about fifty percent of it right, in the beginning. The rest was just…imagination. Either stuff I made up myself—some sort of wishful thinking maybe, to fill in the gaps. Or stuff Hydra wanted me to believe. I think that’s why I was so fucked up right after Steve left. I was just…for a long time, he was the only thing I knew was real. So when he left…”
“It messed with your head” Sam concluded heavily. “Made you question things again.”
“Yeah” Bucky nodded slowly. “That.”
He dabbed out his cigarette on the edge of the roof and got to his feet, vodka bottle held loosely in his right hand. “You think we’re gonna wrap up here tomorrow?” he asked, his body already angled to leave.
“I guess” Sam shrugged, pushing out of his chair. “Why, you got somewhere to be?”
“Yes” Bucky said, heading for the stairs that led back down to their rooms. “I do.”
**
“I’ve been going to see my sister,” Bucky revealed out of the blue while they were rattling along 30,000 feet over the Pacific.
Of all the things Sam had been considering might be going on, this was not one of them. He didn’t know whether he was more surprised by Bucky’s sudden mood to share or by his actual words.
“You…I don’t understand” he stuttered after a moment. Somehow it felt rude to ask Have you been going to see her grave? so he kept his mouth shut and waited for Bucky to explain, not sure that he would.
“She’s not dead, Sam,” Bucky said wryly, in reply to Sam’s unsaid words. “Don’t worry, I’ve not been spending my afternoons talking to a headstone. No, she lives in a retirement home in Queens.”
“Oh” was all Sam could think of saying. “Wow. That’s great, Buck. Sorry, I just assumed…I didn’t know she was still alive.”
“It’s Becca,” Bucky said, studying his hands folded in his lap. “I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s the youngest, eight years younger than me. And she was blipped, so.”
“So she’s ninety-five now?”
Bucky nodded mutely and his vibranium fingers closed into a fist so tight the metal creaked under the pressure. “She’s not doing well,” he said quietly. So quietly, in fact, that Sam could only just make out what he was saying over the noise of the plane. “I mean, you know. She’s ninety-five. She was pretty spry when I went to see her the first time, but the last two months she’s been getting worse.”
Something awful clutched at Sam’s heart at those words. “Fuck, Bucky, I’m sorry” he said, watching the man across from him with furrowed brows. “I’m glad you’ve told me, though. You shouldn’t have to handle this on your own.”
Bucky grunted and his mouth moved, but either no words came out at all or Sam simply couldn’t hear them.
“So…that’s why stuff’s been coming back to you? You’ve been talking with her about the good ‘ol times?” he tried himself at a bit of levity, which fell awkwardly flat in the heavy atmosphere that filled the space between them.
“Well…” Bucky began, one leg bouncing steadily up and down. That was step two of his nervous tics—Sam had known Bucky long enough to have a mental list of those by now. Whenever Bucky was seriously anxious about something he’d first start clenching his fists, then bouncing his leg, then flipping a knife—what came after that Sam had fortunately never had to find out. To most people Bucky just looked bored when he did those things. For Sam, the leg bounce was usually what sent his alarm bells ringing.
“She doesn’t know who I am” Bucky finished slowly. “I told her I’m a nephew. One of my other sister’s son’s kids. I keep the arm hidden. Barely sound like I did anymore anyways, so that’s no issue. Mostly she just tells stories about her family—my family. Her kids and so on. And I just listen. Try not to freak out over the fact that I’ve got two nieces and three nephews. And they all have kids, too.”
“Why?” Sam asked, his thoughts lagging a bit behind as his brain tried to process all the new information.
“What?”
“Why wouldn’t you tell her you’re you? I mean, you’re her brother, Buck, I’m sure she’d want to know.”
“Yeah, I’m her brother that died in the war, then spent seventy years killing people and getting my brain fried so that now I’ve barely got two coherent memories and am currently trying to claw my way back to something resembling a life. I’m sure she’d be fucking thrilled to find out about that. Apparently Steve gave her a visit after he came out of the ice and almost gave her a heart attack. I’m aware of my reputation, Sam, but I’m not really out to scare my sister to death.”
“Sorry to be so blunt, but to be more accurate: you’re her brother that almost died in the war, was then held captive, tortured and brainwashed into killing people, and who’s now a major pain in my ass but still very much a person worth knowing. And most importantly to her, probably—you’re the brother that she lost and grieved and now gets to see again. How would you feel, in her position?”
“In her position, I’d be blissfully ignorant, so I’d feel perfectly fine.”
“You should tell her, Bucky.”
“I didn’t share this with you just to be told how to handle my fucked up life” Bucky bit back.
“I’m just saying” Sam sighed, trying to channel his frustration into a gentle tone. “If you don’t, you might end up regretting it.”
“Well then I’ll just add it to the pile” Bucky said, crossing his arms and closing his eyes, putting an unequivocal end to the conversation.
**
“She wants to meet you,” Bucky said when he got home from a visit with his sister, tossing his jacket into the corner of the room. “Apparently I talk about you a lot,” he added sheepishly. “I’m pretty sure she thinks we’re an item.”
“Man, you are so old,” Sam snorted.
“Uh-huh” Bucky grunted, unscrewing another bottle of Stoli.
“Okay, so do you want me to come with you, one of these days?” Sam said soberly.
“Do you?” Bucky asked, an unusual look of doubt in his eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Bucky shrugged. “She’s old. She forgets things. She can’t always keep up a conversation for long. And she’s…you know. Just old.”
“Yeah, you basically just described yourself, buddy.”
Bucky shot him a dirty look and Sam sank into one of the kitchen chairs, schooling his face into a carefully neutral expression.
“No, in all seriousness, Buck” he said, holding Bucky’s gaze until the blue eyes flitted away to stare down at the kitchen table. “I’d love to meet her, are you kidding? She’s your family . I finally get to dig up some dirt on Itty Bitty Bucky Barnes.”
Bucky gave a crooked smirk before the smile dropped away from his lips and he knocked back his drink. “No, you don't,” he said. “She doesn’t know I’m me, remember? She thinks I’m someone named Steven Barnes Calloway. I’m a carpenter working out of upstate New York, I’ve got a dog and I don’t like pickles.”
“Right” Sam shook his head in disbelief. “Well, you might be comfortable lying to her, but I don’t do that kind of thing, Buck,” he said firmly. “I’m sorry, but as much as I’d like to meet your sister, I’m not gonna help you keep up that ridiculous ruse.”
“Fine” Bucky said and there was an edge to his voice that betrayed what he really thought. “I’ll tell her you couldn’t make it, then.”
“Or you could tell her the truth,” Sam suggested pragmatically. “But, you know—just a thought.”
“Sure” Bucky grunted.
“Also— Steven Barnes Calloway?” Sam snorted. “Where did that come from?”
Bucky looked up at him and he actually seemed a little embarrassed as he spoke. “Well, Calloway was Helen’s—my middle sister’s—husband’s name. She kept her own name as well, so Barnes. And Steven…it’s kind of a family tradition, apparently. Naming kids, boys, naming them after Steve. And me. So. Felt weird pretending to be someone who was named after me.”
“You got people named after you?” Sam grinned. “What, like—James Buchanan Barnes, the Second?”
Bucky huffed a little laugh. “No, not quite like that. But there’s…” he furrowed his brows like he always did when he was trying hard to pin down a memory. “I don’t know, I’ve got it written down somewhere. But there’s my eldest sister’s first son, James, and one of Becca’s grandkids is called Steve. Oh, and her daughter, Gemma. She was born a year after I…” His voice tapered off and he swallowed hard. “There’s a few others—more creative twists as well. It’s honestly a bit much to keep track of.”
“Buck, you know what they’re doing, right?” Sam said, leaning on the kitchen table.
“Yeah, they’re naming people after me, for whatever reason.”
“They’re honoring your memory. Literal generations later.”
“I…” Bucky gaped at him with glassy eyes that had nothing whatsoever to do with the alcohol. “I guess they are, aren’t they?” he breathed, something fragile showing on his face.
“Yeah, Buck, they are,” Sam nodded solemnly.
“I really should tell her, shouldn’t I?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you really should.”
“Fuck” Bucky muttered, reaching for his packet of cigarettes on the table. Sam watched as he tried to light the thing with trembling fingers before he switched it to his left hand. The vibranium was always calm and steady. A remark sprang to mind about smoking indoors and he swallowed it down. Not the time.
“Is it really such a bad thing, her knowing?” he asked cautiously as Bucky tried to preempt his impending hyperventilation by inhaling smoke instead of oxygen. “I mean…you’ve gotta wanna talk to her, right? As you, I mean. I’m sure there’s things you’d like to say.”
“‘Course there is,” Bucky muttered, biting his lip. “But how the hell do I explain all this to her?”
“Not like she lives on the moon, Buck,” Sam said gently. “They do have TVs in nursing homes. They get the news.”
“Okay, so say she knows,” Bucky postulated, leg bouncing up and down. “Say she knows, and she still wants something to do with me despite everything—she’s gonna have questions. She’ll want to know.”
“You don’t have to tell her anything you don’t want to, man.”
“So then I’d still be lying to her.”
Sam sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What’s the purpose of this exercise, Bucky? Why are you torturing yourself with hypothetical eventualities that might never come to pass?”
“I can’t do this,” Bucky said abruptly, getting to his feet with such fervor that his chair clattered noisily onto the hardwood floor. He swiped his Lucky Strikes and Stoli off the table and clambered through the window onto the fire escape.
This time, Sam didn’t follow him, but simply watched the smoke rise into the mild April air, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
**
“Tell me about her,” Sam said as they struggled their way through the streets of New York by car. It didn't really make sense, using the car in the city, but Bucky was still not a fan of metros and Sam didn't make a habit of walking dozens of miles into the next borough twice in one day.
“Why?” Bucky frowned, bemused. “You’re about to meet her anyway.”
“I don’t wanna go in blind” Sam shrugged, tapping the steering wheel. “Come on. Tell me about her—not the stuff I know. The stuff I don’t know. From back in the day.”
Bucky was quiet for a long time and Sam could practically feel him itching for a cigarette, but he knew better than to try and light one in Sam’s car. Instead, his fingers fiddled with the zipper of his leather jacket while he stared out the passenger window at the world moving past them at a snail’s pace.
“She’s an asshole,” he finally said fondly. “Never held back her opinion on anything, even if she knew it could get her in trouble. Especially then” he huffed a small laugh and looked up, eyes glued on the road as if it were him behind the wheel, not Sam. “She got in this fight once, with a boy at school who’d made fun of Steve. Got her suspended for a week.”
“Sounds like a hoot,” Sam laughed. “Did she at least get in a solid punch?”
“Don’t remember,” Bucky said. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Sam nodded and they spent the rest of the drive in anticipatory silence until Sam pulled onto the parking lot of the retirement home. It was situated at the outskirts of a park, with a small but well-tended garden and a wide back porch. Bucky led him into the lobby, where they signed in at the front desk and were directed to the community room. Before they pushed through the door Bucky stopped and took a sharp breath, the servos of his arm whirring ever so softly as his vibranium fist opened and closed, once. Then he continued on.
Rebecca Barnes Proctor looked impossibly small and frail in her large wheelchair, but it was obvious even now that she had once shared her older brother’s good looks, the sharp jaw and clear, steel-blue eyes. Perhaps it was just because he knew, but Sam wondered how anyone could think those two were anything other than siblings, despite the difference of lived years marking their faces.
“Rebecca” Bucky said by way of greeting and she looked up. She smiled when she saw who had spoken, eyes drifting over to twinkle at Sam in that particular way old people had to them. Like they saw way more of you than anyone else did.
“You must be Sam” she said, holding out a wrinkly hand which Sam rushed to take and shake gently. “He promised he’d bring you along one of these days, but between you and I, I didn’t really believe it.” She added the last part conspiratorially from the corner of her mouth.
Sam laughed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ma’am” he grinned, throwing Bucky a cautious look. His fists were still opening and clenching shut, but his legs remained still.
“I’m also here to provide emotional support, though,” Sam said. “I think there was something Steven here wanted to talk to you about. Ain’t that right, pal?” he nudged Bucky gently in the ribs and the other man jerked to life.
“Uhm. Yeah. Can we…I think we should go somewhere more private” Bucky said, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Whatever you say, dear” Rebecca hummed contentedly and they wheeled her down the hall into a bedroom that carried her name on the plaque next to the door. It was bright and spacious, homy despite the obvious signs of institutionalised living.
“What was it you wanted to tell me, then?” she asked as Bucky pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. Her words were accompanied by a genial wink in Sam’s direction, which gave him the strong suspicion that she already knew what they were about to tell her anyways. Bucky didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m…” he began after a while, wringing his gloved hands. He looked up at Sam, something desperate in his eyes, and Sam nodded encouragingly, placed a hand on Bucky’s good shoulder, gave it a light squeeze.
“I’m not really a nephew,” Bucky said finally, voice trembling. “I’m…” he trailed off again, eyes fixed on the floor this time, and flinched slightly as his sister placed an age-spotted hand on his arm.
“I know, Jamie” Rebecca said softly, her voice brittle from age but firm nonetheless. “I’ve known since the first day you came to visit me.”
Bucky gaped at her, his mouth forming a perfectly-shaped ‘O’. “I…you—you knew?” he whispered finally, and Sam had never seen him this close to tears.
“Of course I knew! I may be old, but I’m not stupid, you little idiot” she laughed fondly. “And we get the news here, you know? I’ve been waiting years for you to finally show up, ever since they first said you were still alive.”
“Told you” Sam muttered. Bucky ignored him.
“W—why didn’t you say anything?” he stuttered, hands clasped so tight the leather of his gloves was squeaking in protest.
“I wanted you to tell me the truth in your own time. I wanted you to be ready to be yourself.”
“But—what if I’d never been ready. Not before—”
“Oh, Jamie” she smiled sadly, resting her frail hands on Bucky’s broad shoulders. “You’ve been through so much, I can’t even imagine. You needed time, and I was willing to give you all that I could offer. But I knew you’d tell me eventually, Jamie. You never could keep a secret for long” she smirked.
“And you’re not…? You don’t…? God, I’ve killed, Becks. I’ve done so many horrible things, I’ve been—I was—”
“As far as I am aware, none of that was your choice, which means none of it was your fault. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
“Yes, Ma'am,” Sam nodded. “Absolutely. I always tell him the same.”
“Well, keep telling him until he believes it. He’s always been far too stubborn for his own good. Now come here” Rebecca waved Bucky closer. “I’ve been waiting for this hug for ages.”
**
“Shit, Buck, is that your Purple Heart?” Sam exclaimed, carefully pulling a purple leather case from the box of memorabilia Rebecca had one of her children bring her for the next time Bucky and Sam came to visit.
“Oh, yes” Rebecca smiled, age-clouded blue eyes watching Bucky. “We were invited to the ceremony sometime in late 1945. I forget the date. We all went—Ma, Pa, Helen, Evelyn and I. Even Uncle Charlie showed up. We wanted to take Steve’s home for him, too, but they wouldn’t let us.”
Bucky took the box from Sam’s offering hand and tentatively pushed the lid open, running his human thumb over the heart-shaped medal resting on the purple cushioning inside. “I never really thought about me having one of these,” he said quietly.
“You should keep it,” Rebecca said, closing her hands around Bucky’s. “It’s yours. God knows you’ve earned it.”
“I don’t know about that” Bucky grunted, closing the box and placing it back among the other things. His sister frowned a little, but she didn’t say anything. She just gave Bucky’s hands another squeeze and then sighed, looking down at the black leather gloves.
“You don’t have to hide it from me, you know?” she said, poking Bucky in the ribs. “Your arm.”
“It’s…not a particularly pretty sight,” Bucky muttered.
“Good thing I’ve always been the pretty one of us, then” Rebecca quipped. She unfurled Bucky’s hands and gently pulled at the fingertips of his left glove. Sam watched Bucky warily, but the man didn’t resist. Instead, he pulled his vibranium hand free from the leather, the plates shifting with tiny mechanical sounds as he spread out his fingers and held them out to his sister, palm up.
“Oh, but it’s beautiful!” Rebecca breathed, tracing her frail fingers along the gold seams embedded in the black metal. “How does it work?”
Bucky shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders, though he didn’t pull away his hand. “It’s…uhm. Connected to my nervous system” he said slowly. “So, you know, I can feel things and…stuff. I don’t know, honestly” he laughed nervously. “Shuri—the girl who designed it—she’s incredible. I…I owe her a lot.”
“Does it hurt?” Rebecca asked softly.
“At times” Bucky admitted. “But I’m fine, Becks. I promise.”
Rebecca leaned back in her chair and regarded her brother out of worried eyes. She had the same frown lines as Bucky, Sam realized, only much more pronounced. Except in her they weren’t permanent as they were with her brother. Rebecca liked to laugh and smile and grin —something which Sam had never before thought of old people doing—and whenever she did, her frown lines smoothed out into nothing but signs of her age. She even giggled sometimes, like a young girl. She was the polar opposite of Bucky, personality wise. An open book, willing to share and love freely, cheerful by default. Sam couldn’t help but wonder if Bucky had been like that, too, before it had all gone wrong.
“What really happened, Jamie?” she finally asked with a pained expression. “They…all they told us was that you were killed in action. Same thing they said about Steve. Then it turns out the idiot got himself frozen in ice for six decades. Then suddenly you’re alive, too, and you were—they say you were held captive, all that time. What happened, Jamie?”
Bucky pulled his hands away from her gentle grip and clenched his fists, one, two, three times. Then the leg bounce started up.
“Well—” he began, cutting himself off. He glanced at his sister, then at Sam, and finally stared back at the ground. “There was—a train,” he said haltingly. “And I—I fell.”
Sam listened closely as Bucky described that last mission of the Howling Commandos—he’d only ever heard it from Steve’s perspective. Bucky’s, it turned out, was much more clinical. As he talked about ziplining onto the train, fighting their way to the front, being blown out the side of it, trying to reach Steve’s hand, his voice was clipped and his tone flat. It sounded like he was recounting the events of a book he’d read—there were no personal anecdotes, nothing to imply that it was actually himself he was talking about. Sam wondered if that was a deliberate choice or if Bucky simply didn’t remember a whole lot about that day, besides what he’d been told.
“I…I thought I’d die there, Becks” Bucky said in a thick voice, looking anywhere but his sister's teary eyes. “I was found, though, eventually—just by the wrong people.”
And then something happened that after all these years of knowing Bucky, Sam had never thought he’d ever get to see. Bucky cried . It was silent, but it took him over completely, shook his shoulders and his human hand and the rest of his body, as it was all suddenly just laid bare. Exposed, like a raw nerve. It was as if someone had cracked Bucky open and now everything came spilling out.
Rebecca waved him towards her and Bucky followed her gesture without a word. He buried his head in the crook of his sister's neck and even now, like this, he was still so careful, so aware of the strength that resided in his limbs and he hugged her like something frail and delicate, like a soap bubble that might pop at any moment. Sam met Rebecca’s eyes for a brief moment and there was such a tumult of emotions in that paling blue that it made him dizzy. He gave Bucky’s shoulder a light squeeze and then he left the room, strolled out into the garden to drink in the afternoon sun.
Bucky only joined him when the sky was already darkening and official visiting times were over.
“You good?” Sam asked, not looking at Bucky but at the horizon, where the faintest streaks of orange were still fading away.
“Good” Bucky nodded.
**
Sam had stopped counting the amount of times he’d caught Bucky with a cigarette in his mouth months ago. He still used them, now, flipped one Lucky Strike between the fingers of his right hand like he did with his knives before slipping it between his lips.
“Shit” Bucky cursed as the wind kept messing with his flame. “Can you?” he mumbled around his cigarette, turning in Sam’s direction.
“Really, you gotta make me complicit in your smoking habit?” Sam groaned, but he lifted his hands with a sigh and cupped them against the wind until Bucky took the first drag and flicked his lighter shut. The vibranium arm lay safely tucked away in Sarah’s guest bedroom and no matter how much Sam hated the smoking thing—he wasn’t that much of a dick. Not when Bucky had finally grown comfortable enough to go without the arm for a few hours at a time.
They sat on the front deck of the Paul & Darlene, the boat swaying sedately underneath them. It was a beautiful day, if cold for Louisiana, with clear skies and a mild winter sun warming their faces. Sam leaned back against the wheelhouse and closed his eyes. He focused on the way his body shifted to counterbalance the movements of the boat, focused on taking deep breaths, letting the tension drain from his shoulders.
“I think she would have liked it here” Bucky mused after a while and Sam popped open one eye to look at the man next to him. “She always liked the water. Wanted a cottage on the beach as a kid. I took her to Long Island once. It was freezing, but she loved it. She wanted to celebrate her eighteenth birthday there, get everyone out of the city and have a beach party” Bucky’s face twisted into a wistful smile. “I wasn’t around for that one.”
“You ever ask her if she had the party?” Sam asked, closing his eyes again.
“No,” Bucky said. “Only just remembered that the other day.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with her, this side of the century. With your other sisters, too.”
Bucky hummed and let out a long breath that blew smoke up Sam’s nose. “I think it’s probably for the best” he said after a moment and Sam blinked at him in surprise.
“Really?” he asked.
“I’m not the same person I was,” Bucky said slowly. “I think she knew that even better than I do. She looked at me that same way Steve used to do, sometimes. Like she was still looking for me, although I was standing right there.”
“She still loved you, though, Buck. Steve did, too.”
“I know,” Bucky said. “Doesn’t change the fact we both knew I was putting up a front.”
Sam didn’t ask if they were still talking about Rebecca or if this was about Steve.
“You know, for the longest time I thought I’d regret it. Not reaching out sooner, not visiting her as me from the get go. Hated myself for being such a coward.”
“You’re no coward,” Sam said, stretching his legs. “Far from it.”
Bucky didn’t reply and ashed off his cigarette.
“You don’t regret it, though?” Sam asked.
“No,” Bucky said idly. “I’m glad I didn’t go to see her sooner. I was too much of a mess after Steve left. She wouldn’t have been happy, seeing me like that.”
“You were kind of an asshole,” Sam grunted. “If understandably so.”
“Yeah” Bucky huffed. He regarded the cigarette between his fingers, rolling it between his thumb and index finger. “I thought about shooting up, after the first time I went to see her” he then said.
“What?” Sam jerked out of his doze and sat up straight. Bucky turned and met his eyes with a one-shouldered shrug.
“I’m scared shitless of losing my mind again, but sometimes it was…calm. I shot up a few times, after going cold turkey after DC. I think the serum protects me from full-on addiction, to be honest. But it just helps to shut down, sometimes, you know?”
“How often do you think about this?” Sam asked and he could feel a frown line forming between his brows.
“Not often” Bucky shrugged. “Not anymore. And I didn’t shoot up, did I? I bought these instead” he waved his cigarette through the air. “Just—you asked. Why I started smoking again. It’s not nearly the same of course, but it still helps pretending like they do anything. Placebo effect or something, I don't know.”
“Well, you ever consider doing it again you better fucking tell me, so I can stop your stupid ass from going on an acid trip.”
Bucky pulled a face, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray Sam had made him bring from Sarah’s porch. “Ten horses wouldn’t get me to take that shit again after they tested it on me in the fifties” he said. “That trip was so bad I was actually glad when they stuck me in the chair.”
“Jesus, man, we can’t have one normal conversation” Sam muttered and Bucky laughed.
“I’ll tell you, if I ever think about it again” he then said sincerely. “I don’t think I will though. Actually—hold on” he dug around in the pockets of his jacket until he produced his half-empty pack of Lucky Strikes. He got to his feet and crossed the few feet to the front of the deck where he tossed the packet in his hand once before throwing it out across the water in a wide arch with such force that Sam didn’t see it come down again. Bucky stood there for another few seconds before turning back around and dropping down onto his spot next to Sam.
“That's littering,” Sam said. “It’s very frowned upon in this century.”
“I’ll tell the next guy I see doing it,” Bucky smirked. Then, “She really liked you, you know.”
“‘Course she did, what’s not to like?” Sam grinned.
“You two would’ve gotten on like a house of fire, if you were fifty years older.”
“Would’ve properly shaken up that old people home. Gotten a bit of life in there” Sam agreed.
Bucky snorted and looked back out across the water, shaking the sleeve of his jacket a little further over his fingers to protect them from the cold wind that was steadily gaining force. “I think she’d be glad if she could see me now. On the water. Regularly invited to Wilson beach parties.”
“Livin’ the dream” Sam said sagely.
Bucky snorted, but he tipped his head back and turned his face into the sun like a flower trying to catch the last light of day. “Long time fucking coming” he said.
Sam didn’t say anything, but silently he very much agreed.