Chapter Text
Bucky is in the middle of cutting out leaf shapes to stick on the top of his apple pie crust when, through his kitchen window, he sees an angel tumble down from the clouds.
It’s a gray skies kind of evening out in the country, with heavy rainclouds rolling in menacingly, so Bucky’s first thought when he watches a sizeable dark shadow slam right into the corn fields beside his house isn’t oh god, what was that? but rather oh god, is my house gonna be okay? I just bought the thing. But it’s definitely his second thought right afterward.
There’s absolutely nothing in the wake of the fall — no mushroom cloud of dust or dirt or ears of corn. He doesn’t think angel, initially. Obviously.
It’s probably some plane debris that thankfully fell a good few hundred meters from his roof; still, Bucky can’t help but spiral a little as he leans on the granite counter to get a better look out into the dim fog.
Aliens, honest to god aliens — this is exactly what Steve warned him about before he packed his shit and moved west for some peace and quiet, to gather his bearings in solitude after a particularly turbulent period of his life.
Ever since said turbulent period (re: his years-long stint as an unwilling international assassin, no he’s not proud, just ask his therapist), he’d picked piano playing back up and thought it’d be for the best that he moved somewhere he could bang out tunes on the nights he couldn’t sleep without the neighbors filing a noise complaint.
Can’t evict him if he’s already letting his lease expire, checkmate that. And that somewhere happened to be hundreds of miles from good ol’ New York.
Before warming up to the idea, Steve had fretted about the total uproot from Brooklyn, fearing for Bucky’s already nonexistent social life — which turned out to be all for naught because the old ladies at the farmer’s market know his name and always greet him and give him a discount and that’s a big fucking deal.
Then Steve read a conspiracy book about what the government’s been concealing in regards to information about aliens and their tendency to park in big tracts of midwestern land, and suddenly, he was Bucky’s biggest cheerleader.
You find a UFO, tell me. I’ll be there w/ the good camera. If the lil guy wants you to take him to your leader, take him to ME, was one of the first emails Steve sent to him when he first settled. It’s a cellular dead zone out here and Steve had forced Bucky to, at the very least, rig up the wifi router so he wasn’t completely off the grid.
I’ll take him alright. Quarter him and ship you a sirloin, Bucky sent back. Not even an hour later, Steve responded with a simple, but very emotive frowny face emoticon.
Bucky had snorted reading that message back then, finding Steve awfully naive about aliens. Don’t get him wrong, he desperately wants to see what non-Earthians look like too, but he’s gotta be a little realistic. He’s irrevocably convinced that if extraterrestrials ever find their way to this planet, it’s gonna be more of a How to Serve Man à la Twilight Zone style premise rather than a Lilo & Stitch one where Steve and Bucky co-parent a talking blue koala with sharp teeth.
And yet, the premise feels increasingly less humorous now. Especially since it’s getting rather dark and cornstalks can loom menacingly at night and that’s definitely some kind of horror movie-esque set up.
Bucky stills, the knife in his hand scoring the leaves a little too deeply. He should probably check it out, but fuck, his apple pie. Bucky makes the strenuous decision to preheat his oven first. Sweat beads at his nape.
After he sticks the pie on the oven’s middle rack and checks the clock real quick, he’s decidedly off for a looky-look. Of course, he doesn’t forget the handgun, in case he needs to pistol-whip ET.
Bucky moves quickly, digging his own shortcut through the tall cornstalks and minding his eyes. It’s only early summer but the corn is growing in quite nicely. It’s the white corn variety, sweet, crisp, with an impressive range of purpose; perfect for making johnny cakes to tamales.
It’s such a shame that it’s not even his maize, for fuck’s sake; his property legally ended at the wooden fence between his yard and the field. But since the big shot farmer who does own the corn lives a few miles north and thus appointed him (all under the table, of course) to tend the acre around his house in exchange for a never-ending supply of corncobs and cornmeal, it’s gonna be Bucky’s ass on the hook if he finds crop circles.
His sense of direction is fairly good for a former hired hitman, it only takes a few moments of nothing but snapping stems underneath his boots to spot the exit. Finally he gets to the clearing, pushing away the last few stalks. Hand on his backside just hovering over the gun, he ducks under the eye-level leaves.
Naturally, he doesn’t intend to kill, but hey, if Marvin the Martian whips out a laser gun, then all bets are off.
In any case, he doesn’t really have an idea what to expect, but he’s giddy. Metal remnants of a spaceship? Exploded crate of perishables? A small gray-green alien, bleeding purple blood, laid out flat from the crash? He’s always wanted to tend an alien back to health and be spared out of empathy during the imminent alien conquest.
It never occurs to Bucky that the object from the sky could be some guy, until it does.
Bucky’s eyes widen considerably because it’s literally just a dude who looks... well, largely unharmed but kind of frustrated. He’s just sitting there on his heels on some flattened stalks; white linen pants, shirtless, for some reason. Eyes closed, mouth in a hard line. So, totally not dead. And did he mention shirtless?
Bucky is known for looking a bit stone-faced, though he can’t quite control his facial expressions in the shock of the situation here: he frowns, reels back. Stays quiet. He feels like he’s being Punk’d, but the fact of the matter is this creature did crash straight from the clouds, he saw it with his own eyes. He removes his hand from the hard metal handle of the gun, reluctant at the idea of pistol-whipping this guy.
Like, yeah, the man’s trespassing (and Mister Big Shot Corn Farmer is gonna yell up a storm when it’s harvest season and he notices this flattened patch). But he’s also kind of gorgeous.
Crisp facial hair going on. Honestly, the guy looks like he belongs on the set of some nineties music video — the concept being sensual and biblical. Stick some glitter on his temples and he’s good to go. Would probably look real slick doing a dance number in the rain too. Though there’s no sun in sight, the stranger glows juxtaposed against the muted sky and dark greenery.
“Hey. You okay? You know where you are?” starts Bucky, unsure whether to treat the man like a legitimate extraterrestrial or just a human who’s in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
“Yup,” replies the guy, and though Bucky asked, he still nearly jumps out of his skin like he didn’t expect a verbal response. Then the man brings his chin down, opens his eyes down at the crushed grass before him, hardly even gives Bucky a glance. His fingers curl around a stray ear of premature corn by his side, looking it over, then tosses it aside. He speaks again while watching it roll away. “Earth,” he says with a sigh.
Was he being snide? Bucky wonders if this guy’s off his rocker; or if he’s off his rocker. Maybe his ex-therapist was right — maybe the quietude gets to people. He additionally can’t decide whether he’s relieved or not that the man doesn’t have slit pupils or speak in tongues or some other obtuse telltale sign that he’s not from the planet.
Realizing he’s still bent at the knees, Bucky straightens up and takes a conscious step further into the clearing, lifting his unoccupied hands in a show of peace.
Bucky plays it carefully. “O... kay. Is there somewhere I can take you? You can’t stay here, it’s gonna rain soon.”
The man lifts his arm, waves him off. “I’ll be out of your hair soon, just give me a minute.” There’s scrapes all along his arms, blood visibly prickling at the fine gashes, like he ate dirt with his arms stretched out.
“You’re hurt,” says Bucky, nearing. “I can help you, but you need to leave the field.”
At Bucky’s observation, he looks down like he’s noticing the wounds for the first time. “That’s nothing. Watch this, they’ll close up.”
He takes his opposite hand and runs it along his forearm, smearing blood and dirt and Bucky just cringes. If anything, that’s a recipe for an infection.
Clearly it doesn’t have the effect the stranger was intending either, because he seems genuinely surprised that his wounds look worse now, grimy as fuck. Glances between his forearm and his bloody palm several times with a growing frown.
“Huh,” he says. “This normally works — oh, shit.” He squeezes his eyes tight shut as trepidation crosses his countenance and pinches his eyebrows together, and he reaches both hands behind as if to scratch his back. “Shit.”
With a grumble (Bucky thinks he hears a very distinct “this is great, just perfect”), the man stands up, claps and wipes the filth off his hands, and then stretches; he turns at the waist several times. He has absolutely no clue what the hell’s even happening; and then Bucky sees them.
Two massive scars dead set on the stranger’s shoulder blades, scar tissue dark pink and jagged like some time not too long ago, someone took a knife and skewered him, dragging a serrated blade down his flesh twice. Or clipped something off.
Bucky has seen his own fair share of scars, no doubt has his own fair share of keloids, but these send a tremor up his spine. They’re by no means common war time scars, the pink tissue growing back in criss-cross lines, a gradual attempt at knitting itself seamless again. His back muscles ripple and flex as he rolls his shoulders, the scars following the movement of skin. Bucky stares despite himself.
A sick feeling pools in Bucky’s stomach, but he’s unsure whether it’s a reaction to the pink gashes or the audible cracking and popping in the stranger’s joints as he twists around to loosen his limbs.
“Ooh,” says the stranger all of a sudden, ferociously bending backwards with hands on his hips. “I needed that.”
Bucky lets him wind down before speaking. “My house is just right over there,” he says, gesturing behind him with an incline of his head. “I can get you cleaned up. And give you a shirt.”
He swings his elbows into a final stretch, his chin pulling upward to face the swelling sky again for a flash. Wordlessly, the stranger swings Bucky a curious look for the first time, actually regarding him with undecipherable and dark eyes. “Thank you,” he says, taking a step forward. “Your charity will be remembered.”
Bucky hardly knows what to say to that. “Yeah... don’t think I have much of a choice. Would be kind of a dick move if I just left you here, honestly,” he says, punctuating with a half-hearted shrug.
The man shrugs. “Still charitable in my eyes.” He extends a hand, to which Bucky takes in expecting a handshake. However, the stranger clasps his other hand over, firmly holding Bucky’s right hand in his two. “Samuel.”
“James,” says Bucky, pausing. “Or Bucky, a nickname. Either’s fine.” He doesn’t know why that comes out, he normally doesn’t care to offer his nickname to strangers he’ll never see again.
“Bucky, huh?” says Samuel, feeling his name on his tongue. With an affirming nod, “You know what? How about this — call me Sam. That’s still used, right?”
“Uh... yeah, still is, from my knowledge,” Bucky replies, unnerved. “Sure you know where you are?”
“Sure. The states. East of the Rockies?”
Bucky nods and lets the interrogation go.
They take the long way back to the house, which isn’t that long at all but they have to cut to the road first before walking towards the driveway, mainly since Bucky was a bit afraid to lose the guy in the maize; it would mean he’d be racing against the clock for real, between retrieving Sam and making sure the apple pie doesn’t become a block of apple charcoal.
Thankfully, it doesn’t come to this. But Bucky feels like he’s in a very weird, contemporary retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice the way he regularly glances backwards at Sam to make sure he’s still following.
“Sorry about your corn,” says Sam when they finally meet pavement, walking side-by-side on the empty roads.
“It’s fine. Not even mine,” says Bucky. Eyes shifting downcast, he realizes Sam’s also barefoot, and yet another zip of pure confusion runs up him. “By the way, where the hell did you even come from? You landed pretty hard.”
The arm scratches are pretty bad but way milder than what Bucky would’ve expected, none requiring any fancy suturing. Seriously, how does he not have all his ribs cracked?
“Oh,” says Sam dismissively. “Not hell, that I can assure you.”
“What?”
“What,” says Sam.
Bucky squints at Sam, who squints back. Is it a thing to jump out of planes wearing nothing but white harem pants? And where was the camera crew?
“Do you have a phone on you? Someone you can contact, anything?”
“Phone? Nah, there’s no service up there. I’m lucky there’s even a spot of wifi by the gate so I can check Twitter. Incredible website. You on it?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re missing out. Check out John Cena’s account. He’s like, your Voltaire of the twenty-first century,” explains Sam, serious, as if Bucky’s on the same wavelength.
“I’m not good with social media and tech,” confesses Bucky. “I think it’s all pretty neat stuff but, uh, still can’t really wrap my head around it.”
Sure, he’s used advanced military-grade technology to take out grimy capos and politicians (calling them grimy would just be redundant), but he still had to landline dial Steve to set up a VPN. Even before he moved away for school, Bucky also had to forcibly train himself out of saying “Wow, technology, huh?” every time he read a scientific breakthrough article because Becca wouldn’t stop imitating him.
Sam stares at him, balked. “You sound older than me and I am most definitely the older one.”
They both chuckle but Bucky’s lowkey kind of scared now ‘cause he’d sounded so self-assured and yet legitimately doesn’t look any older than mid-thirties, max. Bucky’s laugh comes out incredibly brief and fake.
“No, seriously — did you jump from a plane?” presses Bucky.
“Oh no, man. Try jumping from the angel realm.”
Bucky pauses, closes his mouth. That was so dead of a joke, Bucky’s not even certain it was one. And admittedly Sam’s hot, but Bucky’s way too sober to try and pull a hey did it hurt kind of pickup line. He takes too long to think of an appropriate reply and so decides on staying silent, nodding once to indicate he heard him.
After a couple of palpably quiet seconds, Sam speeds up and wheels around so he’s walking backwards to face Bucky. “Ohh. I get it. You don’t believe me.”
“Sorry, pal. Guess not.” Bucky shrugs. Internally, he feels like screaming and panicking if that was actually a come-on and if he’d just fumbled his own bag.
“Why not?” asks Sam with a tilt of his head, eyes gleaming.
Now, Bucky was once a good Catholic boy growing up in Brooklyn. Attended mass, had his favorite verses. Knew them in Latin too. Things got a little blurry in his adult life when even prayers became difficult to manage, but the point was he still recalled most major biblical concepts, including those regarding the messengers of the Lord.
So Bucky gives him a once-over and slightly regrets it because the man is all smooth skin and firm pecs. God, his pecs. “I mean,” says Bucky, turning his eyes to the far distance, staring ahead and cleansing his mind with the horizon. “Ever read the texts? Angels don’t look like you.”
The artistic depictions of angels being just a swarm of wings and eyes are admittedly a bit eldritch but Bucky has always subscribed to their likeness as opposed to the image of fat baby cherubs with wispy hair.
To misunderstand angels as human-like was kinda fucked up to Bucky; he thinks that if more angels looked like Sam, then there would already be a couple billion nephilim roaming the earth by now. And he means like, half the world’s population would be half-angel, half-human giants and God would have to actually smite every continent and every single sin committed would be worth it because damn, this guy.
Sam cocks his eyebrow, slides back to his side. “Is this you admitting your ethnocentric biases, or —“
Bucky blanches. “No, fuck, no that’s not — I just mean angels don’t look human. They don’t have bodies. Real ones that you can, like, touch. Like you and me. That’s — that’s what I was taught, at least.” Bucky shuts his mouth because his ears are burning and the word salad isn’t making it any much better.
A smug smile curls at Sam’s mouth. Yeah, he’s definitely poking fun at Bucky. Whoo. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I? And yes, this is actually my body. This ain’t Supernatural,” he says. “Plus, I literally got wings. That’s gotta count for something.”
“You do?”
“Okay, I did.”
Bucky glances at Sam’s shoulder blade scars again, unable to restrain his curiosity. “So you’re an angel,” says Bucky, very carefully. “And you fell?”
“How’d you figure?” Sam sighs, rolling his eyes. “Yeah man, I fell.”
“Like... the Devil?” Bucky swallows, unsure if he should’ve said that and if Sam is gonna go up in flames at the accursed name.
“Damn, no, not like the Devil. Man, what?” Looking offended, Sam shoots him a peevish look. “It’s not like that. My wings burned off; but I’m fine though, they’ll grow back.”
“Burned off?” Bucky repeats questionably after Sam for what seems the umpteenth time. “From the fall?”
“Bingo. I’m supposed to be on an observational op, nothing new. Just didn’t grease the landing this time and my wings singed when I was entering the atmosphere. It happens, maybe every couple millennium. Maybe. Swear I’m a fantastic flier though.” Sam wipes at the blood dripping down his wrist, and shakes the droplets onto the cement.
Ah.
“If my old Bible study group could hear you now,” mutters Bucky and Sam snorts with laughter.
Entertaining this conversation was his first mistake. Bucky can feel his sanity slip even farther away because why are things actually checking out? Bucky would laugh if he didn’t feel so enraptured by the scars, the actual crash he witnessed, the lore.
Did he accidentally order a dose of shrooms with his coffee earlier today at the farmer’s market? The stall that was selling them was having an anniversary sale, and Bucky won’t lie, he hemmed and hawed a little but eventually did turn away. Maybe the decision to get him off those court-mandated therapy sessions and periodic psychiatric evaluations was way too damn premature.
“Well,” says Bucky, and coincidentally they’ve reached the porch. “You can stay here until your wings come back or whatever. Ever had apple pie, angel?”
The words come out before Bucky can even register what he’s saying. How long would it even take for the “wings” to “come back”? Bucky’s always been a little soft-hearted, a little impulsive. He’s a Pisces, so unfortunately it’s written in the stars too. Astrology aside, his house is not equipped to accommodate a squatter. He’ll have to write up a draft for the imminent eviction letter, just in case.
Verbal contracts don’t hold legal weight, do they?
Sam grins broadly and for a heartbeat, Bucky thinks it’s gonna be okay actually. “Hey, who do you think invented apple pie? We didn’t tend apple trees in Eden just to look at.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You wish,” replies Sam and he shuffles into the house first simply because Bucky wants to slide his gun out from his belt and stash it away again without Sam noticing and getting spooked. Despite Bucky’s scraggly appearance, he’s not a killer in a worn Henley preying on lost vagabonds and supposedly celestial creatures, okay. Sam thankfully doesn’t notice and whistles low while glancing around the cozy one-story house. “Nice digs. You choose the wallpaper?”
Bucky eyes the peeling paisley wallpaper that’s several shades of yellow bile. Sam probably commented on the wallpaper because there’s hardly any interesting house fixings to note of otherwise.
In the small living room alone, he’s got a sagging couch that he took from a yard sale two months ago and a box television that he never uses because the satellite dish on the roof isn’t attached to anything. The piano is set against the yellow wall, inconspicuous. A bare brick chimney. He used to have a glass coffee table but two weeks ago he kicked his feet up with too much fervor and shattered the thing.
“Came with the house,” he says.
“I was hoping you’d say that. I really do like your curtains though. My roommate got these cream-colored curtains for the living room but get this: our walls are cream too, so what the hell, right? Don’t block nothing out either.”
That was a really weird, loaded comment but Bucky glides over it (mainly because he doesn’t know where to begin in breaking it down). “Thanks. I did buy those actually. Shop local, you know?” says Bucky.
“Sure,” says Sam with a nod. “Support small business, I’m all for that.”
Were there small businesses in the angel realm? Is it a barter-and-trade system? Or is there a heaven coin currency? One of these three questions is on its way out of Bucky’s mouth until he realizes he still has to help Sam out.
“Uh... yeah. Let me get you some clothes,” Bucky mumbles, scrambling away. He reaches for the doorknob to his room. He had intended for Sam to wait in the living room as he dug through the closet, but Sam pads up to Bucky, peeking over his shoulder into the open room.
It’s kind of a wreck in there, but in Bucky’s defense he didn’t expect to be hosting an angel today. Clothes strewn everywhere, piles of books on the floor like elevated stepping stones — it screams shut-in who has really, really let himself go. Like, Bucky is one bad day away from eating Nature Valley granola bars in bed.
But he’s inclined to believe Sam won’t care; after all, shouldn’t he be all-loving and shit?
As it turns out, he’s wrong. Sam makes a noise of disdain from beside him as he yanks open a drawer for something clean with minimal holes.
“Bucky, my man, you’re given all this free will and you put your mattress on the floor? One pillow? What’s wrong with you?”
Ain’t that a question. But they seem to be birds of the same (looney) feather so Bucky doesn’t hold that comment against him.
“No bed frame, no headboard. I think I feel faint,” continues Sam.
Bucky throws at him a random Hanes tee and pajama pants. “Yeah, yeah. Go take a shower. Bathroom’s at the end of the hall.”
“Invest in a mattress topper at least,” calls Sam as he’s aggressively ushered out the bedroom.
Bucky then watches, slightly horrified, as Sam heads for the shower, starting to undress as he walks down the hallway. With his free hand, Sam hooks his thumb under the waistband of pants, which means Bucky gets a very indulgent peek of the dimples above Sam’s ass.
He averts his entire body once Sam’s actually in the bathroom so he’s not caught staring. He shuts the drawer with a particularly violent snap. He wonders what his life has come to, to reach this point of trying his damndest to not ogle the ass of a potential religious nut.
Fidgety, Buck returns to the kitchen in long strides, wanting to make sense of the situation but also profusely trying to convince himself it isn’t odd at all and there’s nothing to analyze.
He rounds the kitchen island in order to check the time for the apple pie. It’s almost done, the waft of cinnamon-apple at 350°F heat blasting him in the face when he creaks the oven door for a glimpse.
The leaves have become deformed spiked maces (see if he tries to be all artistic and cottagecore-y again, those Pinterest pictures lied) and the smooshed edges are simply ghastly and the whole thing looks like Bucky had dropped the pie three times before he baked it but at least the top gleams buttery and flakey so it’s all win still, baby. He closes the door, gives it ten more minutes.
Leaning against the counter, Bucky stares down at the floor. He walks back to the front door to kick off his shoes when a melodic sound resounds in his eardrums.
Sam hums in the shower, as it turns out, the sound of his deep voice leaking out with the steam from the giant crack under the door because the threshold isn’t flush at all and that’s part of the reason why the house was so cheap.
It’s unexpectedly neither gospel song nor Gregorian chants — in fact, it sounds suspiciously like the old doowop on vinyl Bucky’s dad used to play, upbeat and lively. Bucky zeroes in on it, tries to place it to no avail.
Sam eventually gives his vocal cords a rest, the faucet concurrently giving a ringing squeak as it’s shut. Bucky realizes it’s been way over ten minutes.
“Shit,” he mutters and pulls the pastry straight out with his prosthetic.
“You really do buy local. Goat milk soap?”
“Yep.” Bucky serves him the first slice of pie on his finest china because while he is completely batshit crazy, he isn’t a poor host. “Here you go.”
“Wow, thanks. You sure this isn’t apple crumble?” Sam laughs at his own joke, takes a hearty bite as Bucky frowns. “Okay, won’t lie: this is good! Presentation is a little ehh but you know your stuff for a mortal. And a midwesterner.”
Bucky sticks the fork between his lips and slides into the seat across from Sam without breaking eye contact. “You’re not very righteous for an angel,” he says, effortfully poking holes into Sam’s identity. “You make fun of my wallpaper, you make fun of my food, now you’re making fun of midwesterners? I’m from New York, by the way.”
He doesn’t let up. “Not New York,” says Sam, faux-sympathetically. “I was there for recon once and saw someone literally throw their chamberpot juice out a third floor window. And eight year old white kids wouldn’t stop trying to sell me their society papers for a nickel. I thought to myself, never again. And I was there when Babylon fell, so.”
That does sound like Manhattan antics. “You do recon missions? Wait, how old are you?”
Sam purses his lips, looks to the ceiling in thought. His eyelashes flutter as he drops his gaze back to Bucky. “You know when humans discovered fire?”
“Yeah?”
His full lips curl up. “So do I.”
“Shit,” says Bucky. “And I thought I’ve seen some crazy things in my life.”
“Oh, I bet you have. I’m guessing that arm isn’t ‘cause you tried unclogging the sink garbage disposal while it was on.”
He barks out a laugh, largely in reaction to Sam’s nonchalance. “Yeah, it’s. It’s a long story,” says Bucky, finding himself rubbing his left wrist, cold and unyielding under his fingers.
Sam doesn’t pry. Bucky almost feels bad, that Sam has told him so much about the unspeakable and yet Bucky can’t return the favor, however minuscule. He thinks he should give something of interest, offer some insight about himself, like why he’s an amputee; why he’s here and not the east coast where his friends and family are; why he was actually looking out for an alien, not angel.
However, Sam only nods, likely not expecting him to launch into his origin story. “It’s a dope ass arm, so it’s gotta be.” And then Sam inhales his fallen apart wedge of pie like it’s his first meal in days.
“Jesus. Slow down,” says Bucky, worried because if angels choke and die, where do they go? And how should Bucky go about disposing the body in a respectful, faith-aligned procedure?
“It’s Sam.”
Bucky sighs. “I know, I —“
“I’m just messing with you.” Sam chortles. Bucky is halfway through his own slice when Sam is getting the remaining chunks of apple on his plate into his mouth. Drawing a tongue over his bottom lip, Sam points over to the living room with the fork. “Saw the piano. Got any original pieces?”
“Working on ‘em,” he says, with a casual lift and fall of his shoulders. “Haven’t written anything down yet.”
It’s not technically a lie. If anything, he’s just playing as a crutch; most of what he plays being improvised and insomnia-induced pieces in an attempt to understand himself. At least that’s how his therapist had put it. One time, he’d stress slammed out a very rich composition that gave himself goosebumps, only to realize he’d been doing a slowed-down cover of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work.
Sam nods again, visibly impressed. “Okay, Franz Schubert, that’s what’s up.”
He laughs again, for longer and much more embarrassed this time. “Don’t say that, you’ll get your expectations up and be disappointed.”
“Oh, am I gonna have the honor of hearing you play?”
“Depends on how long you’re here for, you just might.”
Sam sets his fork down, neatly across his cleaned plate, before letting his tongue dart out once more to swipe a smudge on the side of his thumb. Bucky shoves an inconveniently large piece of pie into his mouth and chews furiously. “Let’s hope the wings grow back slow, huh,” says Sam, eyebrows lifted high in a playful manner.
Bucky forces a smile back around the huge mouthful. Dammit, he’s gonna have to reach into the far recesses of his mind to play something noteworthy. Sam patiently waits for him to finish but Bucky feels a bit pressured. He clears his throat, chugs his glass of water for extra insurance.
“So, uh,” says Bucky, sliding off his high stool and taking his plate to the sink. He politely reaches for Sam’s but is swatted away. “I’ll get the first aid when you’re done.”
The dinnerware clatters against the bottom of the metal sink as Sam breezily says, “No need. I’m golden.”
“You want an infection? ‘Cause that’s how you get — oh.”
Sam displays his forearms over the counter, flips them around a couple times, and he’s right: totally unmarred brown skin. No scars, scabs, bruises, nothing. “What’d I tell you,” says Sam, smug.
Bucky dubiously curls his fingers around Sam’s arm and rubs his thumb across his skin. Then withdraws with a jerk.
Well, it’s pretty conclusive. That’s not normal.
Bucky deflates a smidge, finally acknowledging that Sam really is an angel, and not just some handsome wackjob flirting with him. It’s a little disheartening to subsequently realize that if Sam was but a handsome (and human) wackjob, these unconventional pickup lines would’ve succeeded on Bucky, because hell, he’s in Bucky’s house right now, isn’t he?
So Bucky stiffly slips back into his seat, in resignation as Sam helps himself to another lumpy slice of warm pie.
It takes Bucky twice as long now to do the dishes, thanks to there being twice as many dishes to do than normal. Who knew. Sam offers to help but Bucky kicks him out of the kitchen since it seemed like a cardinal sin to make a cosmic being dry his plates.
Yet when Bucky turns away from the counter, flinging water from his hands in search of the kitchen towel, he finds that Sam really is nowhere in sight.
Hoping this wasn’t going to turn into an impromptu chase scene from a home invasion thriller movie, he checks the living room on the chance Sam’s voluntarily sitting in the dark on his lumpy couch because Bucky can’t cross that prospect out just yet. Nope. He then carefully pulls the bedroom door ajar. “Sam?”
“In here,” says Sam, voice muffled. Bucky pokes his head in and nearly gets sudden vertigo.
Sam’s laying dead center on his stomach on Bucky’s humble mattress and over the covers like he owns the place.
There’s an open book in his hands, one that Bucky can identify as Jane Eyre because he never read this one growing up and after he did, couldn’t comprehend why anyone would be in love with Mr. Rochester. He was a brooding freak! He was never going to tell Jane his secret if she hadn’t found out herself! So he’d thrown the gothic to the side and never picked it back up.
Enough about Mr. Rochester though because Sam is in his bed, legs parted in a straight V. Bucky’s doesn’t let strangers into his bed anymore, he’s not that kind of guy. He wants something real. Plus, Bucky doesn’t think he’s prepared to be touched by a self-proclaimed angel just yet. Yet being the keyword here.
When Bucky doesn’t say anything, Sam finally cranes his head back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ll just — I’m just grabbing my stuff,” says Bucky. He hunkers down to open the linens storage box, dreading the prospects of sleeping on the couch that’s more of a loveseat.
“What? Sleep here, man.” Sam scoots to the side with a bounce, extends an arm to pat the empty space beside him. “We can both fit.”
It’s true. Bucky deliberately upgraded to a king-sized in his giddiness of having a bedroom with more square space than both Steve’s and his combined back in NY. Two grown men should fit, with or without a pillow cootie barrier between them.
Angels probably have a different perspective on communal living than him. They weren’t the ones to invent capitalism, after all. Sam did say he has a roommate, didn’t he? Bucky wonders if the real estate market in heaven is just as hectic as it is in the cities or if angels just like living with one another.
“No, you take it,” says Bucky. He firmly shakes his head.
Tossing Jane Eyre to the ground, Sam scrambles to his knees — does the downward dog facing away from a beet-faced Bucky for one whole second — and flips around. “No, I’m up, I’m up. Take your bed.” He gets to his feet, and nimbly takes a hold of the spare pillow in Bucky’s grasp. “Couch is more than enough, thanks.”
Worst part in this is that Sam seems pleased either way, sincerely gracious. Dammit. If this is some kind of angelic test like he’s Abraham and his bed is the sacrificial son, then Bucky’s failing miserably. He can’t afford to get smote in his own house, Steve’s gonna get the wrong idea if he finds out his friend has passed from a “freak accident” while “alone” in his house. Shit, shit —
Bucky rounds on Sam, who’s reaching for the door, and nearly bumps chests in his attempt to halt the cosmic being. Sam reaches up and presses a hand to the center of Bucky’s chest to reverse his inertia. He can feel his warmth radiate through the thin fabric of his shirt.
“Whoa there, bucko,” says Sam.
“Get your ass on the bed,” demands Bucky, pauses and reflects. “Just. Take the bed. Okay?”
“Okay,” says Sam, eyebrows high. Pats Bucky’s chest once before pulling away. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
Sam flops back down, blissed out, and again rolls to the side to accommodate Bucky, if he so chose to sleep there too. Like a helpless puppy, Bucky follows with sagging shoulders.
Did he make the right choice? Did he pass? How long does Sam plan to stay and should Bucky invest in a spare mattress? Bucky is desperate to know, especially since he doesn’t actually have enough pillows to construct a cootie barrier.
He kneels down on his sheets and crawls over to Sam’s right. Delicately, he pulls the blanket up and stares at the ceiling, in disbelief this is how his first night in more than a year (closer to two, but who’s counting?) getting a handsome stranger in his bed is going.
“Night,” says Sam.
Bucky musters the most impersonal tone he can. “Night.”
He lays on his back all log-like while Sam shuffles about beside him, in quiet yawns. Eventually Sam turns on his side, broad shoulders rolling once as he gets comfortable.
Bucky knows the drill. He does the same: turns away from Sam to sleep on his side, which happens to be his left side and thus on his left arm and he hates doing that because then his shoulder joint scar tissue feels all weird and phantom-like in the morning but it Must Be Done.
It must.
Fully convinced he’s not going to sleep well, if at all, Bucky subjects himself to concentrating on Sam’s snores and thinking of questions about the inner-workings of the pearly gates to ask him for tomorrow. Seriously, recon missions?