Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I thought you said he’s grumpy and surly and has a staring problem,” Sarah says, complete with accusatory side-eye. “That man does not look grumpy and surly to me.”

Sam has to concede that in this particular moment, Sarah is right. Bucky looks the furthest thing possible from grumpy and surly right now: he’s in evidently animated conversation with Carlos and Mrs. Grace the librarian and Marie from down the road, and a smile is never far from Bucky’s face. Hell, as Sam watches, Bucky laughs at something Mrs. Grace says, and Sam feels about as dizzy and disoriented as if he’s just been knocked on the head and then spun around, because what the hell. It should not be possible for Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier, to look this damn adorable, and it should be even less possible for him to look kind of beautiful with the way uncomplicated joy lights him up. It definitely should not be possible for Bucky Barnes to look like he belongs here, on Delacroix’s docks, surrounded by Sam’s family and community, and yet, Bucky indisputably does look like he belongs here.

“He is grumpy and surly,” Sam insists, despite all the current evidence to the contrary, and Sarah turns to fully face him, eyebrow of disbelief fully raised. 

“He was perfectly polite and sweet when he came down to help with the boat,” she says.

“He was on his best behavior then! He was trying to impress you!”

Because Bucky had been a model house guest then, and Sam had been both amused and not a little touched by Bucky’s earnest courtesy. He’d insisted on doing the dishes every time Sarah or Sam had cooked, and while Sarah normally wouldn’t have let a guest anywhere near a full sink, Bucky had somehow managed it with some real politeness jiujitsu that had involved an awful lot of awkwardly sincere flattery. And only after he’d gone back to New York had Sam and Sarah noticed that Bucky had left a trail of small household repairs in his wake: the no-longer leaky shower head, a loose board on the house’s dock replaced, the shed’s lock cleaned of rust until it shone. Sam had read the gestures as thanks and apologies all in one—wholly unnecessary after his help with the boat and his actual using-his-words apology—and muttered to Sarah about how extra Bucky was being.

“Uh huh,” says Sarah now.

“It’s—this is a party, he must just be in a very rare good mood or whatever,” Sam insists. He eyes the glass Carlos passes over to Bucky with suspicion. “Or maybe the moonshine is a bit too strong.”

“Sure,” drawls Sarah. “Well, he’s welcome to stay, you know. I cleared out some space in the den for a proper daybed, so…” she trails off with a significant look that Sam refuses to decipher.

Of course Bucky’s welcome to stay. But given that so far, Bucky’s pretty much only shown up for missions and mission-adjacent contexts, even if he had stuck around to help with the boat, Sam’s not going to hold his breath waiting for Bucky to stay for much longer than a few days. Sam supposes he ought to consider it progress that nowadays, he doesn’t have to chase Bucky around the globe, and also he even mostly answers Sam’s texts now.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, and starts to make his way through the crowd towards Bucky.

It takes Sam a while to get there, what with all the people who stop to talk to him, but eventually Sam gets close enough to hear Bucky’s laugh, a surprisingly boyish sound, almost intolerably sweet with the way Bucky’s whole face scrunches up. This is the first time Sam has actually heard Bucky laugh, Sam realizes. Shit, what kind of moonshine is Carlos serving up?

But when Sam finally sidles up to Bucky, Bucky’s stance is steady, his eyes clear as blue skies and just as sunny.

“Hey Buck, having a good time?” 

At close range, Bucky’s smile is kind of a lot to deal with. Sam slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulders out of sheer self-preservation, and Bucky leans in, and for some reason, that small, probably reflexive gesture fills Sam’s heart up to bursting, a warmth so expansive it fills his lungs and his throat and his eyes.

I finally found you, thinks Sam, the realization bubbling over with giddy wonder. I found you, I found you, I found you.

“Yeah, of course I am,” says Bucky, still smiling over at Sam, oblivious to Sam’s long-awaited victory. “Who wouldn’t be? Good food, good company, and a beautiful view,” he says, gesturing out towards the ocean.

Marie laughs and raises her glass in a toast. “Here here, well said!”

“I’ll drink to that!” says Carlos.

Someone passes a glass to Sam and everyone drinks to that with a cheer. Sam’s just glad the sound covers up his cough, because Christ, Carlos is not fucking around with his moonshine.

“Yeah, it’s pretty strong stuff,” says Bucky.

“It making a dent for you?” Sam asks, sounding totally normal, thank fuck. He takes another much more measured sip as the burn of the alcohol settles into a happy simmer all along his throat and into his gut.

“Nah,” says Bucky, still grinning. “Pretty sure I’d need a couple gallons of pure ethanol for that.”

“Oh, so you’re just high on life right now then, huh?”

Bucky shrugs, and Sam belatedly realizes that he’s still got his arm around Bucky, but Bucky makes no move to break loose from Sam’s hold. There’s absolutely no tension in his frame, Sam realizes, none of the reserve or caution that Sam’s become so accustomed to in Bucky’s body language.

“This is the first party I’ve been to in about 80 years, Sam. It’s just really nice to have a good time.”

Shit. Now Sam kind of feels like an asshole about being so surprised by Bucky’s new cheerfulness. No wonder Bucky’s in a rare good mood if this is the first real party he’s been to since the war.

“What, Sharon’s thing in Madripoor didn’t count?” Sam jokes, and Bucky casts him a wry sidelong glance.

“Yeah, no. That wasn’t my kind of party. This is more my speed.”

“Well, stick around here for a little bit longer, then,” Sam says. “We’ve got plenty more cookouts and parties and crawfish boils in store for you.”

“I’d like that,” says Bucky softly.

In the absence of any parties, Sam fully expects and mentally prepares himself for Bucky’s usual surly disposition to return during the rest of his stay in Delacroix. The fact that he’s even sticking around is something of a surprise; Sam had fully expected him to walk off into the sunset with a smile and a sincere call me if you need backup. Which would have been fine, or whatever. It’s not like Bucky and the shield are a package deal, and it’s not like Sam needs him to stay close.

But Bucky happens to be there in the living room when Sam takes a call from Rhodey, and who needs speaker phone when you’ve got super soldier hearing, so Bucky hears it when Sam tells Rhodey that yeah, he’ll finally, officially join the Avengers, and he definitely also hears it when Rhodey asks, “And what about your cyborg sidekick?” because Bucky meets Sam’s eyes and says, “Not a sidekick, but uh, yeah, sure, I’m in. Someone’s gotta watch this guy’s back.”

Sam can’t deny that he’s relieved. Steve’s gone, Natasha’s dead, and Wanda’s AWOL; Rhodey and even Torres still need to answer to the Air Force and the Pentagon, Barton and Banner are out of the game, Thor’s in space, and T’Challa has a country to run. Even Ant-Man has his own thing going on. Sam isn’t exactly over-burdened with superhero allies here, is the point, and the thought of being Captain goddamned America on his own…Bucky’s not wrong. Someone needs to watch his back. Maybe other superheroes can get by solo, but a Black Captain America? Sam’s not naive, and he’s not dumb. Regularly going out in the field alone would be dangerous.

And it’s not like Sam wants to do this alone, either.

So he grins at Bucky and says, “Aww, cyborg sidekick is so catchy though.”

Bucky’s glower isn’t particularly convincing with the way his lips twitch up. “Cyborg partner,” he counters.

Partner feels like a big step, if Sam’s being honest, but begin as you mean to go on and all that. And teammate’s downright presumptuous given that it’s just the two of them for now.

“Pain-in-the-ass cyborg partner,” Sam corrects, and Bucky just smirks, irritatingly smug.

“Good,” says Rhodey, pointedly ignoring their nonsense. “Maybe you two can keep each other out of trouble.”

After Rhodey says his goodbyes, Sam ends the call and looks over at Bucky. “So you’re in, huh?”

“Guess so,” says Bucky. Sam fully expects his next words to be some variation on bye, call me when the Avengers are up and running again, but instead, Bucky says, “We should probably start training together.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sam agrees tentatively, not sure where Bucky’s going with this. “Where, though?The new Compound’s still under construction.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows in a duh kind of expression. “Here’s fine. I can stick around for a while. If you and Sarah will have me that is,” he says, and an uncertain furrow takes up residence on his forehead as he studies Sam. “I can probably find another place to stay…?“

“Man, shut up, of course you can stay with us,” says Sam, buoyant with a surprising amount of relief. He reels Bucky in for a quick backslap and side hug, and Bucky returns the gesture with a careful hesitancy that Sam’s hoping to train him out of. “Who else am I gonna put on shield retrieval duty? Because let me tell you, I am sick of running after that thing when I don’t get the rebound right, and Sarah won’t let Cass and AJ help.”

“Oh, is that how I’m earning my keep?” says Bucky with a grin, one of those bright and flashing smiles that’s been more and more frequent lately. More and more of a welcome surprise, too, Sam’s willing to admit, aiming his own smile right back at Bucky.

“Yup. Shield catching duty in exchange for room and board at Chez Wilson.”

“Sounds like a bargain to me,” says Bucky, still grinning.

So ostensibly, Bucky’s sticking around Delacroix to train with Sam for a few weeks while they wait on the copious bureaucracy of the GRC and World Security Council to give the official go ahead to the new and improved Avengers Initiative headed up by Rhodey, Maria Hill, and Pepper Potts-Stark. In actuality, they spend a few hours training, and then spend the rest of the day helping out around Delacroix, looking after AJ and Cass, running errands for Sarah, or on incredibly boring conference calls. Sam again expects Bucky’s usual surliness to return in force, but it mostly doesn’t. Sure, Bucky’s pretty hilariously grouchy in the mornings, and his general air of old-man grumpiness is only slightly diminished. Complaining might just be one of Bucky’s superpowers, but honestly, he seems to have some fun doing it, so Sam’s not sure it’s actually a sign of Bucky being in a bad mood so much as it’s his default state of being. 

Sam also expects Bucky to make himself scarce for all the boring, bureaucratic bullshit, but he sticks around for all that. Granted, he is alternately pretty dour and blank-faced on the conference calls—I’m an NCO, I’m not here to sit in meetings, I’m here to get shit done, is what he tells Sam after an especially useless call about instituting yet more paperwork requirements for any as yet entirely hypothetical planned Avengers missions—but he dutifully joins all of the calls and he even takes notes. The only thing Bucky explicitly won’t help with is PR.

“Feel like asking the ex-assassin to do any PR is automatically bad PR,” he says wryly.

“I don’t know, there are people with worse PR problems who still regularly mouth off on Twitter,” Sam says, and Bucky just snorts.

If you set aside his professionally intimidating demeanor and the habitual grumpiness though, Bucky’s actually pretty cheerful in a calm and un-showy kind of way. His smiles come freely and frequently, he chats easily with Sarah, and his patience and willingness to play with Cass and AJ is seemingly boundless. He’s even quickly endearing himself to all of Delacroix with his old-fashioned courtesy. If he wasn’t still giving Sam plenty of shit with that smart mouth of his, especially during training, Sam would start seriously wondering about pod people and some kind of benign brainwashing.

Even so, this version of Bucky is kind of freaking Sam out. There has to be a catch.

“I don’t get it,” he says, as he and Sarah work on getting dinner ready while Bucky’s out in the yard keeping the boys occupied. “I do not understand what happened to the guy who communicated mostly in glares and complaining.”

He glances out of the kitchen window and Jesus Christ, Bucky is playing catch with the boys. It’s the most absurdly wholesome sight. If Sam went back in time to tell the 2015 version of himself who’d been trawling through various ruined HYDRA bases for this man that less than ten years later he’d be playing catch with Sam’s nephews, Sam’s past self would have laughed in present-Sam’s face and then had him committed. Never mind that there’s still a small part of present-Sam that’s constantly doing a mental victory lap all, I found him!

“Uh huh,” says Sarah. “Yeah, this guy is so grumpy and surly and broody, you were so right, Samuel.”

“Literally just this morning at breakfast, he complained at length about how horribly expensive the kids’ breakfast cereal is, that was a full-on grumpy old man rant,” Sam says.

Sarah waves a spoon dismissively. “Okay, yeah, but that’s normal grumpy, and the damn cereal really is way too expensive. You were making it sound like the man is a storm cloud in human form, all brooding and ominous.”

“He is,” Sam insists. Sarah’s answer to this is a meaningful stare out into the yard, where Bucky is enthusiastically cheering on Cass’s attempts at pitching a fast ball. He’s wearing a baseball tee and everything, and it stretches very appealingly across his broad shoulders. “Or—he was,” Sam corrects. “And like, I know he was in therapy and all, but I met his therapist, she was kind of awful. This cannot be personal growth or something. Something’s going on.”

“Mmhmm,” Sarah hums, turning back to the pot simmering away on the stove. “Remind me, most of the time you two spent together before this, it was…”

“Fighting aliens, fighting each other, fighting our fellow superheroes, fighting super soldiers, fleeing arrest…you know, superhero stuff.”

“Right, right. And would you call those good times? Because the impression I got from you was that those were, collectively, some truly stressful days what with all the running for your lives and trying to prevent the apocalypse and what not.”

“What are you getting at?” Sam asks, and Sarah rolls her eyes. She sets a lid on the pot then turns to give him her full, judgey attention.

“Sam. If someone met me only on, I don’t know, the days after a Cat 4 hurricane has rolled in and my baby hasn’t slept the night through in two weeks and also my husband just died, and they say, ‘wow, that Sarah Wilson sure is a hot mess of a person,’ would you say they know me?”

“No, of course not, that’s not exactly you at your best—“ Sam protests, before he catches onto Sarah’s point. “Okay, I see what you’re getting at here. But that’s not—we’ve worked together, and he’s mostly been a dick. A competent dick who has my back, but still a dick.”

Sam omits those first few days after they came back to life, when they’d stuck close to each other out of sheer shell-shocked confusion, both of them adrift among all the confusing changes the last five years had wrought. Sam and Bucky hadn’t talked much then, sure, but they’d looked out for each other. Bucky had quietly made sure Sam ate and slept, and Sam had kept an edgy Bucky company in the crowds of familiar and unfamiliar faces in the wake of the battle. There’d been some unspoken accord between them, and Sam remembers, suddenly, that there’d been a few brief, bright flashes of this happier Bucky even then.

“Yeah, well, far as I can tell, you’ve only seen Bucky either at his worst for reasons beyond his control on account of all the, you know, brainwashing and trauma, or at his most stressed out, pretty much,” Sarah concludes.

“I saw him in Wakanda a few times, and at a couple events after the battle with Thanos,” says Sam, despite a sneaking suspicion that Sarah is right. “And I texted him and he barely answered me!”

But those Wakanda visits had been brief, and Bucky had mostly still been in the sleeping 20 hours a day stage of his post-cryostasis and un-brainwashing recovery. They hadn’t exactly talked much beyond teasing and pleasantries. And Sam’s texts had been kind of perfunctory check-ins, because Sam had been too busy dealing with his own shit to worry much about Bucky’s. And Sam’s not about to forget also all of Bucky’s asshole behavior during the whole Flagsmasher mess, but he’s willing to forgive it. Bucky’s sincere apology and help with the boat make all that water under the bridge now as far as Sam’s concerned. However annoying he may be, Bucky shows up and puts in the work when it really matters, and that honestly counts for a lot.

Shit, maybe Sarah’s right. Maybe he has only seen Bucky at his worst and most depressed and stressed out, and this more cheerful and steady version of Bucky is closer to who he really is. It’s certainly closer to the Bucky Steve had always waxed rhapsodic about.

“Maybe he’s just in a better place now,” Sarah says, an unwitting echo of Sam’s own thoughts. “You both are. So I figure this goes both ways.”

Sam narrows his eyes at her. “What goes both ways?” he asks, and Sarah sighs and shakes her head.

“The only seeing each other in insanely stressful situations thing, which seems like a good reason to offer each other some grace now that things are calmer. You both have a chance to get to know each other better without worrying about getting shot at or killed by aliens now, and Bucky seems like a good man who’s doing his best. Give him a chance, Sam, and give yourself one too.”

Sam’s not the one who needs a chance here, as far as he’s concerned.

“He’s basically my superhero partner and he’s currently living with us, I am obviously giving him a chance,” Sam counters.

“That’s not what I—” Sarah starts, then cuts herself off with a sigh. “If you say so.”

Sam knows a hell of a lot about James Buchanan Barnes, is the thing, no matter what Sarah says about how he ought to get to know Bucky better. Not just what’s in the history books, and not just the horrors in HYDRA’s Winter Soldier files, but Sam knows a lot about Bucky himself, because Sam spent two years looking for Bucky, and then he spent two years on the run with Steve, and when Steve got going, he could not. shut up. about Bucky.

So Sam knows that Bucky was a welterweight boxing champ, and he knows that Bucky came second place in some local swing dancing competition. He knows that Bucky apparently doted on his little sisters, and that he was close with his parents, though he’d sometimes been at odds with his dad. He knows that Bucky’s got a sweet tooth, that he hates beets, that he loves pancakes. He knows about all the times Bucky finished a fight Steve started, or vice versa. He knows that Bucky’s good at math, and that he’s the only reason Steve passed any of his high school math classes at all, and he knows that Bucky likes to read science fiction and fantasy, and also, surprisingly, poetry. Sam knows all that and more besides, so much that he’s probably forgotten some of it.

The Bucky Steve talked about at such length was generous and kind and brave and smart, the life of the party and the heart of the team, stubborn to a fault and occasionally moody, but quick to forgive and patient about the things that mattered. Steve had clearly idolized and adored Bucky, and his heart had never quite caught up to the reality that the golden boy Bucky of his treasured memories was long gone, and not just thanks to the war or HYDRA. Even without accounting for horrific amounts of trauma, no one could stay on a pedestal like that.

And anyway, literally none of Steve’s odes to Bucky’s greatness had been relevant to Sam in trying to track Bucky down in those years after Insight. Some of it’s more relevant now—the stubborn and moody part definitely is. But the rest of it…well, maybe Sam’s only now starting to see, a little bit, the Bucky Steve had loved and damn-near hero worshipped. Maybe Sarah’s right that Sam still needs to get to know Bucky.

Bucky fits into the Delacroix community far better than Sam would have ever expected for a white boy from the 40s. Sam’s inclined to credit this to Bucky’s time in Wakanda at first, until he remembers a couple of the times he’d gotten close to catching up to Bucky while he was on the run. Sam had asked around after him, and assorted neighbors and shop owners’ collective impression of Bucky had been: quiet, very polite, and always willing to lend a hand with sundry errands or favors, especially for older folks. He’s the same here in Delacroix, though he’s considerably less quiet, and he’s rapidly charming the entire populace. Sam often finds Bucky shooting the shit with Carlos and the guys at the docks as Bucky works on fixing or lifting something or another for anyone who asks.

“It’s like y’all have your own personal crane and forklift combined into one human man,” Sam remarks one day. “Really putting Bucky’s super powers to good use here, gentlemen.”

“Is that sarcasm I detect, Samuel?” asks Bucky with the easy, bright grin that’s already becoming comfortingly familiar despite how it pretty much makes Sam’s stomach flutter a bit every time. Bucky’s always been distractingly handsome—Sam has eyes, okay, not that he intends to make a move or anything—but happy and distractingly handsome turns out to be a way better look on Bucky than stoic and broodingly handsome. “Or is it maybe…jealousy?”

Sam snorts. “Jealous of being put to work on every rickety old boat in this marina? No way.”

Sam is not jealous. He doesn’t actually much want to spend his time hanging around the docks and marina fishing and fixing the various broken down boats. It’s just that it stings, a bit, how no one expects him to contribute to the family business. Sam’s been gone a while, sure, but this boat, fishing in these waters, feeding this community—that’s all his family legacy too, not only Sarah’s. And yet when Sam had called around the community to help with the Paul & Darlene, damn near every person had sounded at least somewhat surprised that it was Sam doing the calling, that it was Sam who wanted to save the boat too, and not just Sarah.

“Hey now, Sam, if you had a useful superpower like Bucky here’s super strength, we’d be happy to put you to work too,” says Carlos. “But if we got any need for flying, we’ll be sure to call you up!”

Sam laughs along with the guys on his way to the Paul & Darlene, and Bucky falls in step with him once he’s smoothly disentangled himself from the gaggle of Delacroix old-timers.

“So what needs fixing today?” asks Bucky.

“Nothing, for once,” Sam tells him. “Sarah just asked me if I could check out one of the routes she’s considering for chartered tours, make sure it’s clear and safe and all.”

It’d be good to have an additional revenue stream when it’s not shrimp season, and Sarah’s not wrong that even a few tours in the shrimping off-season would make the endeavor worthwhile.

“You want some company?” asks Bucky.

“Sure. You can pretend to be a city slicker tourist on one of our tours, let me get in some tour guide practice.”

“Pretend?” says Bucky with a grin. “Awfully kind of you to assume I’d be pretending.”

Sam laughs and Bucky’s grin widens a tick. “Hey now, you’re a cut above a city slicker tourist by now, Buck.”

“What an honor.”

They shoot the shit while Sam navigates the boat out into open waters, and after he’s apparently gotten his fill of the view, Bucky joins Sam in the cabin.

“Hey, do you know how to steer a boat?” Sam asks.

He knows Bucky can operate all kinds of vehicles on land and in the air, but outside the Paul & Darlene, they haven’t exactly spent a lot of time out on the open water in a work context or otherwise.

“Probably,” says Bucky.

“Yeah, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Sam says, then gestures Bucky over. “C’mere, you should know the basics at least. Just don’t tear the ship’s wheel off like you did with my car’s steering wheel.”

“I’ve apologized for that, multiple times even, are you ever gonna let me live it down—”

“No! Now pay attention, this is one vehicle you are definitely not allowed to destroy.”

Sam goes over the controls with him, and in the close space of the cabin, that means they’re standing hip to hip, and it feels natural to put a hand on Bucky’s broad back or around his shoulders as Sam shows him the basics of nautical navigation. Bucky picks it all up quickly, which isn’t a surprise. What is a small surprise is Bucky’s anxious vigilance about hitting animals.

“What if I hit an alligator? Or a manatee? Aren’t they endangered?” Bucky frets, peering out at the water.

“We don’t really get manatees ‘round here. And we’re in the ocean right now anyway, so no, you’re not gonna hit a gator. Even if you did, the gator would probably be fine, to be honest. Those fuckers are tough.”

Thus reassured, Bucky relaxes, and starts poking around the cabin a little. Sam points out where the maps are kept—though shit, probably they ought to pick up some new ones, he’s pretty sure the coastline has changed in the last however many years old these maps are—and where the flares and fire extinguisher are, but Bucky seems most interested in all the photos and knickknacks strewn around the cabin. Even though he’s seen them before while working on the boat, he’s still looking at all the photos closely.

He taps at one photo. “Your parents?” he asks, and Sam glances over at the photo of his dad with his mom in his arms on the deck of the boat, both of them beaming, and he nods. If you look closely, you can just about see the swell of his mom’s belly: she’s pregnant with him.

“Yeah,” he says.

“They look really happy,” says Bucky quietly, and Sam nods, swallowing past the by now familiar tightness in his throat. After a long moment of silence, Bucky asks about another photo: a young Sam at the helm, beaming into the camera.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Sam confirms. “My dad was teaching me how to steer.”

It’s a treasured memory, one of Sam’s favorites. A lot of Sam’s favorite memories are on this boat: spending time with his dad, learning to fish, stargazing with his mom, running around with Sarah, taking the boat out on his own for the first time…it’s part of why he’d been so hurt by Sarah’s proposal to sell or scrap the boat. Objectively, Sam knows that nothing will happen to his memories of the boat and his family if the boat itself ceases to exist. Emotionally though...well, he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. The boat is safely theirs now, looking better than it has in years thanks to Sam and Bucky’s work and the community’s help.

Sam’s startled out of his reminiscence when Bucky says, “Yeah, my dad taught me to drive too.” There’s an odd hesitance to his voice. Maybe the memory’s not as clear as Bucky would like it to be.

“Yeah? You guys have cars back in the stone age?”

“Ha ha,” says Bucky, rolling his eyes. “My dad had a car for the business, nothing fancy. He started teaching me when I was, I dunno, twelve or thirteen? I’d already been begging him to let me try for years at that point, even though I was definitely too short to manage it.”

Sam grins over at him, charmed at the thought of a tiny pipsqueak Bucky trying to wheedle his way into driving lessons.

“Aww, were you a late bloomer?” he teases, and is surprised by Bucky’s wry chuckle.

“Yeah, actually, I was. I wasn’t all that much bigger than Steve until my growth spurt hit me like the wrath of God when I was fifteen or so. Felt like I grew two feet in about six months, it was miserable.”

“That didn’t make it into the history books,” Sam says. 

It didn’t really make it into Steve’s rosy recollections either—not the Bucky being miserable about it part, anyway. Steve had mostly focused on the part about Bucky becoming tall and handsome seemingly overnight. Sam wonders if there are any photos of a teenaged Bucky; he’d have liked to see the transformation, if only to tease Bucky about it. He’s only ever seen some grainy old yearbook photos from the year Bucky graduated.

Bucky snorts. “No, they skipped that and got right to the ‘good athlete’ part once I’d gotten past all the clumsiness.” Bucky moves on to another picture, this one of a teenaged, zit-ridden Sam who’s sporting an unfortunate flat top. “Looks like you had an easier time of it.”

Sam shrugs and says, “Yeah, I guess.”

He can’t complain much about his teenage years, at any rate. He argued with his dad a lot, sure, had a couple tempestuous high school relationships, but things were pretty easy at school, and he figures puberty was the usual amount of awkward and gross for him.

“Were you ever gonna take over the family business?” Bucky asks, now examining another photo of a teenaged Sam, this time aiming a strained smile up at the camera as he hauls a catch in.

“No,” Sam says, and winces when the single word comes out far more harshly than he intends, harsh enough that Bucky’s shoulders hunch up, his body language turning wary and distant in a way that’s almost worse than a thrown punch. “Sorry, guess it’s still a sore spot,” Sam adds with a smile that’s probably pretty wan.

Bucky nods, his shoulders easing back down again, but not all the way. “Yeah, I didn’t really want to take over the family business either,” he offers, again with that strange hesitance, or maybe it’s carefulness. “Though I might never have needed to, my uncles had it covered.”

Which was fortunate for past Bucky. Teenaged Sam had the weight of his father’s expectations bearing down on him from pretty much the moment he was in high school, until not even college out of state was enough distance from Dad’s disappointment in Sam’s lack of interest in the Wilson family business or in the church. So he’d joined the Air Force and left Delacroix behind, for a while, at least…

“Alright, enough family story time,” declares Sam, clapping Bucky on the shoulder and ignoring the way Bucky’s brow knits. “Time to give you that tour. Now, there’s a lot of little islands along this part of the Louisiana coast…”

When they get back to the house, Bucky stares at Sam for a bit, not as intense and murdery as some of his past stares, but still intense and searching enough that Sam struggles not to fidget under those clear, pale eyes. Bucky’s brow has the same small furrow it’s had for much of the trip on the boat, and Sam can’t decipher the meaning of that.

“If you’re trying to spontaneously develop telepathy, it’s not working, Buck. Spit it out,” Sam says.

“I just—uh, thanks. For taking me out on the boat with you today,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry if I was—annoying or whatever.”

Sam blinks, taken aback by both the apology and the assumption. Sure, Bucky’s always at least a little bit annoying, but not in any kind of way that requires an apology, not now that they’re actual friends. 

“Hey, no, you’re fine, we’re good. Thanks for coming along, seriously, it was fun.”

Bucky smiles then, his relief obvious. Most emotions are in fact pretty obvious on Bucky’s expressive face and in his eloquent body language, Sam is coming to learn.

“Yeah, it was nice,” he says.

AJ and Cass come in with a clatter then, cutting off any chance for further conversation.

“Uncle Sam, the schoolbus is the worst, why couldn’t you come pick us up today?” whines Cass.

“I like the bus!” says AJ cheerfully. “Uncle Bucky, are you making our after school snacks again today? Can we have apples with peanut butter again?”

“I want a banana with peanut butter!”

“Everyone can have whatever fruit they want with peanut butter,” Bucky says, already herding the boys into the kitchen.

“Really? Even if I want peaches with peanut butter?” asks AJ, and Cass makes an exaggerated retching noise.

“Sure, but then you gotta eat it,” says Sam, before Bucky can say anything like ‘okay, let’s try it.’ “Wash up first, boys!”

Sam fleetingly wonders if he’s the one who owes Bucky an apology—because why would Bucky think Sam was annoyed enough to merit one?—but the thought quickly dissipates in the late afternoon’s normal rush of helping the boys with homework, having dinner mostly ready by the time Sarah comes home, and replying to yet more of the seemingly endless emails about the Avengers Initiative.

If Bucky’s good night as they’re turning in for the day seems somewhat tentative, Sam’s pretty sure he’s just imagining things.

One of the most familiar sights in the Wilson family kitchen is this one: a Wilson flitting between the stove and the oven and the kitchen table, stirring and fixing and plating up good, hearty food, while their shoulder holds up a phone to their ear with someone or another pouring out a problem to be fixed or a sorrow that needs easing or just plain gossiping.

Today, it’s Sarah with her head tilted at an uncomfortable angle to keep her phone at her ear—Christ, it’s like she’s forgotten about the modern innovation of speaker phone, or a bluetooth headset—as she stirs up a big batch of dirty rice to go with yesterday’s shrimp catch, almost certainly to be distributed to whoever’s in need of a bit of help this week. Maybe the Youssefs, who have a colicky newborn, or the Perezes, who are still struggling to fit back into post-Blip life.

“You know I’ve tried with Ms. Lark, but the woman does not like me, I guarantee she won’t accept so much as a good morning from me, much less any actual help—“

Sam plucks the phone from Sarah’s shoulder in a move too fast for Sarah to retaliate, and he puts it on speaker as he sets the phone down.

“You are gonna get an awful crick in your neck if you keep holding the phone up like that, use speaker phone, that’s what it’s there for!”

“Samuel—! Ugh, sorry, I was saying, you know I worry about her all alone out there, but sometimes I think she’s so ornery she wouldn’t call the fire department if her house was on fire, just to avoid talkin’ to anyone—“

Sarah’s assessment of Ms. Lark isn’t far off. Ms. Lark isn’t a bad person, she just doesn’t much care for seemingly anybody save her late husband, and she’s blunt and snappish at best and grimly silent at worst. But she’s as gentle as anything with animals; if you can’t afford to go to the vet, you go to Ms. Lark, and she’ll do her best, or she’ll quietly give you the money to get your pet proper care.

“I know, I know,” says Mrs. Grace over the speaker phone, “But that house is liable to fall down ‘round Lark’s ears and she won’t let anyone help!“

Bucky comes in from outside, looking unfairly dewy with the glow of a good workout or good honest labor or whatever the hell it is he’s been doing outside for most of the day. He’d gone out that morning with unspecified plans and a promise to be back in time for dinner. For all Sam knows, he’s been tanning, given how his skin’s already lost the pale cast of winter in New York, and it looks damn good on him. But no, Sam eyes the dirt and grass stains on the knees of his jeans. He’s been gardening, maybe.

“Wait, are we talking about Ms. Lark down on the other side of the woods?” asks Bucky. “Hi, Mrs. Grace, this is Bucky, sorry, you’re on speaker phone.”

“Well hello there, Bucky! And yes, that’s Lark—“

“Oh, you don’t have to worry, I’ve been helping her out, fixing some things up around her house,” says Bucky. “It’s not so bad as all that, really, the wood’s all still sound, she just can’t keep up with the maintenance so well any more—“

“She let you help?” says Sam. “And wait, when did you even meet her?”

Bucky blinks wide and guileless eyes at Sam, and not fake guileless, but his most truly innocent look, the one that makes him look all of ten years old.

“At the animal shelter the other week. We got to talking—”

“She talked to you?” says Sarah, and Bucky gives her an odd look.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Why wouldn’t she?” He looks anxious then. “Oh, is she—she’s not scared of me or anything, is she—”

“Oh, honey no, who’d be scared of you?” coos Mrs. Grace over the phone line, and Sam’s ready to share in a silent joke with Bucky, because there are plenty of bad guys out there who are rightfully scared shitless of the Winter Soldier. But Bucky just snorts, a bitter twist to his lips that Sam hates to see.

“No one in Delacroix,” Sam says firmly. “We just meant—Ms. Lark isn’t much for people, is all. She keeps her own company most of the time.”

Bucky shrugs. “She was pretty quiet, sure, but she was nice. We talked about animals, I told her I was thinking of getting a cat.”

“You’re thinking about getting a cat?” Sam echoes.

Bucky ignores him to continue, “And she talked about her pets, and how she wanted to build a cat patio for her cats, but she couldn’t manage it on her own—“

“A cat patio?” Sarah repeats, as Mrs. Grace exclaims, “How adorable!”

“So I offered to go over and see if I could help, and while I was there, I figured I might as well help fix up whatever else needed fixing—“

“Of course,” Sam says faintly.

“So anyway, I’ve got it covered, Ms. Lark is doing alright,” he says. “I’m headed over there tomorrow, actually.”

“Well! That is good to know, you’re such a sweetheart, Bucky. Thank you for looking after even the surliest of Delacroix’s own!” says Mrs. Grace. “Though Sarah honey, if you could take some food over there too…? I worry about how thin Lark’s getting.”

“Of course, Mrs. Grace.”

“We could go together,” offers Bucky.

“Oh thank you, that would ease my mind and the whole church’s too, I’m sure! Y’all are such angels!”

Sam wonders just how much gossip is about to flourish on the Delacroix grapevine, and decides not to worry about it. They’ll be sweet grapes rather than sour, at least. In fact, if Bucky’s managed to win Ms. Lark over, the entire island’s going to think he’s the most charming motherfucker on the planet. Sam might just start thinking that too, because seriously, winning over Ms. Lark? That would be a hell of a feat. Sam doubts even Steve could have managed it no matter how much he laid on the old-fashioned, aw shucks charm.

After Mrs. Grace says her goodbyes and Sarah and Bucky work out when to go visit Ms. Lark the next day, Sam asks Bucky, “You need any more help over at Ms. Lark’s tomorrow?”

On her way out, Sarah gives Sam some side eye like she’s judging his nosiness, but Sam means the offer genuinely. He just happens to also be nosy as hell and he wants to see what’s going on with Bucky and Ms. Lark. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Bucky, it’s just that he’s kind of wondering what exactly Bucky’s definition of “nice” is. He honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them communicate in silences that are various levels of surly or grumpy.

“Sure,” says Bucky as he washes up at the kitchen sink. “You can help build the cat patio. Catio?”

“I can definitely help supervise the building of a cat patio,” says Sam, and Bucky snorts. He pours himself some water from the pitcher in the fridge, and something about his hand’s grip on the glass and the movement of his throat is oddly arresting. 

And sexy. Fuck, Bucky really is distractingly hot now that Sam has leisure to really notice that kind of thing.

This is a serious problem for Sam’s poor, neglected libido. Sam refocuses his thoughts with effort. Getting laid is unlikely to be an option any time soon, given how much he’s got going on, and he wishes now that he’d worked some more sexual frustration out with hookups before taking up the shield. Sam Wilson can have a no-strings-attached night on the town in New Orleans a couple times a month or so; Captain America, not so much. Sam does not want to start out his tenure as Cap with a hookup selling a story to TMZ or something. 

Whatever, it’s fine. Sam’s a grown-ass man who won’t die of blue balls. 

“What have you been up to today anyway?” Sam asks Bucky.

Bucky made himself scarce after they trained together this morning while Sam has spent most of the day poring over a proposed contract for working with the Avengers Initiative. He’s sent a redline out to the lawyers though, which he figures is enough superhero-related productivity for the day.

“Went to that big garden center with Janette from down the road, she wanted some help with the big bags of soil, then I helped her with some planting too,” says Bucky. “She’s got a hell of a garden. Is it still a garden if you can probably feed half the island with its produce?”

“Yeah, her family’s always had a green thumb,” says Sam. “You like gardening?”

“I think so,” says Bucky, in a contemplative kind of way. “I helped with the garden in the village I was staying at in Wakanda too. It was—nice. And here, everything’s so—so green. It’s—I don’t know. I like it, working with plants. It feels like—like a real thing, a good thing.”

“Sounds like it ought to be your new hobby then,” Sam says, and if the straightforward suggestion comes out too tender, well, this small confession of Bucky’s is worth being tender and gentle with.

“Maybe,” says Bucky, suddenly diffident.

“You know, we’ve got plenty of space in the yard, but we’ve never managed much more than an herb garden and some tomatoes,” Sam says. “Sarah hasn’t got the time for much more. Our Titi was the one with the green thumb. But if you want, maybe you could do some gardening here?”

The offer seems to surprise Bucky, and he studies Sam carefully before he says, “I’d like that, if Sarah doesn’t mind. Maybe I oughta make sure I can keep some plants alive before I get a cat.”

“Of course you’re a cat person,” says Sam with an exaggerated sigh and shake of his head, setting out the obvious bait for a round of low-stakes arguing.

Bucky takes the bait, of course. “And what’s wrong with being a cat person?”

“Nothing! Just, for a guy whose nickname is White Wolf—“

“Oh, now you get the name right—“

The next day, Ms. Lark greets Sarah and Bucky warmly enough by her standards, but she seems distinctly nonplussed by Sam’s presence.

“I warrant a visit from Captain America now?” she asks, hand on her hip and skeptical eyebrow raised impressively high.

To Sam’s mingled relief and awe, Ms. Lark looks much the same as she always has: as upright and stubborn as an oak tree, only somewhat more gnarled and weathered now. Weathered as she is, there’s still a burnished sheen to her brown cheeks, and her headful of braids is only lightly touched by gray. It’s her hands that give her age away the most, the joints looking knobby and somewhat swollen. No wonder she’s having trouble keeping up with house maintenance. 

“Just thought I’d come along with Sarah and Buck,” Sam says, with a level of cheer he knows is excessive. 

What can he say, seemingly incurable grumps like Bucky and Ms. Lark always bring it out of him. Though admittedly, Bucky isn’t so much of a grump anymore. Maybe that’s at least a little bit on account of the influence of Sam being so damn delightful. Sam likes to think so, at any rate.

Not that Sam’s influence seems to be doing much for Ms. Lark, given her vaguely disapproving hum and glower in response to Sam's cheerful smile. Bucky's charm on the other hand…

“I figured things would go faster if Sam came along, and then Sarah wanted to bring some food for us. I thought we could all eat together?” says Bucky with an easy, slightly bashful smile that’s visibly softening Ms. Lark up. “I hope that’s alright, I didn’t mean to spring it on you.”

“Mmhmm,” says Ms. Lark. “I’m sensing that this is Grace’s meddling mother hen nonsense, James.”

“A little bit,” Bucky admits. “It’s also my meddling mother hen nonsense.”

Recognition hits Sam like a particularly vicious static shock: Steve’s voice, from the past, full of fondness: he’s such a mother hen, always looking out for people. I’d call him a mother hen and he’d say ‘yeah, yeah, cluck cluck, asshole, now get back in bed.’ 

Ms. Lark snorts, though her lips twitch with a smile. “Oh, big, tough Sergeant Barnes is a mother hen?”

Apparently, thinks Sam with something like wonder, and Bucky nods solemnly. “Yes, ma’am. That’s about 75% of a sergeant’s job, actually. We just yell so much that folks don’t notice.”

Both Ms. Lark and Sarah laugh then, which, holy shit, Sam’s not sure he’s ever heard Ms. Lark laugh, and Ms. Lark invites them inside. Sam shares a quick surprised glance with his sister, who widens her eyes in return. Yeah, Ms. Lark laughing is a novel sight to her too. 

On the way in, Bucky keeps pace with Ms. Lark, both of them chatting easily about the animal shelter, and Sam and Sarah fall back to whisper to each other. Sam’s under no illusions that Bucky won’t be able to hear, but Ms. Lark definitely won’t, and that’s the point.

“Well, Steve always did say he used to be a real charmer,” Sam mutters to Sarah, who gives him a somewhat incredulous look.

“There’s being a charmer, and then there’s this. It has got to take some kinda magic or hoodoo to get Ms. Lark smiling and laughing with anyone, I’m just saying.”

Despite Mrs. Grace’s conviction that the place is about to fall down around Ms. Lark’s ears, Ms. Lark’s property looks to be in decent enough condition to Sam. A stiff hurricane-force wind is unlikely to turn it to kindling, that’s for sure, though it’ll need boarding up before a storm, and the roof certainly needs patching. And maybe the porch railings could stand to be replaced too, he thinks, eyeing the way some of the wood looks a bit rotten.

Today’s task is patching the roof, and he and Bucky manage that in a couple hours while Sarah disappears inside the house—where she’s almost certainly tidying up for Ms. Lark and squirreling away food for her—and while Ms. Lark sits out on the porch, trading cat patio ideas back and forth with Bucky.

With the sun of his hometown shining down on them and Bucky beside him, doing good honest work together to help someone in Sam’s community, for the first time in a long time, Sam feels like he’s in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing. His mind is free of all doubts and second guesses, his heart’s full of nothing but gratitude. He needs this, he realizes. He needs this touchstone, this simple, necessary work with the people he cares about most, for the people he cares about most, if he’s going to be out there donning the stars and stripes to go to the rescue.

“What’s with the Captain America look?” says Bucky, startling Sam out of his thoughts. When Sam looks over at him, Bucky is smiling, his hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. The sheer unlikely, surprising rightness of Bucky being here too nearly makes Sam laugh in delight.

“What Captain America look?” he asks.

“You know, looking all noble and heroic. You look like you’re about to break out into a speech.”

Sam laughs and shakes his head. “No speech. Just feeling grateful, is all.”

Bucky’s smile brightens in some intangible way that suddenly makes it a rival to the sunshine. He looks out over Delacroix from their perch on Ms. Lark’s roof, then tips his face up very slightly to the sunshine. Sam’s next breath comes a bit too shallow, his heart beats a touch too fast.

“Yeah. I get that,” says Bucky, and then he gets back to work, and Sam joins him.

After lunch—wonder of wonders, Ms. Lark compliments Sarah’s food, to Sarah’s visible surprise—Ms. Lark even sends them off with two of her famous pecan pies, which is some kind of miracle. She’d won a church baking contest award for her pecan pie once, and then she’d never served it in public ever again. Sam has pretty much judged every single pecan pie he’s had since against his one brief taste of Ms. Lark’s, so this is honestly kind of a big deal.

“Alright, ‘fess up, what kind of magic did you work on Ms. Lark to get her to like you,” asks Sam in the truck on their way back home. “That woman is damn near the most misanthropic person I’ve ever met, and here she’s making her famous pecan pie for you. I have dreamed of this pie.”

“Aww, she’s not so bad as all that,” says Bucky, and Sarah laughs incredulously.

“Oh, she absolutely is! I’ve known her almost my entire life and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard her laugh until today.”

“Well, I guess I’m used to prickly, ornery people,” says Bucky.

“What, being one yourself?” says Sam, and Bucky somehow manages to both glare and roll his eyes at almost the same time.

“No, I mean Steve. He wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine back in the day. My sister Alice wasn’t either.”

Despite Steve’s insistence that Bucky was a happy guy before the war, Sam’s always found it hard to imagine Bucky as the ray of sunshine to Steve’s raincloud, recent evidence notwithstanding. It’s not that Steve was a happy person when Sam knew him, but he wasn’t exactly grim and dour, or particularly ornery. Stern and serious sometimes, sure, but with a dry sense of humor, and he never took himself overly seriously. He could let loose, he could laugh. Sam had admittedly been the one to take on the role of being the upbeat and positive member of the team though, which is a familiar position for him, and one he usually enjoys. Even so, it hadn’t always been easy, during their time on the run.

“Were you a ray of sunshine back in the day?” Sarah asks Bucky, in that easy way of hers that makes even a nosy or loaded question sound good-natured.

When Sam glances sidelong at Bucky to gauge his reaction to the question, Bucky’s face is calmly thoughtful.

“I guess, yeah,” he says. “I was, y’know, pretty happy, all things considered. Moody sometimes, maybe, and it’s not like I didn’t want a better life or whatever, but I was a cheerful guy.”

Sam’s inner smartass wants to reflexively joke, oh yeah, what happened, only he knows exactly what happened and it’s not at all funny. And anyway, Bucky has been in a pretty good mood lately, Sam doesn’t want to be the kind of asshole who steps all over that.

“You still seem like a pretty cheerful guy to me, given the givens,” says Sarah.

“I’m not exactly an optimist,” Bucky notes dryly, after a long silence. When Sam risks a look at Bucky’s expression, there’s something between pain and surprise, or maybe wonder, in his eyes. “But uh, I guess—well, it’s easier to be happy here. Now.”

“Damn straight it is,” Sam says, and smiles out at the road. Bucky probably doesn’t mean here here, as in Delacroix, with Sam, he just means the generic here and now. But that’s victory enough.

“What about you?” Bucky asks him. “You always been this obnoxiously upbeat and motivational?”

Sarah barks out a laugh and says, “Oh this guy had such a rep for being the class clown, it was so annoying. Everyone thought I was a downer in comparison just because I didn’t turn every class into a comedy club.”

“Okay, I don’t think ‘class clown’ is the right term,” Sam protests. “I was, you know, a good student and all, I didn’t start shit, I just liked to joke around sometimes, that’s all, keep the mood light.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” says Bucky, and when Sam meets his eyes for a brief moment, he doesn’t quite know what to make of the keen focus in Bucky’s gaze when it’s matched with the fond crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“Okay, we’re stopping for the day,” declares Bucky.

It takes a longer moment than Sam would like to admit to gather enough air to say, “No way, I’m good to go,” he wheezes up to the cloudy sky. To add insult to literal injury, a fat drop of rain plops onto his cheek, swiftly followed by another, then another. The sky flashes and Sam groans.

He gropes with one hand for the shield—maybe he can press it into service as a temporary umbrella, if nothing else—but before he can, Bucky has kicked it up onto his vibranium arm. Thunder rumbles, and Bucky’s scowl down at him might as well be part of the storm clouds.

“You just nearly took yourself out with your own shield, you are not good to go,” says Bucky. “Also, guessing it’s about to start pouring.”

“You gonna let a little bit of rain stop you, Barnes?” Sam asks as he sits up. 

His lower back twinges in warning, and his upper back does worse than that. This is what Sam gets for trying a cool combination flip and catch maneuver. Not only had he failed to catch the shield, but it had actually managed to hit him too.

“No, but I am gonna let making sure you’re not going to throw your back out, or worse, stop me. We’re done for the day,” says Bucky.

“Just give me a couple minutes and I’ll be good to go,” Sam insists.

Bucky’s answering glare is all the more dramatic with the way another flash of lightning punctuates it, turning the stern angles of his face even harsher, and briefly making his eyes seem to glow. “Do you want to get struck by lightning? And are you trying to injure yourself?” he demands.

A clap and growl of thunder lends dismaying credibility to his words, as does the way the rain starts falling in earnest. Bucky is pretty immediately soaked, his hair losing its now-customary fluff and volume and his shirt plastering itself very unfairly to his muscles. What the hell kind of shirt is he wearing that it so lovingly outlines every single one of his chiseled abs? And oh god, why are his workout pants so low-slung, Sam is pretty sure he can see the faintest shadow of a happy trail, and is that the cut of his hip—

Yeah, no, Sam cannot continue on down that mental path, not without his inappropriate thirstiness becoming embarrassingly apparent. He heaves himself up to standing position. Bucky does not help, letting Sam’s struggle to get up speak for itself with raised eyebrows.

“Fine! But that just means we’re gonna be stuck inside answering emails!” Sam says.

“Better than getting soaked and injuring ourselves out here,” says Bucky heartlessly.

Bucky shepherds Sam back into the house, and once they’ve both changed and dried off, he chivvies Sam to the couch where he straps an icepack to Sam’s upper back in defiance of all Sam’s protests.

“I don’t really know how you’re supposed to elevate your back,” Bucky frets as he stacks pillows behind Sam. “But at least the rest, ice, and compression parts are covered.”

Sam has to try very hard not to be charmed by this. Between the fussing and the way his drying hair is getting ever more wild and fluffy, Bucky’s resemblance to a mother hen is only intensifying, swiftly overtaking Sam’s annoyance at the weather and the Bucky-enforced break. The temptation to ruffle Bucky’s hair is so strong Sam’s hand actually twitches with it before he curls it into a fist. And it’s—well, it’s nice not to be doing this on his own. It’s nice to not have to resort to a bath tub filled with ice and cold water and a fistful of painkillers, and it’s definitely nice to not have to push through because it’s not safe enough to stop, or because he can’t worry his family.

It’s even, maybe, kind of nice to be fussed over and helped, says a very small, plaintive voice deep inside Sam that he promptly smothers into silence.

Naturally, this is when Sarah comes in, her arms heaped with bags. “What’s all this? Sam, did you get hurt?”

“Why are you home so early? You okay?” asks Sam. “And I’m fine, don’t worry—“

“The wind and surf were kicking up too much down by the docks to bother staying open, so I got the boat and everything secure and came back, figured I could get some cooking done here,” she says. She turns to Bucky. “Did he get hurt?”

“Nothing serious, just a strain, but he needs to actually rest it, here let me get some of those for you.“

Bucky takes all of Sarah’s bags, and Sam doesn’t miss Bucky’s fleeting grimace as he does. Shit. The weather. It had turned swiftly enough that it’s probably set Bucky’s left shoulder to aching, and getting fully soaked by the rain probably hadn’t helped. A while back, Bucky had admitted that the remainder of his left shoulder, collarbone, and the port for his prosthetic ache when the weather turns suddenly cold or damp, and today’s storm probably counts, coming so suddenly after a stretch of sunny days. Now that he’s looking closely, there’s a tell-tale strain around the set of Bucky’s mouth and a tightness around his eyes that says Bucky’s in pain. Given Bucky’s penchant for alarming understatement, Sam suspects it aches sometimes actually means causes me agonizing chronic pain.

“Sarah, don’t let him take those bags, his shoulder’s hurting him, here let me—“

“Don’t you dare get up, Samuel, I’m fine—“ Bucky warns, and does not relinquish the bags.

“I’m not gonna throw out my back if I go get you a heating pad, sit your ass down, Buck—“

In a flurry of graceful movement, Sarah sets her own bags down on the kitchen table, takes the ones from Bucky’s arms and sets those down too, and nudges Bucky into a chair at the kitchen table, all before Sam can get up from the couch.

“You two trying to out-mother hen each other is hilarious,” she says, laughing. “Don’t get up, either of you, I’ll get the heating pad. And you should take a hot bath tonight too, Bucky. Sam, you want that back brace thing you got?”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, alright.” He snorts and glances over at Bucky. “Maybe we’re too old and busted to be superheroes,” he says, keeping his tone light for all that he’s not entirely joking.

Sam’s worried about it more than once, and he’s still worrying about it sometimes. He’s in great shape, he knows that, he’s worked hard on that, but he’s not in his 20s anymore. He doesn’t bounce back the way he used to, and no amount of natural athleticism will keep him in superhero shape in his 40s, not without serious training. If the training alone leads to injuries, how can he hope to be an effective Captain America? Sam doesn’t much want the serum, but he has to admit it would make some things a hell of a lot easier, and he’s not sure if Bucky entirely realizes what an advantage he has compared to Sam.

“Says the man who’s less than half my age and still has all his limbs,” says Bucky dryly, and Sam suppresses a wince, because shit, that’s not quite what he’d meant. He’s about to fire back with an admittedly weak joke about how Bucky looks great for his age when Bucky frowns over at Sam, though he doesn’t seem upset. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not a machine, you can’t push yourself like you are, especially not in training. You’ll burn out before you ever get back in the field. You can’t be a super soldier if you just train hard enough.”

Does Bucky think Sam should be a super soldier if he’s going to be Cap? Sam dismisses the question as soon as it occurs to him. Obviously Bucky doesn’t, because at no point during the whole Flagsmashers search for the serum mission had he suggested Sam could or should use the serum on himself, not even with how much and how annoyingly he’d insisted on Sam becoming Cap. Anyway, Sam’s not trying to train himself into being a super soldier, he knows it’s not possible. He does have to be prepared to go up against various enhanced humans and aliens though, and he intends to make damn sure to make it as fair a fight as possible. That’s not being too hard on himself, that’s pure pragmatism.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you, coach,” is all he says to Bucky. “We’ll ease up on the training for the next few days, alright?”

“Listen, if you—” starts Bucky.

“Thanks for the pep talk though,” says Sam, cutting him off, and then Sarah’s back with the heating pad and the back brace, and they’re too busy enduring Sarah’s fussing to continue the conversation.

Before Sam can start seriously wondering if Delacroix has magical powers over one specific traumatized super soldier, Bucky’s run of good cheer falters and he has a couple bad nights. Whether it’s sleeplessness or nightmares or maybe even chronic pain, or hell, all of the above, that have put those dark circles back under Bucky’s eyes, Sam doesn’t know. If it’s nightmares, Bucky has kept quiet about it. But the return of a more closed off Bucky than Sam has become accustomed to in just these last couple of weeks only serves to prove Sarah’s initial point right: the Bucky Sam knew before all this hadn’t only been stressed out in high-pressure, dangerous situations, he’d been miserable. And not even just miserable, but exhausted.

It’s painfully obvious now that Sam can see the return of some of that exhaustion, because even this level of tired and quiet Bucky is miles away from the wound-tight guy Sam went super soldier serum hunting with. Because while Bucky’s eyes have gone more gray and cloudy than sunny skies blue, he still has the occasional smile to spare for AJ and Cass, and he still makes an effort to talk to Sam and Sarah, even if it clearly takes some serious effort.

Sam tries not to worry. Bucky’s an adult who has a hell of a lot of trauma and grief to deal with, he’s more than entitled to some off days, and it’s a good sign that he’s not trying to isolate himself.

Even so, Sam can’t help checking in with Bucky.

“Hey, you doing alright? You’ve been looking kinda tired lately. You can slow down, if you want, or take a break,” Sam says.

Bucky offers a somewhat wan but still sincere little smile. “I’m—well, I’m not great, but it’s nothing to worry about. Some days are harder than others, is all. I’ll be fine, thanks, Sam.”

“Okay, well, you let me know if there’s anything you need from me, okay?”

“Just being here’s all I need,” Bucky says, and then his face goes immediately pink. It’s genuinely pretty damn cute how flustered Bucky can get about being such a softie.

So Sam leaves him be and they go about their days the same as they have been: helping out around town, doing work on Ms. Lark’s house, training, wrangling the copious amounts of superhero bureaucracy. The only difference is that Sam takes to keeping Bucky company on his more sleepless nights, because it turns out that Bucky’s insomnia coping mechanism of choice is exploring the various sports channels’ late night offerings. 

“You a soccer fan?” Sam asks one night when Bucky’s got some kinda World Cup qualifying match on.

They’re both keeping their voices and the TV volume low in deference to the late hour, and the lights are off too, only the TV’s glow illuminating the living room. With the sounds of a Louisiana night outside the house—the soft shush-shush of wind through the trees, the buzz and hum of the frogs and insects, the occasional lapping of the water—it all feels intensely cozy. Even Bucky himself looks cozy, all rumpled and soft, curled up with his knees to his chin like a little kid, and the sleepy exhaustion on his face has an almost kind cast to it. Which suggests that tonight, it’s not horrors that are keeping him awake, but just plain restlessness or insomnia.

Bucky shrugs. “It’s alright. There’s just usually always a soccer match being broadcast somewhere in the world,” he says gesturing to the screen. “Makes for good white noise. You?”

“It’s not my favorite, but yeah, it’s okay to watch sometimes,” says Sam. “Or to play a pickup game with some guys or whatever. Louisiana’s football territory, you know. American football, I mean.”

“I’m not really a big football fan, I don’t think,” says Bucky with a thoughtful tilt of his head, like he’s unearthing the memory as he speaks.

“Now, now, don’t let the guys at the dock hear you talking like that. They’ll start a mission to convert you into an LSU or Saints fan for sure.”

“Baseball’s more my thing,” says Bucky with another shrug. “I played all the time when I was a kid, used to daydream about going pro and everything, not that that was ever gonna be likely. But you know, a lot of us kids in Brooklyn were obsessed with the Dodgers.” Bucky rests his cheek on his knee to look over at Sam with drowsy eyes, his long lashes shadowing his gaze into inscrutability. “What about you?”

“Louisiana doesn’t have an MLB team, so…” Sam starts, and then on the TV, a soccer player takes an offensively obvious dive that nevertheless causes the ref to issue a red card to the other team. “Oh come on, that’s an obvious dive!”

Bucky grins and says, “Yeah, I get the impression that’s part of the game.”

The rest of the match isn’t nearly so interesting, and by the end of it, both Bucky and Sam are about to drop off. Sam leaves him with a clasp of the shoulder and a good night, and thankfully, Bucky looks less exhausted the next morning.

The next night, Bucky finds some rerun of an old baseball game, the kind of thing the sports channels like to use to fill open space in their schedules cheaply. Sarah, who’s at the kitchen table catching up on accounting, snorts when she sees it.

“A whole baseball game: as good as a sleeping pill,” she says.

“Hey, I like baseball,” is Bucky’s mild protest.

“Oh lord, don’t tell me you and Sam are gonna start in on talking about baseball stats. That’s the only thing more boring than an actual game! Wait, no, I take it back, the only thing more boring than watching a baseball game on TV is going to an actual baseball game to root for your brother, who’s a shortstop, which isn’t really the kinda position it’s easy to cheer for or anything—”

“Hey now, you don’t see me making fun of your hate-watching The Bachelor hobby, and I’ll have you know that shortstop is a very demanding position, strategically speaking, the most important defensive—” Sam starts, before being interrupted by Bucky.

“Wait, Sam played baseball—” Bucky turns to Sam and repeats the question. “You played baseball? When? Where?”

It’s not like it’s a secret or anything, and Bucky sounds downright excited, so Sam’s not sure why the question makes his stomach give an anxious flutter, not unlike the way it used to feel before a game.

“Uh, in high school and college. I got a small baseball scholarship, actually,” Sam says.

“I’m surprised you haven’t seen his trophies, he was still keeping those up at his place in DC as a grown-ass man,” says Sarah, shaking her head. “Won’t display his many medals, but will display an old high school trophy for MVP, what kinda priorities are those?”

“You didn’t mention it the other night,” says Bucky, in a hard to read tone.

“Just didn’t think of it, I guess. Seems like a long time ago now, I haven’t played in years.”

“We should play,” Bucky says, and Sam laughs.

“With what team? It ain’t exactly a two-person sport, Buck.”

Some of Bucky’s enthusiasm seems to falter, but he recovers and says, “Sure, but we could go out and throw some balls with the boys or something, maybe go to a batting cage. It’d be fun.”

Yeah, okay, that does sound fun. If nothing else, Sam figures it’ll be neat to see just how well a super soldier can pitch and hit. 

“I approve of some wholesome, non-videogame sports out in the fresh air,” says Sarah. “Just don’t expect me to get into the baseball weeds with y’all.”

They end up making an outing of it that weekend, taking a picnic with them to the closest public baseball diamond. Bucky’s adorably excited about it, maybe just as much as AJ and Cass are, and Sam watches fondly from the sidelines as Bucky instructs the boys on proper form with a baseball bat.

“This was a good idea,” Sarah says, setting out the food. “I was kinda surprised you and Bucky haven’t been talking up a storm about sports, honestly, I feel like I knew he was a huge baseball fan after only a few days.”

“Oh, I knew,” says Sam absently. He has got to take photos of this wholesome baseball with the kids situation, it’s too damn cute. “The number of stories I heard from Steve about all the most important Dodgers games of their childhood…” Sam shakes his head and snaps another few photos. “Those two were real Brooklyn Dodgers die-hards.”

Sarah, inexplicably, gives him the hairy eyeball. “Then why haven’t you and Bucky been talking each others’ ears off about baseball this whole time? Don’t you men love to bond over sports stuff?”

Sam starts with an automatic retort that he doesn’t know how to finish. Why hasn’t he talked about it with Bucky? Sarah’s kind of right, after all, and at the very least, sports is a safe topic of conversation, a reliable way to fill conversational dead air with ultimately inconsequential yet heated discussions that pass the time. Even Bucky at his grumpiest might have been coaxed into a civil conversation with talk of baseball.

Sarah keeps talking. “Seriously, I was surprised you didn’t brag about your baseball ‘career’ the second you got a chance.”

“Just, uh, didn’t think of it, I guess,” is Sam’s weak response, and Sarah frowns.

Oh no, Sam knows that frown. Whatever she says next, she’s going in for the kill. Sam braces himself.

“Sam. Have you forgotten how this friendship thing works or something? You gotta actually talk about shit, not just have stressful, life-threatening bonding experiences. And I don’t even mean talking about serious stuff, I mean talking about normal friend stuff like your interests and hobbies.”

The conversational curve ball catches Sam off guard. 

“I know that,” Sam says, only barely keeping his tone short of snappishness. Strike one, says a snide part of his brain. “Seriously, I just didn’t think of it, I thought Bucky might’ve already known.”

That’s not even a strike, it’s a whiff, it’s such a weak rejoinder. How would Bucky have known about Sam playing baseball? Not even Steve, Sam realizes, could have told him, because Sam hadn’t talked much about it even to Steve. He’d told Steve just enough to encourage Steve’s own stories, reasoning that it was good for Steve to share those memories.

Sarah’s frown does not go away. “Sometimes I think you’re too damn independent,” she says softly.

“What? Why? What’s wrong with being independent?”

She raises an incredulous eyebrow. “Because take it from me, sometimes it’s just another word for being alone, and because as far as I can tell, you don’t have any close friends.”

“Hey, I have—” He’s about to say Steve and Nat, but, well. He doesn’t have them any more, now does he. The stab of renewed grief is almost enough to make him want to double over. “Torres, and Bucky, and—you know, the guys around town, and some of the folks from the VA—”

“A bunch of those people are coworkers or former coworkers, and half the time, you’re coworker-zoning Bucky too,” is Sarah’s flat response, before her eyes and tone soften. “Listen, I know it’s hard after you’ve lost people. You know I know that. But you’re always so damn insistent on carrying everything alone and keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself. You don’t have to hold everyone and everything but your work and your family at arm’s length.”

“I’m not,” Sam says, then, “Wait, is this you trying to say I need to find someone and settle down?”

“Well, that sure wouldn’t hurt,” she says. “I just worry about you being lonely, Sam.”

“I go out on dates, I’m not some kinda monk,” Sam retorts.

“Dates, or hookups?” asks Sarah. “You deserve more than that, and maybe Bucky—“ and then thankfully they’re interrupted before Sam has to face any more sisterly intervention or any suggestions about what Bucky’s role in all this is.

“Sam!” Bucky calls out. “We need a pitcher, get over here!”

They’re on a literal baseball diamond, with Sam’s family, and yet the innuendo rises automatically in Sam’s mind: does that mean you catch? Which, Jesus, get a grip, Wilson.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” he calls back, and stifles a wince. 

Why the fuck is baseball so damn suggestive? Talk of bases and sliding home, pitching and catching, the way Bucky’s cute little ass looks in his tight pants—

Sam shakes the thoughts off. His partner isn’t a hookup option. Sarah might have a point though, about the friendship thing. Sam needs to do better there, and it’s a damning sign of how out of practice he is at it that he’s been inadvertently ‘coworker-zoning’ Bucky by holding parts of himself back for no real reason.

So for the rest of the day, Sam makes an effort to tell Bucky about his own baseball stories: the first game he won, the time he took a ball to the gut and threw up on the field, how long it took him to become a decent batter. That it is in fact an effort, like working a weakened muscle, is disquieting in a way Sam doesn’t want to think about. Bucky, already in a good mood thanks to playing with the boys, lights up even more, like he’s making a creditable effort to match the sunshine, and he’s talkative almost to the point of being chatty. Steve, Sam remembers, always used to say that Bucky could chatter like anything else. I swear, he could talk for ten minutes straight without me needing to say much more than ‘yeah’ or ‘uh huh’.

They’ll make the time to do this more often, Sam decides on the way home, when Bucky is regaling Cass and AJ with a story of the time Steve and Bucky got caught sneaking into Ebbets Field. This, and maybe going to baseball games. Louisiana doesn’t have an MLB team, but there are minor league games, and maybe they could make a mini-project out of finding Bucky a new team to root for, now that his beloved Dodgers are in LA.

As for Sarah’s totally unnecessary concern about Sam’s love life, that’s a non-starter for now. Sam’s well-aware that he’s not getting any younger, and while he firmly believes there’s no time limit to finding a life partner, he has to admit that it hasn’t seemed all that urgent since he lost Riley. And anyway, he’s not in any kind of position to pursue romance right now, no matter what impractical demands his libido makes.

AJ says something that makes Bucky laugh—an increasingly familiar sound, though no less of a sweet surprise every time—and Sam’s eyes leave the red traffic light in front of him and find their way to Bucky’s face, sitting in the passenger seat. The neck of Bucky’s t-shirt is stretched out enough to reveal the vulnerable hollow of his throat, and Sam’s mouth damn near waters with a sudden craving to taste the salt of the sweat that could surely gather there—

“Light’s green!” announces Cass, and Sam startles, taking his foot off the brake.

“Got it, buddy,” he says.

Christ, maybe Sam needs to jerk off more or something, if only to avoid lusting after even the most innocuous parts of his partner’s body.

One aspect of Bucky’s grumpiness that has remained mostly unchanged despite his otherwise much sunnier and more relaxed disposition is his aversion to most attempts to catch him up on all the pop culture he’s missed. If you’re not recommending him a book, preferably a sci fi or fantasy one, Bucky does not much want to hear about it. AJ and Cass get a pass, he’ll watch basically anything with them, which means his pop culture knowledge is skewing awfully young: Disney and Pixar movies, those Lego movies, the seemingly endless Star Wars spinoffs, some other cartoons that might as well be incomprehensible to Sam. But the second Sam tells him he’s got to watch the classics of the buddy cop genre or The Matrix, Bucky grumbles and refuses.

“Man, we have got to expose you to more grownup media,” says Sam one night after the boys are in bed. “At this rate, you’re gonna know about the entire Disney canon before you know anything about, I don’t know, the Fresh Prince, or Lost.”

“I don’t mind,” says Bucky as he makes up his bed on the couch. “I like animation, it’s really come a long way since Snow White.”

“You love that sci fi nerd shit, you should watch some of the sci fi movie classics though!”

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of this thing where people hand me lists of shit to watch or whatever so that I can be considered a normal, well-adjusted person who gets every pop culture reference ever,” he says, airing out a blanket with a snap. “That’s not really my priority when it comes to getting used to living in the future. What the hell’s the problem with not talking in impenetrable cultural references anyway?”

“Wow, you sound very old man yells at cloud right now, Grandpa Simpson. Did you also wear an onion on your belt, which was the style at the time?”

Sam makes himself laugh with that particular excellently timed pop culture reference. Joke’s on Sam though, because Bucky narrows his eyes into one of his death glares, and then he spends the next few days making incomprehensible old-timey American and modern Wakandan pop culture references, until Sam cries uncle.

“Fine, fine, I get the point, I’ll try to ease up on the pop culture stuff,” Sam says. “If you don’t get something, you can just ask, you know.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, in a tone that suggests he will not be asking. “And that’s not the only point.”

“What’s the other point then?”

“This thing where you tell me I gotta watch or listen to this or that, it oughta go both ways. I watch something with you, you watch something with me.”

“What, like your favorite movies from the 30s?”

“Yeah, or the music I liked, or whatever.”

Sam wants to object, but can’t really come up with any objections that don’t sound totally assholish, apart from, “Okay, but no hideously racist shit. Like, I get that there’s gonna be an ambient level of racist bullshit, but none of that Birth of a Nation shit.”

Bucky’s whole face says no shit before the words themselves come out of his mouth too. “No shit, Sam. I know I’ve still got a lot to learn about that kinda thing, but come on, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Also, they gotta be talkies,” he adds, and Bucky rolls his eyes and laughs. “And we should do music too, exchange playlists or whatever.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky.

“And none of this wishy-washy ‘I liked it,’ or ‘it’s okay’ bullshit, you gotta fully engage with the music.”

“Oh? And should I write up an essay about the playlist for you, Mr. Wilson?” teases Bucky.

“No, I don’t need an essay, c’mon. I just mean you gotta actually talk about what you like or don’t like, or don’t get or whatever.”

“Same goes for you then,” says Bucky, and then they shake on it.

“Y’all are making mixtapes for each other now? Cute,” says Sarah, when she catches him hunched over his laptop skipping through songs on his Spotify.

“It’s not a mixtape, they’re playlists, and it’s for educational purposes, not, y’know, a mix tape.”

Sam is, admittedly, lavishing as much attention on this playlist for Bucky as he ever did on a mixtape for his high school sweetheart Leila, but that’s because it’s a lot more challenging to make a playlist of songs that are both representative of Sam’s music taste and a good introduction to the decades of music Bucky has missed out on. If his purpose was just to give Bucky a crash course on all the music he’s missed, or prank him, this would be easier. Having to pick songs that Sam likes, and that he hopes Bucky will like too, is considerably harder.

“Sure,” Sarah drawls. “You better include Lauryn Hill on the mixtape, is all I’m saying.”

“Make him your own playlist!” he retorts, though Lauryn Hill is already on Sam’s, multiple times, even, because of course she is. 

God, Bucky better appreciate all the effort Sam’s put into this. If he shit talks all of Sam’s music, Sam doesn’t know if their partnership can survive it. Hopefully, Bucky’s own playlist for Sam won’t just be all the greatest big band hits of the 30s and 40s. Though maybe even that wouldn’t be so bad, Sam concedes, at least not if Bucky shares his own memories and stories about what the songs mean to him.

Superhero luck being what it is, they only get a chance for one movie night before duty calls—Sam’s pick, The Matrix, on the basis that it blew his mind when he saw it in the theater, and it was a real inflection point for all the action movies that came after it, so it’s both a personal favorite and educational, pop culture wise—and they haven’t even managed to exchange their playlists yet. Rhodey assures them that it’s a good sign they’re being called in for this mission, and that they should try very hard not to turn it into an enormous shitshow.

“Consider this a job interview of a mission,” he suggests during the briefing. “So try to be on your best behavior?”

“Sure, but if things blow up, they blow up,” says Bucky with a shrug. “Can’t always control that.”

Rhodey sighs. “Right, but if you two, personally, could avoid any particularly destructive explosions or other disasters, that would be great. That would be pretty critical, in fact.”

“You’re sending us into a suspected bioweapons lab,” Sam points out. “Blowing shit up might be the safest call.”

“Also, it’s in the middle of nowhere,” adds Bucky. “No better place for us to blow shit up.”

“Fine, whatever, blow up everything, just as long as you get the intel we need and you don’t let some kinda zombie plague escape this facility.”

“On it, boss,” Sam says with a crisp salute that makes Rhodey roll his eyes.

“Right, so let’s go over the objectives and your infiltration plans…”

It’s a long flight to Kazakhstan, and with the briefing and planning part done with, they don’t have much to do other than keep staring at the maps and intel that they’ve already committed to memory. Once even Bucky is satisfied that they’re as prepared as they’re going to be, complete with multiple contingency plans up to and including zombie plague and/or aliens, Sam suggests they exchange their playlists now and listen to them for the rest of the flight.

“What, like, together?” asks Bucky with a furrowed brow that borders on the suspicious.

“Like, I listen to the one you made me, and you listen to the one I made you. We talk about them as we go, or at the end, whichever. It’ll pass the time.”

Bucky shrugs and puts away his thick brick of a paperback—his favored pastime on long flights when he’s not brooding or sleeping, Sam has come to learn.

“Yeah, alright,” he says. “But we should talk after we listen, otherwise we’ll never get through all the songs.”

“Yeah, alright, fair enough,” says Sam with a laugh.

They share their playlists, and pull out their respective earbuds to begin listening. Sam’s not entirely sure what to expect from Bucky’s music, beyond a healthy amount of jazz, swing, and big band music. He doesn’t really expect a particularly cohesive playlist though, given that Bucky isn’t from a time when painstakingly crafted mixtapes and playlists were really a thing. And yet, Bucky’s playlist seems to tell a story, of sorts, not least because he seems to have organized it more or less chronologically. It has the danceable highs of Benny Goodman and the sad, crooning lows of Judy Garland, and there’s even some classical music too, Rachmaninoff and Chopin, that Sam’s curious enough to ask about before he gets to the end.

“What’s with the classical? It doesn’t seem like your style.”

“My ma played piano. We couldn’t afford one, but she’d listen whenever she could on the radio, so it reminds me of her,” says Bucky softly.

“The Motown and gospel on my playlist, that’s there on account of my parents,” Sam offers in return, and they share wistful smiles before returning to their listening.

Maybe it’s just Sam’s own perspective, but all the 30s and 40s songs feel soaked in bittersweet nostalgia, like he’s getting a glimpse of the black and white film reel of Bucky’s old life. Every so often he looks over at where Bucky’s listening intently to Sam’s playlist, and the full-color reality of him is a pleasant kind of shock, like the glimpse of a rainbow beyond storm clouds. His face is set in a softer version of the intent concentration he brings to missions, broken only by the way he sometimes taps his fingers against his thigh, or bobs his head to the music. He even smiles a bit sometimes, and Sam’s wildly curious which songs earn that reaction. It’s almost jarring when Sam’s own attention returns to Bucky’s playlist as it transitions to more modern music.

“Joy Division? Weirdly on brand for you,” Sam says.

“Kept seeing it on people’s shirts, got curious,” is Bucky’s explanation.

There are also a couple Afropop bops, some French rap, a couple songs from something called Eurovision that sound vaguely reminiscent of mediocre club music only more overwrought, and some songs from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It all neatly encapsulates Bucky’s recent globetrotting ways and the things and people he’s come in contact with since breaking free of HYDRA. The last song on the playlist actually succeeds in making Sam emotional, embarrassingly enough, and it’s not even on account of the song itself: Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”

“Oh, so now you like Marvin Gaye, huh?” he says once he swallows past the weird lump in his throat.

Bucky takes his earbuds out, and gives Sam a sweet, crooked little smile, the blue of his eyes going somehow both soft and sparkly. “Figured I ought to prove I’ve been paying attention to at least some of your music rants.”

Sam nods his chin towards Bucky’s phone, still held in his hand. “And my playlist? What’d you think?”

He’s glad now that he took this whole thing seriously—he’d feel like a real asshole if he’d gone with anything jokey or blandly educational given Bucky’s earnest playlist—even if he’s suddenly weirdly nervous. Sam’s playlist for Bucky is full of his favorite genres and artists, the music his family and community love and that he loves too: Motown and gospel, funk and soul, a sprinkling of the blues, some of the greatest hits of 90s R&B and hip hop, a couple house tracks that make him think fondly of his brief but fun clubbing days, and even some rock music. Each song is a memory or a feeling or even a memorial, a track on the soundtrack album of Sam’s life, and while objectively Sam knows that music tastes differ and it’s no big deal, subjectively, he might be kinda heartbroken if Bucky doesn’t like or is apathetic about all of it.

Thankfully, Bucky leans forward, bright-eyed, and says, “The Four Tops, that’s Motown, right? I don’t think there’s a Motown song I’ve heard yet that I haven’t liked. And Lauryn Hill, I really liked her—”

Sam grins wider than he has in a long time, and cannonballs into the conversation like it’s a pool at a summer house party.

The long flight doesn’t feel long enough after that, they get so caught up in talking about music and listening to more of it, and it’s such an enormous change from that one fraught and snippy exchange about Marvin Gaye back during the Flagsmashers mess that Sam almost can’t believe it. Here and now, there’s no defensive hunch to Bucky’s shoulders, no tense glower; there’s just Bucky’s quick and easy smile, his avid and animated interest. Sam almost forgets about the mission entirely, until Torres calls back to them from the cockpit.

“ETA one hour!”

“Shit, guess we oughta get ready, huh?”

“Yeah, but put on that ‘Born to Run’ song while we do,” says Bucky.

“I feel like there are a lot of possible jokes about you being into Springsteen, but honestly, I can’t blame you, he’s pretty much a national treasure,” Sam admits.

Bucky offers him one last sunny grin before he puts his stern superhero game face on and gets back to business. 

“So I was thinking about it, and I know it’s not any of the blueprints or imaging, but we should keep an eye out for any secret underground tunnels or exits, could Redwing scan for that—?”

This is Sergeant Barnes talking, and the Winter Soldier, and the White Wolf, solemn and competent, the kind of guy you want on your six. Even so, Sam’s surprised by a fierce and almost childish stab of missing. He misses Bucky, who both is and isn’t right in front of him right now. He shakes the feeling off quickly. You are on the job, Wilson, and so is he. Be a professional. A mission is the last place Sam wants to get distracted by inconvenient feelings.

Chapter Text

The suspected bioweapons lab isn’t much to look at: just a small collection of concrete box-like buildings, likely Soviet leftovers, surrounded by nothing much other than dirt, dust, and scrubby grass. Grassland and achingly blue sky stretch out endlessly around them, the dry and cold air a premonition of a characteristically bitter winter’s approach. According to Redwing’s scans, there aren’t more than a dozen people inside the facility, and weeks’ worth of satellite imagery and the current vehicle tracks around the area confirm that it’s unlikely that there’s a hidden army or anything lurking around here, though there’s always the possibility that whoever’s in there could have backup arrive from elsewhere.

“So what’s the over-under on there being a zombie plague or some other bioweapon horror in there?” asks Sam.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” says Bucky. “Any seriously horrifying shit would be out at Vozrozhdeniya by what’s left of the Aral Sea, the Soviets never cleared that research facility out properly after it was shut down. You dig a hole in the dirt around there and you might be spreading anthrax around.” Bucky squints out at the squat concrete buildings. “Podunk place like this? Don’t expect much.”

“Well, that’s a relief, I guess,” says Torres, eyeing the ground with some suspicion.

Bucky’s proven right, thankfully. The only resistance they meet in the main building is a small squad of mercs, and he and Bucky take them out with swift efficiency. One of the mercs even babbles about what an honor it is to get taken out by Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

Bucky sighs and pats the guy on the shoulder roughly enough to make him wince. “Yeah pal, you’ll be drinking for free on this story for years if you’re lucky.”

With the mercs out of the picture, the folks in the labs don’t put up much of a fight. One of them is making a half-hearted effort to destroy documents, while another tries to run for it with an armful of laptops and hard drives, and a zap from Redwing stops him in his tracks. After that, they get the half-dozen lab techs and scientists secured with ease.

“I guarantee you the bratva is not paying you enough to try going up against superheroes, buddy,” Sam tells the guy who tried to make a run for it. Where he even thought he could go, Sam doesn’t know. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you in protective custody. Torres, call in the cleanup crew.”

“On it!”

“So, can we blow all this up now?” asks Bucky, and Sam snorts.

“Let’s clear the rest of the buildings first.”

“You think we need to go full hazmat protection?” Sam asks as they head for one of the other, smaller buildings.

“Doubt it, none of the mercs or lab guys had any protective gear on other than goggles. I didn’t see any other gear even available,” says Bucky, and it’s a good point. “I’ll take point though, just in case.”

“I’ll send Redwing in first, then you take point,” counters Sam, and Bucky rolls his eyes, but assents.

They poke around the buildings and don’t find anything immediately concerning, just battered lab equipment and drugs in various stages of synthesis. As battered and busted as the equipment and labs are, all the materials and drugs are meticulously labeled and organized. Sam recognizes a few of the chemical names. Still no clean rooms or hazmat suits anywhere though, just gloves and goggles, some heavy-duty cleaning supplies and fire extinguishers, and a well-stocked first aid kit. It strongly suggests they’re not messing with anything like deadly viruses out here, which is a relief.

“I think we’re looking at more of a party drug operation than a bioweapon one,” Sam says. He pokes at a bag of individually packaged pink pills. “Though I’m guessing this MDMA might not be the standard kind.”

“Even party drugs can be used as weapons,” notes Bucky grimly. “But yeah, I don’t think we have to worry about sarin or anthrax or anything here.”

The last building they check is in more disarray than the others, but it’s the kind of disarray you’d expect if the inhabitants had panicked about being raided by superheroes: some broken glass, the remains of a small fire in a trashcan full of papery ashes, chairs knocked over. Sam’s having Redwing pull the data off yet another laptop when he notices that Bucky has gone stock still, his head cocked, looking for all the world like a hound who’s caught the scent.

“Do you smell that?” asks Bucky.

Sam sniffs the air tentatively. He doesn’t smell much other than something that smells like cleaning product, and the lingering smoke from the fire in the trash can.

“What, the smoke? It’s just from that trash can.”

“No, there’s something else, something…it’s kinda tart, lemony.”

“Cleaning product,” Sam says. “It’s got that fake citrus kinda smell.”

Bucky frowns, apparently unconvinced, and his nose twitches. “Your throat and nose, they feel fine? Your head?”

Sam dutifully checks in with himself, just in case. “Yeah, I’m good, Buck. Redwing’s reporting normal oxygen concentration in the air and everything, no toxic gasses or any other toxins.”

“I don’t like it,” says Bucky, still frowning. “You got all the data?” Sam nods, and Bucky continues, “So let the cleanup crew finish the rest, let’s get out of here. Try not to breathe too much.”

He almost objects just on principle, but honestly, the cleanup crew can handle the rest. Even if Sam’s almost certain that Bucky’s overreacting to the scent of some cleaning product or another, it’s not worth getting into an argument over it. They leave the building and rejoin Torres and the prisoners, where Bucky makes Sam thoroughly wash his hands, drink a whole canteen of water, and even flush out his eyes.

“This is going overboard,” Sam protests, even as he lets Bucky squirt water into his eyes.

“Better safe than sorry,” says Bucky.

“Why aren’t you doing all this shit too anyway?”

“I metabolize most airborne pathogens and toxins within two to four hours, and I’m familiar with the symptom progression for them. If I’m fine in the next hour, we’re in the clear,” is Bucky’s flat answer.

It’s not only his voice that’s gone flat either, it’s his whole affect, and the set of his shoulders has gone taut and worried. Yeah, Sam can make some horrifying guesses about just what it means that Bucky is ‘familiar with the symptom progression.’ Bucky goes through the whole hand and eye washing routine too though, so Sam doesn’t push, and when Bucky mother-hens Sam into using a pulse oximeter too, his eyes fixed on the readout, Sam doesn’t protest much. He’s willing to give Bucky some slack right now. The excess caution won’t hurt anything anyway.

“See? My lungs are working just fine,” Sam says when the results are a healthy 99%.

This good news makes the tension in Bucky’s shoulders ease a little, but his expression remains firmly closed off. Sam doesn’t like it. Whether Bucky’s dealing with bad memories or bad vibes about the current mission, either way, it’s making Sam antsy. That stab of missing hits again, missing Bucky when he’s right in front of Sam, and Sam pushes it aside.

The World Security Council cleanup crew arrives not long after that, and they pass the scene off to them, Bucky advising them to go into the last building in full protective gear. With that, their part’s over now, and all that’s left is to sort the intel and take it back to Rhodey, then get started on the reams of paperwork.

“If that was a job interview, I’m pretty sure we just aced it,” says Sam when they’re back on the quinjet. “No casualties, no property damage, suspects in custody, and intel acquired.”

Bucky grunts in grudging acknowledgment of their unqualified success, and stares at Sam. “You have to tell me if you feel even a little bit weird,” he presses, and Sam groans.

“Yeah, yeah, I will, but I’m sure I’m fine. It was just a weird smell, not some kinda death gas. Same goes for you too though, you better say something if you feel weird and not just pull the stoic soldier bullshit,” Sam says, and Bucky nods.

Sam had figured Bucky would relax when they were safely in the air, but he doesn’t. His face still has that awful closed-off expression that’s such a terrible contrast from the Bucky Sam’s gotten to know in Delacroix who’s so much more at ease, and who’s so willing to let his face reflect all his feelings. The mission went well and they haven’t argued, and Bucky had been cheerful enough until—until that building with the weird smell. Maybe it’s just that he’s genuinely worried they’ve been exposed to something, but if he really thought that, he’d have insisted they go to a hospital first. Maybe it’s time to push a little.

After the silence has stretched for long enough to get uncomfortable, Sam breaks.

“Hey, you wanna talk about whatever’s got you doing such a good impression of a clam?”

Finally, Bucky’s expression thaws a bit, albeit into annoyance. “A clam? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re all, you know, closed off, shut up tight. Like a clam,” says Sam, complete with illustrative hand gesture, which Bucky is visibly unimpressed by. “So did those labs bring up bad memories or something? You can talk about it, if you want.”

“I never want to talk about it, not really. Not with you. You’ll look at me like—like I’m a sad dog at the pound, or like I’m breaking your heart. I hate that. The one thing I liked about talking to Raynor was that she never looked at me like that, no matter what awful shit I told her.”

Sam blinks, a bit taken aback by this torrent of honesty. The honesty itself isn’t remarkable, Bucky’s actually a pretty honest guy, to a fault, even. The willingness to say all that though, that’s a bit of a surprise. Sam had been expecting to get the brush off, or a not right now at best.

“Okay, that’s fine. That’s alright, Buck, you don’t have to talk to me about it. Is there—maybe you should think about finding a new therapist though, someone to talk about this kinda thing with?”

“I’ve been looking for someone,” says Bucky with a diffident shrug. “But I didn’t want to bother you about it.”

“Why? Buck, it wouldn’t be any trouble, I’ve got contacts, I could ask around.”

Sam will do more than just ask around, admittedly. He’ll run full and thorough background checks and demand references, maybe even conduct his own interviews, but Bucky doesn’t need to know that.

Bucky turns bright red, and his eyes drop away to the floor. “Because I’ve been looking in New Orleans.”

Why wouldn’t Bucky want to tell him—oh. Warmth rushes down Sam’s spine and settles happily in his belly. “Because you want to stay. In Delacroix.”

“Yeah.”

“For—uh, to help with Cap and Avengers stuff, or—because we’re probably gonna have to relocate to the Compound for at least part of the time. And I mean, you really don’t have to stay just to be Cap’s cyborg partner or whatever.”

“Who said anything about Cap?” asks Bucky, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion, though he doesn’t seem willing to risk more than a brief glance up at Sam before looking down again. “I know I don’t have to stay. I want to stay, because you’re in Delacroix. And because I like it there. It feels—uh, it feels more like home than anywhere else has in a really long time.”

“Oh,” says Sam, a flush of happy heat suffusing through him, knocked more off-kilter by Bucky’s words than he probably should be. Not in a bad way, just—it’s unexpected, is all. “Hey, that is nothing but good news, man.”

Bucky looks up again, and the last of his tense, shuttered expression has fallen away to leave hope shining through, bright as sunshine once the curtains have been thrown open.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” says Sam, and he means to make some kind of joke to lighten the mood, to get Bucky smiling, but instead he says, “I want you to stay.”

It’s the truth, not that Sam had known it until this moment. That’s fine though, because it makes Bucky smile, and not his “I am handsome and charming and I know it” smile, or his rakish grin, or the small and quietly happy smile that mostly shows around his eyes, but his real-deal, sparkling eyes, light up the world miracle of a smile.

“Okay. Um, that’s—that’s good,” murmurs Bucky.

“And I’ll help you find someone in New Orleans, or hell, maybe someone who’s willing to do remote sessions.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

Sam’s surprised at just how much it’s like a weight has been taken off his shoulders, as if he’s been carrying a load for so long he’d gotten used to it. There’s an almost euphoric looseness to his muscles, like the endorphin rush after a tough workout. There’s one thing that’s still bugging him though.

“Did you think I wouldn’t want you to stay?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know, I wasn’t sure,” says Bucky. His smile turns rueful. “You kinda give mixed signals sometimes, Sam.”

Sam laughs. “Me give mixed signals? Says Mr. Brooding and Mood Swings over here.”

Bucky doesn’t take the bickering bait. Instead he meets Sam’s eyes, solemn and sincere. It never stops surprising Sam, that sincerity, the way it softens everything about Bucky.

“You don’t always let me know you, is all. It’s okay, though. You don’t have to.”

Sam has no idea what to say to that. He wants to say, of course I let you know me, I tell you shit all the time, but he can’t. He actually can’t. The message gets garbled somewhere between his brain and his ears, and all that comes out is, “I tell you stuff sometimes.”

“I know,” says Bucky with a soft little smile that’s at odds with the sad resignation in his eyes. “Like I said, it’s fine. I get it.”

“What exactly do you get?” demands Sam.

“That I’m not—that you might not want me to know you like that. You can have, uh, boundaries, or whatever, it’s fine, I get it. We don’t—we don’t have to be best friends, we’re, y’know, coworkers. Partners. It’s—” Bucky’s mouth works silently for a moment, and then he frowns and finishes, “enough.”

Fuck. Half the time, you’re coworker-zoning Bucky too, Sarah had said, and apparently, she’d hit on something there if Bucky’s sitting here now saying Sam gives him mixed signals and doesn’t let Bucky know him.

“Buck, of course we’re friends, c’mon. We’re pretty much best friends at this point,” Sam admits.

It’s not as if there’s much, if any, competition for the position right now. Sarah wasn’t exactly wrong when she said he doesn’t have a lot of close friends; if he’s being honest with himself—and right now, it’s hard to be anything other than honest with himself when he’s faced with Bucky’s own honest sincerity and doubt—it’s always been that way. Sam strives to be a friendly guy, but it’s been hard to let people get really close to him, since—well, since Riley, he supposes.

“Yeah?” says Bucky, equal parts skeptical and hopeful.

“Yeah, man. On my end, anyway, I don’t know about yours.”

“On my end too,” Bucky rushes to say. He seems to have a couple false starts then, opening and closing his mouth until he says, “Sorry. I’m not—I’m not sure I know how to do this, anymore. The friendship stuff, I mean.”

“You’re doing alright as far as I’m concerned,” Sam says with an encouraging smile. “Hell, as far as all of Delacroix is concerned, even. You’ve been making friends all over the place.”

Bucky shrugs. “That’s just helping out, being a good neighbor. It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re going pretty above and beyond for Ms. Lark, that’s a pretty big deal. Take it from me, she is not that friendly with…basically anybody else.”

“I don’t think I’m going above and beyond,” protests Bucky. “I’m being, you know, a normal amount of friendly with her.”

“Uh huh, sure,” says Sam, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed. He raises his eyebrows in challenge. “Like you don’t know how charming you can be with that aw shucks, I’m just a handsome old soldier from the 40s and big blue puppy dog eyes routine.”

Bucky laughs. “Are you confusing me with Steve? C’mon, I don’t have an aw shucks and—and big blue puppy dog eyes routine, what the hell.”

Sam scoffs and makes a gesture encompassing Bucky’s general everything. “You do, you definitely do, with the eyes and the smile and the hair—”

“The hair?” asks Bucky, roughly scrubbing a hand through said hair, which only calls attention to how he’s been growing it out from its short, tousled look into a style that’s longer on the top, and how the beginning of a wave or curl is starting to appear. It always looks so damn soft too, and thick.

“You have obnoxiously beautiful hair,” Sam informs him. “Even when it’s all fluffy and messy! It is genuinely hard to resist touching it, especially when you first wake up in the mornings and you’ve got that adorable bedhead situation happening.”

Bucky goes very still, his eyes wide. Which is exactly the kind of big blue puppy dog eyes situation Sam was talking about, come on.

“Sam…are you feeling okay?” asks Bucky.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine, why?”

“Are you sure?” presses Bucky. “Are you feeling, I don’t know, dizzy, or hot, or confused—”

Bucky comes over to Sam’s side of the quinjet to peer into his eyes, and he puts a hand on Sam’s forehead to check his temperature. Sam bats it away.

“I feel fine!”

Bucky leans back and narrows his eyes at Sam. “Okay, sure. Hey, quick question: did you eat the other half of the pint of ice cream I got last week, the one I specifically said was mine and that you said you hadn’t touched?”

Is this supposed to be a test of Sam’s memory or his cognitive function? If so, it’s not a good one. And okay, so maybe Sam had not been paying attention when Bucky had told him which pint of ice cream was hands-off for everyone else, and maybe he’d indulged in some late-night ice cream after Bucky fell asleep watching Encanto the other night. In Sam’s defense, Bucky gets a lot of ice cream whenever he goes on a grocery run, how is Sam supposed to keep track of which flavors are his rather than communal?

Sam wants to answer Bucky’s question with an apologetic maybe? He absolutely means to say maybe. But somewhere on the journey from brain to mouth, maybe transforms into, “Yeah, I did.”

“Ha, I knew it!” says Bucky, before his triumph swiftly turns grim. “Also, now I’m pretty sure we were exposed to something back at that lab.”

“What? Why would you—what, because I answered your question?”

Sam replays the last couple minutes. So, okay, he’s been kinda…loose-lipped. That doesn’t mean he’s been drugged.

“Yeah, and you were kinda, uh, chatty, just now,” says Bucky. “Like, five drinks deep chatty.”

Sam tries to say I’m not that kind of lightweight, c’mon, but it’s like his mouth is not at all listening to his brain, because instead he says, “More like three drinks, actually, I can’t hold my liquor for shit.”

He usually manages to cover for it by sipping his drinks slowly, but—wait. Why the fuck did he just admit to that?  The answer hits Sam like getting a bucket of ice water thrown into his face.

“Oh no. You think this is—what, some kinda truth serum situation?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Unless you’re saying you wanted to ‘fess up about your ice cream thieving ways and how you’re a total lightweight.”

“I didn’t,” Sam says automatically. Shit. “What about you, is it hitting you?”

Bucky’s been somewhat more forthcoming than usual, but nothing too far out of the norm, really. Definitely nothing that would make Sam think he’s under the influence.

Bucky scrunches up his face. “Maybe?”

“Alright, so who’s your favorite of the OG Avengers?”

It’s a low-stakes question that Bucky has alternately scoffed about and dodged in the past, which terrible liar that Bucky is, had clued Sam in that the answer might be embarrassing and/or hilarious. Given what Sam’s just inadvertently admitted to, he’s not above wanting to even the score a bit.

“Thor,” Bucky answers promptly, and then immediately closes his eyes and blushes bright red.

Sam cackles. “Oh, that is ice cold, man. Not your BFF? For shame. But okay, sure, he’s an alien god-prince who controls lightning, I get it.”

“No, it’s mostly just because Thor’s hotter,” is Bucky’s seemingly automatic rejoinder before he opens his eyes again to glare at Sam, still blushing deeply.

“Oh, so this is for purely shallow reasons,” says Sam, still laughing. “Any other thoughts about the hotness levels of the Avengers you wanna share?”

So Bucky’s into guys. Sam has gotten a bit of a vibe at times, but the confirmation is…nice to have. Especially given all the flirting with Sarah. And for other reasons that Sam definitely shouldn’t be thinking about at the moment.

Bucky turns prim. “I think we have more important things to worry about right now, Samuel. Like just what the hell we got exposed to.”

Thankfully, they have all the data from the facility with them, and Redwing easily cracks the encryption on the laptop from that last building. All the biochemistry stuff goes over Sam’s head, and he can’t help confessing as much.

“You know what any of this means?” asks Bucky, scrolling through chemical formulas while Sam peers over his shoulder at the laptop screen.

“I got a C- in chemistry, so no,” Sam says, then winces. “What is this, overshare serum or truth serum, goddamn.”

Bucky snickers, but casts a sympathetic glance Sam’s way. “I got a B in Biology in high school,” he offers.

“How are those things comparable?” demands Sam.

“I, uh, got all straight As otherwise?” says Bucky with an apologetic wince.

Bucky was pretty much always top of the class, he’s so smart, Sam remembers Steve gushing, starry-eyed. Ugh. So Bucky was one of those high school kids, Sam thinks, not without fondness. One of the annoying ones who had the whole package: good looks, good brains, good athlete. Sam rocked most of that trifecta in high school too, admittedly, but he at least had a couple speed bumps like the C- in chemistry and getting teased for the gap in his teeth. He shakes his head, focuses. Tries to, anyway. Shit, maybe he is feeling whatever they’ve been dosed with. His thoughts keep meandering.

“Here, a report in good old plain English, more or less,” says Bucky, pointing at the screen. He scrolls through it rapidly. “‘Aerosolized targeted inhibition lowering,’” he reads. “Results unclear…subtle mode of action…no serious side effects other than dry mouth, dizziness, itching, nausea…”

“Okay, but what does this stuff do,” says Sam, impatient.

The set of Bucky’s mouth goes angry. “Oh. They were trying for something that would make people compliant. They got truth serum instead. ‘Most subjects incapable of lying while under the influence, but require specific prompts and questions…loss of inhibitions can lead to excess loquacity…if we can replicate the results consistently, recommended for use in interrogations…’”

“Shit. That could be dangerous.”

Bucky sighs. “But at least it’s not physically dangerous. How are you feeling?”

Sam checks in with his body. “Feeling some of that dry mouth, but that’s all. Does it say anything about how long this is supposed to last?”

“We didn’t get exposed to much of it for long, and I should burn through it faster than you…” Bucky looks at the data again. “Seems like they don’t have clear data on that yet though. Anywhere from one to eight hours.”

“This shit is creepy with how barely noticeable it is,” Sam says, unnerved, and Bucky nods.

“You could probably wreak some real havoc if you, say, released it during some diplomatic negotiations or a trial or something,” says Bucky. He frowns and scrolls through the report some more. “At least it looks like this doesn’t work on a solid 40% of their subjects so far, though they haven’t tested it out much yet.”

“Great. Guess we’re part of the unlucky 60% then.”

“It should pass by the time we get back to DC, even if it lasts a full eight hours,” says Bucky, and closes the laptop, eyeing Sam warily. “You’re, uh, you’re not feeling any urge to spill your guts about all your darkest secrets or anything, are you?”

“No,” says Sam. “It’s only kicking in if you ask me a question, or get me talking, I think. You?”

“I’m barely noticing it,” says Bucky with a shrug. “But, uh, you know I’m a terrible liar, so. I don’t lie that often, I guess. Just…omit.”

“And have you been able to ‘omit,’ since getting exposed to that stuff?”

Bucky looks distinctly shifty. “Yeah. Have you?”

Sam nods slowly, relieved that Bucky hasn’t been revealing any big truths against his will. “Yeah. It’s kinda like being tipsy, I guess. I can let stuff slip if I’m not paying attention, but if I am, I don’t have some irresistible urge to spill my guts.”

“Alright, good,” says Bucky with a relieved sigh. “So as long as neither of us asks each other a lot of personal questions for the next few hours, this isn’t a big deal.”

It feels like a pretty big deal to Sam, actually, and he’s surprised that Bucky’s taking this with such equanimity, given how upset he’d seemed back in the lab. He supposes Bucky’s not wrong that he doesn’t actually lie all that often though. Still, Sam would have thought that anything that overrides or impacts Bucky’s free will would be way more alarming to him, if not outright re-traumatizing. Like, Sam’s a pretty truthful guy too, but he’s sure as hell feeling pretty damn uncomfortable being subject to drug-induced truth-telling.

“You think it’s not a big deal?” Sam asks. “Seriously?”

Bucky gives him an odd look. “I mean…no? Not with you, anyway. I trust you.” A hurt wariness ripples across Bucky’s face before settling into shuttered resignation. “If you don’t trust me, or—you can just stay quiet for the rest of the flight, I—” Bucky stops, his throat working, before the polite lie he’s clearly trying for fails to make it out of his mouth. He grimaces, then more carefully, he concludes, “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I do trust you,” Sam blurts out, a little surprised at himself when the words come out so easily. If he’s saying it now, while under the influence, he supposes it must be true.

God, obviously it’s true, Sam goes out in the field with Buck, he’s invited Bucky into his home, he wants Bucky to stay in his home. Of course he trusts Bucky. Sure, there are some things he doesn’t trust Bucky with: an unattended plate of fries, for example, or properly spicing food, or having a fully-functioning sense of self-preservation. But Sam’s trusted Bucky with the big stuff, the real stuff, for a while now. Pretty much since Bucky had shown such care with the Paul & Darlene, actually.

“Okay,” says Bucky quietly, nodding to himself, his eyes bright. “I, uh—thanks. But you still don’t need to say anything if you don’t want to. We can go back to listening to our playlists or reading or whatever.”

“Yeah,” says Sam, sighing in relief. “Yeah, alright, that’s a good idea.”

Listening to music and not talking much: it’s a good plan, a great plan, except for how after about half an hour, Sam cannot handle the not talking thing, he just can’t. The effort of staying quiet is actually making him break out into a sweat, and he cannot stop fidgeting and bouncing his leg. He guzzles a bottle of water to ease his dry mouth, and it helps the dry mouth but not the restless urge to talk. He tries pacing, and that doesn’t help either, especially not when he keeps looking at Bucky, who’s sitting still and calm as he listens to the playlist Sam made him. Bucky is seemingly unruffled and unaffected by the truth serum, save for maybe the slightest pink flush that’s lingering on the high points of his cheeks.

That bit of pink is giving Sam ideas, ideas that are definitely inappropriate given their current situation. Hell, these particular ideas are inappropriate at all times, they’re just especially inappropriate right now. Sam would usually be able to get his damn libido to shut up already, but now that he knows Bucky’s into guys, now that there’s theoretically a possibility—he very nearly asks about it. There are a lot of things he’s tempted to ask Bucky now in this brief window of time when he can be sure Bucky’s answer will be wholly truthful. At least, as long as Bucky doesn’t “omit” anything. The urge to talk, to ask, is so strong that Sam has to clap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from saying anything.

Bucky eyes Sam with concern and takes his earbuds out. “You doing alright, Sam?”

When he’s sure he won’t proposition Bucky, Sam lowers his hand to admit, “Not really. I mean, I’m fine, I just don’t think I can do this keeping quiet thing, Buck. I feel like I need to talk.”

“Uh, okay, what do you wanna talk about then?” asks Bucky, looking oddly wary. “Maybe we could talk about our playlists—?”

That would almost certainly be as safe a topic as they can get while under the influence of truth serum. Sure, Sam might end up admitting that he actually unironically really loves Carly Rae Jepsen, but as humiliating truths go, that one’s mild. Thanks to the truth serum though, Sam is painfully aware that he doesn’t want to talk about music.

Instead, he sits back down and blurts out, “Do you really think I can be Cap without the serum?”

The non sequitur renders Bucky silent for long seconds, long enough that Sam’s stomach sinks and his skin goes cold. If Bucky needs to omit or stay silent rather than answer this question…well, that’s not gonna feel great.

“Of course you don’t need the serum to be Cap, what the hell?”

“It’s just—I know I’m doing my best and that my best is pretty damned awesome, but—I’m still just a human.”

“A human who can fly,” says Bucky, with, okay, a gratifying level of awe for Sam’s self-esteem.

“I hit myself with my own damn shield in training and had to rest for a couple days, that’s not the kinda thing that makes me feel like a superhero, Buck.”

“You don’t need the serum,” says Bucky, no room for argument in his tone or in his intense stare. “The serum—you know, if people wanted it to cure diseases and actually help people, I’d get it. But it seems like people only ever want it to make weapons with. To make people into weapons. You don’t need to be a weapon, Sam. I didn’t get the impression that was the kind of Cap you wanted to be.”

“It isn’t,” says Sam, and wow, okay, the relief of that revelation and/or admission is almost as good as a drug. The restless, truth-serum induced urge to talk fades a bit. “I’m about the rescue, man, that’s the kind of Cap I want to be.”

“Yeah, and that’s why you’re the best person to be carrying that shield now,” says Bucky. “The shield doesn’t need to be carried by some kinda superman, just a good man. That’s you.”

“Thought I was the best person because Steve said so,” Sam says, rather than acknowledge the compliment.

“That’s what I thought at first, yeah. But not anymore. Not since we took the shield back from Walker, pretty much,” is Bucky’s simple rejoinder, before he scrunches up his face into a skeptical and suspicious expression. “Are you seriously using us being on truth serum to fish for compliments?”

Sam bursts into a fit of laughter that’s maybe a bit too close to hysterical giggles for comfort.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I guess I kinda am, yeah. Here, fair’s fair, your turn, you can fish for compliments or whatever too.”

Bucky’s expression turns hesitant even as he goes full staring problem, only it’s the searching and worried version of his staring problem rather than the surly and confrontational version.

“You really want me to stay? To—to be your partner, and everything?”

“Yeah, man,” says Sam, because truth serum means being direct, no helpful jokes or teasing to cover the unavoidable vulnerability of wanting someone to stay, and if Bucky’s asking this again, if he needs the reassurance that Sam is absolutely telling the truth about this, then the answer must be pretty damned important to him.

“And not just because you gotta keep an eye on the Winter Soldier, or because Steve asked you to look out for me?” presses Bucky.

“Is that what you—Buck, that’s not why I want you around,” he says. “You’re not an—an obligation, or, god, some kinda parolee I gotta keep an eye on. You’re—I told you, you’re my friend. Hell, Buck, you’re pretty much family.”

Bucky looks heartbreakingly surprised by that, so much so that Sam’s almost mad about it. Not at Bucky—it doesn’t take a therapist to figure out why Bucky would make the assumptions he has—but at the whole unfair situation, at the way they’ve both been flailing and struggling on their own after the Blip, at the awful circumstances that have left Bucky pretty much alone in the 21st century through no real fault of his own. Sam may be independent to a fault, but Wakanda aside, Bucky’s been just plain alone for a really long time, and that leaves wounds of its own. It’ll take more than a few weeks in Delacroix to heal wounds like that.

“Okay,” says Bucky very quietly. “Thank you.”

A belated realization occurs to Sam. “Wait, is that why you didn’t answer my texts?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, then adds, “Also, I was really depressed.” He looks deeply annoyed at himself for revealing the latter, not that it’s much of a revelation.

“Okay, well, just say that next time, man. We’re officially friends, okay? Not just a couple of guys or coworkers or partners.”

Bucky nods, wide-eyed. “Got it. Friends.”

“We can even make BFF bracelets or whatever if it’ll help you get the message.”

“Not necessary,” says Bucky, looking adorably grumpy again, not that Sam buys it given the flush on his cheeks. He ostentatiously puts his earbuds back in, and Sam grins at him, unrepentant.

If those are all the truth-serum induced revelations and feelings they share today, Sam will count this whole experience as a win, the mild embarrassment of that much vulnerable honesty more than canceled out by the reassurances they’ve both given and received. Only truth serum sharing time isn’t over yet. Sam manages to get through four songs on the playlist before jiggling his leg and singing along with the music stop being enough to stifle the near-irresistible urge to talk.

“How the hell are you managing to stay quiet?” Sam bursts out, and Bucky takes his earbuds out again, eyebrows raised.

“Guess that ‘loquacity’ effect isn’t hitting me. But then, I was never really a talkative drunk either.”

“Lucky you,” gripes Sam.

Bucky sighs. “You can talk all you want, you know, I just won’t promise I’ll answer all your questions. Let a guy keep some secrets.” He eyes Sam with a worried frown. “Feel free to keep some of your own too. We can talk about, I dunno, your most embarrassing favorite song or something.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, that’s not what I wanna talk about though.”

“Okay,” says Bucky slowly. “What do you want to talk about?”

“So, uh, I didn’t know you were into guys. That’s cool, it’s fine, I am too,” he adds, and Bucky looks pretty gobsmacked.

“What? Really? But you—“ Whatever Bucky’s about to say, it’s either not quite the truth or he’s thought twice about it, because he opens and closes his mouth for a couple of seconds before continuing more carefully, “Sam, you really don’t have to tell me any more than that. Or, uh, you can keep talking and I can put my earbuds back in, turn on the noise canceling—”

“Yeah, I know, but I told you, I gotta talk or I’m gonna crawl out of my skin, and we might as well talk about this,” Sam babbles. “So why didn’t you tell me you were into guys before? You don’t have to tell me why if you don’t want to, I’m just curious. Maybe a little bit hurt. Like, did you think I wouldn’t be cool with it?”

“I was pretty sure you would be, but I also thought you already knew!” protests Bucky.

“How would I know!”

“I don’t know, you seem to know a hell of a lot of other shit about me.”

“Because Steve told me! Steve wouldn’t shut up about you, actually. But he never mentioned that!”

“Oh,” says Bucky, blinking in surprise. “He knew though.”

“It’s generally frowned on to out someone without their consent,” says Sam dryly.

“Right. But—I made a joke about Grindr that one time!”

“I thought you were getting your modern references mixed up! Also, you flirted with my sister!”

“Well, I’m bi, Sam, and you and Sarah are both hot! Of course I flirted with her!”

Bucky groans then, and puts his head in his hands as he slides down his seat in apparent abject humiliation. Sam is both appalled and charmed, and okay, yeah, flattered. He sits back down too.

“Yeah, alright, fair enough. We Wilsons have good genes. Kinda offended you haven’t flirted with me though.”

Bucky makes another noise, this one of pure, furious frustration, before he lifts his head to glare wildly at Sam.

“You think I haven’t flirted with you?” demands Bucky. Which, Sam would like to explore this conversational thread, but Bucky continues, “Wait, you’re offended I haven’t flirted with you?”

If he wasn’t truth serumed right now, it would be time for a joke or deflection. Unfortunately truth serum leaves him with few face-saving options here other than, “That’s what I just said, yeah.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, clearly grasping for calm, and says, “I—listen, I know we didn’t get off on the right foot, what with the—the attempted murder while brainwashed thing and all—”

“Uh huh, gotta say, you ripping the steering wheel out of my car was not the best first impression—”

“—and then there were all those fights and battles, and, uh, being dead for five years—”

“You forgot round two of attempted murder while brainwashed,” Sam points out, and Bucky winces.

“—right, and then I was, you know, a miserable asshole for a while—”

“In your defense, you apologized, and it was a pretty great apology,” admits Sam.

“—but since all that—Jesus, have you really not noticed the way I look at you?” asks Bucky, somewhat wildly. “Shuri says I have literal heart-eyes when I look at you. And—and—I’ve been trying—I keep asking you stuff, to get to know you, and trying to—to do stuff for you, or with you, so we can spend time together—”

Suddenly, the last few weeks turn from the jumbled up if pretty patterns of a magic eye painting into a whole, detailed landscape. Oh, damn.

“Wait, that’s what you’re considering flirting? That’s all pretty much friend stuff, Bucky!”

Bucky winces. “I was, uh, kind of working my way up to actual flirting, I guess,” he says, and when Sam just goggles at him, he continues, “No one ever said I was good at this!”

“Uh, someone did say you were good at this, actually! Steve said you were good at this! He literally told me, multiple times, that you’re such a ladies’ man and charmer—”

“Yeah, so, the thing you gotta remember is, all the shit Steve said about me being cool or suave or whatever, that’s on account of how he was absolutely terrible at anything approaching romance. I’m a charmer and a ladies’ man compared to him, but that doesn’t mean I’m actually smooth or whatever,” says Bucky, sounding vaguely apologetic. “Or I dunno, maybe I used to be, but I’m sure as hell not anymore.”

“I have literally witnessed you flirting with my sister, Barnes, you flashed those pearly whites of yours at her and she was giggling and twirling her damn hair around her finger.”

“Since when is smiling and saying hi great flirting? Sam, I am not—”

“And it worked!”

“I mean, did it?” hedges Bucky with an apologetic and somehow adorable grimace. “I’m not going out with Sarah. Not that I was really seriously trying to go out with Sarah—”

“You’re not going out with me either!”

 “Not for lack of wanting to, I’ll tell you that much!” Bucky goes red again and rushes to add, “You can forget I said that. I’m sorry, I know you’re not—you know.”

“Know I’m not what? Because you know I’m queer now.”

“Interested in me,” Bucky finishes with a pouty glare. “In that way, I mean, I know you’re—I know we’re partners and coworkers, and best friends, or whatever—”

On the one hand, it’s kind of a relief that Bucky has never noticed all the obvious-to-Sam ogling of him that Sam has been doing. On the other hand, what the hell, how has Bucky failed to notice that?

“Hold up, hold up, I need a second to process all this,” Sam says, and Bucky shuts up. His arms are crossed and he looks thoroughly miserable and embarrassed, and it’s way cuter than it ought to be. “So let me recap a bit…your flirting method has been to…come stay with me and spend time with me and tell me stuff about yourself—”

“And try to get to know you,” Bucky interrupts, mulish and still red-faced.

“Aww, that’s sweet, Buck. Real old-fashioned and gentlemanly of you,” says Sam, delighted and thoroughly charmed, but Bucky’s embarrassment shifts to hurt, his shoulders hunching and his scowl unable to hide the wounded look in his eyes.

“You don’t have to be an asshole about it. I get it, you think it’s hilarious that I have actual feelings or whatever. LIke I said, forget I ever said anything. We can—we can chalk this whole thing up to the dumb truth serum and never talk about any of this ever again.”

There’s a small part of Sam that’s tempted to do just that: to treat this is as a weird drug-induced interlude they never talk about, to chalk it all up to being under the influence and consign it to the same dark and memoryless mental pit reserved for those rare instances Sam’s gotten blackout drunk. That way nothing would have to change.

But that’s a shitty impulse and Sam knows it. Not only would it hurt Bucky, it would hurt Sam too in the long run, and it might just wreck their fledgling partnership more thoroughly than even an actual romantic relationship ever could. Also it would 10000% make Sam an irredeemable monster, holy shit, because Bucky looking all sad and hurt like this really feels like some kind of crime against humanity.

“Buck, baby, that’s not what I meant at all,” Sam says.

“Then what do you mean?” demands Bucky.

Sam’s not sure if being under the influence of truth serum is the best or worst time to confess your feelings and make a move on someone; either way, there’s a thrill in it, the kind of terrifying and irresistible thrill that had Sam strapping on the experimental EXO Falcon rig again and again way back when, knowing full well each time could have been his last. And hey, Sam hasn’t crashed and burned yet, has he?

“I meant what I said, it’s sweet as hell.”

It’s shockingly sweet, even, though Sam supposes he shouldn’t really be surprised. Steve always did say Bucky was a gentleman for all that he never lacked a date or a dance partner. For Sam, whose relationship history exists at the extremes of no-strings-attached hookups and fuckbuddy arrangements at one end, and love at almost-first-sight, zero to ride-or-die at the other, there’s a wonder and a novelty, and okay, yeah, not a little bit of fear, to Bucky’s slow and careful approach.

Bucky does not seem comforted by Sam’s attempt at reassurance. “You can get to the part where you let me down easy now,” he says through gritted teeth. “Or you can just knock me out and if there’s any mercy left in this godforsaken world, it’ll give me amnesia again.”

Sam moves across the quinjet to sit right next to Bucky, and takes his hand, holding on tight. Bucky’s answering grip is tentative, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Bucky, for the love of god, please actually listen to the words coming out of my mouth: this isn’t the part where I let you down easy, because I don’t want to let you down at all.”

“Okay…” says Bucky, narrowing his eyes.

It’s shockingly hard to come right out and say it, even with the truth serum ensuring that it’s pretty much the only thing Sam can say.

“I want you too,” Sam says. “Do I need to be more specific? Because I can be. I want to kiss you, and I want to get your clothes off, and I’d like to have sex with you, if you’re into that kinda thing, however you’re into it—”

Bucky’s wide eyed as Sam talks, and when he swallows hard, Sam’s helpless to do anything but watch the motion of his throat and the curl of his lips.

“However I’m into it, huh? That’s a dangerously open-ended offer there, Sam,” says Bucky, his voice gone low enough to feel like a caress. “What if I’m into some real freaky shit?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Nah, not really,” says Bucky with a slow grin.

“What if I am?” teases Sam.

Bucky laughs and says, “Bold thing to bring up while truth serumed.”

Which is an excellent point, so Sam kisses him to shut them both up, and this turns out to be a much more productive and fun use of their mouths. If it’s possible to be an honest kisser, Bucky is it. For all that he’s been about going slow so far, his kisses are open and earnest and wanting, and so gorgeously pliant with it. Sam immediately knows he’s going to want more of this, all the time, and god, isn’t that going to be a distraction, having to look at Bucky’s lovely mouth while knowing he can do this with it, which has got to be his lips’ best possible use, and that’s not even mentioning the spine-tinglingly soft and low little noises he makes.

Can Bucky get louder? Sam desperately needs to know, and he applies himself to finding out, trying out kisses elsewhere: on Bucky’s jaw, the tender space just under his ear, his pulsepoint, and he hits jackpot right on the hinge of Bucky’s strong jaw, where the rasp of Bucky’s stubble makes Sam shiver and Sam’s lips make Bucky moan, and so does gripping his thick hair and tilting his head back for better access, and okay, now Sam’s on Bucky’s lap, and Bucky’s worked some kinda magic to get his hands into Sam’s uniform and on his ass, and also, they’re thrusting and rutting against each other—

“Wait, wait—Sam, we gotta—we gotta stop—” pants Bucky, even as he keeps kissing Sam with open-mouthed hunger. When Sam’s hips rock into his, desperate for stimulation on his already hard cock, Bucky whines and wrenches himself away. “Sam, stop.”

And Jesus, fuck, of course Sam has to stop, they’re high on some kinda truth serum and Joaquin’s right there in the cockpit. Sam flings himself off of Bucky.

“Sorry, sorry—”

“No, it’s okay, just—”

“Shit, maybe we should make an emergency landing, get to a hospital or something, I’m sorry, Buck, I didn’t mean to—”

“Sam, look at me, it’s okay,” says Bucky, so Sam looks at him, and yeah, alright. Bucky’s flushed and glassy-eyed, but he’s still sharp, still with it, and he definitely doesn’t look angry or scared. “I just—I don’t want our first time to be—uh, humping each other on a plane while our teammate is in the cockpit. I wanna—I wanna treat you right, you know?”

“You are such a gentleman, it’s adorable and I love it,” Sam says, because goddamn truth serum. “But yeah, okay, I hear you, I hear you. We should—we probably shouldn’t do this while we’re, uh, compromised anyway.”

Sam means it, he does, even if the way Bucky is staring at his mouth is testing all his resolve. Bucky licks his lips. Sam’s resolve fails the test. He leans in for another kiss, and Bucky melts into it so sweetly, so perfectly, kisses Sam with such urgency—fuck. Sam tears himself away.

Sam doesn’t think the truth serum is compromising his judgment—at least, not beyond necessitating some mildly embarrassing admissions—but there is enough uncertainty there that they probably shouldn’t jump straight to fucking each other. No matter how much Sam wants to.

“Is this, is it the drug, the truth serum, is it making you—” breathes Bucky, somewhat dazed now.

“Nah, baby, this is just me being horny as hell for you,” says Sam before groaning at his own admission. Bucky laughs in breathless delight, which is, god, such a good fucking look for him, everything about this is an unbearably good look for him, all disheveled and wanting in his already sexy uniform, his lips red and a bit swollen, his eyes sparkling more brightly than sunny ocean waters. “Maybe I should sit on the other side of the plane.”

“Yeah, that’s—that’s probably a good idea,” says Bucky. Despite the distance, Sam’s cock is still hard, throbbing almost painfully in the confines of his uniform, and he has a good view of the sizable bulge in Bucky’s tac pants too. “Torres could come back here any second.”

“That’s kinda part of the thrill,” Sam says, and Bucky’s flush turns a deeper red, even the tips of his ears going pink. Sam grins, equal parts delighted and intrigued. “Seems like it might be for you too.”

“Of course you’re an adrenaline junkie about this too,” complains Bucky, which isn’t quite an answer. The way he starts to squirm kind of is though. He tips his head back against the seat and squeezes his eyes shut, and god, the line of his throat. Sam wants to kiss and lick his way up it, or maybe take that bulge out of his pants and— “Christ, you got me all worked up when we can’t even do anything.”

“I mean, we can,” Sam very reasonably points out.

Bucky scrunches up his nose and opens his eyes to squint at him. “I guess we could each go, uh, take care of things in the bathroom…”

“We’ve been exposed to a strange substance though, we should probably, you know, keep an eye on each other. Just in case. That wouldn’t count as actually having sex, would it?”

Sam can’t help it, he can’t even remember the last time he was this turned on. It’s like he’s been rocketed back into being a teenager again, when dying of blue balls seemed not just possible, but likely, with the only cure being dry humping his first kinda-boyfriend Darien in a half-full movie theater. Sam’s already rubbing at his own crotch through his uniform and even that muffled touch makes him shudder. Bucky stares at Sam’s hand, his mouth dropping open a little.

“No…no, that’s just—that’s just jerking off, right?” he says slowly.

“Yeah, exactly.”

Bucky shifts in his seat, and makes no move to touch himself yet. “But Torres—“

“Don’t worry, J’s angling for as many flight hours on the quinjet as he can get, he won’t be putting it on autopilot any time soon,” says Sam, already rummaging in his pack for the little packets of lube he really hopes are still there. And yes, jackpot. He tosses one to Bucky. “I don’t think we need to worry about getting walked in on. So long as you keep it quiet, that is. And make it fast.”

“That might not be a problem,” admits Bucky. He holds up the lube packet between two fingers, grinning. “And you say I’m a gentleman. This right here is pretty gentlemanly. Back in my day, we made do with spit for our semi-public, bad ideas handjobs.”

“Excuse me, this is not a bad idea, it’s an excellent one,” Sam retorts, already pulling his uniform pants open and down.

Bucky watches avidly as Sam takes his cock in one lubed hand. He gives himself a few slow strokes, admittedly mostly for the purpose of showing off, and can’t quite stifle his groan of relief at finally getting some skin-on-skin stimulation.

“You’re right, it is an excellent idea. Just as excellent an idea as those tight undies of yours,” says Bucky with a leer that’s far more attractive than it has any right to be. It’s gotta be something about that confident and cocky tilt of Bucky’s head.

“Yours are just as tight, they gotta be under our uniforms! Now c’mon, whip it out, Barnes.”

“I take back what I said about you being gentlemanly,” says Bucky.

He does unzip though, and damn, is that a damp spot on his boxer briefs? Yes, it is, his cock’s already leaking with pre-come and it is somehow one of the hottest things Sam has ever seen in his life. He’s also kind of regretting the fact that they’re being hands off with each other right now, because Sam would love to get his mouth on Bucky’s cock. Sam should’ve known he was packing that kind of heat in his pants, given that sexy, strutting swagger he does.

Sam hasn’t had one of these mutual jerking off sessions since he was a cadet in the Air Force, when it had been about 60% desperate horniness and 40% vague embarrassment, and 100% no homo on the part of the guy he’d been jerking it with.

This, needless to say, is different. This is pretty damn enthusiastically yes homo, for one thing, with the way Bucky is watching Sam like Sam’s an oasis in the desert, like quenching this particular thirst will save his life. Sam’s maybe watching him back the same way, hungrily cataloging the way Bucky’s mouth goes a bit slack with pleasure, the pink flush on his cheeks, the red tint on his lips, still slick from their kissing, the way he’s leaning his head back, the sprawl of his legs…and his grip on his cock, of course, the strokes slower than Sam would have expected. Sam’s own deferred desire is setting a faster pace that’s just short of desperate.

“Enjoying the show?” asks Sam.

“Oh yeah,” says Bucky, his stare on Sam still avid and almost ravenous. “Pretty as a very dirty, very patriotic pin-up.”

“You have always seemed to be pretty into the uniform.”

“Christ, can you really blame me? Yeah, I’m into it, I gotta spend a solid five minutes getting over all my ogling pretty much every time.”

Sam laughs, and in the spirit of reciprocity, offers a confession of his own too. “That sexy strut of yours is pretty distracting to me. Your thighs, Buck, damn. Gotta say, I’m glad you wear such tight pants so often.”

Bucky spreads those thighs as far as he can with his pants pushed down, and the sheer obscenity of the picture he makes—cock in hand, legs spread, his face gone blurred and soft with his arousal even as his eyes keep their hectic focus on Sam—makes Sam groan. Bucky bites his lower lip in response, and the motion of his hand on his cock speeds up. The slick and wet noises shouldn’t be quite so audible over the din of the plane, but it’s like Sam is hyper attuned to them, and to Bucky’s occasional breathy moans. Sam could probably close his eyes and come just listening to that, knowing that Bucky’s got his eyes on Sam—wait.

“Are you turning this into a staring contest?” Sam demands, and Bucky grins.

“Sure. Winner takes the loser on a date, winner’s choice?” he says, slightly breathless now.

It says some possibly sweet, terribly endearing things about Bucky that he considers that a worthy prize. Even losing with those stakes won’t be much of a loss. Although it is also kinda sneaky; win or lose, Bucky gets a date out of it. Whatever, Sam’s gonna play to win.

“Yeah, alright,” he says, then, “You know, I kinda can’t believe you’re letting me watch you like this, Buck. Didn’t take you for an exhibitionist.”

“I don’t mind when it’s you watching me,” says Bucky, and isn’t that a thrill.

“What else would you let me do right here, huh? If we didn’t have to worry about the truth serum fucking with us, I mean. Would you let me suck your cock out here?”

“Yeah, but I’d rather suck yours,” says Bucky. Sam swallows hard, and shudders with the premonition of an orgasm that’s coming up faster than he’d like. Ruinously, Bucky continues, “I’d—fuck, I’d let you fuck me though.”

“Fuck, what, right over the bench in here?”

“Yeah, god—“ Bucky shivers, starts stroking his cock even faster. His eyes are heavy-lidded now but he’s still maintaining eye contact. “Me jerking off while thinking about that—gotta admit, that’s nothing new.”

As dirty talk goes, this is still pretty tame, only—they’re both on goddamn truth serum, Sam remembers. Bucky means it, when he says he doesn’t mind when it’s Sam watching him, when he says he’d let Sam fuck him right here, not even in the quinjet bathroom, but right out here, bent over the seats. That would be a bad idea, for a number of reasons, but it’s also quite possibly the hottest thing Sam has ever contemplated, especially if—

“Would you let me fill you up?” he asks, and Bucky’s answering moan is almost a whine as he works his dick harder and faster, but fuck, fuck, he’s still looking straight at Sam. “And what about fucking me, would you—“

Sam is pretty sure he’s jerking harder than he has ever jerked it in his life, and somehow the cresting wave of release keeps building and building without breaking, like looking out at the water and seeing the swell form, knowing it’s gonna knock you over and damn near drown you, and wanting that.

“Oh fuck yeah, are you kidding me, serum means I can go for another couple rounds even after I come—“

That’s it, that does it: Sam closes his eyes and comes, almost spasming with it, his whole body caught up in the lightning rush of sensation so purely good and intense that it’s almost painful. If that’s a truth serum side effect, it might just be worth it, thinks Sam, dazed and riding high. He only just opens his eyes in time to see Bucky gasp and come too, and even if Sam hadn’t just had a spectacular orgasm himself, seeing this would have made the whole thing worth it: Bucky’s face in a moment of pure, unguarded pleasure and release, the fan of his lashes and the long stretch of his bared throat, that gorgeous mouth of his half open and already tilting up into a small, replete smile.

Of course, then Bucky kind of ruins the moment by opening his eyes and saying, “Ha, I won!”

They clean up hastily after that, and just in time, because Joaquin calls them to the cockpit, where Rhodey’s on comms. Sam dutifully reports both their successful mission and their exposure to a possible truth serum, which news Rhodey takes in with a weary sigh and an almost philosophical, “Well, at least it’s not anthrax or a zombie plague. Probably.”

“Probably?” demands Sam.

“Just come to medical ASAP and get a full workup and clearance, okay?”

After that, they test themselves with the occasional attempt at innocuous lies like “I don’t like funk music” (Sam) and “I hate pancakes” (Bucky), until the words actually make it out of their mouths. That takes less than an hour for Bucky, and about three more hours after that for Sam. By the time they get cleared by medical and give their debriefing in DC, Sam’s too exhausted to spare much thought for the recent huge change in his and Bucky’s relationship. They crash at Sam’s place in DC, collapsing together into Sam’s slightly musty bed, and it isn’t until the next morning that Sam even realizes, wait. They’re already at the sharing-a-bed stage of things?

Bucky’s fast asleep beside him, with one arm thrown over Sam’s chest, though there’s still a bit of room between them on the bed. Sam could probably wriggle his way free without disturbing Bucky. He doesn’t. Instead, he stares up at the ceiling and contemplates the morning after of it all.

Sam is no stranger to morning-after regrets. He may be comparatively staid now, but he was honestly pretty damn slutty in his early 20s, and there’d been a handful of times he’d woken up with a hangover to look at the person sharing a bed with him and thought, “oh fuck, what was horny and/or drunk me thinking?”

When Sam looks over at his current bed partner, he does not think that. Instead he thinks that a Bucky at rest looks lovely, and very kissable. Which is good, because truth serum-enabled sex—or, okay, a truth-serum enabled session of jerking off together—is not particularly conducive to any kind of denial. The truth serum has long since worn off, leaving little worse than a slight headache in its wake, and there’s no substance-induced amnesia here. Sam knows for a fact they both wanted every bit of what they did on the jet yesterday, and more besides.

Bucky sighs and stirs, shifting closer to Sam. Sam turns to the side to face him, and the close proximity to Bucky’s bedhead overwhelms Sam’s usual restraint: he reaches out to stroke Bucky’s thick hair, and Bucky makes a sleepy noise of contentment that Sam would very much like to hear every morning.

“Is my bedhead really that irresistible?” mutters Bucky, his voice a low rumble this soon after waking up, and he blinks drowsy eyes open as his lips curve into a smile.

Sam sighs in relief. Bucky’s not upset about yesterday then.

“Oh yeah, it’s like petting a cat,” whispers Sam. He hits a tangle and Bucky hisses a bit as Sam works through the knot gently, patting it down once he does. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine. You?”

“Same,” he says, and keeps slowly stroking Bucky’s hair while Bucky stares at him. It’s a gentler kind of staring than usual, with sleep’s blurred edges softening Bucky’s usual intensity. Even so, it’s clear Bucky’s looking for something, some truth or reassurance.

Sam’s about to try to offer it to him when Bucky asks, “Sam. Are we good?”

There’s a lot they should talk about, after yesterday’s admissions and confessions. They’re gonna need to have a serious define-the-relationship conversation, for one thing, figure out just what they’re doing here.

Maybe some of the truth serum’s influence is still lingering though, because Sam doesn’t say any of that. He sticks with the truth underneath it all instead.

“Yeah, we’re good, Buck. Are you?”

Bucky’s eyes crinkle into a smile. “Oh, I’m great. I won, remember? I get to take you out on a date,” he says.

“Seems like that makes both of us winners,” says Sam, returning Bucky’s smile helplessly. “Though hey, you didn’t even need a date to get me in bed with you.” To Sam’s surprise, Bucky goes red and rockets out of the bed. “That wasn’t a complaint!”

“I know, but I told you, I wanna treat you right,” Bucky says.

“James Buchanan Barnes, if the words ‘I want to wait until marriage’ or anything like them come outta that pretty mouth, so help me—”

Bucky laughs as he helps himself to a pair of Sam’s sweats from the dresser drawer. Sam considers protesting before he’s too distracted by the view of Bucky’s pert ass and long legs to bother. Bucky has downright dainty ankles, Sam notices. Has he ever even seen Bucky’s ankles before? He must have. And yet, they’re an oddly compelling sight.

“I’m not that old-fashioned! And I’m obviously not a good Catholic boy. No, I’m not saving myself for marriage here.” Once he’s dressed, he comes back to sit on the bed to be sincere at Sam at a dangerously, temptingly close proximity. “I just—wanna go the whole nine yards, y’know? Wine and dine you properly and all that.”

“You know, people nowadays are a lot more casual than that,” Sam points out as he sits up in bed.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. But I don’t want to be casual with you.”

Sam’s stomach simultaneously drops like he’s just taken a dive out of a plane, and starts fluttering around like it could keep him afloat all on its own. In the morning light, Bucky’s eyes have a softer blue hue than usual, a sky that Sam would happily float forever in.

“Okay,” says Sam, after he’s swallowed past the unexpected tangle of feeling. “But for the record, I put out on the first date.”

Bucky grins and darts forward to kiss Sam on the cheek. “I’ll look forward to that. I’m gonna run out and get us some breakfast, you got any requests?”

“Coffee,” says Sam automatically, somewhat dazed by the close contact with such a sweet and cheerful Bucky. “And, uh, one of those breakfast sandwiches from that cafe a couple blocks away. But make sure it’s—”

“Egg white and spinach, yeah, got it.”

He’s out the door before Sam can ask how the hell he even knows that.

The days leading up to their date the next weekend are pretty much normal. The only difference is that Bucky’s more physically affectionate, and more likely to make flirty comments, both of which Sam is happy to return. Also, they do keep sneaking off to make out, which is the kind of thing Sam hasn’t done in years, and is one blast-to-the-past he doesn’t at all mind, even if Bucky’s gone full preacher’s-daughter what with keeping things to second base. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, and Sam’s not sure if that’s a bad sign or a good sign, or even what it’s a sign of.

The day of their scheduled date, Bucky gives Sam a kiss on the cheek before they part ways for the day after their morning training—Bucky to go help Ms. Lark, and Sam to help Sarah with a delivery—and says, “I’ll pick you up at six tonight, wear something nice.”

Bucky has kissed his cheek a couple dozen times by now, and yet every time, Sam’s skin heats up under his lips. “We are living together, what’s this picking me up nonsense?”

“I’m picking you up at six,” repeats Bucky, and leaves with a cheerful salute and sunny smile.

So Sam wears something nice, puts on some classy special occasions cologne, and is ready and waiting on the porch at fifteen minutes to six. Bucky drives up five minutes later in a sensible sedan that’s clearly a rental, which is unnecessary—he could’ve just borrowed Sam’s truck for fuck’s sake—but it’s also charming, and Sam appreciates how much effort Bucky is putting in here.

When Bucky steps out of the car and comes around to meet Sam, Sam’s mouth goes dry, because goddamn. This whole date night scenario might be old-fashioned as hell, but Bucky sure as hell doesn’t look old-fashioned in his tight black pants, a black or navy button-up shirt with some kind of subtle pattern on it, and a leather jacket. He is also, Sam belatedly notices, holding a bouquet of flowers: a few prolifically blooming pink peonies.

“Hi,” says Bucky, and holds out the flowers. Sam takes them automatically, and breathes in their sweet aroma. The blush color of the peonies is awfully close to matching the pink on Bucky’s cheeks. “You look amazing.”

Like an idiot, Sam just nods and says, “Flowers?”

Bucky grins, wry and crooked, a hint of anxiety in his eyes. “I think we’ve established that I’m old-fashioned. Just—thought it’d be nice.”

It is nice. It’s—god, it’s really nice, and sweet. Sam’s eyes sting a bit, probably from the pollen or something.

“I’ve never gotten flowers on a date before,” says Sam, and when Bucky’s smile starts to falter, he rushes to add, “These are gorgeous, thanks, Buck. Lemme just take these inside, put them in a vase.”

When he does, he notices that they’re tied with a red, white, and blue ribbon, which makes Sam snort fondly. God, Bucky is so—he doesn’t let himself finish the thought. He determinedly ignores Sarah’s shit-eating grin and escapes the kitchen without responding to her sing-song, “Be back by midnight, young man!”

Back outside, Bucky is leaning against the passenger side of the car, those long and lovely legs of his on excellent display, and he looks so damn handsome and a little dangerous in that leather jacket, like the best kind of bad decision. At least, until his face lights up in a smile, the one Sam can privately admit he officially calls Bucky’s miracle smile, and then he looks nothing but absolutely perfect.

Bucky, naturally, opens the car door for Sam. This date has barely even started and it’s already the most charmingly old-fashioned, gentlemanly shit Sam has ever been subjected to in his entire life. He’s not mad about it.

“So, where are we headed?” Sam asks once they’re in the car.

“New Orleans. Got us a reservation at a restaurant, and then there’s a blues club I thought we could go to,” says Bucky.

“Blues club, huh?” says Sam, grinning. “Yeah, alright, you’re not half-bad at this dating thing.”

They shoot the shit like usual on the drive, mostly about New Orleans in this case, with Sam waxing rhapsodic about the food and the singularly overwhelming, raucous, tourist-riddled experience that’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans. When they arrive at the restaurant—a classy French place with a lush courtyard for outdoor dining, all the greenery-laden trellises studded with sparkling lights like the starry sky is close enough to touch—Bucky’s still just as much a gentleman, pulling Sam’s chair out for him and everything.

“I hope French food is alright,” says Bucky once they’re seated. “I figured we should go with something where we won’t constantly be comparing the food to Sarah’s and wishing we’d just stayed home.”

“Good call,” says Sam. “And yeah, French food is great, thanks.”

They both peruse the menu, offering the occasional comment on this or that option and debating what to pick, until the server returns to take their orders.

After the server leaves, silence stretches between them for a long moment, long enough that Sam’s stomach starts to turn leaden. Is this a mistake? They might have stumbled their way into being friends and partners, but is an actual romantic date where they falter? How do fancy dates like this even work, anyway? Sam suddenly can’t remember, all his recent memories of romance—or sex—centered on casual meetings in bars or clubs or cafes. You can get by on small talk then, but this is Bucky. He and Bucky don’t do small talk.

In a mild panic, Sam blurts out, “So, have you ever been to France?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. Kinda helped liberate Paris that one time?”

Right, yes, that is in literal history books. Sam laughs, then groans, rubbing his face. “Sorry, sorry, I knew that. Just—I was in automatic first-date small talk mode for a second there.”

“Since when do we do small talk?” demands Bucky, unwittingly echoing Sam’s own thoughts.

“I don’t know, since we’re doing this whole official date thing,” Sam fires back, even though he does kind of agree with Bucky.

Bucky narrows his eyes in a milder version of his usual glare. “But we already know each other, people who know each other don’t need to do small talk.”

“That’s—no, small talk is a whole genre of conversation, it’s not just reserved for strangers. It just means, you know, light conversation about meaningless stuff.”

“That is not what dates are for,” says Bucky, looking appalled.

“Don’t tell me you think dates are for exchanging, like, life philosophies or something. What kind of dates have you been going on in the 21st century anyway?”

“Awkward ones,” says Bucky with a wince. “The dating app scene is…”

“Kind of a horror show?”

“Yeah. Great for, uh, hooking up, but an actual date…” Bucky shifts in his seat, then shrugs with one diffident shoulder. “I don’t do so great with strangers any more.”

“Nothing really wrong with that, plenty of other people have the same problem,” offers Sam. “Sarah’s said the same thing about the app scene, actually. There’s still the usual ways to meet people though, get to know them a bit. You know, regulars at a cafe you go to, people you meet at events and stuff, friend of a friend, that kinda thing. People who you know at least a little bit.”

“Yeah, I got set up on one of those kinda dates, and it was also horribly awkward. My fault.”

“Aww, c’mon, it couldn’t have been that bad. As the current recipient of your gentlemanly courting, I gotta say I’m sure as hell charmed.”

Bucky’s somewhat abashed expression brightens into a bashful and pleased smile. “Yeah?” he says, before deflating again. “Well, she mostly seemed kinda…surprised and weirded out. Said I reminded her of her grandpa. Then I told her how old I am, and she didn’t believe me.”

Sam winces and laughs in sympathy. “Aww, Buck.”

“Then I bailed, and—” Bucky stops, shakes his head. “Anyway, I went back to apologize to her, and by then she knew who I actually was, and it was all even more awkward.”

Sam reaches across the table to take Bucky’s hand. “We can do better than that, I promise. Small talk or no small talk.”

“I mean, I sure hope so. I figure you’ve gotta be pretty good at this dating thing,” says Bucky.

“I do alright,” says Sam with a wink and a grin. “So, tell me about this blues club, we dancing tonight?”

For a flickering moment, a furrow of worry takes up residence on Bucky’s brow, but it’s there and gone so quickly Sam wonders if he’s imagined it, quickly replaced by a smile.

“No dancing tonight, I gotta save some of my more impressive date-night moves for later,” says Bucky. “Noah Dawson is playing there tonight, and I figured since you put him on my playlist…”

“Wait, Noah Dawson? For real?” demands Sam, and Bucky nods.

Noah Dawson had been the most obscure, niche inclusion on the playlist Sam had made for Bucky; he’d only included Dawson at all because he was one of Sam’s dad’s favorite bluesmen. When Sam thinks of the blues, of what it means and the raw feeling it wrings out of you and the history it holds, he thinks of Noah Dawson, even if Dawson is far from famous. He’s not even on Spotify. Hell, the only reason Sam even has digital files of the man’s music is that years back, he’d digitized his dad’s old Noah Dawson records as a Christmas present to him. The only people likely to know about Noah Dawson at all—who, god, has got to be pushing 80 if not 90 by now—are people in Sam’s dad’s cohort or devoted local blues fans who’d seen Dawson play in tiny bars and clubs, or who heard him on local radio stations back in the 70s during the closest thing he ever got to his fifteen minutes of fame.

“I, uh, hope that’s okay?” says Bucky, a tentative and worried tilt to his eyebrows. ”If it’ll bring up more bad memories than good, I’m sure we can go somewhere else instead—”

“No, that’s amazing, Buck, I didn’t even realize he was still alive.” Sam takes a sip of his ice water, just to jostle the surprising lump of emotion loose from his throat. “That’s really thoughtful of you, man, I’d love to see Noah Dawson perform tonight.”

Really thoughtful is an understatement. There’s a level of perceptive care in Bucky’s date night pick, a keen attention to Sam, that’s almost overwhelming. In a good way, mostly, like when you see someone for the first time in a long, long time, and you’re suddenly surprised by how very happy you are to see them.

Bucky smiles, clearly relieved. “Good. I really liked the songs of his that you gave me, and when I was looking up places to go tonight, it seemed like, what do you call it, serendipity.”

“Oh no, am I turning you into a blues hipster?” teases Sam. “You’re kinda rocking the Brooklyn hipster thing already.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “God, don’t talk to me about Brooklyn hipsters. I can’t believe Brooklyn became the cool, expensive borough to live in. I say I’m from Brooklyn now and it means something totally different than it did when I was growing up, it’s weird.”

“Gentrification,” says Sam, sympathetic. “I’m just glad it never hit Delacroix.”

“What was it like, growing up in Delacroix?” asks Bucky, all bright-eyed, honest interest. “Was the town then a lot like it is today?”

“Practically the whole island’s been flattened by hurricanes and rebuilt a couple of times since then, feels like,” says Sam. “But yeah, even so, I guess it hasn’t changed all that much, not in any of the important ways. Still a small town, still the nicest people on Earth, like I told you.”

“But you didn’t stay,” says Bucky. “I mean, you joined the Air Force, then you lived in DC…”

“What, you didn’t want to get out and see the world when you were younger?” asks Sam with raised eyebrows.

Bucky frowns. “Sure I did, me and Steve used to talk about going out West, to California, but—well, it was just talk, y’know? Brooklyn was home, and I didn’t ever really wanna leave. Not then, and not even during the war. I didn’t really think I’d make it, but if I did, I knew I wanted to go back to Brooklyn after.” Sam wants to dig into Bucky’s alarming assumption that he wouldn’t live through the war, but before he can, Bucky continues, “Did you go back to Delacroix after you got discharged?”

“For a while, yeah,” says Sam, glossing over those long months of gray grief, the way the succession of bereavements—his mom just after he graduated college, his dad during his first tour, Titi after that, then Riley—had weighed him down so much he’d been almost crushed by them. Sarah’s the only reason he got through it at all. “Then I moved to DC for a bit of a fresh start, and for work, and that’s when I met Steve. You pretty much know the rest from there.”

“Not sure I do, actually,” Bucky murmurs, his frown returning, and then their food arrives.

The food is really damn good, both hearty and richly flavored, and it pairs perfectly with the wine the server had suggested. He and Bucky share bites off each other’s plates, and Sam maybe kind of stares a lot at Bucky as he eats, fascinated by Bucky’s expressiveness, his meticulous attention to the food, his mouth as he visibly savors each bite.

“What?” asks Bucky after he swallows what was evidently an amazing bite of his lamb chops.

“Nothing, just—I like seeing you enjoy your food so much, is all.”

Bucky’s cheeks flush a pale pink. “Good food is still kind of a novelty to me, I guess. Not that my ma was a bad cook or anything, or that there wasn’t any good food back in the 30s, just—I went a long time eating rations or worse, and sometimes I still don’t, uh, really care what I’m eating so long as it does the job. So when I’m eating something really good, I try to, you know, really focus on it, I guess.”

“That’s a good strategy,” says Sam softly, and quietly resolves to take Bucky on a couple food tours of New Orleans.

They share dessert, a fruit tart served with fresh ice cream that looks so beautiful it’s almost a shame to eat it. Though watching Bucky eat it is an experience all in itself, one that has Sam almost ready to risk some adventurous footsie. He heroically restrains himself though, and even lets Bucky pay the bill without much more teasing about his old-fashioned courting, and then they head to the blues club, walking the few blocks there hand-in-hand.

The club is the kind of shabbily graceful old venue that’s a familiar atmosphere in New Orleans, history seeped deep into the bones of the place and plastered all over the walls in decades’ worth of photos of musicians and record covers. The dim lighting lends the whole place an air of softness rather than seediness, and it smells of tobacco and alcohol in a not entirely unpleasant way. There’s a medium-sized crowd already there for the show, mostly older guys and a few older couples, though the place is far from packed. Sam might just be the youngest person here, actually; a young and hip date night spot this isn’t.

Older crowd or not, it’s an amazing show, intimate and comfortable, and Noah Dawson may be pushing 80, but his weathered hands can still coax magic from the keyboard and the guitar, and the years have lent his voice even more richness and depth of feeling, like leather that’s only gone more supple with age. Sam’s dad always did used to say there was a reason the best bluesmen were older: you gotta hear those years of living in their voice, if you’re really gonna believe in the blues. 

Sam and Bucky don’t talk much during the performance, only this time, it’s not like the brief awkward silence of the restaurant. They just settle at a high-top table with their drinks, hands tangled together, and take in the music, and it has the kind of sheer rightness that Sam’s never felt on a date night, much less on a first date.

It feels, Sam realizes, a lot like working with Bucky on the boat had. There’s that same sense of ease, of partnership. Of unconditional companionship.

He looks at Bucky’s profile, his face half-cast in shadow: the fine, strong line of his nose and brow, his thick lashes, his sensitive, expressive mouth. He’s always been handsome, but he’s somehow only becoming lovelier the more Sam looks at him. The more Sam knows him.

Sam could have this for the rest of his life, he realizes. He could have Bucky here on dates, and at home; at his six in the field and in the next office over on the job. He could have Bucky in his bed, and all kinds of other places, judging by the way Bucky had talked on the quinjet. Bucky has quietly and cautiously offered Sam all of that. 

Maybe it should be too much, too soon. But hell, Sam’s always been an all or nothing kind of guy. As Noah Dawson sings with raw longing about waiting a long time to come home, Sam raises Bucky’s hand to his lips, and presses a long and lingering kiss to his knuckles. Even through the music, Sam can hear Bucky’s hitch of breath, and even in the dark of the club, he can see Bucky’s wide eyes and parted lips as he looks at Sam.

No, it’s not too much, Sam decides. It’s exactly enough.

Sam had meant it, about putting out on the first date.

Unfortunately, they’re going back home to a full house, and while it’s late enough that Sarah and the boys are asleep, Sam definitely does not want to risk waking them.

“Maybe we should’ve gotten a hotel for the night,” mutters Sam between kisses.

The drive back had felt too damn long, and it had been all Sam could do to keep up a conversation about Noah Dawson and New Orleans and all the jazz clubs Bucky had gone to in his youth rather than to just give Bucky some road head right there. He’d managed to keep his hands and his mouth to himself though, at least until they got back home, and then he’d only made it to the porch before he had to kiss Bucky.

So now they’re making out on the porch, Sam pushing Bucky onto the lounge chair there and climbing on top of him while Bucky gasps and tilts his head back in a wordless offering that only intensifies Sam’s hunger for him.

“Y’know, I thought of that,” says Bucky, breathless, as he chases Sam’s mouth for another kiss. “But then it just felt kinda seedy.”

Sam can’t help his delighted laugh. “Oh my god, you are too much of a gentleman for me to deal with, Bucky Barnes. It wouldn’t have been seedy if you’d picked a classy place!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get us a room at the Ritz the next time,” says Bucky, laughing too. 

His laugh turns into a poorly stifled moan when Sam kisses his neck and presses down against him. While Sam’s distracted by trying to get that pretty sound out of Bucky again, Bucky pulls some super soldier strength nonsense to switch their positions, and he sits back on his heels as he straddles Sam.

“Hey, you had a good time tonight, right?” asks Bucky.

Sam raises his eyebrows. “I think it’s pretty obvious I’m having a good time, Buck,” he says, and pushes his hips up against Bucky in demonstration.

Bucky bites his lip and lets out a shaky sigh, but he doesn’t get back to the very important work of making out.

“I meant before. At dinner, and at the club, did you—was it okay?”

Sam squirms and struggles to sit up, and Bucky leans back to let him. When they’re facing each other properly, Sam raises a hand to Bucky’s face, and goes in for a kiss, soft and sweet and deep this time, rather than urgent.

“Baby, I had such a good time. It was the best date I’d been on in—god, a really long time.”

Maybe ever, actually. He loved Riley almost more than he could stand, but they hadn’t exactly had much occasion for real dates, between being deployed and DADT.

Bucky’s brow furrows with worry, like he doesn’t quite believe Sam. In the dark, with nothing but the porch light illuminating them, his eyes gleam like old silver, and the angles of his face look strange and new, if still lovely. Sam almost wishes for a dose of truth serum again, just to ease that uncertain doubt off Bucky’s face.

“It’s just—you didn’t really, uh, talk that much?” says Bucky.

“What? We talked practically the whole time, except at the club!”

“I’m not saying this right,” says Bucky, clearly frustrated. “I mean—you did the thing again, the thing where we talk, and it’s good, but you don’t let me know you. You don’t—you don’t talk about yourself, not really.”

Sam wants to deny that, is about to, only it’s almost like the truth serum again: the words won’t come out. Sam talked plenty tonight, he talks plenty to Bucky in general, but—how much of that is Sam talking about himself, sharing of himself? Suddenly, Sam’s not sure.

“Hey, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to be…I don’t know, distant or whatever.”

This is not, apparently, a satisfactory answer. Bucky’s frown deepens, to the point where he actually looks kind of upset.

“Sam, I don’t just want this,” he says, gesturing between them. “The—the sex and the fun, I mean. I want you. I want to know you. And I can’t—I can’t do this if it’s just gonna be—a couple of guys helping each other out or having a good time or whatever.”

“Hey now, what’s this couple of guys shit, didn’t I say we’re best friends? And under truth serum, no less?” says Sam, a weak attempt at a joke that only makes Bucky shake his head and hunch his shoulders.

“Sam, please don’t joke about this, I’m trying to be—to tell you something serious.”

“Okay, I know, I’m sorry. I hear you, I do,” says Sam with an apologetic touch to Bucky’s arm.

“Do you?” demands Bucky, with that intense and almost confrontational stare of his, softened somewhat by the earnest candor in his voice. “We can be friends and partners no matter what, but if we’re doing this, if we’re gonna be more than that, I want it to go both ways when I tell you stuff. I want to actually know you, the way I’m—I’m really trying to let you know me. Maybe I’m just—bad at it, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I’m probably being an asshole and I’ve definitely ruined our date—”

“Hey no, you’re good, nothing’s ruined. This isn’t on you,” Sam says through the tightness in his throat and chest. “This is—this is my shit to deal with.”

“We don’t have to do this,” says Bucky quietly. “Being friends, coworkers, partners—that’s enough.”

Bucky means it, Sam knows. He’d said much the same thing while under truth serum. In fact, a truth serumed Bucky isn’t all that different from the Bucky sitting here in front of Sam right now, open and honest, unwilling and unable to give Sam anything but the truth.

“You deserve more,” Sam says. “We both do. Just—gimme a little time, okay? Not much. Just—I obviously gotta, I dunno, think about some shit.”

Bucky nods, his eyes big and searching, but thank god, not with that awful hurt look in them.

“Alright. I can go back to Brooklyn, if you need space—“

Sam instinctively pulls Bucky in for a quick, fierce hug. “No. No way. I said I wanted you to stay, and I meant it. Like I said, I just need a bit of time.”

Bucky returns the hug tentatively, but he does return it. “Okay,” he says, and Sam just hangs onto him for a while, the solid, steady warmth of him a comfort as Sam’s mind roils. Bucky lets him hang on.

“Buck, are we good?” he asks.

Bucky pulls back, and presses a soft kiss to Sam’s cheek, then an even softer, equally chaste one to Sam’s lips. “Yeah, we’re good,” he murmurs with a small smile that’s worried, but genuine. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, alright?”

Bucky leaves Sam with one last kiss and heads inside.

Sam stays out on the porch for a long time, just thinking, turning the date over and over in his head, and more than that, the whole last few weeks.

Bucky’s right, Sam realizes. Sam hadn’t talked about himself. It’s like the baseball thing all over again, Sam holding back without even realizing it. Sarah had said it too: you’re always so damn insistent on carrying everything alone and keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself. You don’t have to hold everyone and everything but your work and your family at arm’s length. Where Bucky had freely shared his memories, his feelings, just like he had under truth serum, Sam had feinted and dodged all of Bucky’s conversational openings like they were jabs trying to get past his guard. 

Oh my god, when did I become an emotionally withholding asshole? Sam wonders with no small amount of horror. Only he knows when: right about when he lost Riley. Losing Steve and Natasha, the two people he’d let himself become closest to after that loss, hadn’t exactly helped either. So slowly Sam hasn’t entirely noticed it, walls have built up around his heart. Pretty walls, maybe, ones with windows in them that let in the light, but still walls. And it turns out Bucky has been waiting patiently outside them, knocking and peering in, all without Sam noticing.

And as for Bucky’s heart…

Bucky’s heart is something of a paradox: incomprehensibly strong to survive more or less intact while still being capable of so much love, but fragile too, after all the pain. Or maybe it’s not a paradox at all. Aren’t there plants that seem to shrivel and die during droughts but that bloom back into life when it rains? Sam’s Titi showed him one once when he was a kid: a rose of Jericho, she’d called it. He’d been a dumb kid so mostly he’d just thought it was weird and kind of creepy, how the shriveled up, dry thing bloomed open again with some water, and he’d told Titi so.

Creepy? she’d demanded. Samuel, it is one of life’s most precious miracles. They call plants like these resurrection plants. They can go years without water, ‘til they dry up and float away, but when they find water, they come back to life. People can be like that too, and you ought to remember that. 

He’d scoffed, then. People don’t come back to life like that, Titi. Dead’s dead. 

There’s more than one kind of dead. You’ll understand when you’re older, she’d told him, shaking her head.

He’s thought of that a few times over the years, mostly for the sake of morbid chuckles: had Titi anticipated that Sam would meet two “resurrected” old soldiers from World War II, or even that Sam would die himself, dust on the wind, only to come back five years later?

Now though, he thinks he does understand what she’d really meant: how people can go without care and comfort and love for so, so long, until they close their hearts up and let them go dry and dormant, a tumbleweed on life’s harsh winds, but how a little bit of love and welcome and comfort can make them grow roots again, can help their hearts bloom open.

That’s what Sam’s seen in Bucky in Delacroix: not only Bucky’s truest self unfurling, but his heart’s resurrection. And if, after almost a century-long drought of love and safety, Bucky’s brave enough to try putting down roots again, to let his Jericho rose heart bloom into life again, to open himself up and ask for more without truth serum as an excuse, then surely Sam can meet that bravery with his own. Surely Sam can work on breaking his walls down, or at least putting in a Bucky-shaped door.

Sam’s an all or nothing guy, and he and Bucky? They could have it all. And sure, it’s terrifying—Sam’s been here before, after all, and it ended with one RPG blast. But Riley had been worth it.  So is Bucky. And maybe more importantly even than that, Sam is worth it too.

Between the date and all the soul-searching, Sam gets to bed so late it’s early, and sleeps in the next morning. Sarah’s already gone when he gets downstairs, likely with the boys at their Saturday soccer games, but when he checks his phone, there’s a text from her: you left that boy on the couch last night?!?!? What happened??

Sam snorts and tosses his phone aside. He spends his entire shower practicing what he’s going to say to Bucky, only to go downstairs and find an empty house. There’s still coffee in the pot though, and the oven is on in warming mode. When he peeks inside, there’s a somewhat misshapen veggie omelet waiting for him. It’s almost certainly Bucky’s doing: Sarah’s omelets are picture-perfect. Even after last night, Bucky made him breakfast. God, Sam adores him.

“Buck?” he calls out.

“Out here!” comes the response, and Sam steps outside to see Bucky in the yard, kneeling in front of a patch of new soil, where he’s planting something with meticulous care. 

He wouldn’t be planting something unless he intended to stick around to take care of it. He is, quite possibly, the most beautiful thing Sam has ever seen.

Sam goes over and joins him, kneeling in the soil too, heedless of any mess.

“So, what are you planting?” he asks.

Bucky doesn’t look up as he very carefully transplants the plant from its small pot into the soil. “Tomatoes. The ones from the store taste like total shit.”

Sam takes a deep breath, inhaling the rich scents of fertile soil and green things and the tomato plants, and Bucky too, the woody and herbal tang of whatever he uses on his hair to make it look so annoyingly gorgeous.

“I’m not actually that good at dates. I mean, I’m great at first dates, the kind you go on before a fun hook-up, but I don’t really have that much experience at the real thing, so to speak. Me and Riley, we never had much chance for ‘em, between the EXO Falcon project and being deployed and DADT,” he says.

Bucky looks up at him, finally, and meets Sam’s eyes. The blue of Bucky’s stare steadies Sam the same way being in the air does. Sam can do this.

“I loved growing up here in Delacroix, but this community was my dad’s entire life, and I wanted more than that. I wanted more than the church and the fishing business, and Dad never understood that. I think he took it as—as some kinda judgment, or rejection. I tried to make like the Air Force was the righteous choice, the dutiful choice, you know? And I’m proud of having served, I am, but—yeah, it was at least a little bit about running away.”

“Sam, you don’t have to—“

“Yeah, I do, Buck. When I came back, after Riley died—my parents were already gone, and being here, it was—god, it about crushed me, all that grief. I don’t know how Sarah did it then, and she’s lost even more since. So I ran again, and I told myself it was running to the rescue, and it was, but it was still running.”

“Is it still running now?” asks Bucky.

“No. No, I’m finally right where I wanna be,” he says. “Whatever else you wanna know, I’ll tell you. My old baseball stats, my favorite wine, the dumbest mission I ever went on, that incredibly embarrassing summer I was trying to be a backup dancer in music videos—all of it. No deflections, no more—no more not letting you know me. Hell, I’ll be as chatty as truth serum me if you want, just—“ He reaches over and takes Bucky’s hand where it’s dug into the soil, tangling their fingers together, dirt and all. “Let me have it all with you, Buck. Friends, partners, dating—”

Bucky doesn’t let him finish, rushing forward to kiss him, and god, how he blooms open for Sam every time, as sure and inevitable as a flower reaching for the sun. His lips are as warm as the morning sun shining down on them, and he’s holding onto Sam just as tightly as Sam is holding onto him. 

When they pull apart, breathless and giddy, Bucky is practically glowing at Sam he’s so happy, and there it is, his miracle smile.

“Yeah, all of it,” says Bucky. “That sounds pretty damn good to me.”