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Steve still feels like it wasn’t unreasonable to believe that Sam and Bucky would get along once they met under more peaceful circumstances. They were both soldiers. They were funny, even if Bucky’s humor tended to be a little darker these days and Sam’s references sometimes went over their heads. They also both cared about Steve, he wouldn’t do them a disservice by doubting that.
They had a whole lot in common.
Sure, there was that unfortunate business of Bucky ripping off Sam’s wing and severing the last link to his past and also Sam kicking Bucky in the chest pretty hard. But, that was nothing that couldn’t be improved with a little bit of constructive dialogue and some death-threatening experiences, of which there were always plenty to go around.
Too bad Sam and Bucky didn’t seem to agree.
*
Sam and Bucky start bickering the moment they’re in the same room.
First there’s barbed comments muttered under their breath, and then with increasing volume and directness, until there’s a perimeter around them them that includes only Steve, calculating and recalculating how he’ll stop them from killing each other if they eventually come to blows.
This doesn’t end when they’re in the field, just quiets to comments whispered into communications devices and occasional glaring over the suspect’s head. Not that it seems to hurt the mission any. If it had, Steve would have had reasonable reasons to step in and mediate, but the missions almost always go off without a hitch.
It’s not so surprising, maybe. Bucky was a brilliant marksman when Steve knew him in the war, and he’s picked up more than a few skills in the years interim, honing him into something awful, tragic and frightening when set off, instead of being contained by Steve’s side. And Sam improves every day, gaining intricate control over the air and the fifty pounds of machinery strapped to his back, his aim sharp and eyes sharper.
Together, they’re more than a match for any regular or irregular HYDRA grunt, displaying exemplary teamwork. Now if only they could extend that to their downtime, so Steve wouldn’t get quite so many headaches.
*
Sometimes there are bad missions. Sometimes they drag each other in, bleeding from cuts and nursing purpling bruises that even a healing factor can’t erase. Sometimes they’ll hobble back on broken bones and shattered expectations. And sometimes, Bucky’s face will go slack and expressionless, his bones grinding mechanically, his actions only a step above brutality. Steve won’t admit it to anyone, not even his lovely and discreet therapist, that those times scare him most.
Today is one of those times.
Steve’s muscles are screaming at him as they walk down a thankfully empty hallway at headquarters, and Bucky’s footfalls on his right are heavy, the silence from him oppressive. Steve darts glances at their profiles in the mirrored glass of the offices they pass and wills himself to walk tall, his gestures non-threatening, the garter on his shield loose under his hand.
They walk into the rec room and into the sound of loud cursing. Steve senses Bucky freeze at his side, and turns, only to be confronted with the sight of Sam, attempting to twist the lid off a very large jar of pickles and swearing up a storm. He doesn’t seem to be aware of any danger, or of their presence in general.
There’s soot marks on his hairline, hastily scrubbed at, that signify his mission might have been as much of a disaster as theirs, and Steve is halfway to offering help, but Bucky beats him to it.
“What’s this then?” Bucky says, and his tone is still worryingly flat, but expressing enough glee that Steve whips around to stare at him. “The big bad Falcon, bested by a jar of pickles?”
Sam’s head comes up, his eyes wide, and he almost loses his grip on the jar. His hands are trembling.
(tired, vulnerable, going for the knife strapped to his side)
But Sam’s voice is steady when he speaks. “Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you do better, Buchanan.”
And Bucky reaches out, neon light glinting off the steel of his arm (the seams still have blood stuck under them) and gently takes the jar from Sam’s unresisting hands. Their fingers don’t brush.
Bucky affects a tight grip on the jar, his metal hand over the lid and then, he twists.
Or. He tries to. The lid doesn’t budge.
Bucky tries again, visibly straining, blood flushing his pale cheeks.
Nothing.
After a few minutes of bitten off grunts, he hands the stubborn jar over to Steve, pink-cheeked and sweaty. Steve sees Sam touch his fingers to one of the cuts on his lip, but it’s less like he’s trying to stem the fresh bleeding and more like he’s desperately trying to contain his laughter.
Some ten minutes later, the jar has been placed on the kitchen counter, three sets of eyes studying it intently.
“Maybe it’s made of some of T’challa’s unbreakable glass? A prototype of some sort?” Steve says, still feeling the indentations of the lid on his palm.
Sam shakes his head, says, “I brought it at the grocery store this week. Unless he’s mass producing them for the US market, that can’t be the reason.”
“Well, but,” Steve says, feeling almost petulant. The jar seems like it’s mocking him from its perch on the counter, “you couldn’t open it, and neither could me and Bucky. That’s more than you could say for the most secure buildings in the country!”
“So what are you saying?” Sam says, sarcasm almost palpable. “This is some plant by Baron Zemo? What’s it going to do, lower my morale because I can’t eat my favorite brand of pickles?”
“Enough talking,” Bucky says.
There’s a shot. And a bang. And then Sam’s screeching, “You shot my pickles!” as Bucky triumphantly stands over the jar that’s dripping pickling liquid all over the floor, before it suddenly shatters into a mass of glass pieces and sliced pickles.
Bucky walks out before Sam’s yelling reaches fever pitch, but before he goes, Steve notices that his face has lost some of its slackness, twisted into something that barely passes for a smile.
Steve directs Sam to the couch and makes him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead, then sweeps up the glass while Sam softly grumbles about the pickles between bites of his sandwich.
The next morning, when Steve opens the fridge, there’s a jar of pickles on the shelf next to a fresh packet of dried plums.
Steve won’t admit it to anyone, but his heart soars a little.
*
Sam consistently denies it, but Steve suspects that he’s somehow figured out a way to communicate with the birds he shares the skies with. He doesn’t see what else could explain why a flock of seagulls should fly directly into the path of a HYDRA helicopter, distracting it enough for Sam to escape, or how a particularly fat pigeon appears underfoot at the exact right moment to trip an assassin aiming to drive a knife into Sam’s back.
Steve also doesn’t know what else could explain the massive amounts of bird shit that Bucky accumulates through a mundane daily outing. It seems like every time Bucky leaves the house, there’s a glaring pigeon or a seagull, just waiting for their moment to strike, emptying the contents of their bowels on his black shirt, or, worse yet, his leather jacket.
Sam predictably finds it hilarious.
“Wow, that’s years of good luck right there!” he says, when he catches sight of Bucky and his soiled jacket.
Steve quietly moves towards the sink to grab a washcloth. It conveniently puts him out of the line of fire.
“You’re doing this,” Bucky hisses, glaring at Sam. “I don’t know how, but you’re ordering them to shit on me!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just fly, I’m not actually a bird,” Sam says, tilting his head to the side in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of one. “I read somewhere that they can very attracted to shitting on a certain kind of color.”
“What, black?” Bucky says, gesturing at his outfit, which is indeed all black. “You people decided it wasn’t even a color while I was gone!”
“Experiment, live a little! Blue would really bring out your eyes. Maybe some polka dots?” Sam says, ignoring Bucky’s angry growl.
Luckily, they’re interrupted by a mission call, and Bucky spends the rest of debrief scrubbing at his jacket, while glaring at everyone who looks at him. It’s their fastest mission briefing yet.
*
“Can you just sit still for one minute?”
“You’re stabbing a needle into my leg!”
“Don’t be such a baby!”
It’s in the nature of their work that no matter how good they are and how well prepared, eventually one of them is going to get hurt. This time it’s Bucky, pale and washed out in the neon lights of the hangar, blood turning rust against his skin, Sam’s hands steady and patient as he sews up the gash on his leg. On anyone else, the wound might have required more than stitches and Steve can’t make himself look away.
“Do you even have medical training?”
“Don’t even start, asshole. Next time you take your fool ass through a meatgrinder, you can wait for headquarters like everyone there. I’m sure the nurses there will be happy to accommodate you.”
“They’re nicer to me at least.”
Sam snorts incredulously. There’s no trace of a tremor in his hands, just pure competence. He’s doing a better job than a lot of the nurses at mission control, and Steve knows that Bucky knows that. At least the arguing seems to be bringing more color to his cheeks. Steve’s learned to not get in the way of it by now.
“Is that why you play human shield so often then?” Sam asks, securing the stitches. “I’m sure there’s better ways to score with nurses than abandoning your post and putting everyone’s life in danger!”
Steve’s eyes whip up from his intense concentration on Bucky’s leg, to stare at Sam whose voice has grown progressively louder, edged with hysteria. Looking at him more closely, he looks spooked, more agitated than usual.
“You say that, Sam,” Wanda’s voice cuts smoothly through the din, “as if you weren’t the first one to abandon mission parameters when Bucky went down.”
She’s studying the scene keenly, mouth curling into an amused smile. There’s traces of dust and mud and blood on her cloak, but she’s impeccably put together, and Sam shifts under her attention, muttering something under his breath.
There’s a beat of silence as Sam twists the roll of bandages into something that covers up the ugly scar. Bucky’s the one who finally speaks.
“Were you worried about me, birdbrain?” he says, but Steve notes that his voice sounds almost gentle.
Sam snorts and shakes his head, picks up his tools and walks out.
His hands shake on the medkit he’s holding.
*
Things are different, after that.
The bickering doesn’t stop. In fact, the rate of it increases, mostly because Sam and Bucky suddenly seem to be spending a lot more time together.
Steve walks into the living room to find them on the couch, watching TV in silence that’s comfortable instead of sullen. One time, they get into an argument over whose family recipe for apple pie is better, and spend a miraculously uninterrupted afternoon baking up a storm, without setting fire to the kitchen or to each other.
He catches Bucky bopping his head to Marvin Gaye, his room full of CD’s labelled with Sam’s careful handwriting. Sam takes down an enemy with a move straight from Bucky’s arsenal.
It’s all very suspicious.
*
It’s easy to forget sometimes that Sam’s probably the most vulnerable out of all of them, only a feat of futuristic engineering and his own hard worn skills, keeping him safe against the vastness of the skies.
Right now, Steve’s acutely aware of this, Sam’s drugged body leaning heavily against his side, bruises sketching in around his wrists.
“Almost home, buddy,” he says to Sam, who only blinks at him placidly, his normally keen eyes cloudy.
Finally, they hobble their way out of the elevator and to the door of the apartment they share with Bucky. The lights are still on, and Bucky looks up from his book from where he’s reclined on the couch.
“You were out late,” Bucky says, frowning when he catches sight of them. “Hey, what happened?”
At the sound of his voice, Sam seems to stand up straighter.
“A good old-fashioned kidnapping,” Steve says, voice steadier than he feels. “They drugged him with something, but medbay says it should wear off on its own. Sharon dropped us off on the roof.”
“Bucky,” Sam mutters suddenly. It’s the first thing Steve’s heard him say since he busted into the abandoned warehouse and saw him chained up to a chair. There’s a truth serum component to the drug, and Sam had been resisting it by keeping his mouth so firmly shut that his gums started bleeding.
Sam lets go of the death grip he’s got on Steve’s arm, to stumble over the last few steps to their couch.
Steve watches, strangely unsurprised, as Bucky reaches out with his flesh hand, and Sam folds under it with a sigh of relief, tucking his face against Bucky’s shirt, laying half on top of him. Bucky runs his other hand carefully over his back, checking for injuries, but the motion seems to soothe Sam, and he goes completely boneless, his breathing deepening.
It’s a position that looks natural, practiced. Bucky takes his concerned stare off Sam to glance at Steve, who just shrugs at him, to which Bucky replies with a nod.
Steve heads over to his own room, glancing over his shoulder once, in time to see Bucky press a lingering kiss to the top of Sam’s head. He closes the door behind him, before Bucky can look up and see his knowing smirk.
*
There’s a sudden noise in the quiet forest around them and a moment later, something hits the top of Bucky’s head with a soft ‘thump’. In the next second, Bucky’s got both guns out and Steve’s shield is unstrapped, ready to tackle him in case it explodes.
It’s a small grey mouse. Very dead.
Above them in the clearing, a falcon circles once and then departs with an amorous sounding caw.
“Steve,” Bucky says, very calmly, “if you mention this to Sam, I’m going to shoot you.”
Steve’s resulting hysterical laughter probably blows their cover.