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When Sam enters their bedroom, mouth minty fresh and fully prepared for all the making out that’s hopefully going to be happening soon, he finds Bucky sitting atop the sheets, messing with his wrist gauntlet.
Sam pauses in the doorway. “What’cha doing?”
Bucky doesn’t look up from his task. The Redwing that they keep in their room—an emergency measure, just in case their expansive home security system fails—beeps to life. “There’s a spider.”
“A spider,” Sam repeats, leaning against the wall. “Is that, like, code for something? Like someone planted a bug in here?”
Bucky rolls his eyes and points with his left hand to a spot on the ceiling, about halfway between the bed and where Sam stands. With his right, he carefully directs the Redwing up to the spot he’s indicating.
And yep, that’s a spider all right. Totally normal-looking from a distance. Not the biggest one Sam has ever seen, but not too small either. Thick and dark, almost certainly hairy.
Sam garners all this from an extremely brief look. Because a second later, Redwing shoots out a tiny laser and vaporizes the thing.
“Jesus, Buck!”
“I could’ve shot it,” Bucky points out, sending Redwing back to her resting place and powering down the control panel. “But I didn’t want to put a hole in the ceiling.”
“Yeah, the scorch mark is a lot better,” Sam agrees, finally walking into the room. He stops beneath the site of the assassination, scrutinizing the damage. Which, thankfully, is minimal. A bit of ash still clings to the popcorned surface, but there’s no actual stain that he can see.
“Y’know, if you’re scared of spiders, you could just ask me to kill it for you.”
“I’m not scared,” Bucky scoffs, leaning back against the pillows. “Just didn’t feel like getting up. And you were in the bathroom.”
“Yeah? So it’s your laziness that’s finally made you admit that Redwing is a valuable part of our family unit?”
Bucky rolls his eyes again. “Fine. I’ve got trauma around spiders.”
Sam pauses at the foot of the bed. “Wait. Really?”
Bucky sniffs and nods. He doesn’t actually look upset, which isn’t all that unusual—he can be disconcertingly cavalier when it comes to discussing all the gifts that HYDRA left him. Sam has never been able to figure out if that’s a trauma response in and of itself, if that’s just how Bucky is, or if, as he suspects, it’s a combo of both.
Bucky jokes about his trauma sometimes. But he doesn’t usually make things up wholesale. And Sam doesn’t think he’s starting to now.
“I’d rather admit to all the fucked-up shit HYDRA did to me than have you thinking I care about your birds,” says Bucky.
Sam flips him off—there’s a bird for him—but, as he climbs on the bed, his head is swimming with questions. Or crawling with questions. Questions that form sticky, tangled webs—
“Okay,” he says, rolling onto his side and facing Bucky. “Spiders?”
“Spiders,” Bucky agrees. He reaches out to cup Sam’s cheek.
Sam bats his hand away. “You really going to just leave it at that?”
Bucky frowns. “I thought we were going to have sex.”
For all that Sam is used to Bucky’s many idiosyncrasies, he still finds himself staring at him incredulously on a regular basis. “You tell a man you have spider trauma, and you expect him to what, just forget that and roll over?”
“I was actually hoping you’d sit in my lap and let me finger you,” Bucky says, and he knows that Bucky is good at dirty talk when he wants to be, but there’s something about the casual way he says things when he’s not even trying that makes Sam’s dick spring to attention like a cat that just heard the kibble bag being opened. “And I’ve been had spider trauma for a couple of decades. It’s not new.”
“It’s new to me. Is this why you don’t like the Parker kid?”
“What? No. I don’t like him because he’s annoying.” Bucky wrinkles his face up. “Can we not talk about him when we’re in bed?”
He straightens up and slides his hand up Sam’s thigh, over his boxers to rest on his waist. Sam shivers, but—spiders?
“Are you trying to turn me on so I stop asking about the spiders?”
Bucky rolls his eyes, dipping his hand down to pat Sam’s ass and pull him towards his lap. Sam goes willingly, sitting up and straddling Bucky’s legs. But he seats himself on Bucky’s knees, leaning back.
“If I wanted you to stop asking about the spiders, I would say ‘Stop asking about the spiders, I don’t want to talk about my trauma.’ And then you’d get all sad-eyed and you’d stop asking and you’d insist on being the big spoon for the next three nights.”
“Oh, you complaining about my spooning now? You don’t like it when I hold you? You don’t go all soft and gooey when I kiss your hair?”
Bucky rolls his eyes, but doesn’t refute Sam’s excellent points. “Let me make you come on my fingers, and then I’ll tell you about the spiders.”
“You know sex isn’t a quid pro quo, right?”
Sam tries to make the words sound like a joke, like banter, but he can’t entirely hide the real undercurrent of worry that he feels. Close to a year into their relationship, he and Bucky are still unpacking the various hangups that HYDRA left Bucky with—and Sam isn’t stupid; he knows there’s not, like, an end date to that sort of thing. As long as they’re together—which will hopefully be a very, very long time—they’re probably going to be uncovering different ways HYDRA fucked with Bucky.
He’s pretty sure Bucky has long since unpacked the lessons HYDRA taught him about “consenting” to sex in order to get a blanket, or a sip of soup, or proper wound care. But it’s still a relief when Bucky glares at him and huffs out a breath.
“The spider story’s not exactly fun—”
“Really? Man says he has spider trauma, I figure the story’s gotta be a barrel of laughs—”
“—and you’re probably not gonna want to have sex after. So it makes more sense to do it before.”
Sam mulls this over for a second.
Well, can’t argue with that logic.
“Yeah, okay. You promise you’re not just doing this ‘cause you think I’ll fall asleep right after and forget about the spiders?”
Bucky reaches out and lays his hands on Sam’s thighs, thumbs pressing into and rubbing up and down the muscle. “Promise. You’re not just agreeing to sex because you want to hear the story, right?”
“Jesus, Buck, of course not. But thanks for checking.”
He reaches out to loop his arms around Bucky’s neck, but hesitates before he makes contact. Bucky is wearing his black-checkered sleep pants tonight. Black checkers mean that his dick is strictly out of bounds for the evening. And Sam is always careful about touching Bucky, but especially so on a black-checkers night.
“This okay?”
“Yeah,” says Bucky, fingers wrapping tighter into Sam’s thighs as he pulls him up closer. “Anything above my pants is fair game tonight.”
“Got it.” Sam settles his hands and leans in to kiss Bucky.
They make out for a few minutes, building from soft, sweet pecks up while Bucky massages Sam’s thighs, to something much harder, an intense scrabble of tongue and teeth. Bucky’s fingers curl around the edge of Sam’s boxers, tugging them down. Sam sits up obligingly even though it means breaking away from Bucky’s lips, kicking them off and onto the floor.
Bucky leans against the pillow, eyes hooded as he rests his hands on Sam’s waist, thumbs rubbing circles into his hipbones. “Which fingers do you want tonight?”
Sam considers for a moment. “Right hand. But let me prep you?”
Bucky bites his lip and nods. He reaches over onto the nightstand and tosses Sam the lube.
Sam squeezes a generous dollop onto his fingers, then reaches out for Bucky’s hand. He presses the pads of his fingers against Bucky and then drags them down, then up again, coating Bucky with the lube. His fingers slip between Bucky’s and he holds their hands tightly together for a moment before he slowly, slowly rubs the lube up into the back of Bucky’s fingers.
Bucky’s eyes flutter shut and he sighs, quiet and breathy. Sam knows him well enough to recognize his pleasure. Bucky is rarely vocal in bed—whether that’s a HYDRA thing, a growing-up-gay-in-the-1930s thing, or a Bucky thing, Sam has never been able to discern. It doesn’t really matter. All those small sounds, they do plenty to his dick and his heart alike.
It stings sometimes, the fact that they’ve been together almost a year and he can count on two hands the times he’s directly made Bucky come. Sam knows not to take it personally, but he also knows that nothing good comes from pretending that his feelings aren’t real.
Being able to make Bucky feel good—watching his body go lax as he slicks lubes onto his knuckles or over his callouses, slotting their fingers together, pressing their palms flush with each other—it warms something in Sam’s chest as much as it heats up other places. It’s easy to care for Bucky, but it’s not always so easy to take care of him.
Case in point: Bucky sits up and carefully disentangles his fingers from Sam’s, leaning in to kiss him as he does.
“You hold my hand any longer, my skin’s gonna absorb all the lube and there’s not gonna be any left for you,” he says, pulling his lips away but drawing Sam in close with his metal hand, while his right hand reaches behind, fingers resting right at Sam’s opening.
“Yeah? If that’s what it takes to get you to use some damn lotion—”
He breaks off with a groan as Bucky carefully pushes a finger inside of him, grabbing onto Bucky’s shoulder with his own lube-sticky hand. It slips against the black metal for a second until he finally finds purchase clinging to Bucky’s bicep.
Bucky has his own insecurities, Sam knows. Hell, if they had an insecurity dick-measuring contest, Bucky would win by several inches. There are so many ways he wants to touch Sam, and there are so many ways he wants Sam to touch him, that he can’t have unless he wants to risk tripping and falling down a trauma staircase that leaves him hollow-eyed and withdrawn for days.
Bucky sees his therapist dutifully each week they’re not on missions, making slow progress towards accepting that there are some things he’ll probably be able to enjoy again one day, and there are some things that he’s probably never going to be able to handle. And he and Sam have talked about it too—of course they have, and even though there’s plenty Sam doesn’t know about, like whatever this spider trauma thing is, they’ve made big progress, especially since the Cock Cage Incident.
Point is, Sam knows that Bucky sometimes feels bad about all the things he can’t do, and he makes space for Bucky to have those feelings, just like Bucky makes space for Sam to feel his feelings about how rarely he’s made Bucky come.
But he’ll never stop trying to get Bucky to understand that it’s really, really okay. It would be okay if they never had sex, that’s how smitten Sam is. But as it is, the things Bucky can do?
He doesn’t just finger Sam, working him open with a crooked digit that bears into him with an agonizingly slow steadiness. He doesn’t just stroke the pad of his finger over Sam’s prostate once, before suddenly withdrawing and then plunging back in with two fingers twisted together this time. He doesn’t just work Sam over until he’s too far gone to be able to discern if there’s a pattern to how Bucky touches him, two fingers, scissor apart, blunt fingernails just lightly scratching at his walls as they withdraw, three fingers, in, out, in deep, dragging against his rim, stretching him open, two fingers in again—
No, it’s not just that. It’s the way that Bucky touches him with the hand not preoccupied in his ass, tracing his spine, brushing over his nipples, then arm suddenly wrapped tight around him, hugging him fiercely close and rubbing back and forth against his ribs. It’s the way Bucky kisses him all the places he can reach with Sam in his lap—his nose, his jaw, his throat, his shoulder. It’s the way Bucky rubs his cheek against Sam’s, nuzzling his face into the soft spot where his neck meets his collarbone before brushing his lips there.
Sex with Bucky, it’s a full-body experience. Even if Bucky doesn’t touch Sam’s dick tonight, even if Bucky stays soft as Sam writhes in his lap. It’s all-consuming; it takes Sam over until he’s lost in the sensations, no thoughts able to form in his mind through the sparks igniting at every point where Bucky’s body meets his.
“Buck, ‘m gonna—” his words cut off into a sharp moan as two fingers push into him at the same time Bucky’s thumb swipes over his perineum.
“Whatever you need, doll,” Bucky murmurs, and then gently sucks a kiss right below Sam’s earlobe.
Three strokes with Sam’s already-lubed hand, and he’s shooting off like there’s no tomorrow, Bucky buried three fingers deep inside him.
He lets himself get lost in the bliss, head hazy and warm. Bucky pulls out of him, careful, but not so slow that the drag hurts. Both arms wrap around Sam, holding him close, torso-to-come-smeared-torso. He rests his head atop Sam’s.
Sam could stay there forever, or at least fall asleep like that—he’s done so plenty of times. But as the orgasm wears off, thoughts of their earlier conversation creep back in. Creep in, like creepy-crawlies trotting on eight legs—
He sits up, carefully ducking out from under Bucky’s chin, and kisses Bucky on the cheek. “Tell me the story now?”
Bucky straightens up too, dropping his arms. “Yeah, okay. Let me clean you up first?”
Sam hums his assent and flops back onto the pillow as Bucky rolls off the bed and heads into the bathroom. Sam hears the sound of running water and Bucky scrubbing his hands together. He comes back into the room a moment later, carrying two washcloths.
He starts with Sam’s hand, carefully scrubbing it clean of the lube. He runs the washcloth between Sam’s fingers, scrubs under his nails with more studied focus even than when he cleans his guns or knives.
Sam watches him through hooded eyes, halfway between this sleepy, sex-sated feeling, and poised in alert anticipation of the story that’s to come.
Except, now that he’s got a little bit of that post-nut clarity, he’s realizing that maybe he should, well, clarify something.
“You know you don’t have to tell me the spider story if you don’t want to, right?” he asks as Bucky turns his hand over, carefully scrutinizing it to make sure he wiped up all the lube. “I mean, I wanna know, but I’m not, like. Gonna be mad if you don’t tell me.”
Bucky rolls his eyes at Sam’s attempt to be a nice and trauma-informed partner. But he kisses Sam’s knuckles before using the other side of the washcloth to swipe away the streaks of come drying on his belly. “I know. I told you, you’d know if I didn’t want to talk about it.”
He gently, quickly wipes off Sam’s dick, then sets the washcloth aside in favor of the clean one, patting Sam’s thigh. Sam rolls over obediently.
“It’s just…” Bucky pauses as he rubs the cloth between Sam’s legs, every touch sinking warmth deep into his skin. “You know it’s not a nice story, right? I don’t wanna give you nightmares. That shit’s gotta live in my head no matter what; there’s no reason for it to be stuck in yours too.”
“I want to hear all the stories you want to tell me,” Sam mumbles into his pillow.
Bucky kisses between his shoulder blades, just a quick, soft brush of his lips over the skin there. Through the washcloth, his fingers massage the last of the lube out of Sam’s hole. “I’m gonna remind you of that the next time you tell me I talk too much.”
“Don’t push it.”
Bucky laughs and swaps the cloth out for the towel, patting Sam dry. Then he balls everything up and tosses it into the laundry basket across the room. Sam doesn’t look up, but based on the soft thud, Bucky makes the shot in one.
“All right.” Bucky lifts up the covers, gently tugging until Sam raises his legs enough to let Bucky pull them free. He slip under them, then pulls them over Sam too and reaches over to switch off the light.
Bucky snuggles up against him, left arm sneaking under the pillow, right arm draping warm and heavy over Sam’s chest. Sam automatically twines their hands together, kissing Bucky’s knuckles.
“You ready for your shitty bedtime story?”
Sam snorts, stretching his body out of the sex-induced languid sleepiness. He rolls his neck with a satisfying crack before dropping back onto the mattress and pressing back against Bucky. His thumb rubs against Bucky’s, up and down. “Lay it on me.”
Bucky kisses the back of his neck. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”
He takes a deep breath. Sam closes his eyes, listening.
“Once upon a time, there was a bad little Soldier—”
“Yeah, I’m already not buying it.”
Bucky glares (well, Sam can’t see that he’s glaring, but he’s pretty sure he can feel it). “It’s my story.”
“Bucky.”
“Fine. Okay.” Bucky huffs against the back of his neck.
“So this was in the early 90s. I was technically with the Americans, but the Soviets were still helping with my maintenance. Worst of both worlds, y’know. Pierce had just started on as my handler. I don’t know how much of this I realized at the time—I wasn’t actually kept up to date on world politics—but I think he was… not eager to prove himself, exactly, but real focused on not losing face. The Americans won the Cold War, and he didn’t want them to forget it. They were all HYDRA, and HYDRA was supposed to be above borders, but that was mostly a load of crap.
“Anyway. Early 90s, I was in Poland. The details don’t really matter, but there was this guy, a politician, who’d worked with HYDRA and then decided to stop doing the favors they asked for. They sent me to kill his wife and kid.
“So I’m in their apartment, hiding in this tiny space under the stairs that no one has cleaned since the second World War. Wife gets home, but the kid’s not with her; she’s on a play date or something. So that messes me up, because it was supposed to be just her and the wife, and now I’m going to have to wait until the daughter gets home, and I don’t know if the wife is getting her or the nanny, so I might have to kill the help too. And I have enough ammo and it’s not like it’s a big deal, I’m authorized to make sure there are no witnesses, whatever. But it’s throwing off my schedule, which means my handlers are gonna be pissed, which means that things are gonna be bad for me, and anyway, I knew even then that the kid hadn’t done anything wrong. She couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7. So as much as I could want anything back then, I didn’t want to kill her.
“And then I fucked up.”
Bucky pauses for a moment, but his breath is steady against Sam’s neck, and when Sam presses his fingers against Bucky’s wrist, gentle, his heart rate is barely elevated.
“It sounds funny now. Stupid, I mean, but funny. Because I think the thing was that I was trying to hold in a sneeze. Of all the fucking things to ruin a mission, it was ‘cause I was trying not to sneeze. And I kind of flinched, and the space was so small, I knocked against the back wall.
“And she heard. And I don’t know why she didn’t just assume it was rats or something, but she started screaming. Like, really screaming. And like I said, it was an apartment, or maybe a duplex or something. Neighbors nearby, is the part that matters. And I could hear people coming to see what was going on, and…
“Yeah. You don’t need the details. I killed her and ran, managed to get out without anyone seeing. But I didn’t get the daughter, obviously. I just went back to my handlers. And they were pissed. I hadn’t fucked up a mission that bad in years. And obviously the politician knew why his wife was targeted, so his daughter was now under protection 24/7. Which didn’t really mean much; I could’ve killed her easy anyway. But it would’ve been a whole production getting it done, probably more witnesses… and they’d made their point, besides.
“So instead I just got shipped back to the States.
“Now—like I said, the space I was hiding in, it was filthy. And when I made my escape, I was covered in cobwebs. All over my suit and my hair.
“If there were actually spiders in them, I don’t remember. But somewhere along the line, one of my handlers made the joke that I must’ve got bitten by a spider and that’s why I flinched, why I fucked everything up. And I dunno how exactly it happened, but I guess that theory must’ve gotten back to Pierce somehow.
“We get back to base, and I’m just shoved in my cell. Now obviously my handlers had roughed me up a bit, but they were just assigned to manage me in the field; they weren’t responsible for real discipline. So I was just sitting around, waiting to be punished. Because I knew I was going to be, and bad. I’d really fucked up.
“I don’t know how long went by—a couple of days, maybe; they weren’t feeding me or anything, which I figured was probably part of the punishment, but it also didn’t seem like enough of one, given how much worse I deserved. Then some techs show up and tell me to strip down. And I’m thinking, oh, so it’s just going to be the usual.”
Sam squeezes Bucky’s hand. Bucky grips back, pausing his story to sweep his thumb up and down the edge of Sam’s hand.
“They take me out, but not to one of the rooms where that shit usually goes down. Instead, we go to a lab. Pierce is there. And there’s this… box.
“I say box. It was a coffin, really. Made of this thin wood. I take one look at it, and I know it’s just large enough for me to fit. And for half a second I thought that this was it. They were finally letting me go.
“But Pierce takes one look at me, and he knows what I’m thinking. He just shakes his head, real disappointed, and goes into this whole monologue about how there’s still so much work for me to do, how the world is still a mess, only HYDRA can save it, and if I was only better at what I did they could make some real progress. And they need to help me be better for my own good. Help me so I can help others.
“And I was a real dumbass back then, so even though I think that a part of me probably thought that what he was saying was bullshit, most of me was about ready to drop to my knees and grovel for forgiveness, offer him whatever he wanted. So I did.
“Christ, it’s embarrassing,” Bucky mumbles, more to himself than to Sam. “I mean, I was about two seconds away from licking his shoes clean. Just apologizing, begging to be given another chance. He should’ve just put a bullet through my brains, I was that pathetic.
“But he didn’t. Obviously. Instead, he tells me he’s decided to give me another chance to go out and do good, but I need to prove that I can be better. He tells me to go lie in the box.
“I get in, and I was right; I just barely fit, lying flat on my back. So now I’m thinking, you know, so this is my punishment. They’re gonna shut the lid, and I’m going to be stuck here, maybe they’ll bury it somewhere or something. Isolation and being trapped in a tiny space. I can do this, I can handle this, I can be good.
“Then Pierce comes over, and he tells me that I can’t move and I can’t make a sound. If they hear me shifting, hitting the walls of the box, then I’ve failed and I’ll be kept inside even longer. If I scream or sob or whatever, I’ll be kept inside even longer. I need to prove I can be still. So that what happened on the last mission won’t ever happen again.
“I say understood, sir. And dumb fucker that I was, I was also thinking that I could do this, no problem. I’d gotten off easy; I couldn’t believe Pierce was being so nice.”
Bucky snorts. “You gotta remember, I was getting my brain fried on a regular basis. So you can maybe understand why I was so goddamn stupid.”
“You were doing the best you could with what you had,” Sam says around the thick dread he can feel welling up in his chest. He’s got an idea where the story is heading. It’s not a place he’s eager to go.
Apparently, Bucky can tell. He kisses the back of Sam’s head. “You sure you want to hear the rest? Me putting this in your head, it’s not gonna change things. Just because I have to remember it, doesn’t mean you need all this badness clogging your brain.”
“I know.” He reaches back and strokes Bucky’s arm. “Thanks for checking. But if you want to tell me, I want to hear it.”
“You need me to stop, just say the word.” Bucky kisses his hair again, then picks up the story.
“Okay. So then this tech comes over. He’s holding a glass jar. From where I’m lying, I can’t see what’s in it.
“Pierce tells me that as soon as the box closes, I need to take the jar and break it. Not just open it, break it. Use my right hand. That’s the last movement I’m allowed to make until they tell me otherwise.
“I figure that makes sense, they want to introduce a bit of pain, make it more of a challenge to stay still and not try to curl up in a ball or whatever. Not like I’ve never cut up my hand before. I still think it’s not gonna be too bad, but I’m not going to tell him that, obviously. I just say yes, sir.
“Tech puts the glass jar in my hand; the way he moves in front of me, I’m still not able to see it. But it’s light. It feels empty.
“The lid closes. It’s dark and cramped, my nose touching right up against the top, and I can tell right away that it’s sealed tight. I give it maybe four hours or so before I run out of oxygen. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been trapped in a tiny space like that as part of a training session, so I wasn’t panicking or anything.
“I take the jar and I squeeze it. And I mean, you’ve seen me break glasses by accident ‘cause I held them too tight—it doesn’t take much.
“It shatters. There’s glass in my fingers, a big piece in my palm, cutting deep—but I’m not paying attention to that, because I can feel them. Right away. Skittering out. Some went over my hand, up my arm; others went over my thigh—everywhere. I mean, they were all on me. There wasn’t enough room in the box to go anywhere else.
“I don’t know how many there were. How many spiders can you fit in a mason jar? I don’t know.” Bucky shakes his head, nose nuzzling against Sam’s hair.
“It doesn’t really matter. There were a lot, and they were just… everywhere. All over me. Thousands of legs running up and down over my skin, over every part of me. Crawling between my toes, up into my armpits, behind my balls—everywhere. Some of them went onto the cover of the box, but I could still feel them there, that’s how cramped it was.
“I don’t know how to describe it, I really don’t. Just… all those legs. Running up and down me. And I couldn’t move.
“It’s just, it’s so… instinctual, you know? When a mosquito bites you, it’s automatic to slap it. You even think you feel something crawling on you, you jerk and brush it off, even if it turns out there’s nothing there. But Pierce had told me I wasn’t supposed to move. And I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t fail, not again. I knew if I did, then they really would use the box as my coffin. And even after everything I’d done, even though there were plenty of times that I thought I wanted to die, part of me also didn’t actually want that.
“Not even when they started biting. I don’t know what kind they were. They weren’t, like, tarantulas or black widows, or any of that shit they have in Australia. Not venomous, or at least not seriously.
“But they were scared and probably angry. So of course they bit me.
“The ones on my face were the worst. Pierce had told me I couldn’t move. He didn’t say if that included blinking or not. So I was trying to do that as little as I possibly could. And when they got to my eyes…”
He cuts off, his arms tightening around Sam. “You’re shaking. I’m sorry. I should’ve stopped sooner.”
“Don’t be.” He hadn’t even realized, but—yeah. He is. “I want to hear the rest.”
Sam can hear the frown in Bucky’s sigh, but he doesn’t push, doesn’t try to convince Sam otherwise.
“There’s not much else to tell. I just… lay there. Let them crawl over me and bite me, and spin their webs over me, some of them. I didn’t move. Not an inch. Not when they ran over my lips or my dick, not when they crawled into my ears, never.
“I don’t know how long I was there—maybe three hours. I was having a hard time breathing, but I don’t know if I was actually running out of air, or if it was just from keeping the panic in. Eventually I felt them picking up the box and moving me—I didn’t know where, but I still didn’t move.
“Then Pierce told me I could get out. So I pushed the lid open, and I was immediately met with this chemical spray—they’d brought me to some kind of decontamination shower. It was all over me, spraying and burning and I was coughing and choking; I’d barely been breathing, and now that, I thought my lungs were going to catch fire. And it hurt, like acid melting me; it felt like my skin was going to shrivel up the way the spiders were.
“But then that was done, and it was ice water rinsing me off instead. It felt like a fire hose, the pressure was so strong, but I loved it, Sam—it hurt, but it felt like I was finally getting clean. They hadn’t even cleaned me off after I’d killed that woman in Poland. I probably still had cobwebs in my hair from hiding under her stairs. And now that was gone, and the chemicals, and all the spiders, and I hadn’t had anything to drink for days besides the water in the toilet in my cell. And my skin was so numb, I couldn’t feel were they’d bitten me, and I almost couldn’t feel them crawling over me anymore.
“The water turned off. The techs came in, dried me, then brought me back to Pierce. And… fuck.”
Bucky huffs quietly against Sam’s hair. “This is the part that’s the hardest to tell. That’s fucked up, right? I know it is.”
Before Sam can ask what he means, Bucky rushes on.
“Pierce came up to me. He looked me over—I was a goddamn mess, even after the shower, covered in bites. But he smiled at me. He told me I did good. I hadn’t moved at all. He said he thought I could be better in the field now, that he trusted I wouldn’t make any more mistakes.
“I almost started crying. I probably would’ve, if I hadn’t just spent three hours in hell, being trained to control myself. But hearing him say that, tell me I’d been good… Jesus. It was like it had all been worth it.”
His words hang in the air. Sam searches for something to say and comes up empty.
He rolls over to face Bucky, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him in close. Bucky lets him do so with a quiet sigh, scooting down to tuck his head underneath Sam’s chin.
“Anyway. Like I said, I had bites on me head-to-toe, all those little red bumps. Real nasty. So no one wanted to fuck me after, and I got to go back to my cell and sleep. So the story’s got a happy ending after all.
“But that’s why I don’t like spiders.”
Sam hugs him tighter and kisses his hair. “Thank you for telling me. You wanna go to Pierce’s grave and piss on it this weekend?”
Bucky snorts. “Don’t tempt me.”
“I love you,” Sam says. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” Bucky lifts his head and kisses Sam’s chin. “I know. I love you too. I’d kill spiders with my bare hands for you.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t have to.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” He plants one last kiss on Sam’s collarbone, and then snuggles against him with a sigh. “I’m tired. If you have spider nightmares, wake me up. I won’t even say ‘I told you so.’”
“Aww. You’re too good to me.”
Bucky slips into sleep not long after, apparently warn out from the retelling.
Sam holds him, and breathes, and tries not to think about Bucky, trapped and still and covered in hundreds of spiders. He tries not to feel a thousand tiny legs crawling all over him, tiny fangs penetrating through his flesh, leaving little red pinpricks swollen all over.
He dreams of webs and sealed spaces and screaming and beating his hands against the rough wooden cover until they start to bleed. But he wakes up to Bucky holding him and whispering gently until he slips away into sleep again. And when the dawn spills light through their curtains, when Sam comes to with Bucky curled against him, breathing softly, nothing creeps over his skin.
He kisses Bucky’s forehead and closes his eyes again, snuggling closely up against him. This morning, they are okay. And for now, that’s enough.