Work Text:
Bucky was, as to be expected, pretty damn good at making himself invisible.
It worked on the street, where he blended in with any size crowd easily, undetectable. It worked at events and galas and gatherings he and the rest of his team were obligated to go to, where he stuck to the walls and resolutely pretended he was anywhere else. And, unsurprisingly, it worked on hotel reception workers who one hundred percent didn’t want to be doing what they were doing.
“Room nine oh five,” Bucky said in passing, tilting his head ever so slightly away from the receptionist’s line of vision. She had her nose stuck in one of the thickest books he had ever seen and did not care a single lick what room he was going to, or that he had a hood up that was obscuring most of his face.
“Have a good night,” she muttered, flicking a page over. “Thanks for staying with us.”
“Anytime,” Bucky threw back over his shoulder both because he felt like it and also because he could’ve waved the metal arm in her face with John and Alexei doing the macarena in full uniform behind him and she still wouldn’t have given half a shit. The New Avengers were a household name by this point, sure, but it was always good to know that most of the people they were tasked with Avenging just simply couldn’t care less.
He adjusted the backpack on his hoodie-covered metal shoulder as he waited for the elevator, hoping whatever four-star hotel Captain America was set up in tonight was fancy enough for an in-room microwave. He could’ve taken the stairs, sure, and it probably would’ve been faster, but he’d been teaching Bob how to box, Yelena had taken it upon herself to join their lesson fists-first, and Bucky’d taken too many surprise hits to the solar plexus. He didn’t really feel like trekking up nine stories when an elevator would get him there just fine.
The door slid open and the first thing Bucky saw was Joaquin, wide-eyed expression firmly fixed on his face.
“You actually came,” he said. Bucky’s expression, which had probably already been pretty flat, flattened.
“What the hell are you doing down here, Torres?”
Joaquin stepped to the side and Bucky entered the elevator, just to get the receptionist off his back (she was still nose-deep in the book and still couldn’t care less). Surreptitiously glancing over at him, Joaquin jabbed the NINE button with his thumb.
“I was seeing if the vending machines have any hot Cheetos,” he said as the elevator began to rise.
Bucky raised an eyebrow as he kept his stare firmly locked on the seam of the elevator doors. “So why are you following me up?”
“They don’t have any hot Cheetos.”
“How do you know if you don’t check?”
“I just know,” Joaquin said, his eyes still a little bit wide. They flicked to the elevator’s number pad, to the floor, to Bucky’s shoes. Flighty. “Uh, intuition.”
Bucky made a muffled grunt noise, not deigning to push Joaquin’s buttons any further. He didn’t mention how Joaquin had a jacket on, perfect for the late-night April weather outside, or that Joaquin was wearing a backpack of his own, or that he kept fiddling with his unlocked phone, his Bobby Reynolds! contact lit up bright and damning. He’d told Bucky about Sam, and figured he could sneak out to the Tower under that cover.
Whatever. It wasn’t like Joaquin or whatever hell Joaquin decided to raise with the rest of the Thunderbolts was Bucky’s problem. The only problem Bucky really cared about was supposedly on the ninth floor of this too-fancy hotel, and was supposedly sick as hell.
Joaquin had texted him about an hour or so ago. Bucky wasn’t even sure how Joaquin had his number, just that his phone had buzzed with a too-long message —hey bucky it’s falcon (joaquin!) and i don’t know if i’m supposed to tell you this but me and sam are still in nyc and sam’s really sick. maybe with that thing you had. not that you have to do anything or whatever but i thought you’d want to know! anyway yeah that’s everything bye!— split up into about eight separate (unnecessary) texts. He’d asked which hotel, Joaquin had answered in another long, roundabout way with at least four flame emojis and one weird silent video like the ones Bob and Yelena used all the time in the Thunderbolts group chat Bucky kept muted.
So, Bucky had filled up his backpack with supplies and headed uptown.
“It’s, uh, room five,” Joaquin said as the doors slid open on the ninth floor. “I propped it open. I’m right next door, y’know, if you need anything.”
“Should I?” Bucky asked as he stepped off the elevator. Joaquin stayed on.
“Probably not.”
“You going to check on those hot Cheetos now?”
“Yeah.”
“Someone’s gotta, I guess.”
Joaquin’s wide-eyed expression was the last thing Bucky saw before the doors slid shut. He shook his head, stripping the leather gloves off of both hands and shoving them in his hoodie pocket as he headed down the hall to room five.
It was propped open, and Bucky muttered something to himself about security and safety procedures as he kicked Sam’s uniform boot deeper into the room and made sure the door was double-locked behind him. He left his backpack in the short hallway and poked his way into the bedroom area.
His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting quickly. The room’s huge bed (again with the too-fancy hotel rooms) was pushed against the far wall, and Sam was directly in the middle of it, propped up by clean white pillows and coccooned in a comforter. Bucky leaned against the wall, shoulder to plaster, and felt the ghost of a smile tug on his lips as he watched Sam’s bare chest rise and fall. His phlegmy breathing was loud enough to rattle the wall’s bland hotel art in their frames, and there was a slight crust building around his eyes and under his nose.
He was sick as hell.
Bucky couldn’t even blame him. Most of it was his own fault, anyway. He’d been the one who was sick first, a nasty bout of something that Alexei still called super soldier sickness, which was, in reality, just an overexaggerated cold. But Bucky had resisted any and all forms of treatment, which led his team (his nosy, overinvolved team) to call Sam for advice.
And Sam had shown up.
To the Tower, where he still felt unwelcome. To Bucky’s team, who didn’t know the extent of their tangled, still-under-wraps relationship. And to Bucky’s room, where he’d climbed under the covers and wrangled Bucky down with him, helping him ride out his fever and forcing soup into him and taking care of Alpine when he’d been too sick to.
So, no matter if Sam had a slight case of allergies or the worst raging cold known to man, Bucky was going to do the same for him.
Although, as he nudged his backpack closer to the wall and headed closer to the bed and to Sam, he had to admit it was definitely not a slight case of allergies. Sam murmured something in his sleep, and his voice was near unintelligible. Bucky sat gingerly on the side of the bed; he didn’t want to scare Sam out of his skin, and he could see the shield just barely peeking over the mattress’s farthest edge. Even sick, Sam’s reflexes were killer. Bucky wasn’t trying to block a shield to the face.
Sam shifted and muttered something else and Bucky hummed in response, a low noise deep in his throat.
“Sam,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. “You awake?”
“I don’t need any more tissues, Joaquin.” Sam’s voice was somehow phlegm-thick and raspy at the same time. He tugged more comforter over his bare shoulder as he rolled over to face the window. “Get out of here.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.” Circling the bed, Bucky sat on the very edge, just enough to indent the mattress. He cupped Sam’s face with his right hand, tilting his chin upwards just enough for Sam’s dark eyes to meet his own.
“Bucky?” Sam breathed.
“Live and in the flesh,” Bucky said. “Mostly. Catch a cold?”
“Somethin’ like that,” Sam murmured, laying his head back down as Bucky ran a thumb down his temple. Hot as hell. Feverish, not hot just because he was Sam Wilson. Although…
Unfortunately, sickness didn’t seem to matter much, and Sam was still one of the most beautiful damn people Bucky’d ever seen. He wiped away a bead of sweat trickling down Sam’s forehead.
“Sorry,” he said. “I think this is mostly my fault. You shouldn’t have been cuddling with a sick person, though, so some of it has to be on you.”
Sam didn’t reply, just flailed around a little bit in a valiant attempt to kick off the comforter. He really was burning up, and had started sweating in earnest now. Bucky gathered the heavy blanket and pushed most of it off to the side, and found the corner of the sheet and peeled it off of Sam as he curled on his side, most of his face pressed into a pillow, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and… A single sock. Where the other sock went was anyone’s guess.
Kicking off his shoes and shrugging off his jacket, Bucky wedged himself beside Sam, draping the metal arm across his forehead. Sam made a quiet noise and moved closer, pressing his entire face to Bucky’s bicep, shifting every so often in order to get more of the cool metal onto his feverish face. Bucky leaned over and, with his flesh hand, scratched lightly down Sam’s back the way he knew he liked, getting between his shoulderblades and rubbing his thumbs down each raised muscle.
Limp and boneless, Sam flopped mostly on top of Bucky’s left side and, with his eyes closed, he tilted his face back.
“Did Joaquin tell you to come?”
“I wanted to,” Bucky said, trailing his fingers up and down Sam’s bare back. He ran cold, he always had, and even though Sam was feverish it was still nice, having his warmth pressed so close. “Even if you weren’t sick I still would’ve come.”
“Yeah?” Sam said, half-asleep. He was fading fast, and hopefully his fever was, too. “What would we be doing if I wasn’t sick?”
“Probably still this,” Bucky said. “Now are you going to get some sleep, or what?”
“Wouldn’t be sleeping if I wasn’t sick,” Sam murmured. Bucky shifted further down in bed so that Sam could lay his warm head on Bucky’s chest and wrap one damp arm around him. He cupped the back of Sam’s head with his left hand, allowing the cold metal to hopefully help him forget about the fever’s heat.
“No,” Bucky said as Sam’s breathing steadied. “No, we wouldn’t be.”
—
Bucky didn’t sleep much on a good day. Now, with a very sick Sam half on top of him, he wasn’t about to catch even half a wink, but it wasn’t all bad. A few weeks back, Bob had downloaded some color matching game to his phone, and, as Sam slept, he killed a few hours playing that and scrolling back through old photos of Alpine, both taken by him and sent by other members of the team. He kept them all in a special folder with his favorite, a great shot of her sitting primly in a sunbeam (courtesy of Ava), as the cover photo.
The moon was high in the sky outside the hotel room window when Sam began to sweat in earnest, curling as close as he could to Bucky as he shivered and shook. Pulling the comforter overtop of both of them, Bucky slid his phone onto the nightstand and wrapped Sam in his arms. Whatever fever was working its way through his body was brutal. Bucky pressed his lips to Sam’s temple, his forehead, his hairline; silent reassurance that, even as Sam slept, he wasn’t alone, and he didn’t have to go through it alone.
As another hour passed and the full-body shivers wracking Sam’s body began to ebb. It finally seemed like he was able to relax, sinking back into the pillows and breathing steadily, falling into a deeper, more peaceful sleep. Bucky watched him for a few minutes before touching his forehead with his lips again; cool, dry skin. None of the damp clamminess of the past few hours.
Sam wasn’t home free yet, but the worst of it seemed to be over.
Untangling himself from the confines of the blankets and sheets, Bucky tucked them back around Sam until he vaguely resembled one of the burritos Bob was always trying to bribe Yelena to pick up for dinner, and tucked his phone into his pants pocket. He’d spent most of the night staring at the wreck of a hotel room, and busied himself with cleaning it up.
He emptied Sam’s duffel and repacked it, folding clean and semi-clean clothes and shoving the rest in the mesh pocket he knew Sam used for dirty laundry. After a short internal back-and-forth, he dug out a pair of gym shorts from the clean section and changed, swapping his dark jeans for the too-short shorts. Sam’s uniform boots and his running sneakers went in a tidy line by the door along with Bucky’s shoes, and the duffel sat against the wall next to Bucky’s backpack.
He emptied it quickly, sliding the freezer bag with the soup container in it into the hotel’s mini fridge, and setting the ziplock with the sliced bread on top. He hadn’t been sure what else to bring, but Yelena had a stash in her room and the Tower had its fair share of med kits and first aid; he’d grabbed a bunch of cough syrup, lozenges, and sinus medication packets. Those went next to the sink next to Sam’s toothpaste and toothbrush in its green case.
Speaking of… Bucky ducked out of the bathroom and dug in the smallest pocket of Sam’s duffel until he emerged with a toothbrush in a blue case, smiley face drawn on it in marker. He gave it his own lopsided smile, and, just because he knew Sam would give him grief if he didn’t, brushed his teeth.
As he walked back into the main room, he bent to snag the lone sock from where it was hiding, half under the far side of the bed. He flipped the comforter off of Sam just for a moment, just enough for him to wrangle the sock onto Sam’s bare foot.
The last thing left on the floor of the hotel room was Sam’s uniform. Piece by piece, Bucky took it to the sink and used probably more towels and washcloths than necessary to clean away any evidence of Sam’s latest mission, taking care to get in every indent and crevice just like he knew Sam did. In the field, Sam couldn’t care less about what he looked like as long as they work got done, but afterwards he was fastidious with keeping his equipment clean and cared for. Bucky snagged hangers from the hallway closet and hung each piece of the uniform on the shower’s curtain rod until there was only one piece left.
He scooped the shield from its spot propped against the bed and took it back into the bathroom with him, using a washcloth to wipe it clean, slow and careful, and another to buff it until it was shining. He’d stared at the damn thing for so long, across centuries, but seeing it in Sam’s possession would never get old. He left it on the counter, a towel between it and the marble sink.
“Keep him safe,” he muttered to it before flicking off the bathroom light and heading back to bed.
—
Sam woke up to another person in his bed, which wasn’t normal.
He also woke up with a throbbing sinus headache, a scratchy throat, and sore, crusty eyes that could barely open more than a crack. He was sick.
More than that, he remembered as the events of the night began crawling back, Bucky had come.
And was still there, pressed close to Sam under the hotel comforter as they shared a single pillow. His left arm was over on the nightstand, his right wrapped around Sam’s waist, and he was either breathing heavily or snoring softly, like he only did when he was actually asleep.
Sam, headache and crusty eyes be damned, couldn’t help but huff out a tiny little laugh. He shifted closer to Bucky, resting his cheek on the top of his head. At the movement, Bucky twitched.
“Sam?”
“Morning, Buck,” Sam said. The words barely came out; he sounded like shit. “You didn’t have to—”
Bucky cut him off in the only way Sam ever wanted to be cut off by Bucky Barnes— with his lips on Sam’s. Unfortunately, Sam couldn’t breathe out of his fucking nose, and had to push him away right when it was really getting good. Bucky whined.
“C’mon.”
“I’m sick, Barnes,” Sam grumbled, and kissed him again, quick and chaste, just barely brushing their lips together. Before he could go in for another one, he reeled back, and—
Bucky snagged a tissue from somewhere and held it under Sam’s nose right as he sneezed.
“Bless you,” he said.
“Thanks.” Sam wadded up the tissue, aimed for the trash halfway across the room, and missed. “God, I feel like I was run over by a truck.”
“You don’t look run over by anything bigger than an SUV,” Bucky said, and pulled him close, tucking Sam’s head under his chin and holding him there with one arm. “If you don’t want to make out with me, you can at least stop struggling so I can spoon you.”
“I don’t want to be spooned,” Sam grunted. Bucky wrapped the comforter around him tighter, if that was even possible.
“Well, there’s nothing else I can do to help, so it’s this or I leave.”
“Leave, then.”
Bucky gasped dramatically. Jesus, the rest of those delinquents he called his teammates would never believe what he was really like behind closed doors.
“Take that back.”
“Or what, Barnes?”
Bucky took his arm off of the nightstand and reattached it, rotating it once. The quiet whirr of the mechanism never got old; it was one of Sam’s favorite sounds. “Or I don’t heat up the soup I brought. Or, maybe I do heat it up, and I eat it in front of your germy face, bread and all.”
“You guys still surviving off of that big-ass pot of soup Walker made the other day, then?”
“It’s healing soup, Wilson.”
“Maybe you do need it more than me.” Sam leaned back, about to sneeze again, and Bucky passed him another tissue. The sneeze that came out of him was somehow bigger and louder than the last one. It ached deep in his chest. “Thank you.”
“Bless you,” Bucky said. “And, you know what? I don’t care what you say. You’re getting healing soup and you’ll eat it all while we watch one of those deep sea fishing shows you like so much, and that’s final.”
“Oh no,” Sam said as Bucky got out of bed and headed towards the mini fridge and microwave combo. “That sounds terrible.”
“I’m sure it does,” Bucky said, and slid the glass soup container into the microwave and punched something onto the keypad. “So get ready for it.”
Sam tilted his head. “Are you wearing my shorts?”
“Sure am.” Bucky leaned over farther, unnecessarily, to watch the soup rotate. “Liking the view?”
“It’s not bad.”
“What about now?” Bucky slid the steaming soup onto the nightstand on Sam’s side, stacked the homemade bread next to it on a napkin, and got back into bed, straddling Sam’s lap and leaning down just far enough for their noses to brush. “Better?”
“Better,” Sam said, and tilted his face up to meet Bucky’s lips with his own.
As the day wore on, their kisses tasted like chicken noodle, like cherry cough syrup, like honey lozenges, like toothpaste. With each one, Sam really did feel a little better, although maybe he’d chalk that up to the healing soup doing its job.