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Wakanda is fucking hot and fucking humid. Sam has never sweat this much in his life and he spent a long ass time in an actual desert. He knows sweating. He knows his own symptoms of heatstroke and dehydration intimately.
But the fucking condensation that formed on his skin fucked with his sense of self and two weeks after they get there he’s in the hospital with an IV getting fluids and an asshole nurse is laughing behind his back because the silly American black boy whose ancestors came from a fucking humid country got heatstroke like a fucking tourist.
Barnes is laughing at him, but a lot more loudly.
Steve laughs a little too, but not in a mean way. But that’s only because there’s not a mean bone in that boy’s body.
“Keeled right over,” Barnes says with obvious relish.
Well, obvious to Sam and Steve anyway. To anyone else it just looks like Barnes’ mouth is twitching funny, likes he’s got something stuck in his teeth and he’s trying to stealth it out before anyone notices.
“I hate you,” Sam answers and pulls the thin hospital pillow over his head to try and keep him out.
“Repeat,” Barnes says and reaches out to swat him on the thigh. It leaves behind a stinging welt. Fucking supersoldiers. If Sam weren’t suffering from heatstroke he’d get Barnes back tenfold. He says as much.
”Yeah, punk, you keep dreaming.”
Sam assumes the increasingly happy attitude comes from a close proximity to Steve. Why they had to put him in the same damn hospital room with this asshole, he doesn’t know. But he want’s to. He says this out loud as well.
“What? You think we’re supposed to get special treatment? It ain’t like we’re guests of the king here, or anything.”
He takes it back. He want's to know why on God’s green Earth he ever decided to help the blue eyed pretty boy. It’s what landed him in this mess in the first place.
“He’s very persuasive.” Barnes answers judiciously.
Sam didn’t mean to say that out loud.
But, yeah, Steve’s fucking persuasive. Doesn’t even need to say anything, just stand there all patriotic and sad-faced and everybody in the damn world wants to make it all better. Except for assholes.
“I thought I was an asshole?”
The real assholes. The ones who wear their asses for hats. Asshats. Those dicks. Except that’s kind of sexist? So those vaginas too. Yeah. That’s better. His momma would be so damn proud.
“You feelin’ alright?”
Except no. His momma wouldn’t be proud. She’d be goddamn furious Samuel Thomas Wilson, runnin’ off to war and becoming a big damn hero? Look at all the damn good it’s done you, huh? Running away to Africa and hiding in some tiny country like a criminal fleein’ the law.
“Yeah. Steve’ll be hoppin’ mad if you’re not okay. Hey! Nurse! This fellas not doin’ too hot.”
Yeah, Sam thinks before the nurse pushes something through his IV, What made him want to be a hero anyway?
*
Fevered hallucinations aside, Wakanda was a gorgeous track of jungle. Lush greens and dense fog making a backdrop both mystic and terrifying. They’d been warned, very seriously, about the different kinds of snakes and bugs to avoid, what to do if an actual black panther showed up, how to find your way back if the mist ensorcelled you and you lost your way.
The man T’Challa assigned to help them settle actually used the word ensorcelled.
Sam laughed right up until Scott got his dumb ass lost for a day and half the night and came back nearly dead from a snake bite.
Give him dunes and dung beetles any damn day of the week.
“One kind of heat for another,” Wanda had said and shook her head. The bun of her long hair bobbled dangerously. Clint inserted the broken end of an arrow through it like a hair stick. Wanda shook her head again. The bun stayed firmly in place.
“You will teach me how to do that for myself.” She said firmly.
“Sure,” Clint said, all wide smiles that didn’t mean anything. “Ain’t the first time I’ve done a little girl’s hair.”
“Pietro used to do mine.” She didn’t smile at all. Clint sniffed and held out a cup of water.
“Braiding it makes it easier to wrap up and secure.” He said.
Sam got up and left. He knew when he wasn’t supposed to be part of a personal conversation.
“Dude,” Scott hissed quietly from his bed, looking frantically between Clint and Wanda and then over to him.
Sam shook his head. Sometimes a man had to take one for the team. Occasionally that meant listening awkwardly as two people discussed missing family members as it meant to them and bonded over hair care.
*
Barnes wanted to go back on ice.
Steve was pretending to take this stoically and supportively while stubbornly disagreeing.
Sam closed the doors to the room where the fight was taking place in perfectly normal tones and with completely reasonable arguments on both sides.
He hadn’t seen that much repressed tension since his cousin had gotten married to the nephew of his momma’s ex-husband and his momma and her ex-husband and their current spouses had ended up at the same table for the reception.
*
Except this is somehow worse.
*
He thinks it’s because they’re both so careful with each other.
Careful not to take too much, careful not to push too much, careful not to ask hard questions, careful not to talk about heavy things. Careful to keep things light and witty. Careful with how they touched each other. Careful with how they walked near each other. Careful with how they addressed each other.
Honestly.
Sam just wanted them to get over it and fuck already.
*
It takes him far too long to realize that they will never actually get their heads out of their asses and do something about it.
It takes him longer still to realize that it’s a different reason for both of them.
*
Barnes moves the salt shaker two inches further down the table.
Sam rests his finger tips on the table top, arm extended, the shaker just out of reach.
Barnes keeps on eating.
Sam gets up, takes two steps, picks up the salt shaker deliberately and then sits back down.
Barnes didn’t make eye contact at all.
Sam can barely keep the ‘I hate you’ in.
From the way Barnes’ eyebrow twitches, he’s pretty sure the asshole knows what he’s thinking anyway.
He gets it. Revenge for the car seat.
So that’s how he wants to play it, huh?
*
The fact is, Sam and Barnes? Make a damn good team. Unfortunately. Not as good as Barnes and Steve, but they had years to get used to each other.
When they’re in the field and its getting hot, he’s not Barnes-the-asshole-who-makes-him-want-to-choke-something-preferably-Barnes-himself, he’s Barnes-good-shot-weak-left-flank-good-ground-to-ground-cover-with-weapons-and-hand-to-hand.
In the sparse moments when he can take a breather and channel his stress into pithy banter, Barnes always gives as good as he gets.
It’s nice, having someone to fight with who can compartmentalize as well as he can.
And by ‘fight with’, he means side by side in the field, and against each other off it.
*
Steve can’t stand it. Sam gets that. Barnes and Sam are his two closest friends and they can’t stand the sight of each other.
They make efforts to keep Steve from seeing the tension. They are, after all friends of Steve.
And the hang dog expression works equally well on the both of them.
*
The thing is, it wasn’t about the car. Or ripping his wing off. Or any of the shit he did as the Winter Soldier.
It was about the six months Steve spent looking. The six months he had to remind Steve to eat, to sleep, to fucking breathe. It was the nights when Steve’s nightmares kept them both awake in shitty rooms in third world countries where it was always loud day and night and Steve kept seeing his Bucky everywhere.
It was how now that Steve finally had him back again he wanted to go back to sleep and leave him alone again.
Sam is not okay with Barnes playing the part of King Arthur and making Steve be Merlin- always waiting.
*
And Barnes was actually an inconsiderate fucker all things considered.
*
That Barnes is talked out of going back into stasis is something of a small miracle and Sam lives in hope that there will be celebration of the sexual kind that will release all the tension.
But no.
They just go for a walk in the jungle, come back looking worse for wear- and not in the good way- and continue on in the status quo.
*
Sam does not want to play cupid for Barnes.
No he fucking doesn’t.
*
Shit. Steve’s his friend, goddamn it.
*
“You know it’s not the forties anymore, right?”
Steve gives Sam an incredulous look. “Yeah. Pretty well aware of that.”
“You know gay marriage is a thing, right?”
“Yes?” Steve is confused. It would be adorable except for how it's pissing him off so bad.
“So you know if you wanted to go steady with Barnes, you could, right?”
Steve stares at him in that blank way that means he’s thinking really, really hard. Sam chews his granola bar methodically, letting him work through it.
“But Bucky wouldn’t want…” Steve’s face twists with anguish.
Sam brushes some crumbs off his fingers. “Listen. I don’t know what it was like back then, or what you went through. Maybe brotherhood covers all the things you guys did for each other. But I think you should consider the possibility that it was more than just growing up in Brooklyn together.”
“That’s…”
“Of all the things Hydra tried to take, he hung on to you even when he didn’t really know it.”
*
“What did you do?” Scott hissed accusingly.
Steve was sitting in the window bench, quiet as death, hands limp in his lap.
“That dick.” Sam hissed, and stalked away.
*
He had an unfair advantage, what with Barnes still missing an arm and all that, but he took savage joy in using that leverage. With Barnes pinned neatly under him, Sam said his piece.
“You do not get to let your insecurities and manpain hurt him. You did terrible things, yes. But it doesn’t define you unless you let it.”
Barnes went perfectly still. “What are you-”
“Do not bullshit me right now.” He shook Barnes a little. “I ran a support group for soldiers transitioning back to civilian life with varying levels of PTSD. You think you’re the first asshole to cut and run from the people he loves because of a misguided sense of guilt over the things he’s had to do in a wartime situation? Think again. And think real hard,” he ended, getting up off Barnes’ prone body, “About what you want the rest on your life to look like. You want Steve there for you, arm in arm with a pretty girl or boy? Or do you want him there for you, arm in arm with you?”
*
They don’t see Steve or Barnes for a whole week.
Staff members who try to clean the room come back blushing hard.
Sam enjoys the peace and quiet immensely.
*
“Your momma would be proud.” It was said grudgingly.
Sam snorted. “Thanks, Barnes.”
Barnes made a face like he needed to wash his mouth out with soap and walked away.
Sam slept a little easier that night.
*
The fruit hits him in the head, just over his eyes. Juice actually gets into one eye. But that’s fine. He’s pretty good at aiming even with his depth perception fucked.
He nails Barnes right in the ass with the partially squished plum.
Barnes clutches his bruised rear and glares.
“You have terrible reflexes about things coming from your right.” Barnes says.
“Not your place to test them.” Sam says.
“Guys.” Steve says, eyebrows indicating his genuine distress and a hint of exasperation.
Sam and Barnes eye each other for a moment more before they take their seats. Barnes makes a side trip to pick up the plum. Looking Sam right in the eye, he takes a big bite.
Sam hates Barnes so much.