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i.
‘C’mon, man,’ Sam’s saying, head tilted back, bottle halfway to his mouth. The fingers of his left hand are wrapped around another, filled to the brim, dark green where the light catches it. An offer. A threat. ‘Live a little.’
Bucky throws him a look. One of his signature ones. Dark and threatening and off-putting to anyone but. Sam Wilson. Jesus christ.
He’s lived, is the thing. He’s lived a lot. Done his part, and then some. Lived more than anyone would ever need.
More than. Anyone ever should.
Sometimes he wonders why he’s still here. Most days, he. Keeps going.
He shakes his head at the proffered bottle. ‘I’m good.’
‘Bucky,’ Sam groans, dramatic in a way Bucky will never, ever admit is the cause for the weird tugging of his mouth. Ever. ‘What’re you afraid of, man? An entire beer factory isn’t enough to give you a buzz. Humour me just for tonight, alright?’
The woman checking Sam out from the bar is so far from subtle it’s funny. Or. Concerning, depending on the era. Bucky’s still getting the hang of it.
‘You should buy her a drink,’ he says, nodding towards her over Sam’s shoulder. Doing a much better job at being subtle than her, in Bucky’s objective opinion. ‘She keeps staring at you like this, you’ll burst into flames.’
He doesn’t take the bottle.
‘Huh?’ Sam whips his head around, as unsubtle as humanly possible. How did the guy get out of the force alive, it’s anyone’s guess. ‘Oh,’ he says when he spots her. ‘Why would I do that, again?’
Bucky gives him a one-shoulder shrug. ‘She’s cute.’
‘You know I’m here with you, though, right?’
Bucky swallows down something bitter. It doesn’t even make sense, biologically speaking. He hasn’t had a drop of beer.
‘Is that one of those unspoken rules now? You can’t go talk to someone you’re interested in?’
‘Ditching your friends was considered polite back in your day?’
Bucky throws him a scowl. ‘’s not ditching if I’m telling you to go.’
Sam looks at him. For a long, long moment. He opens his mouth, and closes it, and opens it again. ‘I dragged you out of your hole because I wanted to see you, dumbass. I’m not looking to score.’
He takes a sip of his beer, and Bucky follows it, all the way down his throat, and wonders. How long he can keep this up. Being around Sam, and watching his throat move, and wanting.
How many more months of Bucky snapping, and disappearing, and being mean in ways Sam doesn’t, doesn’t deserve. Before Sam wises up. Before Bucky disappears, one last time, and Sam doesn’t come looking.
‘Yeah, well,’ he says, stool scraping against the wooden floor as he stands up, ‘’m not in the mood for male bonding tonight.’ He reaches inside his pocket, throws a couple of bills on the counter. For the bottle he never accepted. ‘There. Now you’re free to talk to her.’
He turns around, but not before the flash of anger on Sam’s face registers.
Good, Bucky thinks. About fuckin’ time.
ii.
He wakes up struggling for breath more than not, these days.
It goes with the territory, he supposes. You don’t go through decades of brain-scrambling and come out the other side smiling, sunny-side up.
Still. He could do without the nightmares. The worse ones, at least.
He’s still working out the logistics of guilt, and how it sneaks up on him. Decades of numbness have left him reeling. Relearning how to feel. Relearning how to allow himself that luxury.
Sometimes it’s hands, his own hands, wrapped around throats. Innocent or deserving, it’s all a blur to him. Sometimes it’s Steve, Steve’s face getting smaller and smaller, as snow dances around him, and Bucky meets the ground, and he can’t see Steve anymore.
These days.
It’s Sam, these days.
Sam, watching Bucky falling, falling, falling, with no wings on his back. Sam, with a hole in his chest Bucky was a second too late to take instead.
Sam, watching Bucky leave. Sam, not going after him.
He wipes the one flesh hand he’s got left over his face. The floor is hard under his legs. Grounding. Not. Nearly enough.
He reaches for the jacket, hastily thrown on the couch a few hours ago. Fishes his phone out of the pocket. Thumbs through his contacts, as many as the fingers on his hand, the real one.
Sam’s name is right there, silver-red-blue shield as his thumbnail and all. Sam’d set it up, when he’d grabbed Bucky’s phone and punched his number in, mouth set on a frown that meant he knew it was pointless. Bucky hasn’t called first, not even once.
He sits there, thumb hovering over Sam’s name, until the battery’s down to 8%, and he’s starting to see light outside.
Then he locks his phone. Then unlocks it. Turns it off, completely. For all he knows, the damn thing can read his mind and call Sam on its own. That’s not how it works, old man, Sam’s voice rings in his head, but.
Bucky can’t afford to take any chances.
He lays back down, and closes his eyes against the sun climbing its way up the sky, and thinks about the anger on Sam’s face last night. The more he thinks of it, the anger starts shifting into hurt, until Bucky’s not so sure anymore.
The phone hits the wall with the most satisfying thunk.
Bucky hopes it’s ruined beyond repair. He doesn’t get to have Sam as his emergency contact.
He doesn’t get to have Sam.
iii.
He wakes up, way past noon and pissed to hell about it, but.
It’s not like he had anything planned today.
The in-between is the worst, he’s found out.
In-between eras. In-between missions. In-between people.
Somewhere between friends, and. More-than.
There’s something restless under his skin, makes him edgy and keyed up and jittery all over, makes him want to start running. Never, ever stop.
He spends three hours cleaning his apartment, which. It’s a feat, okay? He’s got four, maybe five pieces of furniture. All his belongings can fit into a bag. That’s the idea, anyway. Always be ready. Always on the run.
He does go for a run, then. It calms him down, only just. Getting back into an empty apartment while darkness sets in outside only makes it worse.
He takes a shower. Does the laundry. Separates the blacks from. The slightly less blacks.
Then he gets dressed. Grabs his keys, from the stupid wooden holder Sam made him impulse-buy. It’s dumb. The table’s right there. What does he need four hooks for one set of keys?
By the time he’s out the door, all the street lights are on. The streets are crowded in a way that doesn’t help, usually. Being around people that. Aren’t Sam—it doesn’t help.
It’s soothing, tonight, all the commotion around him distracting Bucky out of his thoughts.
He walks until he comes across a cozy-looking bar, just off a main road. As quiet and as loud as he needs right now.
And it’s good, for a while, nursing his non-alcoholic beer in the corner booth. Watching the people around him with no real intent. No targets to scope out tonight. No potential threats to assess.
Aside from plain stupidity, turns out.
The news is on, and it’s not really, not news anymore, but. The fucking asshole with the shield flashes his smug, privileged fucking smile at all the patrons from the screen. The glass creaks under Bucky’s deathly grip, because it’s wrong, this is wrong, and.
‘Good thing we got an actual war hero to protect us now, right?’
The voice cuts through the fog in Bucky’s mind like a broken, eroded, seaweed-covered beacon. He shoots his head up just in time to catch the congratulatory pats on the back the talking dick is receiving from the surrounding assholes.
Bucky. Bucky saw this fuckin’ guy coming in. He knows what car he’s driving.
Slowly, very, very slowly, he gets up. It takes everything in him, to keep his fists clenched tightly at his sides and not feed the guy his own teeth, courtesy of Wakandian tech.
He spots the car a couple of blocks from the bar. The streets have emptied out by now, and the guy’s gone and parked his monster truck right below the one light that doesn’t work.
If Bucky believed in cosmic syzygy. Well.
It’s so satisfying, the crunch of the glass under his hand. The windshield collapses into itself, a fist-shaped hole webbing out, right above the driver’s seat.
It hits him out of nowhere, how much he wishes Sam was here. He’d appreciate the irony. Coming full circle, and all that. Now Bucky’s breaking windshields in his honor.
Honestly, it’s the happiest he’s felt in a long time.
He wishes Sam was here.
iv.
His shoulder’s tingling during his walk home.
Vibranium may be nothing short of indestructible, but his muscles aren’t. All things considered, Bucky thinks he’s faring well for a centenarian.
He winces his way out of his clothes. Splashes some water over his face, and tries, tries to find something familiar in the eyes staring back at him.
His prescribed pain meds are sitting inside the cabinet. Untouched. Bucky’s had enough drugs meddling with his thoughts. Blurring his decision-making.
It’s absurd, he knows that much. He’s not getting hooked on Advil and going on a murder spree on full Winter Soldier mode.
He knows that.
He switches the bathroom light off. Locks the door behind him. His shoulder complains in the form of a sharp sting shooting down his spine.
It’s fine. He’s fine.
He lies down, on his makeshift bed. A poor excuse for the blanket fortresses he used to make for Steve, to keep the evil out. Not that it did any of them much good.
He forces his eyes shut.
It’s fine. He’s fine.
v.
He wakes up with sore muscles and something pinging next to his ear.
The cracked screen shows seven unread messages. All from. Sam.
Bucky doesn’t bother with the rest of them, because the last one, sent three minutes ago and responsible for disturbing his restless sleep, reads Coming over. You got an hour to make the place decent. And then a fucking. Wolf emoji, or whatever the fuck these things are called.
Because Sam’s a dumbass going through his rightfully earned midlife crisis, and emojis are a thing he does, now. Apparently.
It doesn’t make Bucky smile. It doesn’t.
He’s halfway through hiding the remnants of a blueberry-kale smoothie, because like fuck is he letting Sam hold that over his head, when he hears the key in the lock.
Right.
Sam made him buy the key holder for his own set of keys. To. Bucky’s place. His mind keeps helpfully erasing that particular piece of information. Bucky can’t dwell on it for too long, or he starts having ideas.
Sam greets him with, ‘You know that excuse got old, like, four years ago, right?’
Bucky frowns at the dish he’s currently drying. ‘Haven’t even said anything yet.’
‘Precisely my point, asshole. You keep ignoring my texts and pretending you don’t know how to use a phone, but I see right through you.’
‘Really,’ Bucky says, setting a mental note to congratulate himself later. For managing to keep his tone steady and flat when everything inside him is screaming. Then, because self-control isn’t a thing around Sam, ‘What am I thinking right now, then?’
Sam starts, ‘Well—’ and Bucky. Really, really hopes Sam hasn’t been getting mind-reading lessons online, because their relationship is already strained without him getting a peek through Bucky’s minefield of a brain.
He’s almost entirely certain, war-honed skills and all, that Sam wouldn’t appreciate the visual of Bucky’s soap-soaked hand scratching against his head. Or Bucky’s tongue licking kale into his mouth.
‘You’re trying to decide what to get for lunch,’ Sam finishes.
Bucky. Stares at him in horror. ‘No. Shut up. How did you—how the hell did you do that?’
Sam gives him a smile, brighter than the damn sun blinding half of Bucky’s vision. Sam’s in the other half. Bucky’s not particularly annoyed.
‘It’s ‘cause you’re always thinking about food, man. For a trained assassin, you’re so predictable, I swear.’
‘Fuck off,’ is the best Bucky can come up with, and then, because he really is hungry, sue him, ‘so what’re we getting, smartass?’
Two hours later and half a Thai restaurant heavier, Sam reaches out a hand and slowly, so very, very slowly, traces a finger along the seam on Bucky’s shoulder, where flesh blends into metal.
‘You gonna tell me why you keep wincing every time you put pressure on it today?’
Bucky stays. Very, very still. Doesn’t shiver. He doesn’t. ‘’s nothing.’
‘Right,’ Sam drawls, sounding like he doesn’t trust a word coming out of Bucky’s mouth. Which. Fair enough. ‘So whose face met your nothing?’
‘I should’ve broken his stupid face,’ Bucky snaps. Shuts his mouth with a click the moment he realizes he’s offered it to Sam on a silver platter. ‘I didn’t,’ he adds, eyes finding the ceiling at Sam’s triumphant expression, ‘I should’ve. I know better.’
‘But?’
Bucky heaves a sigh. Lets it out, slowly. ‘I broke his windshield.’
Sam doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, in a thoroughly unwarranted display of ingratitude, to Bucky’s completely objective opinion, he bursts out laughing. Bent-in-half, tears-in-eyes laughing.
Bucky crosses his arms and spends the next five minutes glaring daggers at him.
‘You broke his—okay,’ Sam wheezes, wiping at the corner of his eyes, ‘I should be surprised, and I’m not, I’m really not, but. Why, for god’s sake?’
Bucky crosses his arms even tighter. Stares down at Sam, pointedly. ‘That asshole was talking shit about Captain America,’ he grumbles. ‘About you.’
Sam sobers up at that. Sits back against the couch, back rod-straight, military-ingrained.
‘You know I’m not—’ he starts. Cuts himself off with a sigh. ‘Still haven’t answered my question, dumbass. Why are you still in pain? You take anything?’
Bucky stays decidedly silent. The absence of an answer is an answer in itself, his therapist would say. Probably has, at some point. Not like Bucky’s keeping tabs.
‘Bucky,’ Sam sighs, again, ‘why not?’
He keeps still, and then Sam’s turning him around so they’re facing each other with solid hands on Bucky’s shoulders, raising his brows in lieu of repeating the question.
He takes a deep breath, and then, ‘I don’t like taking drugs,’ lets it out on the exhale. Sam’s still looking at him with a question on his face, so. ‘I’ve had enough of it, okay? I didn’t know what they were pumping into me all these years. And it’s not—this doesn’t hurt too bad. I don’t even know what’s in these things. Why take the risk?’
Sam’s hands, still curled around his shoulders, squeeze once, twice, until Bucky rolls his eyes, and then. Looks at Sam.
‘I get it,’ Sam says, ‘you know I do. More than anyone else, I get it. But pain meds won’t drive you paranoid, Bucky. Seventy years of brainwashing, now that will do that to ya. Not wanting to feel pain isn’t crazy. It’s surviving.’
Bucky’s aware, all of a sudden, of Sam’s body next to his. Of how close they are.
Sam’s thumbs are rubbing circles over the paper-thin fabric of his shirt, shooting warmth down his body, and his eyes, wide to fit all the worry Bucky’s learning to accept he deserves, they’re right there, so close—
‘Fuck,’ he says, breathless, pushing away. He’s on the other side of the bathroom door before Sam has time to call his name.
+ i.
‘Bucky?’
Sam’s voice carries through the lock, stuffed with the key Bucky turned, and checked, and checked again.
‘Bucky, c’mon,’ Sam’s saying, ‘’m sorry, alright, I was jus’ trying to help, c’mon.’
Bucky’s gripping the edges of the sink, chest heaving with every inhale. He closes his eyes, forces himself to relax his fingers, one by one. He can’t afford a new sink, on top of everything else.
When he’s steadied himself enough to open them again, he stares right ahead. At his reflection staring back. Doesn’t shy away, not this time.
He’s happy, is the thing. He’s happy when Sam’s around. Fucking. Miserable when he’s not. The thought of Sam having his own set of keys for this place gives him a buzz stronger than an entire distillery ever would.
The thought of keeping Sam around—
Slowly, so very, very slowly, he unlocks the door.
Sam. He’s waiting for him at the other side. Like he always, always is. He goes as far as, ‘Hey—’
Can’t really go much further with Bucky’s mouth crashing into his.
Bucky lifts his arms, cups Sam’s face between his palms, flesh against flesh, flesh against metal. Licks into Sam’s mouth when he opens for him. Lets himself get lost in it, just for a second, before he has to pull back.
Except he doesn’t get very far either, not with Sam’s arms clasped tight around him.
‘Jesus christ, you asshole, I thought I’d fucked everything up,’ Sam breathes against his mouth.
Bucky lets out the shaky breath he’s been holding for a while. For a few decades, seems like.
‘Had to,’ he starts, stops to bite into Sam’s bottom lip, eat up the moan that follows, ‘work some things out.’
Sam hums. ‘And did you?’
‘Getting there.’
Sam laughs, and this time Bucky feels it tingling on his lips, and he decides he has to spend the next week, possibly the next few decades, getting to feel that, again and again.
‘’m not putting out on the first date, though,’ he says, mumbles it into Sam’s mouth, thoroughly reluctant to pull away, probably for the rest of forever.
Except. Sam shoves him away with a palm against his chest.
‘Been taking you out on dates for months, fucker. ‘s not my fault you’re an obtuse old fuck.’
There’s no point contesting. Any of that, because. Well.
Instead, Bucky says, ‘So all these months, you’ve been trying to get me drunk enough to seduce me?’
‘Yes, honey, my plan exactly. Get the Super Soldier super drunk and then have my way with him. You got me.’
Bucky flashes him a smile, and it comes out easy, easy, easier than it has for a long, long time. ‘You didn’t need booze for that, though. ‘m already drunk on you.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Sam groans, ‘a hundred years alive and that’s the best you can—’
The rest of it gets lost somewhere around the seventh and twelfth kiss, because a hundred years is a long time, and.
Bucky decides he’s waited enough.