Archive of Our Own

They catch up to Bucky during a firefight, of course. Bucky snarls under his breath as he tries to remember to shoot the agents trying to get into the room and type on the computer he is trying to access, and not the other way around. The base is a big one, critical to North American operations, and crawling with armed agents more than scientists. Hydra has been collapsing in on itself, shedding smaller bases like jammed and empty guns, concentrating bodies and resources in fewer and fewer locations. Bucky wants their data, and then he wants them gone.

Bucky has earplugs in to cope with the sensory overload. Bucky deliberately thinks of himself as James Barnes, because he remembers more of that life than he does of his time with Hydra at this point. Bucky remembers very little of anything. Bucky blows up Hydra bases because he doesn't have to remember much to hate them. Bucky is also not thrilled. It's been six months, and there are sixteen destroyed Hydra bases between him and Steve. He has managed to avoid Steve up until now.

He's too goddamn busy to deal with this, simultaneously dumping files onto a flash drive and holding off the minor army he attracted. It took Bucky weeks to plan out his assault on the place. It went to hell ten minutes in, when guards suddenly abandoned their usual patrols to race in directions Bucky did not need them going. Between history books, museum exhibits, and his own piecemeal memories, Bucky knows enough to be completely unsurprised that it's Steve goddamn Rogers turning his careful op into a bar brawl.

Bucky has to focus more attention on the computer system, which means the agents make it farther into the room than he would like. At least they haven't made it onto the catwalks above him yet. He turns to fight them off with a combination of automatic fire and swings of the metal arm. His head pounds with his heartbeat. The earplugs contribute, but mostly it's just his own barely-checked panic. He struggles to keep himself fully aware every time he goes on one of his self-imposed ops. His mind remembers 1943 and Steve and Bucky and flying cars and gals with victory rolls in their hair. His body remembers knives and guns and a displaced center of gravity and fourteen assassinations so far. His body's influence fluctuates like a tide, rising and falling over him at intervals, ever threatening the possibility of dragging him under entirely.

Steve bellows “Bucky!” as soon as he skids around the corner. Bucky tosses aside another of his attackers. He has a mostly clear path to the exit, up and out across the series of catwalks overlooking the room. He needs to get out while his head is still where it needs to be. He's not worried about Steve or the base. He's been following Steve’s work even as Bucky avoids him, and Bucky knows the base is doomed regardless. Bucky snatches the flash drive and climbs the scaffolding to the catwalk to make his escape.

Then Sam Wilson stumbles in after Steve. He's obviously injured: bent double so he can brace himself with a hand on his thigh, other hand gripping a gun unsteadily. Bucky remembered him being bigger, if not necessarily imposing. He looks five minutes away from collapsing on his face. The memory broadsides Bucky:

Wilson flat out, unarmed, not even facing Bucky. Completely vulnerable. And Bucky takes advantage, yanks the line. Wilson spins, but that's not enough to offset the force. A crunch, the popping, rending sensation of something giving. A metal wing clattering away, broken.

Bucky's stomach lurches. He can't move except to rake his eyes over Wilson’s hunched back. The other wing is gone as well. Too many layers of armor and straps cover him for Bucky to get a clear look. Is he bandaged? How wounded is he? Whatever damage Bucky had done, it must have been too much to repair; the useless other wing would only be a hindrance. How much did they have to take to get it off? Bucky tries to block out the image of the arm, his intimate knowledge of how deep the damage would go if someone ripped it off him.

Steve flicks a look over at Wilson, in the midst of braining an agent with the shield. “You still with me?”

Whatever Wilson says in response, it gets a grim smile from Steve. Bucky can't hear it over the melee. He surprises himself with the urge to beat Steve over the head. What was he thinking, letting Wilson into the field in this state? It had taken multiple surgeries before Bucky ended up with the final version of the arm. Of all the memories he has regained, those might be the ones he least wanted, but he knows how extensive that kind of work is. He aches for Wilson. Bucky made that happen.

“Look out!” Steve gives him enough warning that Bucky sees the agent about the crash into him. Not enough to brace or block, though. It wouldn't matter, except for how they go over the catwalk’s edge together. It wouldn't matter, except that Bucky can still be stunned by the kind of head trauma that would kill most people.

He's still groaning and pushing himself up against the weight of the agent flopped dead on top of him--when did Bucky manage that?--when Steve reaches him. “Gotta go, Buck. Charges are all set.”

Bucky says, “Dernier been at it again?” as Steve hauls him up with an arm around his ribs. For the life of him, Bucky can't remember what he means. He's out before he gets a chance to ask if Steve knows.

***

Bucky wakes to the scratch of a hotel duvet against his exposed skin. He stays still while he gets his bearings. His internal clock suggests he's been out a few hours, but no more. He doesn't feel the after-effects of any drugs. Most of his armor and gear has been stripped away, but he's otherwise clothed. The sky outside has the steely look of predawn. The bedside light is on, as is the one under the bathroom door. That is shut, and he can hear voices beyond it.

“I couldn't leave him there. But. I can't tell where he's at now.”

“He recognized you.” There's a small hiss of pain. They must be doctoring each other. “That's something.”

“I'm not sure. He didn't--”

“Man, he was looking at you like he'd seen a ghost.”

“Not me, Sam.” They fall into silence. Bucky knows silence, and this is a frantic one. They're still talking, just not with words. Was Bucky so blatant in his attention? Or have they already considered what Bucky only just began to realize: that Bucky is responsible for Wilson’s damage, for the fact that he can barely keep up with Steve? Bucky adds the sensation of poisonous guilt roiling in his stomach to his mental inventory.

When the bathroom door opens, Wilson--Sam, Bucky amends, because he can't keep the appropriate mental distance when the man looks that wrecked-- shuffles out. He immediately collapses into the floral print armchair closest to the door. He's got a shirt on, but Bucky can see the bulk of bandages wrapped high around his torso underneath. He reaches up and drops something behind his back. It crunches softly; Bucky recognizes the sound as ice cubes. Sam sighs and lets his head drop back.

When he looks away, Steve is watching him from the foot of the bed. “I'd like to check you for concussion. Will you let me?”

Bucky hoists himself up in bed. His head hurts, but not enough to worry about. He shrugs, because he knows that Steve asks for more than just medical purposes. He wants to see if Bucky is feral. “Where am I?”

Steve braces one knee on the edge of the bed. He raises a hand to touch Bucky’s chin, to steady him, and Bucky leans away. Steve swallows and doesn't try again. A penlight shines in Bucky's eyes, which hurts worse than the concussion he doesn't have. “Hotel outside Olympia. Pupils look fine. Is there anything you can use for the pain?”

Bucky shakes his head. Anything that will work on him will knock him out as well. It would be overkill, anyway. “Base?”

“Dust. Thanks for the assist, by the way.” Steve's smile flickers to life. He stays perched on the edge of the bed.

“You never did learn better than to bust in, guns blazing.” Bucky genuinely resents Steve blowing his op and doesn't know why that oaf is grinning about it.

The grin dies slowly. “There's no polite way to ask this. How much do you remember? Are you--?”

“Enough. Enough to know what my mission is.” Steve's expression falters further. It takes Bucky a moment for the significance of the phrase to snap into place. Sometimes the most recent things are the hardest to remember. “Hydra,” he clarifies.

Steve nods, not looking any happier. “I think you've got us beat by two right now. Hell of a mess you made in San Antonio.”

Bucky tilts his head in acknowledgment. “What now?”

Before Steve can say anything, Sam speaks up. “Rest, for the love of God.” He points a finger at Bucky without raising his head. “I am willing to fight you for that bed.” Steve smiles indulgently.

There's another armchair on the opposite side of the room. Bucky decides that he would be more comfortable there than on the bed. Better view of the door. He ignores the surprised look Steve gives him when he moves.

Sam wastes no time. He pries himself out of the chair and just about falls across the remaining distance. He tumbles onto the bed with a muttered, “Oh, hell yes.” Sam tosses down his ice pack, then he stretches out on top of it with a hiss and a groan. He cracks an eye open to look at Bucky. “Kill me in my sleep if you want. Just don't wake me.”

Steve gestures out to the little balcony. Bucky hauls himself up from the chair with little better grace than Sam had managed. He and Steve stand in opposite corners, ill at ease. “How are you?”

Bucky gives Steve the unimpressed look that question deserves. “I'm apparently the longest-held POW in modern warfare, and my memories for the past ninety years could fit in a hip flask. How do you think I am?”

“Better than Sam told me to expect,” Steve says sourly.

“Smart man. I'll buy him a drink. Having to put up with your stupid.” The words roll out easily. They do sometimes, when he tries to charm a waitress into giving him a slice of pie free or intimidate a drunk sucker into walking away after Bucky cheated him out of fifty dollars at pool.

Steve’s smile comes out watery. He scrapes a palm down his face. “I've missed you so fucking much, Bucky.” He leans forward, suddenly urgent in his gestures. He's obviously just barely keeping himself from grabbing Bucky. “Will you stay with us? Come on, Buck, I can help you remember. We’ll get a wretched flat somewhere, it'll be like old times.”

Bucky resists his own overwhelming impulse: to launch himself off the balcony and run until he's in another county, another state. He needs distance to deal with what he's feeling. He doesn't have any filters, any coping mechanisms any more, and this is more than he can process.

“It’s never going to be like old times. You need--Steve, I've done too much.” The image of that wing tearing free keeps looping through his mind. Of all the horrors his memory has available, why does it have to fixate on the one about a man dozing ten feet away? “Don't make me promise something I can never give you. Just let me go.”

Steve's hands grip the railing hard enough to warp the metal. He hunches forward, shoulders slumped and head bowed. Bucky remembers another version of him, small and bent but never so defeated. “Bucky, please. I'm tired.” The rising sun turns the circles under Steve’s eyes purple, throws the pallor of his skin into starker relief as it gilds everything else around them.

Feebly, Bucky says, “Hydra--”

“I don't give a damn about Hydra.” Steve doesn't raise his voice but snaps hard enough to cut off Bucky’s argument.

“We both know that's not true.”

“It is right now,” Steve insists. “Please. Just for a little while.”

Bucky looks away. His eyes land on Sam. He’s already rolled away from the ice pack, and his arm stretches toward the glass door separating them from him. Everything about Steve, about Bucky and Steve together, is either too complicated or too simple. Bucky can't get worked up about any of it. Maybe later. Sam, though? If even Steve is running on empty, how far gone must Sam be, on the heels of surgery? Even in sleep, his face is set in tight lines of pain. That, in the end, is what makes Bucky agree.

***

It doesn't end up being a wretched flat. Steve drives them to a small rental house, rural and isolated by some old-growth forest and a swampy mess on either side of the long driveway. There's some lake nearby and with the summer season newly ended, the house only needs a little airing out. Lace curtains flutter when they open the windows.

“Pretty,” Bucky says when he's finished sweeping the house for bugs and vulnerabilities.

Steve lowers two full-to-bursting shopping bags onto the little kitchen table. “It's fine,” he says, as though Bucky had been protesting. “It turns out being the pawn of a corrupt intelligence agency pays pretty well. I've got plenty saved up.”

Steve goes out to get the rest of their groceries while Bucky and Sam start stripping white covers from all the furniture. Bucky trails after Sam, keeping a tactician's eye on his movements. When Bucky notices he is doing little more than standing in the middle of the room and watching Sam, he hurries to remove the rest of the covers before Sam has to. Bucky wonders if he ever knew how to competently help another person. He doesn't seem to now.

They succeed in filling most of the house with a fine cloud of dust from the covers. Sam sneezes and whimpers. The arm wrapped around his chest doesn't seem to do any good, if his slow, shallow breaths are any indication. Bucky suspects he is being too obvious in his attention. Sam keeps shooting him little curious glances. The way Bucky jerks his gaze elsewhere every time it happens probably isn't helping his case.

The last piece of furniture is a tall media center in the living room. The sheet over it has elastic corners, which of course snag on the back of the cabinet when Sam pulls on it. The way Sam’s arms hitch halfway up when he reaches for the sheet again suggests bruised ribs, maybe, or shoulder damage, in addition to whatever had to be done to his back.

“Here.” Bucky moves to stand next to Sam and gives the sheet a flick. The corners pop loose, and he reels in the choking bulk of it. He can't decide if he should fold it up or take it to the laundry room or what. He ends up foisting armfuls of it on Sam in silence.

“Thanks,” Sam says. Bucky can't tell if it's sarcastic--he did just push a wad of dusty sheet at the guy. Mostly, Bucky focuses on not giving voice to what he really means, which is, it’s my fault anyway. Retreat seems like the best plan.

Steve accepts his help readily; they bought enough food for, well, an army. Steve paid for a week at the house, but said they could have it for a month if they needed it. The stockpile of food suggests Steve plans to make every effort to stay that long. Bucky shuttles back and forth between the rented pickup and the house in silence. The echoes in his mind encroach worse than usual. He remembers market days with Steve from before, but they never had this kind of plenty, the privilege of too much food to carry in one trip.

Bucky keeps looking down at where he's walking and catching sight of jeans and sneakers, clothing Steve had given in exchange for the filthy tactical gear Bucky had been wearing. He has a goddamn History of Fashion as seen from the chest down rattling around in his head. At the same time, he can't remember how to make basic conversation or what his favorite food might be or how he and Steve became friends. What more useful or precious memories were forced out to make room for Men's Footwear, 1920 - 2014?

Frustration jangles around in Bucky’s nerves. He's done what he came to do--gotten them settled in a place where they can rest--and should move on now. He agreed to stay, though. In the kitchen, Sam has started to put away the perishables. Bucky scowls. Sam needs rest. He keeps puttering in the kitchen, ignoring his injuries and working around Steve like they've lived together for years, and that’s Bucky’s life.

The kick of jealousy takes him by surprise, leaves him breathless and braced against the doorway. He used to have this; he was supposed to come back to it after the war. Wretched flats and shared grocery bills and even then, Bucky had only the haziest of ideas about settling down with someone other than Steve. Wouldn't they be twenty-two and hungry forever?

“Hey, Barnes.” Sam's voice snaps Bucky back to the present, which is less of a gift than people claim. Bucky drags his eyes up from where they've fixed on the floor. “Think you can reach the top shelf for me?” He's standing in the little pantry with a pound of flour balanced on one palm.

When Bucky squeezes past, he takes care not to touch Sam, not to jar him or do anything threatening. Sam’s thanks don't sound sarcastic at all when Bucky accepts the sack of flour. Bucky keeps his eyes down until he faces the dimly lit shelves of the pantry. The rhythm of taking item after item from Sam and placing it on the shelf lets Bucky empty his head of anything more complicated. His debt to Sam just keeps growing every time the man shows him these undeserved kindnesses. Bucky's fetch-and-carry skills hardly compare.

***

They make it a whole two days before the world’s long arm grabs hold of them again. Steve comes in from the cricket-noisy yard with his phone in his hand and an expression that makes Sam and Bucky both sit up straighter. Sam asks, “What is it?” with equal parts concern and resignation.

Two days stretch long when no one knows how to talk to each other. Steve wants to talk about old times. Bucky wants to trade current intelligence on Hydra. Sam wants to binge on cooking shows and doesn't much care what anyone else does if they're not joining him on the couch. True to his behavior that first night, Sam shows willing to include Bucky in his casual jokes and chatter. Bucky, however, finds himself embarrassingly tongue-tied. He makes up for it as best he can with silent offers of help. Sam still moves like he hurts.

Steve turns the phone over in his big hands. “Maria and Natasha have some deep cover agents in danger. CIA won't touch it, so Sharon’s hands are tied.” Steve shuffles his feet. He looks like he's delivering a terminal diagnosis. “They're asking for back-up.”

Sam takes a deep breath and says, “Can’t leave our best ladies hanging. When do we go?”

“You're injured. You can't go.” Bucky says it without thinking, but he's not wrong. They're both looking at him like they have no idea what he's talking about. “Steve.” His tone has the weight of a whole life of calling Steve on his bad ideas. Bucky is, for once, glad to have that sort of thing leak into his words without trying.

Bucky doubts the tone ever did much good with Steve, but it still had to be worlds better than the indignant bristling he gets from Sam. “The hell?” He's practically levitating off the couch. He's got a bowl of popcorn and looks ready to throw it.

Steve steps between them. “Sam. Can we talk?”

They disappear into the master bedroom they've been sharing. Bucky doesn't bother trying to listen in on them. On the television, a man who looks like he hasn't eaten in a month watches avidly as a woman dismantles a whole chicken. Bucky notes that her knife work is excellent and crams a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

The bedroom door slams open. “This is such bullshit,” Sam announces on his way out to the yard. The slider bounces when he slams it and ends up open by a few inches. The sound of crickets swirls into the house in his wake.

Steve slouches, hands tucked in his pockets. “That went well.” He tuts at Bucky when he steals more popcorn. “Getting back into old habits?”

Bucky looks at the popcorn. “Huh?”

Shaking his head, Steve says, “No, I mean managing personnel like that.” At Bucky's blank look, he goes on. “In the war, that was how it worked. You were my XO, and a damn good thing too. I, uh, tended to forget what the team could actually survive.”

Steve sinks onto the opposite end of the couch. “I spent so long looking at regular fellas and thinking they were superhuman. After the serum, I thought I was normal at last, thought everyone could do what I did. You'd give me hell and insist on down time, tell me that one of them wasn't cleared for another mission yet.”

A piece of popcorn crumbles between Bucky’s fingers. He hadn't remembered that. It's been a long time since he was even in charge of monitoring his own fitness for duty, let alone anyone else's. “Well,” he says at last, “good to know I've always had more sense than you.”

Steve grins, looking shy and happy. Bucky thinks, in another lifetime, this conversation might have devolved into friendly fisticuffs. He can't remember the last time someone touched him for anything other than utilitarian reasons. Long enough, at any rate, that he's afraid to consider seeking it out.

Steve turns pensive beside him. “Don’t hold it against Sam. He's having a hard time being grounded. He was never supposed to be a foot soldier.”

Out in the yard, Sam stands with his back to them, face tipped up to catch the last light of day. Bucky tries to imagine what his wings would look like spread out against a backdrop of autumn orange. He doesn't remember them clearly enough to do it. Were they like the arm, a replacement for something lost? Or an addition beyond what biology intended? Worse yet, were they a protection for something still alive and growing? He's heard stories of someone like that, metal sheathing the weapons nature gave him.

Steve is looking too. Bucky wonders if he knows the answers or if Sam is as much of a mystery to Steve as he is to Bucky. “He was meant for better than this. But his wings.” He trails off.

Guilt is a familiar feeling to Bucky these days. After fear, it is the one that has been back with him the longest. So much to regret, so much he can never make reparations for. Most of his debts are owed to the dead, decades stretched thin and hungry between himself and anyone would could offer him forgiveness. Here, though, is one living man who could give Bucky that, and the grievance he holds against Bucky looms too huge and terrible for Bucky to dream of asking.

Steve claps his hand on the back of the couch, a poor substitute for the shoulder he must want Bucky to provide. “I've got to leave tonight. You'll take care of him for me, won't you?”

That answers one of the easier questions Bucky was holding in--did Steve want Bucky to fill in for Sam? He can't regret being benched as well; he's not ready to face the challenge of working on a team again. All he can do is nod and not let himself dread days alone with Sam too much.

***

Bucky spends that night sleepless and twitchy. Stretched out in the second bedroom, with its lilac-print sheets and dust ruffle, he waits for Sam to come for him. Steve would protect Bucky; he is relatively confident of that. Steve's loyalty outweighs his good sense. Steve isn't here, though. Sam could come for Bucky and no one, not even Bucky, would stop him.

Whatever Sam's plans to avenge his lost wings might be, he at least doesn't seem to hold a grudge for long about being kept off the current mission. He spends the morning working on a laptop in stony silence. Bucky, exhausted and wary and confused, gives him a wide berth. By afternoon, though, Sam has warmed up enough to be sassing the television in a way that is clearly intended to amuse Bucky.

“You don't approve?” Bucky asks cautiously after Sam has finished objecting vigorously to something the television chef has just added to one of five pans occupying the gleaming range. Boredom has reduced Bucky to cleaning guns on the little coffee table. He doesn't need much brain function to manage that. The couch isn't close enough, so Bucky planted himself on the floor with his back to it.

Sam gives him a side-eye. “You're gonna be as bad as Rogers, aren't you?” At Bucky’s inquiring noise, Sam rolls his eyes. “The man does nothing but eat takeout. I meet him and he says, oh, the food’s better now, but what's he doing but living on burritos and enough salt to kill a horse?”

Bucky snorts, unable to help himself. “Be grateful. You don't want him cooking.” Oh, Lord, Bucky remembers enough to know better than that.

Sam looks like Christmas just came early. “Please tell me you were the househusband between the two of you. Please tell me you cook.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose at that designation. “Didn't have much to work with, but yeah. I think so. I think.” He concentrates on cleaning the slide he's got in his hand. “I think I forgot.”

Enthusiastic noises trail behind Sam as he leaves the room. Bucky rushes the rest of the cleaning and reassembles the gun before following him into the kitchen. Sam has already begun amassing ingredients on the table. When he sees Bucky, he points imperiously at the top shelf of the pantry and says, “Pasta. Nobody forgets how to cook. You just need your memory jogged. Come on.”

The conviction that he must find a way to repay this man digs its claws deeper into Bucky. While Steve is an old and complicated tangle, Sam owes Bucky none of the kindness he shows. Bucky tore apart Sam’s body in a way Bucky knows intimately. Now Sam bangs around pots and cutlery for the chance to cook for Bucky. With Bucky.

Bucky has nothing to give, though. He can't give Sam his wings back. He can't even make him heal faster so he can go back into the field. The only resources he has stockpiled are pain and destruction and a certain unattractive willingness to cause a little more of both for the right reason.

Sam ushers him into a chair and hands him a head of garlic. “You got the dexterity to peel these?” Sam's eyes are trained on the left arm.

The flash of clarity so derails Bucky’s thoughts that he barely manages to accept the garlic, let alone explain the combination of artificial connections and neurological rerouting that makes the arm functional. His fingers work on automatic, rubbing away husks from each clove, while his mind races. He can offer a trade. The satisfaction of finding a solution drowns out both the thrill of horror and the voice that says Sam wouldn't want what Bucky has in mind.

Bucky took Sam’s wings, but Bucky can let Sam take something in return. It would be a relief, really, to force that unwanted addition to his body into doing something he wants for his own reasons. Receiving it had shoved him down this bloody path; let him relinquish it and be at the end finally.

Bucky can't take his eyes off Sam as he removes the cleaned garlic cloves and puts them in a machine on the counter. He's saying something about processors and modern convenience, and Bucky isn't hearing any of it. They can fix this, together. They can make it right. Sam can relieve Bucky of this burden, if only Bucky can have the courage to offer it to him.

Bucky doesn't know how to say it. Words catch hard and jagged in his throat. He can give orders and threats in half a dozen languages, more if all he really needs to get across is the possibility of violence. Those are simple, though. Give me that gun, I'll take the left, tell me the codes.

It's nothing to do with him or the minefield of his emerging emotions. He can't produce a single sentence to explain I hurt you, I took something vital, they took things from me too, I have to fix it, I have to shed this weight somehow, because it's killing me, because I care, and I don't want to and don't remember how to survive it. That's not a sentence Bucky will be uttering any day soon.

He can do this though: he can lay the arm across the table, twist it so the palm faces upward, exposing the underside of the forearm and tweaking the shoulder enough to cause a twinge of discomfort. This is as close to vulnerable as he can make it, which even then consists mostly of an inconvenient position from which to attack. It's the best he can do.

Sam turns back from the counter, already reaching for a handful of something aromatic and lively. He pauses. Looks at the offering.

Bucky's not sure what he expected Sam to do. Reach back for the biggest knife in the block, maybe, though Bucky knows Sam would be hard-pressed to do any real damage to the arm with that. Bucky's willing to stay here while Sam goes to get something better suited. He's not going to withdraw the offer just because Sam doesn't have the capacity to rip the arm off him barehanded. He's not going to withdraw the offer at all.

Sam doesn't even look angry. For fuck’s sake, Bucky thinks savagely, at least give me that. Sam is wary, perhaps, and confused. (Bucky can relate.) Like--like he thinks Bucky’s trying to threaten him. Fear curdles into rage. Bucky wants it to be over and done, for all that the thought only just came to him. He doesn't deserve mercy from Sam, but does he really intend to torture Bucky like this?

Sam takes the last step up to the table. The situation has the feel of a standoff, and Bucky doesn't know why. Doesn't Sam want to hurt him? Doesn't he want revenge? Bucky took his wings, his sky. Steve said--well, if Bucky had something he loved like that, Bucky would have a hard time thinking of anything sufficiently terrible to do in retribution. He would come up with something though.

Sam reaches down and Bucky thinks this is finally it. He is nearly shaking with the tension. Sam's hand opens and...picks up a bundle of stalks with green leaves arranged in alternating pairs. “You had pesto before? And store-bought doesn't count.” Sam turns away again. The last thing Bucky hears before he makes it out of the room at a near run is the plastic click of the food processor lid snapping into place and the noisy motor starting up.

***

Bucky hides out in his bedroom for the rest of the day. He doesn't even go out to collect the weapons he left on the coffee table. When he finally sneaks out, a hour after Sam switched off the television for the night, he actually feels some of the hunger he can usually ignore. The sight of covered bowls of pasta and brilliant green sauce nearly shames him into retreating again. A note leans against the pasta bowl. Sam left him reheating instructions.

By the time Sam shuffles blearily into the kitchen the next morning, Bucky has already finished cooking the bacon and has moved on to the crisis that is scrambling eggs. He already turned off the heat, so he ends up just standing there, waiting for Sam to speak.

When Bucky was fourteen, he scraped up enough money to buy flowers for Dottie...Dottie G-something, he forgets that part. Point is, it was the most nervous he had ever been, standing on her stoop with this handful of sad flowers and just enough left over to pay for two tickets to the pictures. Bucky feels much the same now, as Sam comes over to lean against the counter. He wouldn't mind, if he didn't also remember how Dottie spent the picture making eyes at a guy in the next row and never went with Bucky again, flowers or no. It's not a reassuring memory.

Sam looks down into the pan. The eggs are streaked across the bottom, yolk and white too distinct. They turned out too broken up to be called an omelet, too chunky to be called scrambled. “Figure out where you went wrong?”

Bucky’s hand flexes around the spatula, which gives a strained plastic squeak. “I needed to beat the eggs before putting them in.” His voice rises, turning it into a question when he doesn't want it to be.

“That was my guess.” Sam plucks a bit of egg from the pan between finger and thumb and pops it in his mouth. “Tastes fine to me, though.”

“I can make more, or, another, if you don't want--” Dottie would have laughed in Bucky’s face. Sam likes cooking, though, and Bucky wants Sam to like--no. Bucky wants to do something for Sam to make up for his wings. Bucky doesn't know what Sam wants, though, so he has to keep guessing. Maybe if he just can convince Sam he is earnest in his guilt, his repentance, his submission, Sam will help Bucky clear his debt.

“This for me?” Bucky sticks to just nodding in agreement. “Thanks, man. Let me grab a couple plates.”

When they're down to the last crumbs of bacon on their plates, Bucky says, “It's boring here.” Sam tilts his head and waits for Bucky to figure out how to say what he actually means instead of random, faintly insulting nonsense. “Without a mission. I'm not good at this.”

Sam sucks bacon grease off his fingers. “Took me ages, when I finished my last tour. Guess it never really went away. Chasing after Steve has me as bad as ever again.”

Bucky considers doing the same, but even his flesh hand always carries a tinge of metal to it. He doesn't care for the taste or smell. Licking the plate would probably be going too far, he supposes. “How did you do it?”

“Built new routines. Made sure I had something to get me out of the house every day.” Sam quirks a crooked little smile. “Maaaybe ran myself sick a couple times so I was too exhausted to be bored.” He ducks his head, smiling and rolling his eyes at himself.

As far as coping mechanisms go, that's rather tame. Bucky can't think of a response that won't reveal things he'd rather keep hidden. Like how he sometimes runs ops with heavy-duty earplugs in because he fears the sound of gunfire (and shouting and electricity and most European accents), and it was either operate with partial deafness or flinch at the wrong time and get dead.

Like how there were nights when he could only fall asleep in an ice bath and still woke up screaming, the guests in the next motel room pounding on the wall to shut him up.

Like how that happened two nights before the op that brought the three of them together.

“That's how Steve and I met.” For a moment, Bucky can't make the slightest sense of this information. He has to wind the conversation back in his mind.

“Running?” He gets a quick pop-pop flash of memories: Steve’s uneven gait getting worse the more he hurries; Steve with his feet propped up on their shabby bed, trying to stretch the knots from his back; Steve tumbling over a low alley wall with young Bucky shoving him before climbing after, a fight three times their size bearing down on them.

Bucky scrapes his fingers across his temple, trying to anchor himself back in this sunny little house with lace curtains and firearms in the living room. “Would you want to? Here?” Bucky's not sure if he's just asking or making a suggestion. He doesn't care about running, but he's not going to last long if he doesn't find something to do here.

Sam looks from Bucky to the plates to the egg-crusted pan soaking in the sink. He smiles again, still crooked and cautious, and for a moment, Bucky doesn't care about offers of revenge or injuries or anything but the heady power of being able to summon that smile. “I hear there's a lake around here.”

***

They stare. “This seems...wrong. Right?” Sam looks to Bucky for reassurance. Bucky knows it’s a joke, or, well, not something serious, but Sam looks at him with earnest, worried eyes.

“Maybe the map was wrong?” Bucky rubs his fingertips together, itching with the urge to reach for gear he doesn't have. Bad intelligence wrecks ops, gets the wrong people dead, leaves him without an exit route.

The little homemade brochure that went with the rental house insisted it was located within walking distance of the popular lakefront. “Avoid the crowds. Think 'local.'” (The quotation marks had made Sam laugh, then explain the joke, and then nearly get sidetracked by a series of websites on the subject.) There had even been a map. In hindsight, the fact that it appeared to have been drawn by the landlord’s ten-year-old should have been a warning.

Sam prods the muddy footing with the toe of his boot. “I'm not ruining my good running shoes,” he had said at the house. “Have you seen the terrain around here?” Bucky had seen it: a swampy, sucking mess that would pull at boots and twist ankles and double exfil time. Sam's movement makes a stand of dry reeds rattle. The map had led them out into a field bordered by trees, and the hush of rustling grasses and nothing else unnerved Bucky.

What they found instead of a proper lake is an overconfident pond. Reeds define the mushy banks of it, the only real warning that the soft footing is about to turn into ankle-deep water. Little spits of them make incursions into the water and give the pond a starburst outline. It's probably less than two hundred feet across, a little narrower than that, and doesn't seem to get much deeper than a foot. It is definitely not a lake.

“I'm feeling cheated,” Sam says. Despite that, he crouches down by the water’s edge. He doesn't look disappointed. He looks like a child. He finds a broken reed and uses it to poke about in the mud. The smile he has tucked against his folded legs isn't meant for Bucky or anyone else; Sam is just that happy.

Bucky shifts from foot to foot. It's only to keep himself from sinking into the soft footing too much, not from discomfort. Running, hiking, going to a lake--Bucky doesn't remember ever being the sort of person to do things like that unless he had to. If he ever had an idea of fun, if he ever will again, he remains confident this will not be it. Even so, he doesn't mind standing over Sam like this. Watching him push aside reeds to spy on a fat frog. Being near him.

"Hey, city boy, you ever--"

Suddenly, there's a flurry of movement and sound on the far side of the pond. Bucky drops into a crouch before he registers what he's seen. His heart thunders when he reaches for weapons and finds only the single handgun Sam talked him into. Bucky had been caught next to the coffee table, looking down at his partially assembled arsenal. Should he be weaponless around Sam? Was that the key to making Sam accept Bucky's offer? Sam had come up next to him while strapping on a holster to wear under his hoodie. Bucky felt something unclench in his chest when Sam told him to bring something as well. Now, he wishes he had brought the whole kit.

Next to him, Sam pops up after an entirely unsafe amount of time. The air whirs with the beating of wings, a sound Bucky places only after he properly focuses on the source. Small gray bodies dart in a hectic cloud. Sam watches them with a hand up to shade his eyes. They make a call like pigeons set on fast-forward and, like pigeons, return to the ground as soon as they finish their brief, panicked burst of flight. When they land, they disappear into the tall, summer-dried grasses. After a moment, they begin to mark their positions with a clucking burble noise.

Sam looks down and smiles, entirely unfazed by Bucky’s battle stance and the way he causes violence to intrude on even the most tranquil scenes. “Quail.” He offers Bucky a hand to pull him up from where his knee sinks into the mud and the mud sinks into his jeans. Bucky has to put the gun away first. Otherwise he'd be taking Sam’s hand with the left and he can't. He mustn't.

Which of course means Bucky can’t hardly think of a damn thing else. In this position, kneeling at Sam’s feet, it would be easier. Sam could take the hand, hold him steady there, and strike down with a booted foot. Drive it into the shoulder joint, compromise the deep-set socket work. He still has the sound of crumpling metal fresh in his mind from his fight with Steve on the bridge. Sense memories stick best, and he can insert it into the fantasy. He holds on to the clarity of knowing what he has to offer, knowing what he can do right, long enough for the moment to become awkward.

Sam just waits until Bucky meets him halfway. Then Sam’s fingers wrap warm and firm around Bucky’s real arm, well above the wrist, and Bucky has no choice but to mirror the move. In the second it takes for Bucky to regain his feet, his fingertips catalog the delicate skin on the inside of Sam’s forearm, the quick flex and release of muscles, and the one thick vein running up from the back of his hand. Does this touching count as utilitarian or recreational?

Sam gives his arm a squeeze, drawing out the contact, before letting go. “Why are all you supersoldiers so much heavier than you look?” Bucky doesn't understand the joke, but he doesn't care. He's decided this is recreational. It's been decades. He wants more.

***

They expect Steve to call when the op is finished. Maybe when he's getting close to the house, so he doesn't get shot as an intruder. Neither of them expected him to call on a secure line, a firefight audible in the background, and shout, “The backup’s gonna need some backup!”

Sam put him on speaker for Bucky’s sake, and they both snap, “Where?” over the sound of engines revving. Steve seems to be in active pursuit, or worse, attempting to flee someone.

“Maria’s gonna have coordinates for you and transport. We got this one, but they're on the move. Gotta go.”

Sam says, “It doesn't sound like you got this,” but the line has gone dead.

Bucky has already started to strip out of the civvies he's got on by the time Sam stops cussing at the phone. He’ll change into his tactical gear and cover up with something bulky for camouflage. “If you can give me a ride into town,” he says as he tosses aside the soft t-shirt he's grown attached to.

“Uh-huh, and what will I be doing after that?” Bucky shoots Sam a hard look over his shoulder. Sam matches it, and there's a tic in his jaw to go with it. “Alright, it was cute the first time, but I've had enough. I managed to pal around with Captain America--and don't think that isn't a point of pride--before you came along. Against you, in case you've forgotten that you played Let’s Go Fly a Kite with me. I survived.”

Bucky flinches away. His flesh hand prickles with sweat and squeaks as he slides it across the metal arm. He regrets taking the shirt off so soon, because now he's stuck facing Sam with nothing to hide behind. The mess of scar tissue itches as Sam’s eyes flick over it. Bucky curls in on himself, but he's not going to give in. "I can handle it."

Sam expands like an angry cat when he takes a deep breath. Just as quickly, he changes tactics and scrubs a hand across his face. “Let’s try this from the top. Why don't you want me in the field?” The arms crossed over his chest don't make Bucky think he's going to get a lot of chances to explain himself.

“You don't have accelerated healing, do you?” Sam shakes his head. “The amount of surgery they must have done--”

A hand held up stops him from going any further. “I haven't had any recent surgeries. Some stitches. Had Steve pull a slug outta me--was he always such a garbage medic?”

Bucky nods, then shakes his head, unable to focus on the question. “Your wings,” he says in a strangled voice he hardly recognizes as his own. He can't process this, knows he is on the verge of overloading and checking out entirely.

Sam's arms unfold. “Need you to keep breathing,” Sam says. Bucky nods and sucks in a rasping breath. Sam hasn't dropped the anger, but he's not cruel. He won't let Bucky go to pieces out of spite. Bucky wishes-- “Connect the dots for me. Yeah, I lost the wings, but I'm not as hopeless as all that on the ground. What's in your head?”

“I hurt you,” Bucky blurts out. He isn't surprised. He has trouble enough talking these days; he's getting used to either not talking at all or spewing things out unfiltered. “You can't be healed yet, I keep thinking about how long it took to install the arm, what it must--”

“Breathe!” Sam doesn't touch Bucky, but he looks like he barely resists the impulse. Probably to guide Bucky into putting his head down and doing something other than hyperventilating. Bucky will lose it if Sam touches him now. “There was no surgery. You didn't hurt me. The wings were removable, a--a pack, gear. Bucky.” Sam has never said that name to him. “Bucky, I'm fine.”

Without once touching him, Sam sort of herds him down onto the couch. Sam sits opposite him on the coffee table and sets the phone down next to him. It's like a bomb, waiting to go off with mission details and the threat of death.

Bucky shoves a hand through his hair, pulls it back and gives it a tug just to have something else to focus on for a second. “But your back. At the base, and--”

Sam shrugs. “One of those goons got the drop on me, literally. I took a couple of jackboots to the back right before we found you. That's all.”

“You should have healed faster if that was all.”

In Bucky’s peripheral vision, he sees Sam tilt his head, allowing that argument. “I might have been pushing myself a little harder than usual. Guess it all caught up to me.”

“Your wings,” Bucky repeats stubbornly. The whole thing is starting to feel like a delusion. Like something he dreamt up while in stasis. The helicarriers, the Potomac, his face in a museum exhibit. Sam’s wings. James Buchanan Barnes. All equally unreal.

“They weren't--well, I'd be lying if I said they weren't part of me, but not how you're thinking it. They weren't, you know, integrated.” Sam nods at the arm.

Bucky’s brain grinds, all grit and rust and broken gears. He understands the words Sam is saying. He can process how he misinterpreted what he saw. He can't accept it, though. Knowing he didn't wrong Sam in that way doesn't absolve Bucky of anything. The wings were an easy stand-in for everything else, and Bucky doesn't want to, can't, give that up. He's been thinking about it so much, obsessing, wrapping his whole self up in the idea of making this one thing right--he can't let it go now. What are facts in the face of redemption?

The phone vibrates an inch across the table. “Text,” Sam says. “Got our marching orders and our flight plan. Private jet, small airfield. Maria's enjoying having Stark resources at her fingertips.”

“I'll get there myself. Just give me the coordinates.” Bucky has packing to do. He can only think about so many things at a time. He can't cope with what Sam told him, so he chooses to lock it away for now. The mission takes priority.

“Would it be that bad to work with us?” Sam calls to him as he heads for the room he's been using and will never see again.

“I don't work with partners.” He doesn't miss when Sam mutters, “That's what I'm afraid of,” but then, he doesn't think he was supposed to miss it.

***

Desperation mingles with the heavy October air. Bucky smells it in the blood of another close kill. He feels it in the press of heat rising all around him from the burning crops. In the distance, some kind of tractor explodes as the gas tank ignites. Bucky raises his gun and takes out the last guard in front of the laboratory. Focus. One thing at a time.

He's cleared the outside of the compound, which Steve’s team had left panicked by the fire but mostly whole. They had focused on heading down, because if there's one thing true about Hydra, it's that they love an underground bunker. Gunfire from the opposite end of the long, low building lets him know no one will be escaping that way. At least the others are good for something.

If he knows any relevant codes to get through the doors here, he doesn't remember them. Grenades are a great equalizer, however. Hydra attempted to secure the facility with extra personnel, but it was clearly not originally intended to be a high-risk location. The door blows easily, and Bucky steps through smoke into the red glare of emergency lights.

The labs are abandoned. The smell of flame and dirt outside gives way to the stink of bleach. Broken vials litter industrial sinks. The bleach smell gets strongest there. Destroying their projects, the evidence of whatever this lab was tasked to do. Hydra never specialized in biochemical experiments, as far as Bucky has been able to learn, but Zola did. His influence lingers, a stink of its own.

In another room, computers have been smashed haphazardly. A monitor sparks, snaps, white and burning electric, and Bucky goes somewhere else in his head. Bucky doesn't like it here, but he's not allowed to like or dislike things. Bucky can only take the bite guard and lean back and-- Bucky--

Should have worn the damn earplugs again.

He moves forward, down narrow stairs that open up into the deeper levels of the compound. He encounters resistance. He eliminates it.

He knows he isn't fit for this op anymore. The knowledge remains distant, abstract, coming from a part of him that isn't driving right now. He leaves behind a wake of bodies kicked into walls and slumped against refrigeration units with a halo of arterial spray. He switched to knives because...

The next wave of people practically backs into him. They are so focused on finding a place to entrench themselves, to muster their forces, that they don't notice his lone dark figure. They hem him into a large room quite by accident. White coats fill his tunneled vision. Even as Bucky cuts them down, more of them pour in, the whole damn lot of them. Bucky is pushed closer to some kind of manufacturing equipment, large and grasping in the middle of the room.

It doesn't much matter that he moves on instinct alone. Somewhere back in his training, in some series of memories now lost, his body learned to fight whether he was there to command it or not. Hydra wanted an intelligent, compliant assassin, and sometimes they had gotten more of one of those qualities than the other.

For now, he's not here to be bothered by the noises and the press of bodies and the chaos of people caught between running, fighting, and hiding. They go down easily but with more fussing. Screams and tears and the smell of piss. Bucky catches and grabs bodies, batters them against one another into submission, and continues to clear the room.

Something changes. He grabs another body when it gets close to him. He struggles to surface, and his mind is like water through too fine a mesh. This is important. Bucky, trained and honed and tested more than even he can ever know, lets go. He can't tell if it is because of that training or in spite of it.

After a moment, he realizes it's because the person said, “Bucky,” and “shit, man,” and maybe more besides, all in a voice that is becoming familiar.

Bucky blinks slowly when Sam pulls him into a crouch behind the bulk of the machinery. “Did you notice the firing squad coming for you?” There are gunshots pinging off the machinery around them, striking sparks and making terrible noises. Bucky wants to go away again. He shakes his head.

Sam makes unhappy noises. “Can you cover me?” The din gets worse and closer. Sam pushes a gun into Bucky’s right hand. Bucky doesn't have to think to pop up over the machinery to exchange bursts of fire. His ears ring. Agents drop. Now he and Sam are the ones hunkered down, cornered. The shadows cast by agents in the red emergency lights fall over them like a bloody eclipse.

Sam comes up with a knife. His body rolls with the motion. Bucky cannot look away. Then Sam is twisting--side, slash, side, uppercut. He's fast, for someone without enhancements, but more than that, he's graceful. Bucky would think he hadn't even connected with his target, if not for the way the agent twitches at the first blow and collapses at the second. Bucky, when he swings like that, does it to compensate for the weight of the arm. Sam moves like gravity indulges him even without his wings.

Sam's uniform moves with him, and Bucky can't help imagining what that motion would look like without clothing hiding the bunch and stretch of muscles along his back, his ribs. Bucky's gun continues to fire, suppressing the agents in the back while Sam cuts down those who think they can finish the pair off alone.

The room falls silent, then the whole compound. Into a comm network Bucky isn't part of, Sam says, “Yeah, we’re okay, Cap. Clear on this end. Meet you topside.”

Bucky lets both hands, still holding gun and knife, rest slack on the floor. He presses his face against his bent knees. Quiet. Metal smells in the air, all over his body armor, in the curtain of his hair.

“What the hell was that?” Sam stands over him. There's a bruise coming up at the corner of his mouth, like he took a punch, and he licks at a patch of tacky blood. “If you were gonna be in on the op, why'd you blow us off in the first place? Also, thanks for mostly not trying to kill me!”

Fatigue and the pervasive cobwebs of dissociation make his thoughts sludgy. He tried to hurt Sam again. Sam belongs in the air, where he would be safer. Bucky holds out the arm, palm up, a midair echo of how he offered it at the kitchen table. The knife clatters out of his grip.

Sam’s hands curl into fists at his sides. His jaw clenches and a fresh bit of blood seeps from the cut in his lip. Finally, he snarls, “You stubborn, goddamn, Lone Ranger asshole.” And stalks away.

***

“I'm sorry. You weren't together at the base, and I should have seen that. Shouldn't have lost my temper with you.”

Bucky rolls onto his back a bit to look up at Sam. The scratchy duvet from the second of the hotel beds folds around him like a sleeping bag, protecting him from the questionably clean floor. He hasn't been asleep--can't when Steve keeps going from their room to the room Natasha and Maria share next door. Still, it takes him a minute to process that Sam just apologized to him.

Bucky had tried to part ways with them when they returned to the not-so-fresh air outside the laboratory. Natasha, whom Bucky recognized a few times over in a disjointed jumble, had blocked his way and looked him up and down as he tried not to shake with the after-effects of adrenaline and confusion. She pursed her lips and wandered off. When she returned, she pushed the crumpled bulk of a tarp, scavenged from some part of the farming setup, into Sam’s arms. Sam had settled it around Bucky’s shoulders like a shock blanket. Bucky didn't try to leave again.

Having one of those attacks takes more out of Bucky than a fight ever could. On the hotel floor, he shifts stiffly, body aching. “Not the one who needs to apologize.” He unfolds the arm so it's stretched across the floor toward Sam in the familiar palm-up position. It has become habit, even instinct, to make the offering.

Sam crouches down by Bucky’s feet. “What's that mean?” He tips his chin to indicate the arm. “Because I've been trying to make sense of it, but I'm gonna need some help.”

Bucky sits up and twists so his back presses against the wall in the little hiding space created by the bed frame. Sam could still reach out for the arm, but Bucky doesn't have to look directly at him. Now that it's been acknowledged, he feels foolish, like a child flirting ineptly. “I had thought, since I took your wings.” He pushes his feet against the blanket, spreading it out and bunching it up again.

Sam's gaze on the arm is heavy-lidded. “Not sure that thing’s flight worthy.” It's a joke, but Sam doesn't smile.

Bucky shakes his head. “Payback. You could--” He scoots the hand over toward Sam, fingers spread in invitation. “So we'd be even.”

With a sigh, Sam drops to his knees and shuffles around to sit across from Bucky. They barely have enough room to avoid touching. “That's what you want. Not me.”

Bucky nods, disappointment sapping the last of his energy. He's right, Bucky knows he is. What Bucky wants is selfish. It has nothing to do with repaying Sam. It has everything to do with being told he's forgiven. With knowing there's been one, tiny fraction of misdeeds made well again. Maybe, even, he wanted it because the violence he can choose for himself is so different from the violence others subjected him to. The busted knuckles of alleyway fights, the bullet wounds of theaters of war, on down to the staticky memory of a backhand in a bank vault all tell the story of a life of having his battles picked for him.

“What do you want?” Bucky asks. Maybe there is a chance. Maybe he can do something else. Some other form of penance. Fifty Hail Marys and a dozen good kills and come to confession next week with a clearer conscience.

Sam shifts forward. “You offering it to me? To do whatever I want to it?” Bucky nods, heart in his throat. Sam has gotten so close now. His eyes trace the arm then continue up to Bucky’s face. Sam gets a leg under him so he can lean farther forward, really getting into Bucky’s limited space. Bucky has to tip his head back to keep his eyes on Sam’s, but he's blocked by the wall behind him.

Bucky can feel his breathing speeding up. Panicked fluttering starts to eclipse the hard clench of muscles braced against pain. He remembers this, he knows what comes next, he's biting down on--

Sam's fingers curl around the wrist, palm pressed to where the veins should stand out blue under thin skin. Bucky grinds his teeth to stop the scream, but it rattles out between his jaws anyway. There's no pain at all, Sam is so gentle, it's the worst thing ever, Bucky is going to die.

Sam fits his middle finger and thumb into the divots just above where the points of his wrist should be. If it were a real, flesh arm, both their pulses would be pounding there. He feels frantic, desperate to pull away, to end this terrible thing he brought on himself.

“Hey,” Sam says, neither pulling him closer nor releasing him. Waiting for Bucky to meet him halfway. “Hey, let me have it. Bucky. Let me have it.”

Bucky can't, he can't, but he promised. He offered. Sam is nothing like the others, who cut the power to the arm or drugged him into helplessness, stole the strength out of him so they could strap him down. Sam isn't modified. Sam couldn't make him do anything.

Sam wants this though. Bucky doesn't understand, doesn't know what, if not an object to break, he can be for Sam. But Bucky offered and Sam said yes and Bucky wants to. God, he wants to give Sam everything.

Sam catches Bucky as he falls forward, all the fight gone out of him. “Easy. I got you. I got this.” He curls his free arm around Bucky’s back, encouraging him to fold all the weight of his upper body into Sam. They land with Sam’s back to the bed frame and Bucky collapsed like a rag doll across his chest and lap. Sam’s other hand never leaves the metal wrist. That, he guides forward, meeting no resistance from Bucky, until the fingers curl by Sam’s hip.

Sam glides his hand from wrist to elbow, never losing contact. He explores openly, like it’s only his due to have this kind of access. Bucky watches through half-closed eyes and lets his temple rest in the crook of Sam’s neck. The fatigue from the op can't compare to his sudden, utter exhaustion now. Bucky had imagined it happening quickly, the same brutal rending he had inflicted on Sam’s wing. As it is, he can feel sleep creeping up on him with every leisurely movement of Sam’s hand.

Sam rubs his thumb into the bend of Bucky’s elbow. The motion might be like a massage, if the surface of the arm had any give to it. Instead, it's more like Sam using Bucky as a stress ball. “I studied the schematics from the EXO project, you know.” The soft noise Bucky makes to show he is listening barely comes out at all.

Then Sam hooks a nail under the edge of one of the metal plates just to see if he can. Bucky can't suppress a shudder or the memory of a well-timed knife strike that once made it between the plates. Sam’s other hand has started stroking Bucky’s back at some point. He focuses on that to calm himself.

“Used to bribe the mechanics into letting me hover while they worked, too,” Sam continues. His voice trickles down to Bucky as though from a great distance. It doesn't feel anything like the detachment of losing himself during the op. “I liked knowing how my wings worked.” Sam can't budge the plate, of course, and he switches to tracing the dark grooves between them.

It takes hardly a thought for Bucky to make the arm recalibrate. Plates pop up, scales protecting the delicate electrical underbelly of a dragon he never entirely tamed. Sam tilts to the side so he can rub his cheek against Bucky’s hair, reward and encouragement. Sam wants this. Bucky can give him this.

There's enough room to get a fingertip under the plates now. Sam dips into each space, starting at the elbow and working down to the wrist. “I never wanted to hurt people. That's not what I do. I don't want your pain.” His fingers come away with faint traces of grease and tarnish.

Bucky could snap the plates shut at any moment. He could trap and crush those errant fingertips in the mechanism. Bucky does not close them until Sam sweeps his palm down the same path, encouraging the plates to lie flat. Bucky falls asleep under the slow and constant stroke of Sam’s hand.

***

Maria had said, “Hope you boys enjoyed your vacation.” Her gaze fell cool, even a little unfriendly, on Bucky, but she didn't kick him out when Sam and Steve combined forces to coax him into the planning meeting. Bucky starts to wish she had.

The waiting doesn't bother him. He's got a good nest on the hillside overlooking the Hydra base. He cleared a patch of ground to rest on; his gear is warm enough to keep the night chill from his skin. He got hold of an old M1903 Springfield, which made Steve choke up when he saw it and Bucky's hands itch with a familiarity no modern rifle gave him. He has a bead on the first watchtower guard and can take him out at a moment’s notice. It's not the waiting that gets to him.

“I'm in position,” Sam says over the comm link. Bucky wore his tucked under an earplug. It leaves an uncomfortable tightness on one side of his head, and the voices are a touch too loud. He won't risk a repeat of last time, though. Not when he has--his mouth curls in faint distaste--a team to protect.

Two taps over the comm indicate Natasha has reached her position as well. Three watchtowers with weapons turrets, three agents to take them out. Sam and Bucky have the longest distances to cover, while Natasha insisted she had sufficient stealth to take out her target up close. That meant she took the longest. It's not the waiting, though, that bothers Bucky.

“On my mark,” Steve says, and Bucky grits his teeth. That is the bit that's getting to him. The data he has gathered from destroyed bases indicates he used to work with support crews. Backup. Once he had his mission orders and entered the field, though, he--that person, that weapon--didn't answer to anyone. His own older memories tell him this teamwork should be familiar. He doesn't like it.

Sam asked for this, though. It wasn't anything so formal as a promise. He had just said, “Think you could try things my way this time? Cooperate?”

Bucky had looked down at the surveillance photos of another base. Maria's imperiled undercover agents had come back with more than just the intel they had been after. SHIELD, of course, had not been the only organization compromised by Hydra, nor the only resource at their disposal. The photos showed a stream of supply trucks pouring into the base. They were painted up with khaki camouflage. A private defense contractor’s name came up in some very interesting documents.

There had to be worse ways of taking out such a large base. Bucky could tolerate letting someone else coordinate an op, at least this once. His body still hummed with the warm well-being of good sleep, even days later, following Sam’s handling of his arm. Bucky had agreed.

When the order comes, Bucky takes out his target with one clean shot. Sam's overlaps it, and Natasha’s comm conveys a soft, pained grunt and the thud of a body hitting the floor. “You are clear to enter, Cap,” Maria says. The sound of the shots riles the base, like a stirred-up anthill. It's nothing compared to the chaos that erupts when Steve busts down their front gate.

The precise rhythm of sniping--breathe, breathe, hold, fire, eject round, breathe--lulls Bucky as the siege continues. Maria's jamming program, broadcast from the vehicle she has parked out of sight, wreaks havoc on the enemy communications. Sam, down from his perch, takes out the opposition in sprays of automatic fire. Steve and Natasha fight back to back, their strange mix of venomous speed and brutish strength clearly honed with long practice.

“I need access soon, before someone gets a chance to purge the system,” Maria tells them all. Steve and Natasha confirm in sync and start carving a path to the building bristling with a crest of antennas and dishes. Sam and Bucky are left to harass the defending forces.

Bucky will later swear he can hear--despite the earplugs, the noise of the fight, the comm bug tucked deep--the thwap of Sam’s armor taking a bullet. He staggers forward under the force. An agent catches him around the waist while he's still off balance. Sam goes down with a quiet grunt that carries through the comm to Bucky.

Sam's not dead. He's not. Bucky can see him moving on the ground, fighting off the agent. Hyena-like, though, other agents close in. Bucky can't get down there fast enough, but his aim hasn't failed him yet. They've got body armor and, often, helmets, so Bucky goes for throats. Bullets rip them open as surely as teeth would. They fall with gurgles and grasping hands. Breathe, hold, fire, eject. Fire, eject. Fire, eject. Breathe.

Sam makes it to his feet. His right gun comes up while he runs for cover between a couple of the big, canvas-covered trucks. His left stays worryingly still. “Feel like getting up close and personal, Bucky?” Bucky is running and sliding down the hillside before Sam finishes the question.

Bucky storms the courtyard. He just about launches his first attackers into low Earth orbit, battering forward with superior strength and abandon. Bucky relishes the excuse to bust out his supply of grenades, and he doesn't worry too much about collateral damage. Steve and Natasha had better hope they don't need some of the other buildings here. He keeps the explosions away from Sam’s cover, at least.

When Bucky makes it to cover, Sam has use of his left arm again. “Armor did its job, but that still hurts like hell. Lost my other gun, too.” He flexes and rotates his arm and shoulder to work the feeling back into them. Bucky clenches his eyes shut for a second against the persistent vision of Sam with his torn-off wings. Some ideas just won't die.

Bucky pulls the Sig from his left thigh and hands it over. Sam smirks as he takes the pistol. “Not exactly a substitute for a submachine gun.” He's also not exactly giving it back.

“I'm not loaning you my Skorpion. Besides,” and an answering smirk curls Bucky's lips, “you took out the guard. Your aim can't be completely hopeless.” Under the leaden shell of brutality and efficiency and purpose, Bucky feels a buoyant core of relief. Sam isn't hurt.

On a breathless laugh, Sam says, “So, at last I get to see some of this legendary Barnes sass Steve told me so much about.” Then he edges out from between the trucks and takes out three agents with three bullets from Bucky’s gun. A set of abstract memories snaps into visceral reality again: Bucky remembers what desire is.

He doesn't have time to dwell, though. Not on Sam’s avian bob-and-weave. Not on the perfect shots to head and center mass with a gun Bucky offered with his left hand. He can't waste time; he has a partner to keep up with.

***

The jet Stark puts them on, headed for New York, puts most hotels to shame. They've all got private berths, tidy little bunks that smell mildly of detergent. Maria’s wayward agents got shuffled off to an on-board medical station. (Bucky would like to somehow transport that back to 1943 so Morita can stop crying about field hospitals.) The jet has a conference room.

Bucky folds himself into one corner of his bunk, left leg bent and back against the wall. The door he kept open, a compromise between his desire to get some quiet and his inability to entirely trust a plane full of unmonitored strangers. He dozes off like that.

He wakes to Sam’s voice saying, “You're on Stark’s jet, headed for New York. You're safe. Everything's okay.” For a moment, the only thing this does is add an extra layer of sensory immersion to the nightmare Bucky got caught in. His brain forwent imagination in favor of believability: Bucky just spent a few years reliving the moment of Sam jerking with a bullet in his back and falling under a pile of enemies.

“I'm here,” he croaks out at last. Sam eases away from the door, shuts it behind him, and moves to sit down on the bed, all slowly enough that Bucky could object, wave him off, keep this private. Bucky lets him sit, moves closer even.

“Need to talk?” Bucky shakes his head. The nightmare was mundane, obvious. Still--

“Can I--will you let me see?” Bucky reaches for Sam’s shoulder. He can't reach, and anyway, that's his left hand. He pulls away, fingers curling in shyly. He needs to see, though, at long last.

Sam reaches up, grabs the back of his shirt collar, pulls it up over his head. The movement is fluid. He can't be in pain, broken, ruined like Bucky imagined when they met. Still, Bucky lets out a breath he hadn't meant to hold when Sam twists around on the bed and he finally gets a clear look.

His flesh hand comes up without his permission, and this time he can't resist. It touches down on the smooth, dark skin of Sam’s right shoulder and skids inward to the ridge of the shoulder blade. There are scars, a couple pockmarks, one flat mole perched on the first knob of his spine. The sort of things Bucky imagines a kid would end up with if he played sports growing up. Normal. Safe.

He cups his palm around the point of the shoulder blade. He feels it there first, in the roll of bone under the skin, when Sam shifts back closer to him. “Do I pass muster?”

His left side doesn't show any bruising. Bucky's fingers edge past the dividing line of Sam’s spine. He doesn't know where the limits are. There have to be limits. Sam doesn't stop him from pressing his palm over the soft thud of his heart. “Are you hurt?”

Sam shakes his head. “A little tender,” he admits. “The diffusion of force on that armor is pretty good.”

Bucky really doesn't mean to touch Sam with his other hand; it seems disrespectful, even after all this. He can't resist the symmetry of Sam’s shoulders, though, equally undamaged. Bucky sets the cool metal against where the shot landed. A scattering of gooseflesh comes up to outline his palms. With a sigh that pushes him even closer to Bucky, Sam lets his head fall forward and his back arch. Like having Bucky of all people at his back is the most relaxing thing he's ever done.

Bucky sweeps his thumbs along the blades then digs in when he reaches the tight band of muscle above them. Sam groans, so loud it almost sounds theatrical. The sound startles Bucky, and he eases up immediately, provoking a quieter, forlorn sound. His fingers fan out, index fingers just grazing along Sam’s spine. He maps out the empty spaces, proof that Sam remains whole despite the mission, despite Bucky, despite everything.

Bucky has no formal knowledge of anatomy. He doesn't know the fancy names for the bones and muscles under his careful fingertips. He knows where to slide in a knife to sever the spine, though. The torque and speed needed to snap one by hand are as ingrained as the motion of tying his shoes.

The curve of Sam’s ribcage fits so neatly into Bucky’s hands. He keeps the pressure firm, not wanting to tickle. He can't remember ever having this kind of access to another person. Even the hazy memories of dance halls and quick tumbles from his first life can't offer him this. He can't resist the urge to tighten his grip, and his fingertips bite in just under the swell of Sam’s pecs. Sam huffs in surprise and shoves back. He's blocked by Bucky’s folded leg against the small of his back.

“Mm, okay. How about this?” Sam reaches back to tap on Bucky’s knee. “Stretch out?”

Bucky uncurls his leg and slots it down in the space between Sam’s body and the back wall of the bunk. With a little shimmy of his hips, Sam snugs himself back into the vee of Bucky’s legs and lets his spine follow the curve. Bucky suddenly has a lap full of sleepy ex-soldier. Through the thin material of his shirt, Bucky feels every smooth, painless inhalation pressing tight against him.

Sam's head drops back onto Bucky’s shoulder. The graze of lips that follows mimics a kiss closely enough to light up Bucky’s nerves. “You got me?” Sam's breath washes hot across Bucky’s neck.

Bucky's own breath hitches. He doesn't. How could he ever? But Sam’s already there, stretched out and vulnerable and relaxed. It would be the work of a moment, a heartbeat, for Bucky to cave his chest in, shatter ribs and drive them into lungs. He could do anything to Sam. His hands skate over Sam’s chest and belly, enclosing him. He could do anything. He could protect Sam, keep this body from being broken by someone like Bucky. What do redemption and revenge matter in the face of that mission?

“Yes. I have you.”