Chapter Text
It’s not like Sam’s about to win any normality awards or anything, but compared to Bucky--especially lately--he’s practically King Normal. The normalest normal to ever normal. For instance, he’s never watched his partner take a hit and then ghosted said partner for three fucking months.
The worst part is that Bucky would probably still be ghosting Sam if there hadn’t been an actual, literal, get-your-asses-to-the-quinjet emergency with no other Avengers on call, forcing them to work together again.
“Look, I get it, I took a hit, you don’t trust me anymore,” he snaps at Bucky as they secure the first floor. “But while we’re stuck out here together, can you at least pretend?”
Bucky cuts a sideways glance at him. “I trust you,” he mutters. Enlighteningly.
“Well then cut the crap,” he hisses. “I’m not some supersoldier and sometimes we mere mortals can’t literally dodge bullets. I’m still your partner, Barnes.”
Bucky sweeps the next room. “Clear,” he says. He covers Sam while Sam checks the stairwell. And then, like Sam’s tearing it out of him, “I know.”
“Well here’s something you maybe don’t know. That little rectangle piece of metal and plastic in your pocket? Sometimes it rings. And when it rings—” he elbows Bucky as he edges past “—you answer, okay?”
Bucky looks at him. Sam tries to glare back, but Bucky looks away again before he can manage anything worthy of the title.
“Fine,” Bucky mutters sullenly.
“That does not sound fine,” Sam hisses at him, but Bucky’s already prowling up the stairs.
“I trust you to clear the basement on your own,” he hisses back before disappearing around the landing.
Yeah, okay. Sam can take a fucking hint the size of Texas.
They stay on the radio together as they clear the base room by room, and secure the national-emergency-level-data-haul which turns out to be--somewhat anticlimactically--the size of a thumb drive. Equally anticlimactically, the HYDRA prisoners they were supposed to rescue are nowhere to be found, despite all the creepy-ass steel-and-concrete rooms in the sublevel that lock from the outside. So Sam hauled in his medkit for bupkis: an empty bunker, a waiting quinjet, and the promise of a pile of paperwork at home.
“Basement clear,” Sam says through the radio, suppressing a yawn. “So glad they called me out of bed for this.” He pauses, eyes sweeping the final room again. “There’s a whole bunch of papers and equipment down here, though. Come gimme a hand?”
“En route,” Bucky replies, ever the master conversationalist.
Sam starts to flick through the filing cabinets, halfheartedly scanning them for anything interesting. There’s nothing here even remotely worth calling an Avenger out for, except perhaps the cool metal doodad on the nearest desk. Might make a fun paperweight. He could give it to Sarah; she likes weird stuff like that.
He squints at it, trying to figure out why it looks kind of familiar. There’s a weird nozzle thing and an even weirder chamber below it. He steps to the side to get a better look and, abruptly, the weird shapes coalesce in his brain.
It’s not a paperweight. It’s a weapon.
And though he has no recollection of ever seeing one like it before, it’s still somehow familiar.
“What the hell,” he says, and reaches out carefully to take it home. Bruce’ll lose his shit over it.
The weapon--unsurprisingly, he supposes--fires when he touches it. One of these days he’ll remember not to touch weird shit lying around in Nazi basements. It sounds more like a gurgle than a bang, which Sam’s about to put in the “well that’s fucking weird” basket until he sees that a slim, dart-like projectile—whatever it is—has ended up in the far wall. And in between the weapon and the far wall is—
“Bucky!”
Bucky blinks at him. “I thought you said this room was clear,” he says dryly. He pulls his shirt up to reveal a wound barely half an inch across. Sam breathes a sigh of relief. He’s seen Bucky walk off injuries ten times worse. Still…
“Bucky,” he warns, “do not move.” Emphasis on the do not move because Bucky always—yep, there he goes, twisting around to get a better look at the exit wound.
“Barely even hurts,” he says. “Forget it.”
“There is a hole in your abdomen,” Sam tells him, fishing gauze out of the med kit he’s suddenly very glad he brought.
“I said it’s nothing,” Bucky tells him, eyeing the gauze like it’s a particularly nasty bout of shingles that Sam intends on plastering up his nostrils or something.
“The hole in your abdomen begs to differ,” Sam says. “Who knows what hinky shit HYDRA puts in their weapons these days. Look, I swear your skin is starting to glow.”
Bucky loses color so fast he practically melts into grayscale.
“No,” he breathes, yanking the hem of his shirt back up. Sure enough, the wound has a faint edge of blue.
“Don’t panic,” Sam tells a visibly panicking Bucky. “Dr. Strange knows all kinds of anti-glowy tricks. You’ll be fine.” He looks down for half a second to grab his phone and call ahead. Half a second! But that’s all the time it takes for Mr. Reckless Stupid Idiot-Face to do something reckless, stupid, and idiotic. Sam looks back up, phone in hand. “Okay,” he’s saying, “Stay calm, I’ve got Strange on speed dia--”
BLAM!
Bucky’s got a gun in his left hand and a spray of blood coming out of his left leg and the sound of the gunshot is still ringing in the quiet of the room but Sam can’t quite, he can’t quite put the pieces together, can’t make Bucky shot himself in the leg make sense, and while his brain is still struggling to run the numbers through a calculator that’s clearly malfunctioning, the gun goes off again.
Another spray of blood, this time from Bucky’s right leg, and Bucky slumps, slides down the wall, aiming the gun at his right arm even as he collapses and Sam’s brain may not be processing but at least his body’s finally onboard because he lunges for the gun, can’t pry it from Bucky’s vibranium grip but at least manages to knock it off target so the next shot pings harmlessly off the far wall.
“WHAT THE FUCK?” Sam screams as Bucky wrestles him for control of the gun. Two bullet wounds and one hand and Sam still can’t keep up with this fight. “Stop! Bucky! Stop!”
“Run, Sam,” Bucky snarls, barrel of the gun turning inexorably toward his right arm despite all of Sam’s efforts. “You gotta…” Bucky’s panting hard, bleeding harder. Still fighting Sam for the gun. “You gotta run.”
Sam plants a knee on Bucky’s elbow and accidentally kicks one of the leg wounds because Bucky blanches and shouts and his grip on the gun goes weak--Success!--so that Sam can pry it from his fingers and fling it across the room and he gets all of two seconds to think--okay, okay, what now, pressure on the wounds--before the vibranium arm disappears out of sight, reappears with another fucking gun jesus Barnes where do you keep these things and turns it on himself, apparently dead set on taking all his limbs out of action.
Sam lunges for it, puts a hand directly over the muzzle because clearly half a lifetime in the forces isn’t enough to train the stupid out of him, but it works because Bucky doesn’t pull the trigger, doesn’t shoot himself in the arm through Sam’s hand, thank christ, and as Sam disentangles the weapon he thinks this time for sure he’s won but Bucky with two working limbs is a law unto himself and when Sam turns back there’s a dagger in Bucky’s flesh hand and he flips it, expertly, so the pommel is in his palm and the blade is facing inward and Sam can literally hear the words You’re not that stupid, are you in his head but yes, yep, yes Bucky Barnes fucking is, because he snaps his arm closed, right as Sam’s reaching for him, and the blade sinks into his biceps and Bucky makes a horrid gurgling sound that might’ve been a laugh if it weren’t so wet and didn’t accompany three life-threatening injuries. Three life-threatening, self-inflicted injuries.
Sam throws himself over Bucky’s body, slapping at the hand holding the knife and snarling. Trying to remember what the protocol is for Bucky going Winter Soldier on a mission, if that’s what this is. Cut and run, probably.
“I’m done,” Bucky gasps, letting go of the knife--still buried firmly in his right biceps--and slumping further down the wall. He peers at his vibranium arm like he distrusts it, but doesn’t try to, like, rip it off or anything. Apparently four holey limbs is a step too far. “I’m done,” Bucky keeps saying, eyes slipping shut. “I’m done, you’re safe now.”
“Oh I’m safe now,” Sam near-yells, incredulous and horrified and probably in shock himself. He’s ridding Bucky of his other weapons with one hand and packing bandages into the closest bullet wound with the other, though he doesn’t even remember pulling supplies out of the med kit. He’s got such reckless, masochistic friends that the first sight of blood automatically triggers his anti-idiot medic routine. The arm wound isn’t bleeding too bad, what with being stopped up by the knife Bucky stabbed himself with. But the first leg wound is a through-and-through and it’s making the room look like the set of a horror film. He packs in more gauze, kinda hates himself for struggling a little to feel sympathy when Bucky lurches and moans and nearly grabs Sam’s wrist in self-defense.
“If you didn’t want to suffer, you probably shouldn’t’ve shot yourself,” Sam points out. After all, there’s no way to be gentle about literally shoving gauze inside someone’s body.
“Can’t chase you now,” Bucky grits, like somehow that explains things. “But I still-- My left arm.” Sam would bet the family boat Bucky’d be detaching that arm right now if he knew how Ayo had done it. “You’re not safe. I can still--” He chokes on whatever he was going to say next as Sam stuffs more gauze into his thigh.
Sam tries to pretend he doesn’t care. “You can still what, Buck?” He finishes packing the first bullet wound and starts wrapping a pressure bandage around it. Bucky’s leg jerks and his eyes clamp shut; Sam’s still not exactly being gentle, and the noise escaping from behind Bucky’s clenched teeth makes Sam want to pack a pile of gauze in his face. “Why would you chase me? Why did you shoot yourself?”
Bucky’s left hand reaches toward Sam, flops back down without making contact. “Sam, you gotta--” His head rolls against the wall. “I can already feel it. You gotta hurry…”
“I am hurrying,” Sam snaps. “No one warned me I was going to be the one-man bullet-hole corker when I got out of bed this morning.”
“I can feel it,” Bucky says again, metal arm whirring.
Seeing as Sam’s busy squeezing the bejesus out of the through-and-through with cravats, “You damn well better be able to feel it, or we got bigger problems than I realized.”
“No, not--” Bucky gasps, grimaces. Good, Sam thinks meanly. You deserve to feel it, you fucking crazy-ass son of a bitch. “Not that, the-- the other--” He waves haphazardly at his midsection. At his glowing midsection.
Shit .
“Feel what, exactly?” Sam asks carefully. He’s starting to get a really bad feeling about all of this. Like, really, really bad. Like, apologize-to-Bucky-for-being-an-asshole bad.
He lifts Bucky’s shirt, studies the wound. He doesn’t know how to explain it, but the glow is unfriendly. Actively malicious, somehow. And beneath the glow, he realizes the wound is cauterized. Some kind of energy weapon, then? Bucky hisses, and Sam cannot with this man.
“You know what hit you, don’t you.”
Bucky nods, but doesn’t elaborate.
“You gonna share with the class?”
Bucky does not, in fact, share with the class. Sam drops the hem of his shirt in disgust and rips open the tac pants over the second bullet hole. There’s no exit wound. Great. “Is it zombies?” Sam says as he shoves gauze into the second hole. He can feel the bullet in there, misshapen and sharp; it’s way too dangerous to remove in the field, so all he can do is hope it’s corking up more blood than it’s slicing out. “It’s zombies, isn’t it. You’re gonna turn into a fucking flesh-eating zombie.” He hates that he actually kind of sort of believes that’s possible; this universe is full of fucked-up surprises. And at this rate Sam will still be packing gauze by the time Bucky gets the munchies.
“It’s not zo-- Aah!” Bucky lurches so hard he knocks Sam on his ass. “Sorry,” he pants, slowly settling his rigid body back against the wall, slipping down further in an actual literal smear of his own blood. “Sorry. ‘M’ sorry.”
“Bullet’s lodged in your femur,” Sam says, not entirely without sympathy. “It’s probably pressing on a nerve. Strap in, Buck, cos I can’t get it out and I gotta finish this.”
Bucky’s metal hand clenches around his leg above the bullet wound. “Hurry,” he pants, “you’ve gotta… you gotta…” He runs out of steam, head tilting back against the wall, eyes closing.
Sam almost feels bad enough not to snark, “Nah. Figured I’d take my time and let you bleed to death.”
“Gotta get away from me,” Bucky murmurs, head still back, eyes still closed. “I don’t wanna hurt you, I can’t--”
“You couldn’t hurt a fly right now,” Sam points out as he stuffs a final wad of gauze into the second bullet hole and starts on the pressure bandage. He deliberately chooses not to consider why Bucky thinks he’s gonna hurt Sam.
Bucky pries his hand off his leg and grabs Sam’s wrist instead. Sam looks down in surprise, looks back up again; Bucky’s eyes are open and clear and staring at him with alarming intensity.
“I can, and I will.” As if to prove his point, his hand tightens until Sam could swear his bones creak; he shouts, but Bucky’s already gentled his grip. Sam tries to jerk away, but Bucky doesn’t let him. “Finish quick,” he demands. “Go. Come back for me in four hours. I’ll be fine.”
Sam yanks his arm free and seriously considers using it to beat some sense into Bucky. “You are not fine. You will not be fine if I leave you. We are getting out of here, together, just as soon as I finish plugging your leaks, you hear me?”
He ties off the cravat around Bucky’s thigh, then grabs more gauze, goes to pack it around the knife in Bucky’s right arm. But Bucky’s faster, metal hand snaking out and the next thing Sam knows Bucky’s screaming and blood is cascading down his arm and the very gory blade of the knife is at Sam’s throat.
Sam swallows very, very carefully. “Easy,” he says. “The fight’s over. I’m your friend.”
“Listen to me, Sam.” Bucky’s eyes are watering and his chest is heaving but the hand holding the knife is dead steady. “This wound,” his eyes dart to his stomach, back to Sam’s face. “The weapon, it’s…” He slides another inch down the wall, breathes fast and noisy, but his hand on the weapon doesn’t waver.
“Just…” Sam holds his hands out, one palm open, the other full of gauze. “You’re bleeding bad, Bucky, why don’t you let me patch that up.”
Bucky nods, but the knife’s still at Sam’s throat; Sam does what he can without moving his head, gets pressure on the entrance wound but can’t reach the exit.
“It’s mind control,” Bucky grunts. “I can feel--” He moans, squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t fight it much longer, Sam, I-- I ca--” He pries his eyes open, stares Sam down with an intensity that makes Sam as breathless as Bucky. “Two minutes, three tops. If you’re still here, if I can still grab you, I’m gonna…” He swallows again, face crumpling like he’s gonna cry, which--no. What the fuck. “I’m gonna hurt you, Sam.”
“You’re literally bleeding out,” Sam says, trying to inch around Bucky’s blade.
“No. You don’t-- Sam you don’t get it, I’m gonna--”
Sam gets his hand round the back of Bucky’s biceps and uses his fingertips to dig gauze against where he’s pretty sure the tip of the blade came out and Bucky’s sentence ends on a scream. Sam has half an instant to realize maybe that wasn’t the best idea what with the knife at his throat, but Bucky’s left hand never wavers.
“You’re gonna what?” Sam prompts, relieved, pushing his luck and leaning as far into the blade on his throat as he dares to start winding a bandage around Bucky’s arm.
“I’m--” Bucky says, gasping. “I’m gonna. Gonna hold you down. Make you--” He shudders, arches under Sam’s hands. “You won’t be able to stop me.”
“I can hold my own in a fight against a one-armed sieve,” Sam says, finishing Bucky’s arm and going back to the bandages on Bucky’s legs to check that they’re holding. Except there’s… There’s something wrong. Bucky’s tac pants are ripped open over both wounds so the fabric is bunched weird around his crotch but even that doesn’t explain the jut of something hard underneath.
“Bucky--” Sam starts to say (I’m gonna hold you down. Make you) and then there’s a metal hand against his sternum and he’s flying backward, hits the far wall with enough force to knock the wind right out of him and on the other side of the room Bucky’s panting, pale as a ghost but he stares Sam down anyway.
“Go wait in the jet, Sam. Four hours. Lock the door. I shouldn’t be able to follow but if I do make it out there, no matter what I say, don’t believe me, and don’t let me in.”
Sam gets unsteadily to his feet, feels rattled in more ways than one. HYDRA’s freaky neon dispenser didn’t make Bucky hurt himself; Bucky hurt himself to protect Sam. “Bucky,” he says again, takes half a step forward and then stops in his tracks because Bucky makes an animal sound, half shout, and something changes in his eyes and the metal hand stops gripping his thigh and instead plants itself in the floor. Literally in it, fingertips digging right through the concrete. And he hauls himself one bloody smear-length forward.
“Wait,” Sam says, but Bucky’s fingers yank free of the floor and dig in again, dragging his bleeding body behind it. His other arm flops forward like it’s got half a mind to help out, like it’s trying to get to Sam too, and, “Wait!” Sam says again, more urgent. “You’ll hurt yourself!” And he takes another step forward, hands out in front of him and--
“Sam,” Bucky says, except he doesn’t say it, say it. He says it some other way. Says it way down deep in the pit of his belly and his mouth hangs open at the end of Sam’s name and he digs another fistful out of the floor and drags himself another foot forward and he’s not--human, like this. He doesn’t look human, blood smeared all the way back to the puddle he’s leaving behind, legs kicking out behind like fish in the sun and Sam stumbles a quick step back, feels awful for doing it but can’t help taking another, this time toward the door. The very sturdy, locking steel door.
“What the hell is going on,” he says, taking one more step toward the door for every bloody foot forward Bucky gains on him.
“Help me,” Bucky says, shakes his head, claws forward. “I need--”
“You need a hospital,” Sam insists, and Bucky shakes his head again, like a dog trying to rid itself of a pesky fly.
“Won’t help,” he says, sounding more like himself, though he doesn’t stop dragging his body toward where Sam’s quickly backing himself against the wall.
“The miracles of modern medicine may surprise you,” Sam tells him, voice sounding too high even to him, and then the door is pressing into the backs of his shoulders.
“You only have a few seconds,” Bucky tells him. “I can’t stop it. Sam.” He looks up. Eyes glazed with more than just blood loss. “Lock the door behind you,” he says. “Don’t come back no matter what you hear.” Then he shakes his head again and, “Sam,” he repeats, but it’s the other way, it’s Sam’s name from somewhere more than just his mouth and Sam can’t stop thinking about the tent of something hard beneath Bucky’s tac pants, the open-mouthed way he pants after Sam’s name, gonna hold you down and make you, and something tickles at the back of his mind, a hair’s breadth beyond his reach, and he just, he just--
“This can’t be happening,” he says, and grips the doorknob behind his back. “Bucky,” he begs. “Come on, man. Get a hold of yourself.”
“Gonna get a hold of you,” Bucky mumbles, slurring into the floor as he drags himself over it. “Gonna fuck you proper.”
Sam yanks the door open so fast he practically falls through it, slamming it closed behind him and for a moment he thinks the building’s coming down around his ears but that’s not what that awful sound is…
That’s Bucky, yelling. Wailing.
“Sam!” he’s crying out. “Don’t, don’t leave me here!” Something thumps against the door and Sam turns the lock, then stumbles backward down the hallway, watching the door rattle in its sturdy steel frame as Bucky’s yelling increases in volume, turning into a scream that has Sam slapping hands over his ears. “Please!” Bucky’s begging. “Sam! You promised, Sam, please!”
“This isn’t you, Buck,” Sam shouts back, even though what he really wants to do is cry. This can’t be happening. None of this can be happening. When did HYDRA start making glowing weapons that can turn a supersoldier into a horny pincushion? And just when exactly did Sam promise to serve as willing fleshlight for said horny pincushion? He’s pretty sure he would’ve remembered something like that...
“Sam!”
“Four hours!” Sam yells. “You literally shot yourself to keep me away from you, remember? You can make it four hours!”
“I ca-- I can’t,” Bucky moans. The door rattles halfheartedly. “It hurts, Sam, please. I need you.” More rattling, another desperate, tortured moan. “You can stop it, Sam, you can-- Gah, it hurts, it’s killing me, please!”
One final rattle and thud, like Bucky’s collapsed against the other side of the door. The sounds coming through are ripping Sam’s chest to pieces; if he didn’t know better, he’d swear Bucky was sobbing.
Shit. Shit shit shit. He can’t… he can’t leave Bucky alone like this. Suffering and scared and in thrall of… of whatever the fuck that weapon did to him.
Fuck being the operative word, Sam’s pretty sure. God knows he’s seen weirder shit since Steve came into his life. God knows HYDRA’s done more twisted shit than this.
Bucky screams again like someone’s hooked a car battery to his bullet holes, agony so palpable Sam’s sick with it. But Bucky wanted him gone. Begged him to go no matter what he heard. Bucky knew what that weapon would do to him. Was willing to endure it to protect Sam.
“I know you’re out there, Sam,” Bucky moans. “Please. You can make it stop. I can’t--” Another one of those car-battery screams, and then he cuts off on what is absolutely, unmistakably a sob. “I can’t-- I can’t do it, Sam. It’s too much… I don’t wanna die like this. Please.”
It’s not really gonna kill him, right? Bucky wouldn’t… he wouldn’t die to spare Sam four hours of… well. But whatever the weapon’s doing to him, it’s clearly torture, no question about that, not with the way the toughest son of a bitch Sam’s ever known is literally crying for help.
Every part of Sam aches to give him that help. But when Bucky was lucid… When he knew what was coming, he didn’t want Sam. Hell, he’s spent the last three months not wanting to even be near Sam. Of course he doesn’t want to get all his horny dials turned up to eleven with only Wilson on the menu.
But…
He’s in agony in there. He’s in literal, audible agony. He could dislodge Sam’s bandages any second and bleed out and Sam would have no idea from the safety of the quinjet.
The safety Bucky bought him with two bullets and a knife. The safety--the sacrifice--that Sam should respect.
Bucky screams again, voice cracking halfway through. Somehow, that weapon’s given Bucky the biggest, most painful case of blue balls in all of human history, and it’s not like Sam goes around fending off sex curses in his work hours, but he’s spent enough time with aliens and witches and gods--actual literal gods--to know that sometimes shit that shouldn’t exist just does. So okay. Bucky’s been hit by a blue-ballifier and needs someone to bend over and think of America to make it Go Away. Of course it’s just Sam’s Life Now that he’s the only one around who can help.
Oh god. He’s really thinking about it, isn’t he? He’s really thinking about--ahem-- helping.
Well, it’s not like he’s never, you know, entertained the idea of what Bucky might look like under all those buckles and kevlar plates. (Like a Roman fucking statue, probably.) (Not that Sam’s thought about it a thousand times or anything.) (A Roman fucking swiss cheese statue, but still.) Not like he’s never entertained the idea of maybe seeing if Bucky might be up for some benefits with their friendship. Not like he doesn’t love the big lug enough to take one (or two, or three) for him--metaphorically or otherwise. And it doesn’t exactly hurt that Bucky is, well. Frankly kinda ridiculously fucking beautiful. Even though Sam knows that’s not… That’s not what this is going to be. From the sounds Bucky’s making, this isn’t going to be lovemaking. But Bucky’s achingly kindhearted. When he’s not a sex-dart pincushion. And really just a big ol’ softie under all that vibranium and scowling. And god knows he’s suffered enough--more than enough--for ten lifetimes, let alone one.
And sure, maybe Bucky really can’t control himself under its influence, but if he tries anything too hinky, it’s not like Sam can’t jam a finger in a bullet hole and take him down.
He walks back down the hallway and hesitates in front of the steel door. From this close he can hear every tiny hitching sob on the other side. He puts his forehead on the metal and closes his eyes.
Bucky doesn’t want this.
Or, to be more precise, Bucky didn’t want this. Not when he was lucid enough to make that decision. So if Sam does this… If Sam opens this door, there won’t be any word for what happens next except rape. He’s choosing to rape his best friend. He’s choosing to ignore what Bucky wanted.
But he’s doing it to maybe save his life. Does that make it better?
Doesn’t matter.
At least it can’t get too, ah, athletic with the blood loss and bullet holes to stop Bucky from wrecking Sam completely. Besides, whatever happens, it’ll hurt less than knowing Bucky’s writhing in agony, alone and abandoned and begging for help that won’t come.
Sam sucks in a single deep breath, sends up a prayer to whichever god oversees horny supersoldier sex curses, and unlocks the door.