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Bucky needed to be there. He needed to be there for the new Falcon kid, and he needed to be there for Sam.
Sam, because he was probably thinking about the last person he had seen falling while using those wings, and Bucky couldn’t allow his friend to spiral through that alone. He could cancel his plans, he didn’t care; the only thing he currently cared about was being there for Sam.
The thing that Bucky hated most about retiring from fighting was that he couldn’t be there for Sam, that he couldn’t protect Sam and their kid and be there right away when shit went down. When he had to hear on live television that something terrible had happened and not be there to see it and do something about it in person the second it happened.
Sam called him, he did. It wasn’t like Bucky was totally out of the loop. The kid was being carted into emergency surgery, and Sam was worried and no one knew really what would happen, and Bucky could only understand half of what Sam was talking about through his worry, but Sam called him.
“The kid will be fine, Sam,” he had tried to assure his partner over the phone, having no idea if it was true or not but willing it to be. Sam couldn’t lose another partner, couldn’t see someone else fall out of the sky and never be able to hear their voice again. Torres would be fine because Bucky didn’t know what he or Sam would do if the kid wasn’t. “He’s stronger than you think.”
And, truthfully, Bucky wouldn’t have left Sam with just the kid if he wasn’t strong and capable. Some days it killed him not to be working with Sam anymore, but the kid was a better fit as his sidekick anyways; Bucky could never in a million years be convinced to fly. Flying was Sam’s thing, and now Torres’s thing, and Bucky was fine with that. He didn’t want to fly.
But if he could fly, he would be there to protect Sam and Torres every day that he could.
Instead, he was racing through traffic on his motorcycle, not caring about wayward cars or redlights. Someone would understand, and if not then he would figure out a way to pay his tickets. It didn’t matter; what mattered was getting to Sam as quickly as possible.
And the kid. The kid would need them when he woke up. Surgery was always a little bit terrifying, Bucky knew, but even more so when it hadn’t been planned. When someone rushes your malfunctioning body into a lab and tries to piece you back together, that was always the terrifying part.
Bucky couldn’t remember if Sam had ever had surgery before— he must have, right? Not while Bucky knew him— but he knew that Torres could use all the support that he could get.
Right now it was Sam that Bucky could support, though, and that was what he was going to do.
If Sam needed Bucky to hug him for the rest of his life, then he would. Now that sounded like a good use of his time. Seventy years with HYDRA, Seventy more hugging Sam, what could be more perfect?
Sam finally let go, though, and his eyes drifted back towards the glass that they were operating on Torres behind, as Bucky knew they would. Sam was just too good.
“Look how good his breathing has gotten,” Bucky murmured. “He’s doing better.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “He’s a fighter.”
“He takes after you.”
Sam looked up at Bucky and smirked a bit. “You know he’s not actually our kid, right? I think I would have noticed if he was.”
Bucky snorted. “I don’t know, Samuel, you’ve been pretty distracted lately. It’s possible you didn’t make time for the birth and entire childhood of our love child.”
“Oh don’t let him catch you saying that, he’ll take it to heart. He already seems to think that we’re coparenting him.”
“Then I’m expecting a ‘world’s best dad’ mug for Christmas.”
“Nope. Nuh uh uh. That’s my mug. I’m sure that they make ‘world’s second best dad’ mugs as well,” Sam teased him, then frowned again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let him come.”
“He’s still learning,” Bucky told him quietly. He allowed his right arm to drift towards Sam’s back before it finally settled on the small of his back. It felt right being there, comfortable. “What happened could have happened to any one of us. You’re doing a great job with him.”
Sam didn’t respond and instead simply leaned into his touch, but Bucky understood what he was trying to say regardless.
There was a minute there that Bucky truly thought that the kid wasn’t going to make it. During that minute, he slowly wrapped his arms around Sam, turned Sam’s back to the glass, and told him how proud he was to have Sam as his partner.
“You’re the bravest man I know,” he whispered into Sam’s ear. “More than that, though, you made me believe in myself. You gave me a chance when no one else would. I meant what I said before: you give people something to aspire to.”
Sam sniffed into his shoulder. “And what if they’re aspiring towards the wrong thing?”
“They’re not,” Bucky told him. “I promise you they’re not.”
“I can’t keep my partners alive.”
‘Neither could Steve,’ Bucky wanted to say, his mind on himself and Natasha, and everyone else that Bucky knew that Steve couldn’t save. Being Captain America didn’t mean saving everybody, but Sam would have to learn that.
“I’m alive,” he said instead. “Torres is alive. People die, Sam, that’s not your fault.”
“But I could have prevented it.”
“Hey, look at me.” Bucky pulled back, cupping Sam’s jaw. “All you can do out there is fight for what you believe in and try your best. That’s it. I know what you’re thinking, Sam; don’t.”
“And if he dies?” Sam asked.
Bucky pulled him tighter, wrapping both his arms around Sam as tightly as he could without hurting him. Tight as in safe and secure, hopefully, but not oppressive.
He looked through the glass, where the doctors were worrying over the Kid and doing whatever it was that professional doctors in the twenty-first century did. If this had been the 1940s then the kid would have had no chance, not even with the best doctors that the army could supply, but this was different times, and the doctors knew precisely what they were doing.
“Then he died doing something he loved, for a cause he believed in.”
Bucky definitely wasn’t the best at pep talks, that was more of a Captain America thing. Maybe with Sam, though, he did alright.
The doctors weren’t fussing over the kid anymore, which they were told was a good sign and that the kid was stable. He still couldn’t take visitors, but someone told Sam that he could go in there for a minute or two, probably because he was Captain America.
Sometimes it paid to be a super hero.
“C’mon,” Sam muttered, tugging on his hand. “Let’s go see your baby falcon.”
Bucky smiled slightly. Only Bucky really called him that, and the kid always pretended to hate the name, but Bucky knew that he secretly liked it. He shook his head, though; he had already overstayed his welcome, and he doubted they would be very happy with him saying that he was supposed to be at a campaigning event right then.
Well, that was the life of trying to get a former superhero who still had super hero ties into office. It was really more of a sneak peak into what his candidacy would be like than anything else.
“I should go,” Bucky told Sam. “I’ve got this campaign, and Torres would probably prefer just to see you.”
“Stay,” Sam requested. He squeezed Bucky’s fingers lightly. It was grounding, almost. For which one of them, he did not know.
“Are you sure?” He whispered. “They only made an exception for you.”
“Well then they’re going to have to deal with it,” Sam said. “Joaquín wants you there. He’s been asking when we’d see you again for weeks.”
Had it been weeks?
Bucky knew that it had been a while, but he hadn’t realized that it had been that long.
“We need to spend more time together,” he told Sam. “I know I’m not fighting anymore, and I’ve got this campaign going on, but maybe I could train with you guys some days? Or how would you feel about dinner?”
“Family dinner or date dinner?” Sam asked him. He was grinning, and Bucky could admit that he was relieved to see that smile again.
“Maybe a little bit of each.”
Once Sam asked him to stay, it was all too easy for Bucky to stick around and wait for the kid to wake up. He was more Sam’s protége than Bucky’s, but that didn’t mean that Bucky cared about him any less. He clearly had that passion to help people and shared Sam’s golden heart.
“Sarge!” he said when he saw Bucky after he woke up. There was a bright smile on his bruised face. “Sam didn’t say you were coming!”
“Yeah, well.” Bucky shrugged. “You didn’t say you were going to crash yourself into the ocean. That’s more a Captain America thing than a Falcon thing, you hear?”
“Aye aye, Sarge.” He tried to salute, but his body wasn’t quite there yet after surgery. He smiled sheepishly and turned to Sam. “See? I told you I wouldn’t die.”
“Good. Maybe try harder not to get so close to breaking that promise next time,” Sam told him. “Now c’mon, Bucky promised us family dinner.”