Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I thought you said he’s grumpy and surly and has a staring problem,” Sarah says, complete with accusatory side-eye. “That man does not look grumpy and surly to me.”

Sam has to concede that in this particular moment, Sarah is right. Bucky looks the furthest thing possible from grumpy and surly right now: he’s in evidently animated conversation with Carlos and Mrs. Grace the librarian and Marie from down the road, and a smile is never far from Bucky’s face. Hell, as Sam watches, Bucky laughs at something Mrs. Grace says, and Sam feels about as dizzy and disoriented as if he’s just been knocked on the head and then spun around, because what the hell. It should not be possible for Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier, to look this damn adorable, and it should be even less possible for him to look kind of beautiful with the way uncomplicated joy lights him up. It definitely should not be possible for Bucky Barnes to look like he belongs here, on Delacroix’s docks, surrounded by Sam’s family and community, and yet, Bucky indisputably does look like he belongs here.

“He is grumpy and surly,” Sam insists, despite all the current evidence to the contrary, and Sarah turns to fully face him, eyebrow of disbelief fully raised. 

“He was perfectly polite and sweet when he came down to help with the boat,” she says.

“He was on his best behavior then! He was trying to impress you!”

Because Bucky had been a model house guest then, and Sam had been both amused and not a little touched by Bucky’s earnest courtesy. He’d insisted on doing the dishes every time Sarah or Sam had cooked, and while Sarah normally wouldn’t have let a guest anywhere near a full sink, Bucky had somehow managed it with some real politeness jiujitsu that had involved an awful lot of awkwardly sincere flattery. And only after he’d gone back to New York had Sam and Sarah noticed that Bucky had left a trail of small household repairs in his wake: the no-longer leaky shower head, a loose board on the house’s dock replaced, the shed’s lock cleaned of rust until it shone. Sam had read the gestures as thanks and apologies all in one—wholly unnecessary after his help with the boat and his actual using-his-words apology—and muttered to Sarah about how extra Bucky was being.

“Uh huh,” says Sarah now.

“It’s—this is a party, he must just be in a very rare good mood or whatever,” Sam insists. He eyes the glass Carlos passes over to Bucky with suspicion. “Or maybe the moonshine is a bit too strong.”

“Sure,” drawls Sarah. “Well, he’s welcome to stay, you know. I cleared out some space in the den for a proper daybed, so…” she trails off with a significant look that Sam refuses to decipher.

Of course Bucky’s welcome to stay. But given that so far, Bucky’s pretty much only shown up for missions and mission-adjacent contexts, even if he had stuck around to help with the boat, Sam’s not going to hold his breath waiting for Bucky to stay for much longer than a few days. Sam supposes he ought to consider it progress that nowadays, he doesn’t have to chase Bucky around the globe, and also he even mostly answers Sam’s texts now.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, and starts to make his way through the crowd towards Bucky.

It takes Sam a while to get there, what with all the people who stop to talk to him, but eventually Sam gets close enough to hear Bucky’s laugh, a surprisingly boyish sound, almost intolerably sweet with the way Bucky’s whole face scrunches up. This is the first time Sam has actually heard Bucky laugh, Sam realizes. Shit, what kind of moonshine is Carlos serving up?

But when Sam finally sidles up to Bucky, Bucky’s stance is steady, his eyes clear as blue skies and just as sunny.

“Hey Buck, having a good time?” 

At close range, Bucky’s smile is kind of a lot to deal with. Sam slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulders out of sheer self-preservation, and Bucky leans in, and for some reason, that small, probably reflexive gesture fills Sam’s heart up to bursting, a warmth so expansive it fills his lungs and his throat and his eyes.

I finally found you, thinks Sam, the realization bubbling over with giddy wonder. I found you, I found you, I found you.

“Yeah, of course I am,” says Bucky, still smiling over at Sam, oblivious to Sam’s long-awaited victory. “Who wouldn’t be? Good food, good company, and a beautiful view,” he says, gesturing out towards the ocean.

Marie laughs and raises her glass in a toast. “Here here, well said!”

“I’ll drink to that!” says Carlos.

Someone passes a glass to Sam and everyone drinks to that with a cheer. Sam’s just glad the sound covers up his cough, because Christ, Carlos is not fucking around with his moonshine.

“Yeah, it’s pretty strong stuff,” says Bucky.

“It making a dent for you?” Sam asks, sounding totally normal, thank fuck. He takes another much more measured sip as the burn of the alcohol settles into a happy simmer all along his throat and into his gut.

“Nah,” says Bucky, still grinning. “Pretty sure I’d need a couple gallons of pure ethanol for that.”

“Oh, so you’re just high on life right now then, huh?”

Bucky shrugs, and Sam belatedly realizes that he’s still got his arm around Bucky, but Bucky makes no move to break loose from Sam’s hold. There’s absolutely no tension in his frame, Sam realizes, none of the reserve or caution that Sam’s become so accustomed to in Bucky’s body language.

“This is the first party I’ve been to in about 80 years, Sam. It’s just really nice to have a good time.”

Shit. Now Sam kind of feels like an asshole about being so surprised by Bucky’s new cheerfulness. No wonder Bucky’s in a rare good mood if this is the first real party he’s been to since the war.

“What, Sharon’s thing in Madripoor didn’t count?” Sam jokes, and Bucky casts him a wry sidelong glance.

“Yeah, no. That wasn’t my kind of party. This is more my speed.”

“Well, stick around here for a little bit longer, then,” Sam says. “We’ve got plenty more cookouts and parties and crawfish boils in store for you.”

“I’d like that,” says Bucky softly.

In the absence of any parties, Sam fully expects and mentally prepares himself for Bucky’s usual surly disposition to return during the rest of his stay in Delacroix. The fact that he’s even sticking around is something of a surprise; Sam had fully expected him to walk off into the sunset with a smile and a sincere call me if you need backup. Which would have been fine, or whatever. It’s not like Bucky and the shield are a package deal, and it’s not like Sam needs him to stay close.

But Bucky happens to be there in the living room when Sam takes a call from Rhodey, and who needs speaker phone when you’ve got super soldier hearing, so Bucky hears it when Sam tells Rhodey that yeah, he’ll finally, officially join the Avengers, and he definitely also hears it when Rhodey asks, “And what about your cyborg sidekick?” because Bucky meets Sam’s eyes and says, “Not a sidekick, but uh, yeah, sure, I’m in. Someone’s gotta watch this guy’s back.”

Sam can’t deny that he’s relieved. Steve’s gone, Natasha’s dead, and Wanda’s AWOL; Rhodey and even Torres still need to answer to the Air Force and the Pentagon, Barton and Banner are out of the game, Thor’s in space, and T’Challa has a country to run. Even Ant-Man has his own thing going on. Sam isn’t exactly over-burdened with superhero allies here, is the point, and the thought of being Captain goddamned America on his own…Bucky’s not wrong. Someone needs to watch his back. Maybe other superheroes can get by solo, but a Black Captain America? Sam’s not naive, and he’s not dumb. Regularly going out in the field alone would be dangerous.

And it’s not like Sam wants to do this alone, either.

So he grins at Bucky and says, “Aww, cyborg sidekick is so catchy though.”

Bucky’s glower isn’t particularly convincing with the way his lips twitch up. “Cyborg partner,” he counters.

Partner feels like a big step, if Sam’s being honest, but begin as you mean to go on and all that. And teammate’s downright presumptuous given that it’s just the two of them for now.

“Pain-in-the-ass cyborg partner,” Sam corrects, and Bucky just smirks, irritatingly smug.

“Good,” says Rhodey, pointedly ignoring their nonsense. “Maybe you two can keep each other out of trouble.”

After Rhodey says his goodbyes, Sam ends the call and looks over at Bucky. “So you’re in, huh?”

“Guess so,” says Bucky. Sam fully expects his next words to be some variation on bye, call me when the Avengers are up and running again, but instead, Bucky says, “We should probably start training together.”

“Yeah, probably,” Sam agrees tentatively, not sure where Bucky’s going with this. “Where, though?The new Compound’s still under construction.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows in a duh kind of expression. “Here’s fine. I can stick around for a while. If you and Sarah will have me that is,” he says, and an uncertain furrow takes up residence on his forehead as he studies Sam. “I can probably find another place to stay…?“

“Man, shut up, of course you can stay with us,” says Sam, buoyant with a surprising amount of relief. He reels Bucky in for a quick backslap and side hug, and Bucky returns the gesture with a careful hesitancy that Sam’s hoping to train him out of. “Who else am I gonna put on shield retrieval duty? Because let me tell you, I am sick of running after that thing when I don’t get the rebound right, and Sarah won’t let Cass and AJ help.”

“Oh, is that how I’m earning my keep?” says Bucky with a grin, one of those bright and flashing smiles that’s been more and more frequent lately. More and more of a welcome surprise, too, Sam’s willing to admit, aiming his own smile right back at Bucky.

“Yup. Shield catching duty in exchange for room and board at Chez Wilson.”

“Sounds like a bargain to me,” says Bucky, still grinning.

So ostensibly, Bucky’s sticking around Delacroix to train with Sam for a few weeks while they wait on the copious bureaucracy of the GRC and World Security Council to give the official go ahead to the new and improved Avengers Initiative headed up by Rhodey, Maria Hill, and Pepper Potts-Stark. In actuality, they spend a few hours training, and then spend the rest of the day helping out around Delacroix, looking after AJ and Cass, running errands for Sarah, or on incredibly boring conference calls. Sam again expects Bucky’s usual surliness to return in force, but it mostly doesn’t. Sure, Bucky’s pretty hilariously grouchy in the mornings, and his general air of old-man grumpiness is only slightly diminished. Complaining might just be one of Bucky’s superpowers, but honestly, he seems to have some fun doing it, so Sam’s not sure it’s actually a sign of Bucky being in a bad mood so much as it’s his default state of being. 

Sam also expects Bucky to make himself scarce for all the boring, bureaucratic bullshit, but he sticks around for all that. Granted, he is alternately pretty dour and blank-faced on the conference calls—I’m an NCO, I’m not here to sit in meetings, I’m here to get shit done, is what he tells Sam after an especially useless call about instituting yet more paperwork requirements for any as yet entirely hypothetical planned Avengers missions—but he dutifully joins all of the calls and he even takes notes. The only thing Bucky explicitly won’t help with is PR.

“Feel like asking the ex-assassin to do any PR is automatically bad PR,” he says wryly.

“I don’t know, there are people with worse PR problems who still regularly mouth off on Twitter,” Sam says, and Bucky just snorts.

If you set aside his professionally intimidating demeanor and the habitual grumpiness though, Bucky’s actually pretty cheerful in a calm and un-showy kind of way. His smiles come freely and frequently, he chats easily with Sarah, and his patience and willingness to play with Cass and AJ is seemingly boundless. He’s even quickly endearing himself to all of Delacroix with his old-fashioned courtesy. If he wasn’t still giving Sam plenty of shit with that smart mouth of his, especially during training, Sam would start seriously wondering about pod people and some kind of benign brainwashing.

Even so, this version of Bucky is kind of freaking Sam out. There has to be a catch.

“I don’t get it,” he says, as he and Sarah work on getting dinner ready while Bucky’s out in the yard keeping the boys occupied. “I do not understand what happened to the guy who communicated mostly in glares and complaining.”

He glances out of the kitchen window and Jesus Christ, Bucky is playing catch with the boys. It’s the most absurdly wholesome sight. If Sam went back in time to tell the 2015 version of himself who’d been trawling through various ruined HYDRA bases for this man that less than ten years later he’d be playing catch with Sam’s nephews, Sam’s past self would have laughed in present-Sam’s face and then had him committed. Never mind that there’s still a small part of present-Sam that’s constantly doing a mental victory lap all, I found him!

“Uh huh,” says Sarah. “Yeah, this guy is so grumpy and surly and broody, you were so right, Samuel.”

“Literally just this morning at breakfast, he complained at length about how horribly expensive the kids’ breakfast cereal is, that was a full-on grumpy old man rant,” Sam says.

Sarah waves a spoon dismissively. “Okay, yeah, but that’s normal grumpy, and the damn cereal really is way too expensive. You were making it sound like the man is a storm cloud in human form, all brooding and ominous.”

“He is,” Sam insists. Sarah’s answer to this is a meaningful stare out into the yard, where Bucky is enthusiastically cheering on Cass’s attempts at pitching a fast ball. He’s wearing a baseball tee and everything, and it stretches very appealingly across his broad shoulders. “Or—he was,” Sam corrects. “And like, I know he was in therapy and all, but I met his therapist, she was kind of awful. This cannot be personal growth or something. Something’s going on.”

“Mmhmm,” Sarah hums, turning back to the pot simmering away on the stove. “Remind me, most of the time you two spent together before this, it was…”

“Fighting aliens, fighting each other, fighting our fellow superheroes, fighting super soldiers, fleeing arrest…you know, superhero stuff.”

“Right, right. And would you call those good times? Because the impression I got from you was that those were, collectively, some truly stressful days what with all the running for your lives and trying to prevent the apocalypse and what not.”

“What are you getting at?” Sam asks, and Sarah rolls her eyes. She sets a lid on the pot then turns to give him her full, judgey attention.

“Sam. If someone met me only on, I don’t know, the days after a Cat 4 hurricane has rolled in and my baby hasn’t slept the night through in two weeks and also my husband just died, and they say, ‘wow, that Sarah Wilson sure is a hot mess of a person,’ would you say they know me?”

“No, of course not, that’s not exactly you at your best—“ Sam protests, before he catches onto Sarah’s point. “Okay, I see what you’re getting at here. But that’s not—we’ve worked together, and he’s mostly been a dick. A competent dick who has my back, but still a dick.”

Sam omits those first few days after they came back to life, when they’d stuck close to each other out of sheer shell-shocked confusion, both of them adrift among all the confusing changes the last five years had wrought. Sam and Bucky hadn’t talked much then, sure, but they’d looked out for each other. Bucky had quietly made sure Sam ate and slept, and Sam had kept an edgy Bucky company in the crowds of familiar and unfamiliar faces in the wake of the battle. There’d been some unspoken accord between them, and Sam remembers, suddenly, that there’d been a few brief, bright flashes of this happier Bucky even then.

“Yeah, well, far as I can tell, you’ve only seen Bucky either at his worst for reasons beyond his control on account of all the, you know, brainwashing and trauma, or at his most stressed out, pretty much,” Sarah concludes.

“I saw him in Wakanda a few times, and at a couple events after the battle with Thanos,” says Sam, despite a sneaking suspicion that Sarah is right. “And I texted him and he barely answered me!”

But those Wakanda visits had been brief, and Bucky had mostly still been in the sleeping 20 hours a day stage of his post-cryostasis and un-brainwashing recovery. They hadn’t exactly talked much beyond teasing and pleasantries. And Sam’s texts had been kind of perfunctory check-ins, because Sam had been too busy dealing with his own shit to worry much about Bucky’s. And Sam’s not about to forget also all of Bucky’s asshole behavior during the whole Flagsmasher mess, but he’s willing to forgive it. Bucky’s sincere apology and help with the boat make all that water under the bridge now as far as Sam’s concerned. However annoying he may be, Bucky shows up and puts in the work when it really matters, and that honestly counts for a lot.

Shit, maybe Sarah’s right. Maybe he has only seen Bucky at his worst and most depressed and stressed out, and this more cheerful and steady version of Bucky is closer to who he really is. It’s certainly closer to the Bucky Steve had always waxed rhapsodic about.

“Maybe he’s just in a better place now,” Sarah says, an unwitting echo of Sam’s own thoughts. “You both are. So I figure this goes both ways.”

Sam narrows his eyes at her. “What goes both ways?” he asks, and Sarah sighs and shakes her head.

“The only seeing each other in insanely stressful situations thing, which seems like a good reason to offer each other some grace now that things are calmer. You both have a chance to get to know each other better without worrying about getting shot at or killed by aliens now, and Bucky seems like a good man who’s doing his best. Give him a chance, Sam, and give yourself one too.”

Sam’s not the one who needs a chance here, as far as he’s concerned.

“He’s basically my superhero partner and he’s currently living with us, I am obviously giving him a chance,” Sam counters.

“That’s not what I—” Sarah starts, then cuts herself off with a sigh. “If you say so.”

Sam knows a hell of a lot about James Buchanan Barnes, is the thing, no matter what Sarah says about how he ought to get to know Bucky better. Not just what’s in the history books, and not just the horrors in HYDRA’s Winter Soldier files, but Sam knows a lot about Bucky himself, because Sam spent two years looking for Bucky, and then he spent two years on the run with Steve, and when Steve got going, he could not. shut up. about Bucky.

So Sam knows that Bucky was a welterweight boxing champ, and he knows that Bucky came second place in some local swing dancing competition. He knows that Bucky apparently doted on his little sisters, and that he was close with his parents, though he’d sometimes been at odds with his dad. He knows that Bucky’s got a sweet tooth, that he hates beets, that he loves pancakes. He knows about all the times Bucky finished a fight Steve started, or vice versa. He knows that Bucky’s good at math, and that he’s the only reason Steve passed any of his high school math classes at all, and he knows that Bucky likes to read science fiction and fantasy, and also, surprisingly, poetry. Sam knows all that and more besides, so much that he’s probably forgotten some of it.

The Bucky Steve talked about at such length was generous and kind and brave and smart, the life of the party and the heart of the team, stubborn to a fault and occasionally moody, but quick to forgive and patient about the things that mattered. Steve had clearly idolized and adored Bucky, and his heart had never quite caught up to the reality that the golden boy Bucky of his treasured memories was long gone, and not just thanks to the war or HYDRA. Even without accounting for horrific amounts of trauma, no one could stay on a pedestal like that.

And anyway, literally none of Steve’s odes to Bucky’s greatness had been relevant to Sam in trying to track Bucky down in those years after Insight. Some of it’s more relevant now—the stubborn and moody part definitely is. But the rest of it…well, maybe Sam’s only now starting to see, a little bit, the Bucky Steve had loved and damn-near hero worshipped. Maybe Sarah’s right that Sam still needs to get to know Bucky.

Bucky fits into the Delacroix community far better than Sam would have ever expected for a white boy from the 40s. Sam’s inclined to credit this to Bucky’s time in Wakanda at first, until he remembers a couple of the times he’d gotten close to catching up to Bucky while he was on the run. Sam had asked around after him, and assorted neighbors and shop owners’ collective impression of Bucky had been: quiet, very polite, and always willing to lend a hand with sundry errands or favors, especially for older folks. He’s the same here in Delacroix, though he’s considerably less quiet, and he’s rapidly charming the entire populace. Sam often finds Bucky shooting the shit with Carlos and the guys at the docks as Bucky works on fixing or lifting something or another for anyone who asks.

“It’s like y’all have your own personal crane and forklift combined into one human man,” Sam remarks one day. “Really putting Bucky’s super powers to good use here, gentlemen.”

“Is that sarcasm I detect, Samuel?” asks Bucky with the easy, bright grin that’s already becoming comfortingly familiar despite how it pretty much makes Sam’s stomach flutter a bit every time. Bucky’s always been distractingly handsome—Sam has eyes, okay, not that he intends to make a move or anything—but happy and distractingly handsome turns out to be a way better look on Bucky than stoic and broodingly handsome. “Or is it maybe…jealousy?”

Sam snorts. “Jealous of being put to work on every rickety old boat in this marina? No way.”

Sam is not jealous. He doesn’t actually much want to spend his time hanging around the docks and marina fishing and fixing the various broken down boats. It’s just that it stings, a bit, how no one expects him to contribute to the family business. Sam’s been gone a while, sure, but this boat, fishing in these waters, feeding this community—that’s all his family legacy too, not only Sarah’s. And yet when Sam had called around the community to help with the Paul & Darlene, damn near every person had sounded at least somewhat surprised that it was Sam doing the calling, that it was Sam who wanted to save the boat too, and not just Sarah.

“Hey now, Sam, if you had a useful superpower like Bucky here’s super strength, we’d be happy to put you to work too,” says Carlos. “But if we got any need for flying, we’ll be sure to call you up!”

Sam laughs along with the guys on his way to the Paul & Darlene, and Bucky falls in step with him once he’s smoothly disentangled himself from the gaggle of Delacroix old-timers.

“So what needs fixing today?” asks Bucky.

“Nothing, for once,” Sam tells him. “Sarah just asked me if I could check out one of the routes she’s considering for chartered tours, make sure it’s clear and safe and all.”

It’d be good to have an additional revenue stream when it’s not shrimp season, and Sarah’s not wrong that even a few tours in the shrimping off-season would make the endeavor worthwhile.

“You want some company?” asks Bucky.

“Sure. You can pretend to be a city slicker tourist on one of our tours, let me get in some tour guide practice.”

“Pretend?” says Bucky with a grin. “Awfully kind of you to assume I’d be pretending.”

Sam laughs and Bucky’s grin widens a tick. “Hey now, you’re a cut above a city slicker tourist by now, Buck.”

“What an honor.”

They shoot the shit while Sam navigates the boat out into open waters, and after he’s apparently gotten his fill of the view, Bucky joins Sam in the cabin.

“Hey, do you know how to steer a boat?” Sam asks.

He knows Bucky can operate all kinds of vehicles on land and in the air, but outside the Paul & Darlene, they haven’t exactly spent a lot of time out on the open water in a work context or otherwise.

“Probably,” says Bucky.

“Yeah, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Sam says, then gestures Bucky over. “C’mere, you should know the basics at least. Just don’t tear the ship’s wheel off like you did with my car’s steering wheel.”

“I’ve apologized for that, multiple times even, are you ever gonna let me live it down—”

“No! Now pay attention, this is one vehicle you are definitely not allowed to destroy.”

Sam goes over the controls with him, and in the close space of the cabin, that means they’re standing hip to hip, and it feels natural to put a hand on Bucky’s broad back or around his shoulders as Sam shows him the basics of nautical navigation. Bucky picks it all up quickly, which isn’t a surprise. What is a small surprise is Bucky’s anxious vigilance about hitting animals.

“What if I hit an alligator? Or a manatee? Aren’t they endangered?” Bucky frets, peering out at the water.

“We don’t really get manatees ‘round here. And we’re in the ocean right now anyway, so no, you’re not gonna hit a gator. Even if you did, the gator would probably be fine, to be honest. Those fuckers are tough.”

Thus reassured, Bucky relaxes, and starts poking around the cabin a little. Sam points out where the maps are kept—though shit, probably they ought to pick up some new ones, he’s pretty sure the coastline has changed in the last however many years old these maps are—and where the flares and fire extinguisher are, but Bucky seems most interested in all the photos and knickknacks strewn around the cabin. Even though he’s seen them before while working on the boat, he’s still looking at all the photos closely.

He taps at one photo. “Your parents?” he asks, and Sam glances over at the photo of his dad with his mom in his arms on the deck of the boat, both of them beaming, and he nods. If you look closely, you can just about see the swell of his mom’s belly: she’s pregnant with him.

“Yeah,” he says.

“They look really happy,” says Bucky quietly, and Sam nods, swallowing past the by now familiar tightness in his throat. After a long moment of silence, Bucky asks about another photo: a young Sam at the helm, beaming into the camera.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Sam confirms. “My dad was teaching me how to steer.”

It’s a treasured memory, one of Sam’s favorites. A lot of Sam’s favorite memories are on this boat: spending time with his dad, learning to fish, stargazing with his mom, running around with Sarah, taking the boat out on his own for the first time…it’s part of why he’d been so hurt by Sarah’s proposal to sell or scrap the boat. Objectively, Sam knows that nothing will happen to his memories of the boat and his family if the boat itself ceases to exist. Emotionally though...well, he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. The boat is safely theirs now, looking better than it has in years thanks to Sam and Bucky’s work and the community’s help.

Sam’s startled out of his reminiscence when Bucky says, “Yeah, my dad taught me to drive too.” There’s an odd hesitance to his voice. Maybe the memory’s not as clear as Bucky would like it to be.

“Yeah? You guys have cars back in the stone age?”

“Ha ha,” says Bucky, rolling his eyes. “My dad had a car for the business, nothing fancy. He started teaching me when I was, I dunno, twelve or thirteen? I’d already been begging him to let me try for years at that point, even though I was definitely too short to manage it.”

Sam grins over at him, charmed at the thought of a tiny pipsqueak Bucky trying to wheedle his way into driving lessons.

“Aww, were you a late bloomer?” he teases, and is surprised by Bucky’s wry chuckle.

“Yeah, actually, I was. I wasn’t all that much bigger than Steve until my growth spurt hit me like the wrath of God when I was fifteen or so. Felt like I grew two feet in about six months, it was miserable.”

“That didn’t make it into the history books,” Sam says. 

It didn’t really make it into Steve’s rosy recollections either—not the Bucky being miserable about it part, anyway. Steve had mostly focused on the part about Bucky becoming tall and handsome seemingly overnight. Sam wonders if there are any photos of a teenaged Bucky; he’d have liked to see the transformation, if only to tease Bucky about it. He’s only ever seen some grainy old yearbook photos from the year Bucky graduated.

Bucky snorts. “No, they skipped that and got right to the ‘good athlete’ part once I’d gotten past all the clumsiness.” Bucky moves on to another picture, this one of a teenaged, zit-ridden Sam who’s sporting an unfortunate flat top. “Looks like you had an easier time of it.”

Sam shrugs and says, “Yeah, I guess.”

He can’t complain much about his teenage years, at any rate. He argued with his dad a lot, sure, had a couple tempestuous high school relationships, but things were pretty easy at school, and he figures puberty was the usual amount of awkward and gross for him.

“Were you ever gonna take over the family business?” Bucky asks, now examining another photo of a teenaged Sam, this time aiming a strained smile up at the camera as he hauls a catch in.

“No,” Sam says, and winces when the single word comes out far more harshly than he intends, harsh enough that Bucky’s shoulders hunch up, his body language turning wary and distant in a way that’s almost worse than a thrown punch. “Sorry, guess it’s still a sore spot,” Sam adds with a smile that’s probably pretty wan.

Bucky nods, his shoulders easing back down again, but not all the way. “Yeah, I didn’t really want to take over the family business either,” he offers, again with that strange hesitance, or maybe it’s carefulness. “Though I might never have needed to, my uncles had it covered.”

Which was fortunate for past Bucky. Teenaged Sam had the weight of his father’s expectations bearing down on him from pretty much the moment he was in high school, until not even college out of state was enough distance from Dad’s disappointment in Sam’s lack of interest in the Wilson family business or in the church. So he’d joined the Air Force and left Delacroix behind, for a while, at least…

“Alright, enough family story time,” declares Sam, clapping Bucky on the shoulder and ignoring the way Bucky’s brow knits. “Time to give you that tour. Now, there’s a lot of little islands along this part of the Louisiana coast…”

When they get back to the house, Bucky stares at Sam for a bit, not as intense and murdery as some of his past stares, but still intense and searching enough that Sam struggles not to fidget under those clear, pale eyes. Bucky’s brow has the same small furrow it’s had for much of the trip on the boat, and Sam can’t decipher the meaning of that.

“If you’re trying to spontaneously develop telepathy, it’s not working, Buck. Spit it out,” Sam says.

“I just—uh, thanks. For taking me out on the boat with you today,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry if I was—annoying or whatever.”

Sam blinks, taken aback by both the apology and the assumption. Sure, Bucky’s always at least a little bit annoying, but not in any kind of way that requires an apology, not now that they’re actual friends. 

“Hey, no, you’re fine, we’re good. Thanks for coming along, seriously, it was fun.”

Bucky smiles then, his relief obvious. Most emotions are in fact pretty obvious on Bucky’s expressive face and in his eloquent body language, Sam is coming to learn.

“Yeah, it was nice,” he says.

AJ and Cass come in with a clatter then, cutting off any chance for further conversation.

“Uncle Sam, the schoolbus is the worst, why couldn’t you come pick us up today?” whines Cass.

“I like the bus!” says AJ cheerfully. “Uncle Bucky, are you making our after school snacks again today? Can we have apples with peanut butter again?”

“I want a banana with peanut butter!”

“Everyone can have whatever fruit they want with peanut butter,” Bucky says, already herding the boys into the kitchen.

“Really? Even if I want peaches with peanut butter?” asks AJ, and Cass makes an exaggerated retching noise.

“Sure, but then you gotta eat it,” says Sam, before Bucky can say anything like ‘okay, let’s try it.’ “Wash up first, boys!”

Sam fleetingly wonders if he’s the one who owes Bucky an apology—because why would Bucky think Sam was annoyed enough to merit one?—but the thought quickly dissipates in the late afternoon’s normal rush of helping the boys with homework, having dinner mostly ready by the time Sarah comes home, and replying to yet more of the seemingly endless emails about the Avengers Initiative.

If Bucky’s good night as they’re turning in for the day seems somewhat tentative, Sam’s pretty sure he’s just imagining things.

One of the most familiar sights in the Wilson family kitchen is this one: a Wilson flitting between the stove and the oven and the kitchen table, stirring and fixing and plating up good, hearty food, while their shoulder holds up a phone to their ear with someone or another pouring out a problem to be fixed or a sorrow that needs easing or just plain gossiping.

Today, it’s Sarah with her head tilted at an uncomfortable angle to keep her phone at her ear—Christ, it’s like she’s forgotten about the modern innovation of speaker phone, or a bluetooth headset—as she stirs up a big batch of dirty rice to go with yesterday’s shrimp catch, almost certainly to be distributed to whoever’s in need of a bit of help this week. Maybe the Youssefs, who have a colicky newborn, or the Perezes, who are still struggling to fit back into post-Blip life.

“You know I’ve tried with Ms. Lark, but the woman does not like me, I guarantee she won’t accept so much as a good morning from me, much less any actual help—“

Sam plucks the phone from Sarah’s shoulder in a move too fast for Sarah to retaliate, and he puts it on speaker as he sets the phone down.

“You are gonna get an awful crick in your neck if you keep holding the phone up like that, use speaker phone, that’s what it’s there for!”

“Samuel—! Ugh, sorry, I was saying, you know I worry about her all alone out there, but sometimes I think she’s so ornery she wouldn’t call the fire department if her house was on fire, just to avoid talkin’ to anyone—“

Sarah’s assessment of Ms. Lark isn’t far off. Ms. Lark isn’t a bad person, she just doesn’t much care for seemingly anybody save her late husband, and she’s blunt and snappish at best and grimly silent at worst. But she’s as gentle as anything with animals; if you can’t afford to go to the vet, you go to Ms. Lark, and she’ll do her best, or she’ll quietly give you the money to get your pet proper care.

“I know, I know,” says Mrs. Grace over the speaker phone, “But that house is liable to fall down ‘round Lark’s ears and she won’t let anyone help!“

Bucky comes in from outside, looking unfairly dewy with the glow of a good workout or good honest labor or whatever the hell it is he’s been doing outside for most of the day. He’d gone out that morning with unspecified plans and a promise to be back in time for dinner. For all Sam knows, he’s been tanning, given how his skin’s already lost the pale cast of winter in New York, and it looks damn good on him. But no, Sam eyes the dirt and grass stains on the knees of his jeans. He’s been gardening, maybe.

“Wait, are we talking about Ms. Lark down on the other side of the woods?” asks Bucky. “Hi, Mrs. Grace, this is Bucky, sorry, you’re on speaker phone.”

“Well hello there, Bucky! And yes, that’s Lark—“

“Oh, you don’t have to worry, I’ve been helping her out, fixing some things up around her house,” says Bucky. “It’s not so bad as all that, really, the wood’s all still sound, she just can’t keep up with the maintenance so well any more—“

“She let you help?” says Sam. “And wait, when did you even meet her?”

Bucky blinks wide and guileless eyes at Sam, and not fake guileless, but his most truly innocent look, the one that makes him look all of ten years old.

“At the animal shelter the other week. We got to talking—”

“She talked to you?” says Sarah, and Bucky gives her an odd look.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Why wouldn’t she?” He looks anxious then. “Oh, is she—she’s not scared of me or anything, is she—”

“Oh, honey no, who’d be scared of you?” coos Mrs. Grace over the phone line, and Sam’s ready to share in a silent joke with Bucky, because there are plenty of bad guys out there who are rightfully scared shitless of the Winter Soldier. But Bucky just snorts, a bitter twist to his lips that Sam hates to see.

“No one in Delacroix,” Sam says firmly. “We just meant—Ms. Lark isn’t much for people, is all. She keeps her own company most of the time.”

Bucky shrugs. “She was pretty quiet, sure, but she was nice. We talked about animals, I told her I was thinking of getting a cat.”

“You’re thinking about getting a cat?” Sam echoes.

Bucky ignores him to continue, “And she talked about her pets, and how she wanted to build a cat patio for her cats, but she couldn’t manage it on her own—“

“A cat patio?” Sarah repeats, as Mrs. Grace exclaims, “How adorable!”

“So I offered to go over and see if I could help, and while I was there, I figured I might as well help fix up whatever else needed fixing—“

“Of course,” Sam says faintly.

“So anyway, I’ve got it covered, Ms. Lark is doing alright,” he says. “I’m headed over there tomorrow, actually.”

“Well! That is good to know, you’re such a sweetheart, Bucky. Thank you for looking after even the surliest of Delacroix’s own!” says Mrs. Grace. “Though Sarah honey, if you could take some food over there too…? I worry about how thin Lark’s getting.”

“Of course, Mrs. Grace.”

“We could go together,” offers Bucky.

“Oh thank you, that would ease my mind and the whole church’s too, I’m sure! Y’all are such angels!”

Sam wonders just how much gossip is about to flourish on the Delacroix grapevine, and decides not to worry about it. They’ll be sweet grapes rather than sour, at least. In fact, if Bucky’s managed to win Ms. Lark over, the entire island’s going to think he’s the most charming motherfucker on the planet. Sam might just start thinking that too, because seriously, winning over Ms. Lark? That would be a hell of a feat. Sam doubts even Steve could have managed it no matter how much he laid on the old-fashioned, aw shucks charm.

After Mrs. Grace says her goodbyes and Sarah and Bucky work out when to go visit Ms. Lark the next day, Sam asks Bucky, “You need any more help over at Ms. Lark’s tomorrow?”

On her way out, Sarah gives Sam some side eye like she’s judging his nosiness, but Sam means the offer genuinely. He just happens to also be nosy as hell and he wants to see what’s going on with Bucky and Ms. Lark. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Bucky, it’s just that he’s kind of wondering what exactly Bucky’s definition of “nice” is. He honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them communicate in silences that are various levels of surly or grumpy.

“Sure,” says Bucky as he washes up at the kitchen sink. “You can help build the cat patio. Catio?”

“I can definitely help supervise the building of a cat patio,” says Sam, and Bucky snorts. He pours himself some water from the pitcher in the fridge, and something about his hand’s grip on the glass and the movement of his throat is oddly arresting. 

And sexy. Fuck, Bucky really is distractingly hot now that Sam has leisure to really notice that kind of thing.

This is a serious problem for Sam’s poor, neglected libido. Sam refocuses his thoughts with effort. Getting laid is unlikely to be an option any time soon, given how much he’s got going on, and he wishes now that he’d worked some more sexual frustration out with hookups before taking up the shield. Sam Wilson can have a no-strings-attached night on the town in New Orleans a couple times a month or so; Captain America, not so much. Sam does not want to start out his tenure as Cap with a hookup selling a story to TMZ or something. 

Whatever, it’s fine. Sam’s a grown-ass man who won’t die of blue balls. 

“What have you been up to today anyway?” Sam asks Bucky.

Bucky made himself scarce after they trained together this morning while Sam has spent most of the day poring over a proposed contract for working with the Avengers Initiative. He’s sent a redline out to the lawyers though, which he figures is enough superhero-related productivity for the day.

“Went to that big garden center with Janette from down the road, she wanted some help with the big bags of soil, then I helped her with some planting too,” says Bucky. “She’s got a hell of a garden. Is it still a garden if you can probably feed half the island with its produce?”

“Yeah, her family’s always had a green thumb,” says Sam. “You like gardening?”

“I think so,” says Bucky, in a contemplative kind of way. “I helped with the garden in the village I was staying at in Wakanda too. It was—nice. And here, everything’s so—so green. It’s—I don’t know. I like it, working with plants. It feels like—like a real thing, a good thing.”

“Sounds like it ought to be your new hobby then,” Sam says, and if the straightforward suggestion comes out too tender, well, this small confession of Bucky’s is worth being tender and gentle with.

“Maybe,” says Bucky, suddenly diffident.

“You know, we’ve got plenty of space in the yard, but we’ve never managed much more than an herb garden and some tomatoes,” Sam says. “Sarah hasn’t got the time for much more. Our Titi was the one with the green thumb. But if you want, maybe you could do some gardening here?”

The offer seems to surprise Bucky, and he studies Sam carefully before he says, “I’d like that, if Sarah doesn’t mind. Maybe I oughta make sure I can keep some plants alive before I get a cat.”

“Of course you’re a cat person,” says Sam with an exaggerated sigh and shake of his head, setting out the obvious bait for a round of low-stakes arguing.

Bucky takes the bait, of course. “And what’s wrong with being a cat person?”

“Nothing! Just, for a guy whose nickname is White Wolf—“

“Oh, now you get the name right—“

The next day, Ms. Lark greets Sarah and Bucky warmly enough by her standards, but she seems distinctly nonplussed by Sam’s presence.

“I warrant a visit from Captain America now?” she asks, hand on her hip and skeptical eyebrow raised impressively high.

To Sam’s mingled relief and awe, Ms. Lark looks much the same as she always has: as upright and stubborn as an oak tree, only somewhat more gnarled and weathered now. Weathered as she is, there’s still a burnished sheen to her brown cheeks, and her headful of braids is only lightly touched by gray. It’s her hands that give her age away the most, the joints looking knobby and somewhat swollen. No wonder she’s having trouble keeping up with house maintenance. 

“Just thought I’d come along with Sarah and Buck,” Sam says, with a level of cheer he knows is excessive. 

What can he say, seemingly incurable grumps like Bucky and Ms. Lark always bring it out of him. Though admittedly, Bucky isn’t so much of a grump anymore. Maybe that’s at least a little bit on account of the influence of Sam being so damn delightful. Sam likes to think so, at any rate.

Not that Sam’s influence seems to be doing much for Ms. Lark, given her vaguely disapproving hum and glower in response to Sam's cheerful smile. Bucky's charm on the other hand…

“I figured things would go faster if Sam came along, and then Sarah wanted to bring some food for us. I thought we could all eat together?” says Bucky with an easy, slightly bashful smile that’s visibly softening Ms. Lark up. “I hope that’s alright, I didn’t mean to spring it on you.”

“Mmhmm,” says Ms. Lark. “I’m sensing that this is Grace’s meddling mother hen nonsense, James.”

“A little bit,” Bucky admits. “It’s also my meddling mother hen nonsense.”

Recognition hits Sam like a particularly vicious static shock: Steve’s voice, from the past, full of fondness: he’s such a mother hen, always looking out for people. I’d call him a mother hen and he’d say ‘yeah, yeah, cluck cluck, asshole, now get back in bed.’ 

Ms. Lark snorts, though her lips twitch with a smile. “Oh, big, tough Sergeant Barnes is a mother hen?”

Apparently, thinks Sam with something like wonder, and Bucky nods solemnly. “Yes, ma’am. That’s about 75% of a sergeant’s job, actually. We just yell so much that folks don’t notice.”

Both Ms. Lark and Sarah laugh then, which, holy shit, Sam’s not sure he’s ever heard Ms. Lark laugh, and Ms. Lark invites them inside. Sam shares a quick surprised glance with his sister, who widens her eyes in return. Yeah, Ms. Lark laughing is a novel sight to her too. 

On the way in, Bucky keeps pace with Ms. Lark, both of them chatting easily about the animal shelter, and Sam and Sarah fall back to whisper to each other. Sam’s under no illusions that Bucky won’t be able to hear, but Ms. Lark definitely won’t, and that’s the point.

“Well, Steve always did say he used to be a real charmer,” Sam mutters to Sarah, who gives him a somewhat incredulous look.

“There’s being a charmer, and then there’s this. It has got to take some kinda magic or hoodoo to get Ms. Lark smiling and laughing with anyone, I’m just saying.”

Despite Mrs. Grace’s conviction that the place is about to fall down around Ms. Lark’s ears, Ms. Lark’s property looks to be in decent enough condition to Sam. A stiff hurricane-force wind is unlikely to turn it to kindling, that’s for sure, though it’ll need boarding up before a storm, and the roof certainly needs patching. And maybe the porch railings could stand to be replaced too, he thinks, eyeing the way some of the wood looks a bit rotten.

Today’s task is patching the roof, and he and Bucky manage that in a couple hours while Sarah disappears inside the house—where she’s almost certainly tidying up for Ms. Lark and squirreling away food for her—and while Ms. Lark sits out on the porch, trading cat patio ideas back and forth with Bucky.

With the sun of his hometown shining down on them and Bucky beside him, doing good honest work together to help someone in Sam’s community, for the first time in a long time, Sam feels like he’s in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing. His mind is free of all doubts and second guesses, his heart’s full of nothing but gratitude. He needs this, he realizes. He needs this touchstone, this simple, necessary work with the people he cares about most, for the people he cares about most, if he’s going to be out there donning the stars and stripes to go to the rescue.

“What’s with the Captain America look?” says Bucky, startling Sam out of his thoughts. When Sam looks over at him, Bucky is smiling, his hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. The sheer unlikely, surprising rightness of Bucky being here too nearly makes Sam laugh in delight.

“What Captain America look?” he asks.

“You know, looking all noble and heroic. You look like you’re about to break out into a speech.”

Sam laughs and shakes his head. “No speech. Just feeling grateful, is all.”

Bucky’s smile brightens in some intangible way that suddenly makes it a rival to the sunshine. He looks out over Delacroix from their perch on Ms. Lark’s roof, then tips his face up very slightly to the sunshine. Sam’s next breath comes a bit too shallow, his heart beats a touch too fast.

“Yeah. I get that,” says Bucky, and then he gets back to work, and Sam joins him.

After lunch—wonder of wonders, Ms. Lark compliments Sarah’s food, to Sarah’s visible surprise—Ms. Lark even sends them off with two of her famous pecan pies, which is some kind of miracle. She’d won a church baking contest award for her pecan pie once, and then she’d never served it in public ever again. Sam has pretty much judged every single pecan pie he’s had since against his one brief taste of Ms. Lark’s, so this is honestly kind of a big deal.

“Alright, ‘fess up, what kind of magic did you work on Ms. Lark to get her to like you,” asks Sam in the truck on their way back home. “That woman is damn near the most misanthropic person I’ve ever met, and here she’s making her famous pecan pie for you. I have dreamed of this pie.”

“Aww, she’s not so bad as all that,” says Bucky, and Sarah laughs incredulously.

“Oh, she absolutely is! I’ve known her almost my entire life and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard her laugh until today.”

“Well, I guess I’m used to prickly, ornery people,” says Bucky.

“What, being one yourself?” says Sam, and Bucky somehow manages to both glare and roll his eyes at almost the same time.

“No, I mean Steve. He wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine back in the day. My sister Alice wasn’t either.”

Despite Steve’s insistence that Bucky was a happy guy before the war, Sam’s always found it hard to imagine Bucky as the ray of sunshine to Steve’s raincloud, recent evidence notwithstanding. It’s not that Steve was a happy person when Sam knew him, but he wasn’t exactly grim and dour, or particularly ornery. Stern and serious sometimes, sure, but with a dry sense of humor, and he never took himself overly seriously. He could let loose, he could laugh. Sam had admittedly been the one to take on the role of being the upbeat and positive member of the team though, which is a familiar position for him, and one he usually enjoys. Even so, it hadn’t always been easy, during their time on the run.

“Were you a ray of sunshine back in the day?” Sarah asks Bucky, in that easy way of hers that makes even a nosy or loaded question sound good-natured.

When Sam glances sidelong at Bucky to gauge his reaction to the question, Bucky’s face is calmly thoughtful.

“I guess, yeah,” he says. “I was, y’know, pretty happy, all things considered. Moody sometimes, maybe, and it’s not like I didn’t want a better life or whatever, but I was a cheerful guy.”

Sam’s inner smartass wants to reflexively joke, oh yeah, what happened, only he knows exactly what happened and it’s not at all funny. And anyway, Bucky has been in a pretty good mood lately, Sam doesn’t want to be the kind of asshole who steps all over that.

“You still seem like a pretty cheerful guy to me, given the givens,” says Sarah.

“I’m not exactly an optimist,” Bucky notes dryly, after a long silence. When Sam risks a look at Bucky’s expression, there’s something between pain and surprise, or maybe wonder, in his eyes. “But uh, I guess—well, it’s easier to be happy here. Now.”

“Damn straight it is,” Sam says, and smiles out at the road. Bucky probably doesn’t mean here here, as in Delacroix, with Sam, he just means the generic here and now. But that’s victory enough.

“What about you?” Bucky asks him. “You always been this obnoxiously upbeat and motivational?”

Sarah barks out a laugh and says, “Oh this guy had such a rep for being the class clown, it was so annoying. Everyone thought I was a downer in comparison just because I didn’t turn every class into a comedy club.”

“Okay, I don’t think ‘class clown’ is the right term,” Sam protests. “I was, you know, a good student and all, I didn’t start shit, I just liked to joke around sometimes, that’s all, keep the mood light.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” says Bucky, and when Sam meets his eyes for a brief moment, he doesn’t quite know what to make of the keen focus in Bucky’s gaze when it’s matched with the fond crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“Okay, we’re stopping for the day,” declares Bucky.

It takes a longer moment than Sam would like to admit to gather enough air to say, “No way, I’m good to go,” he wheezes up to the cloudy sky. To add insult to literal injury, a fat drop of rain plops onto his cheek, swiftly followed by another, then another. The sky flashes and Sam groans.

He gropes with one hand for the shield—maybe he can press it into service as a temporary umbrella, if nothing else—but before he can, Bucky has kicked it up onto his vibranium arm. Thunder rumbles, and Bucky’s scowl down at him might as well be part of the storm clouds.

“You just nearly took yourself out with your own shield, you are not good to go,” says Bucky. “Also, guessing it’s about to start pouring.”

“You gonna let a little bit of rain stop you, Barnes?” Sam asks as he sits up. 

His lower back twinges in warning, and his upper back does worse than that. This is what Sam gets for trying a cool combination flip and catch maneuver. Not only had he failed to catch the shield, but it had actually managed to hit him too.

“No, but I am gonna let making sure you’re not going to throw your back out, or worse, stop me. We’re done for the day,” says Bucky.

“Just give me a couple minutes and I’ll be good to go,” Sam insists.

Bucky’s answering glare is all the more dramatic with the way another flash of lightning punctuates it, turning the stern angles of his face even harsher, and briefly making his eyes seem to glow. “Do you want to get struck by lightning? And are you trying to injure yourself?” he demands.

A clap and growl of thunder lends dismaying credibility to his words, as does the way the rain starts falling in earnest. Bucky is pretty immediately soaked, his hair losing its now-customary fluff and volume and his shirt plastering itself very unfairly to his muscles. What the hell kind of shirt is he wearing that it so lovingly outlines every single one of his chiseled abs? And oh god, why are his workout pants so low-slung, Sam is pretty sure he can see the faintest shadow of a happy trail, and is that the cut of his hip—

Yeah, no, Sam cannot continue on down that mental path, not without his inappropriate thirstiness becoming embarrassingly apparent. He heaves himself up to standing position. Bucky does not help, letting Sam’s struggle to get up speak for itself with raised eyebrows.

“Fine! But that just means we’re gonna be stuck inside answering emails!” Sam says.

“Better than getting soaked and injuring ourselves out here,” says Bucky heartlessly.

Bucky shepherds Sam back into the house, and once they’ve both changed and dried off, he chivvies Sam to the couch where he straps an icepack to Sam’s upper back in defiance of all Sam’s protests.

“I don’t really know how you’re supposed to elevate your back,” Bucky frets as he stacks pillows behind Sam. “But at least the rest, ice, and compression parts are covered.”

Sam has to try very hard not to be charmed by this. Between the fussing and the way his drying hair is getting ever more wild and fluffy, Bucky’s resemblance to a mother hen is only intensifying, swiftly overtaking Sam’s annoyance at the weather and the Bucky-enforced break. The temptation to ruffle Bucky’s hair is so strong Sam’s hand actually twitches with it before he curls it into a fist. And it’s—well, it’s nice not to be doing this on his own. It’s nice to not have to resort to a bath tub filled with ice and cold water and a fistful of painkillers, and it’s definitely nice to not have to push through because it’s not safe enough to stop, or because he can’t worry his family.

It’s even, maybe, kind of nice to be fussed over and helped, says a very small, plaintive voice deep inside Sam that he promptly smothers into silence.

Naturally, this is when Sarah comes in, her arms heaped with bags. “What’s all this? Sam, did you get hurt?”

“Why are you home so early? You okay?” asks Sam. “And I’m fine, don’t worry—“

“The wind and surf were kicking up too much down by the docks to bother staying open, so I got the boat and everything secure and came back, figured I could get some cooking done here,” she says. She turns to Bucky. “Did he get hurt?”

“Nothing serious, just a strain, but he needs to actually rest it, here let me get some of those for you.“

Bucky takes all of Sarah’s bags, and Sam doesn’t miss Bucky’s fleeting grimace as he does. Shit. The weather. It had turned swiftly enough that it’s probably set Bucky’s left shoulder to aching, and getting fully soaked by the rain probably hadn’t helped. A while back, Bucky had admitted that the remainder of his left shoulder, collarbone, and the port for his prosthetic ache when the weather turns suddenly cold or damp, and today’s storm probably counts, coming so suddenly after a stretch of sunny days. Now that he’s looking closely, there’s a tell-tale strain around the set of Bucky’s mouth and a tightness around his eyes that says Bucky’s in pain. Given Bucky’s penchant for alarming understatement, Sam suspects it aches sometimes actually means causes me agonizing chronic pain.

“Sarah, don’t let him take those bags, his shoulder’s hurting him, here let me—“

“Don’t you dare get up, Samuel, I’m fine—“ Bucky warns, and does not relinquish the bags.

“I’m not gonna throw out my back if I go get you a heating pad, sit your ass down, Buck—“

In a flurry of graceful movement, Sarah sets her own bags down on the kitchen table, takes the ones from Bucky’s arms and sets those down too, and nudges Bucky into a chair at the kitchen table, all before Sam can get up from the couch.

“You two trying to out-mother hen each other is hilarious,” she says, laughing. “Don’t get up, either of you, I’ll get the heating pad. And you should take a hot bath tonight too, Bucky. Sam, you want that back brace thing you got?”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, alright.” He snorts and glances over at Bucky. “Maybe we’re too old and busted to be superheroes,” he says, keeping his tone light for all that he’s not entirely joking.

Sam’s worried about it more than once, and he’s still worrying about it sometimes. He’s in great shape, he knows that, he’s worked hard on that, but he’s not in his 20s anymore. He doesn’t bounce back the way he used to, and no amount of natural athleticism will keep him in superhero shape in his 40s, not without serious training. If the training alone leads to injuries, how can he hope to be an effective Captain America? Sam doesn’t much want the serum, but he has to admit it would make some things a hell of a lot easier, and he’s not sure if Bucky entirely realizes what an advantage he has compared to Sam.

“Says the man who’s less than half my age and still has all his limbs,” says Bucky dryly, and Sam suppresses a wince, because shit, that’s not quite what he’d meant. He’s about to fire back with an admittedly weak joke about how Bucky looks great for his age when Bucky frowns over at Sam, though he doesn’t seem upset. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not a machine, you can’t push yourself like you are, especially not in training. You’ll burn out before you ever get back in the field. You can’t be a super soldier if you just train hard enough.”

Does Bucky think Sam should be a super soldier if he’s going to be Cap? Sam dismisses the question as soon as it occurs to him. Obviously Bucky doesn’t, because at no point during the whole Flagsmashers search for the serum mission had he suggested Sam could or should use the serum on himself, not even with how much and how annoyingly he’d insisted on Sam becoming Cap. Anyway, Sam’s not trying to train himself into being a super soldier, he knows it’s not possible. He does have to be prepared to go up against various enhanced humans and aliens though, and he intends to make damn sure to make it as fair a fight as possible. That’s not being too hard on himself, that’s pure pragmatism.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you, coach,” is all he says to Bucky. “We’ll ease up on the training for the next few days, alright?”

“Listen, if you—” starts Bucky.

“Thanks for the pep talk though,” says Sam, cutting him off, and then Sarah’s back with the heating pad and the back brace, and they’re too busy enduring Sarah’s fussing to continue the conversation.

Before Sam can start seriously wondering if Delacroix has magical powers over one specific traumatized super soldier, Bucky’s run of good cheer falters and he has a couple bad nights. Whether it’s sleeplessness or nightmares or maybe even chronic pain, or hell, all of the above, that have put those dark circles back under Bucky’s eyes, Sam doesn’t know. If it’s nightmares, Bucky has kept quiet about it. But the return of a more closed off Bucky than Sam has become accustomed to in just these last couple of weeks only serves to prove Sarah’s initial point right: the Bucky Sam knew before all this hadn’t only been stressed out in high-pressure, dangerous situations, he’d been miserable. And not even just miserable, but exhausted.

It’s painfully obvious now that Sam can see the return of some of that exhaustion, because even this level of tired and quiet Bucky is miles away from the wound-tight guy Sam went super soldier serum hunting with. Because while Bucky’s eyes have gone more gray and cloudy than sunny skies blue, he still has the occasional smile to spare for AJ and Cass, and he still makes an effort to talk to Sam and Sarah, even if it clearly takes some serious effort.

Sam tries not to worry. Bucky’s an adult who has a hell of a lot of trauma and grief to deal with, he’s more than entitled to some off days, and it’s a good sign that he’s not trying to isolate himself.

Even so, Sam can’t help checking in with Bucky.

“Hey, you doing alright? You’ve been looking kinda tired lately. You can slow down, if you want, or take a break,” Sam says.

Bucky offers a somewhat wan but still sincere little smile. “I’m—well, I’m not great, but it’s nothing to worry about. Some days are harder than others, is all. I’ll be fine, thanks, Sam.”

“Okay, well, you let me know if there’s anything you need from me, okay?”

“Just being here’s all I need,” Bucky says, and then his face goes immediately pink. It’s genuinely pretty damn cute how flustered Bucky can get about being such a softie.

So Sam leaves him be and they go about their days the same as they have been: helping out around town, doing work on Ms. Lark’s house, training, wrangling the copious amounts of superhero bureaucracy. The only difference is that Sam takes to keeping Bucky company on his more sleepless nights, because it turns out that Bucky’s insomnia coping mechanism of choice is exploring the various sports channels’ late night offerings. 

“You a soccer fan?” Sam asks one night when Bucky’s got some kinda World Cup qualifying match on.

They’re both keeping their voices and the TV volume low in deference to the late hour, and the lights are off too, only the TV’s glow illuminating the living room. With the sounds of a Louisiana night outside the house—the soft shush-shush of wind through the trees, the buzz and hum of the frogs and insects, the occasional lapping of the water—it all feels intensely cozy. Even Bucky himself looks cozy, all rumpled and soft, curled up with his knees to his chin like a little kid, and the sleepy exhaustion on his face has an almost kind cast to it. Which suggests that tonight, it’s not horrors that are keeping him awake, but just plain restlessness or insomnia.

Bucky shrugs. “It’s alright. There’s just usually always a soccer match being broadcast somewhere in the world,” he says gesturing to the screen. “Makes for good white noise. You?”

“It’s not my favorite, but yeah, it’s okay to watch sometimes,” says Sam. “Or to play a pickup game with some guys or whatever. Louisiana’s football territory, you know. American football, I mean.”

“I’m not really a big football fan, I don’t think,” says Bucky with a thoughtful tilt of his head, like he’s unearthing the memory as he speaks.

“Now, now, don’t let the guys at the dock hear you talking like that. They’ll start a mission to convert you into an LSU or Saints fan for sure.”

“Baseball’s more my thing,” says Bucky with another shrug. “I played all the time when I was a kid, used to daydream about going pro and everything, not that that was ever gonna be likely. But you know, a lot of us kids in Brooklyn were obsessed with the Dodgers.” Bucky rests his cheek on his knee to look over at Sam with drowsy eyes, his long lashes shadowing his gaze into inscrutability. “What about you?”

“Louisiana doesn’t have an MLB team, so…” Sam starts, and then on the TV, a soccer player takes an offensively obvious dive that nevertheless causes the ref to issue a red card to the other team. “Oh come on, that’s an obvious dive!”

Bucky grins and says, “Yeah, I get the impression that’s part of the game.”

The rest of the match isn’t nearly so interesting, and by the end of it, both Bucky and Sam are about to drop off. Sam leaves him with a clasp of the shoulder and a good night, and thankfully, Bucky looks less exhausted the next morning.

The next night, Bucky finds some rerun of an old baseball game, the kind of thing the sports channels like to use to fill open space in their schedules cheaply. Sarah, who’s at the kitchen table catching up on accounting, snorts when she sees it.

“A whole baseball game: as good as a sleeping pill,” she says.

“Hey, I like baseball,” is Bucky’s mild protest.

“Oh lord, don’t tell me you and Sam are gonna start in on talking about baseball stats. That’s the only thing more boring than an actual game! Wait, no, I take it back, the only thing more boring than watching a baseball game on TV is going to an actual baseball game to root for your brother, who’s a shortstop, which isn’t really the kinda position it’s easy to cheer for or anything—”

“Hey now, you don’t see me making fun of your hate-watching The Bachelor hobby, and I’ll have you know that shortstop is a very demanding position, strategically speaking, the most important defensive—” Sam starts, before being interrupted by Bucky.

“Wait, Sam played baseball—” Bucky turns to Sam and repeats the question. “You played baseball? When? Where?”

It’s not like it’s a secret or anything, and Bucky sounds downright excited, so Sam’s not sure why the question makes his stomach give an anxious flutter, not unlike the way it used to feel before a game.

“Uh, in high school and college. I got a small baseball scholarship, actually,” Sam says.

“I’m surprised you haven’t seen his trophies, he was still keeping those up at his place in DC as a grown-ass man,” says Sarah, shaking her head. “Won’t display his many medals, but will display an old high school trophy for MVP, what kinda priorities are those?”

“You didn’t mention it the other night,” says Bucky, in a hard to read tone.

“Just didn’t think of it, I guess. Seems like a long time ago now, I haven’t played in years.”

“We should play,” Bucky says, and Sam laughs.

“With what team? It ain’t exactly a two-person sport, Buck.”

Some of Bucky’s enthusiasm seems to falter, but he recovers and says, “Sure, but we could go out and throw some balls with the boys or something, maybe go to a batting cage. It’d be fun.”

Yeah, okay, that does sound fun. If nothing else, Sam figures it’ll be neat to see just how well a super soldier can pitch and hit. 

“I approve of some wholesome, non-videogame sports out in the fresh air,” says Sarah. “Just don’t expect me to get into the baseball weeds with y’all.”

They end up making an outing of it that weekend, taking a picnic with them to the closest public baseball diamond. Bucky’s adorably excited about it, maybe just as much as AJ and Cass are, and Sam watches fondly from the sidelines as Bucky instructs the boys on proper form with a baseball bat.

“This was a good idea,” Sarah says, setting out the food. “I was kinda surprised you and Bucky haven’t been talking up a storm about sports, honestly, I feel like I knew he was a huge baseball fan after only a few days.”

“Oh, I knew,” says Sam absently. He has got to take photos of this wholesome baseball with the kids situation, it’s too damn cute. “The number of stories I heard from Steve about all the most important Dodgers games of their childhood…” Sam shakes his head and snaps another few photos. “Those two were real Brooklyn Dodgers die-hards.”

Sarah, inexplicably, gives him the hairy eyeball. “Then why haven’t you and Bucky been talking each others’ ears off about baseball this whole time? Don’t you men love to bond over sports stuff?”

Sam starts with an automatic retort that he doesn’t know how to finish. Why hasn’t he talked about it with Bucky? Sarah’s kind of right, after all, and at the very least, sports is a safe topic of conversation, a reliable way to fill conversational dead air with ultimately inconsequential yet heated discussions that pass the time. Even Bucky at his grumpiest might have been coaxed into a civil conversation with talk of baseball.

Sarah keeps talking. “Seriously, I was surprised you didn’t brag about your baseball ‘career’ the second you got a chance.”

“Just, uh, didn’t think of it, I guess,” is Sam’s weak response, and Sarah frowns.

Oh no, Sam knows that frown. Whatever she says next, she’s going in for the kill. Sam braces himself.

“Sam. Have you forgotten how this friendship thing works or something? You gotta actually talk about shit, not just have stressful, life-threatening bonding experiences. And I don’t even mean talking about serious stuff, I mean talking about normal friend stuff like your interests and hobbies.”

The conversational curve ball catches Sam off guard. 

“I know that,” Sam says, only barely keeping his tone short of snappishness. Strike one, says a snide part of his brain. “Seriously, I just didn’t think of it, I thought Bucky might’ve already known.”

That’s not even a strike, it’s a whiff, it’s such a weak rejoinder. How would Bucky have known about Sam playing baseball? Not even Steve, Sam realizes, could have told him, because Sam hadn’t talked much about it even to Steve. He’d told Steve just enough to encourage Steve’s own stories, reasoning that it was good for Steve to share those memories.

Sarah’s frown does not go away. “Sometimes I think you’re too damn independent,” she says softly.

“What? Why? What’s wrong with being independent?”

She raises an incredulous eyebrow. “Because take it from me, sometimes it’s just another word for being alone, and because as far as I can tell, you don’t have any close friends.”

“Hey, I have—” He’s about to say Steve and Nat, but, well. He doesn’t have them any more, now does he. The stab of renewed grief is almost enough to make him want to double over. “Torres, and Bucky, and—you know, the guys around town, and some of the folks from the VA—”

“A bunch of those people are coworkers or former coworkers, and half the time, you’re coworker-zoning Bucky too,” is Sarah’s flat response, before her eyes and tone soften. “Listen, I know it’s hard after you’ve lost people. You know I know that. But you’re always so damn insistent on carrying everything alone and keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself. You don’t have to hold everyone and everything but your work and your family at arm’s length.”

“I’m not,” Sam says, then, “Wait, is this you trying to say I need to find someone and settle down?”

“Well, that sure wouldn’t hurt,” she says. “I just worry about you being lonely, Sam.”

“I go out on dates, I’m not some kinda monk,” Sam retorts.

“Dates, or hookups?” asks Sarah. “You deserve more than that, and maybe Bucky—“ and then thankfully they’re interrupted before Sam has to face any more sisterly intervention or any suggestions about what Bucky’s role in all this is.

“Sam!” Bucky calls out. “We need a pitcher, get over here!”

They’re on a literal baseball diamond, with Sam’s family, and yet the innuendo rises automatically in Sam’s mind: does that mean you catch? Which, Jesus, get a grip, Wilson.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” he calls back, and stifles a wince. 

Why the fuck is baseball so damn suggestive? Talk of bases and sliding home, pitching and catching, the way Bucky’s cute little ass looks in his tight pants—

Sam shakes the thoughts off. His partner isn’t a hookup option. Sarah might have a point though, about the friendship thing. Sam needs to do better there, and it’s a damning sign of how out of practice he is at it that he’s been inadvertently ‘coworker-zoning’ Bucky by holding parts of himself back for no real reason.

So for the rest of the day, Sam makes an effort to tell Bucky about his own baseball stories: the first game he won, the time he took a ball to the gut and threw up on the field, how long it took him to become a decent batter. That it is in fact an effort, like working a weakened muscle, is disquieting in a way Sam doesn’t want to think about. Bucky, already in a good mood thanks to playing with the boys, lights up even more, like he’s making a creditable effort to match the sunshine, and he’s talkative almost to the point of being chatty. Steve, Sam remembers, always used to say that Bucky could chatter like anything else. I swear, he could talk for ten minutes straight without me needing to say much more than ‘yeah’ or ‘uh huh’.

They’ll make the time to do this more often, Sam decides on the way home, when Bucky is regaling Cass and AJ with a story of the time Steve and Bucky got caught sneaking into Ebbets Field. This, and maybe going to baseball games. Louisiana doesn’t have an MLB team, but there are minor league games, and maybe they could make a mini-project out of finding Bucky a new team to root for, now that his beloved Dodgers are in LA.

As for Sarah’s totally unnecessary concern about Sam’s love life, that’s a non-starter for now. Sam’s well-aware that he’s not getting any younger, and while he firmly believes there’s no time limit to finding a life partner, he has to admit that it hasn’t seemed all that urgent since he lost Riley. And anyway, he’s not in any kind of position to pursue romance right now, no matter what impractical demands his libido makes.

AJ says something that makes Bucky laugh—an increasingly familiar sound, though no less of a sweet surprise every time—and Sam’s eyes leave the red traffic light in front of him and find their way to Bucky’s face, sitting in the passenger seat. The neck of Bucky’s t-shirt is stretched out enough to reveal the vulnerable hollow of his throat, and Sam’s mouth damn near waters with a sudden craving to taste the salt of the sweat that could surely gather there—

“Light’s green!” announces Cass, and Sam startles, taking his foot off the brake.

“Got it, buddy,” he says.

Christ, maybe Sam needs to jerk off more or something, if only to avoid lusting after even the most innocuous parts of his partner’s body.

One aspect of Bucky’s grumpiness that has remained mostly unchanged despite his otherwise much sunnier and more relaxed disposition is his aversion to most attempts to catch him up on all the pop culture he’s missed. If you’re not recommending him a book, preferably a sci fi or fantasy one, Bucky does not much want to hear about it. AJ and Cass get a pass, he’ll watch basically anything with them, which means his pop culture knowledge is skewing awfully young: Disney and Pixar movies, those Lego movies, the seemingly endless Star Wars spinoffs, some other cartoons that might as well be incomprehensible to Sam. But the second Sam tells him he’s got to watch the classics of the buddy cop genre or The Matrix, Bucky grumbles and refuses.

“Man, we have got to expose you to more grownup media,” says Sam one night after the boys are in bed. “At this rate, you’re gonna know about the entire Disney canon before you know anything about, I don’t know, the Fresh Prince, or Lost.”

“I don’t mind,” says Bucky as he makes up his bed on the couch. “I like animation, it’s really come a long way since Snow White.”

“You love that sci fi nerd shit, you should watch some of the sci fi movie classics though!”

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of this thing where people hand me lists of shit to watch or whatever so that I can be considered a normal, well-adjusted person who gets every pop culture reference ever,” he says, airing out a blanket with a snap. “That’s not really my priority when it comes to getting used to living in the future. What the hell’s the problem with not talking in impenetrable cultural references anyway?”

“Wow, you sound very old man yells at cloud right now, Grandpa Simpson. Did you also wear an onion on your belt, which was the style at the time?”

Sam makes himself laugh with that particular excellently timed pop culture reference. Joke’s on Sam though, because Bucky narrows his eyes into one of his death glares, and then he spends the next few days making incomprehensible old-timey American and modern Wakandan pop culture references, until Sam cries uncle.

“Fine, fine, I get the point, I’ll try to ease up on the pop culture stuff,” Sam says. “If you don’t get something, you can just ask, you know.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, in a tone that suggests he will not be asking. “And that’s not the only point.”

“What’s the other point then?”

“This thing where you tell me I gotta watch or listen to this or that, it oughta go both ways. I watch something with you, you watch something with me.”

“What, like your favorite movies from the 30s?”

“Yeah, or the music I liked, or whatever.”

Sam wants to object, but can’t really come up with any objections that don’t sound totally assholish, apart from, “Okay, but no hideously racist shit. Like, I get that there’s gonna be an ambient level of racist bullshit, but none of that Birth of a Nation shit.”

Bucky’s whole face says no shit before the words themselves come out of his mouth too. “No shit, Sam. I know I’ve still got a lot to learn about that kinda thing, but come on, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Also, they gotta be talkies,” he adds, and Bucky rolls his eyes and laughs. “And we should do music too, exchange playlists or whatever.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky.

“And none of this wishy-washy ‘I liked it,’ or ‘it’s okay’ bullshit, you gotta fully engage with the music.”

“Oh? And should I write up an essay about the playlist for you, Mr. Wilson?” teases Bucky.

“No, I don’t need an essay, c’mon. I just mean you gotta actually talk about what you like or don’t like, or don’t get or whatever.”

“Same goes for you then,” says Bucky, and then they shake on it.

“Y’all are making mixtapes for each other now? Cute,” says Sarah, when she catches him hunched over his laptop skipping through songs on his Spotify.

“It’s not a mixtape, they’re playlists, and it’s for educational purposes, not, y’know, a mix tape.”

Sam is, admittedly, lavishing as much attention on this playlist for Bucky as he ever did on a mixtape for his high school sweetheart Leila, but that’s because it’s a lot more challenging to make a playlist of songs that are both representative of Sam’s music taste and a good introduction to the decades of music Bucky has missed out on. If his purpose was just to give Bucky a crash course on all the music he’s missed, or prank him, this would be easier. Having to pick songs that Sam likes, and that he hopes Bucky will like too, is considerably harder.

“Sure,” Sarah drawls. “You better include Lauryn Hill on the mixtape, is all I’m saying.”

“Make him your own playlist!” he retorts, though Lauryn Hill is already on Sam’s, multiple times, even, because of course she is. 

God, Bucky better appreciate all the effort Sam’s put into this. If he shit talks all of Sam’s music, Sam doesn’t know if their partnership can survive it. Hopefully, Bucky’s own playlist for Sam won’t just be all the greatest big band hits of the 30s and 40s. Though maybe even that wouldn’t be so bad, Sam concedes, at least not if Bucky shares his own memories and stories about what the songs mean to him.

Superhero luck being what it is, they only get a chance for one movie night before duty calls—Sam’s pick, The Matrix, on the basis that it blew his mind when he saw it in the theater, and it was a real inflection point for all the action movies that came after it, so it’s both a personal favorite and educational, pop culture wise—and they haven’t even managed to exchange their playlists yet. Rhodey assures them that it’s a good sign they’re being called in for this mission, and that they should try very hard not to turn it into an enormous shitshow.

“Consider this a job interview of a mission,” he suggests during the briefing. “So try to be on your best behavior?”

“Sure, but if things blow up, they blow up,” says Bucky with a shrug. “Can’t always control that.”

Rhodey sighs. “Right, but if you two, personally, could avoid any particularly destructive explosions or other disasters, that would be great. That would be pretty critical, in fact.”

“You’re sending us into a suspected bioweapons lab,” Sam points out. “Blowing shit up might be the safest call.”

“Also, it’s in the middle of nowhere,” adds Bucky. “No better place for us to blow shit up.”

“Fine, whatever, blow up everything, just as long as you get the intel we need and you don’t let some kinda zombie plague escape this facility.”

“On it, boss,” Sam says with a crisp salute that makes Rhodey roll his eyes.

“Right, so let’s go over the objectives and your infiltration plans…”

It’s a long flight to Kazakhstan, and with the briefing and planning part done with, they don’t have much to do other than keep staring at the maps and intel that they’ve already committed to memory. Once even Bucky is satisfied that they’re as prepared as they’re going to be, complete with multiple contingency plans up to and including zombie plague and/or aliens, Sam suggests they exchange their playlists now and listen to them for the rest of the flight.

“What, like, together?” asks Bucky with a furrowed brow that borders on the suspicious.

“Like, I listen to the one you made me, and you listen to the one I made you. We talk about them as we go, or at the end, whichever. It’ll pass the time.”

Bucky shrugs and puts away his thick brick of a paperback—his favored pastime on long flights when he’s not brooding or sleeping, Sam has come to learn.

“Yeah, alright,” he says. “But we should talk after we listen, otherwise we’ll never get through all the songs.”

“Yeah, alright, fair enough,” says Sam with a laugh.

They share their playlists, and pull out their respective earbuds to begin listening. Sam’s not entirely sure what to expect from Bucky’s music, beyond a healthy amount of jazz, swing, and big band music. He doesn’t really expect a particularly cohesive playlist though, given that Bucky isn’t from a time when painstakingly crafted mixtapes and playlists were really a thing. And yet, Bucky’s playlist seems to tell a story, of sorts, not least because he seems to have organized it more or less chronologically. It has the danceable highs of Benny Goodman and the sad, crooning lows of Judy Garland, and there’s even some classical music too, Rachmaninoff and Chopin, that Sam’s curious enough to ask about before he gets to the end.

“What’s with the classical? It doesn’t seem like your style.”

“My ma played piano. We couldn’t afford one, but she’d listen whenever she could on the radio, so it reminds me of her,” says Bucky softly.

“The Motown and gospel on my playlist, that’s there on account of my parents,” Sam offers in return, and they share wistful smiles before returning to their listening.

Maybe it’s just Sam’s own perspective, but all the 30s and 40s songs feel soaked in bittersweet nostalgia, like he’s getting a glimpse of the black and white film reel of Bucky’s old life. Every so often he looks over at where Bucky’s listening intently to Sam’s playlist, and the full-color reality of him is a pleasant kind of shock, like the glimpse of a rainbow beyond storm clouds. His face is set in a softer version of the intent concentration he brings to missions, broken only by the way he sometimes taps his fingers against his thigh, or bobs his head to the music. He even smiles a bit sometimes, and Sam’s wildly curious which songs earn that reaction. It’s almost jarring when Sam’s own attention returns to Bucky’s playlist as it transitions to more modern music.

“Joy Division? Weirdly on brand for you,” Sam says.

“Kept seeing it on people’s shirts, got curious,” is Bucky’s explanation.

There are also a couple Afropop bops, some French rap, a couple songs from something called Eurovision that sound vaguely reminiscent of mediocre club music only more overwrought, and some songs from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It all neatly encapsulates Bucky’s recent globetrotting ways and the things and people he’s come in contact with since breaking free of HYDRA. The last song on the playlist actually succeeds in making Sam emotional, embarrassingly enough, and it’s not even on account of the song itself: Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”

“Oh, so now you like Marvin Gaye, huh?” he says once he swallows past the weird lump in his throat.

Bucky takes his earbuds out, and gives Sam a sweet, crooked little smile, the blue of his eyes going somehow both soft and sparkly. “Figured I ought to prove I’ve been paying attention to at least some of your music rants.”

Sam nods his chin towards Bucky’s phone, still held in his hand. “And my playlist? What’d you think?”

He’s glad now that he took this whole thing seriously—he’d feel like a real asshole if he’d gone with anything jokey or blandly educational given Bucky’s earnest playlist—even if he’s suddenly weirdly nervous. Sam’s playlist for Bucky is full of his favorite genres and artists, the music his family and community love and that he loves too: Motown and gospel, funk and soul, a sprinkling of the blues, some of the greatest hits of 90s R&B and hip hop, a couple house tracks that make him think fondly of his brief but fun clubbing days, and even some rock music. Each song is a memory or a feeling or even a memorial, a track on the soundtrack album of Sam’s life, and while objectively Sam knows that music tastes differ and it’s no big deal, subjectively, he might be kinda heartbroken if Bucky doesn’t like or is apathetic about all of it.

Thankfully, Bucky leans forward, bright-eyed, and says, “The Four Tops, that’s Motown, right? I don’t think there’s a Motown song I’ve heard yet that I haven’t liked. And Lauryn Hill, I really liked her—”

Sam grins wider than he has in a long time, and cannonballs into the conversation like it’s a pool at a summer house party.

The long flight doesn’t feel long enough after that, they get so caught up in talking about music and listening to more of it, and it’s such an enormous change from that one fraught and snippy exchange about Marvin Gaye back during the Flagsmashers mess that Sam almost can’t believe it. Here and now, there’s no defensive hunch to Bucky’s shoulders, no tense glower; there’s just Bucky’s quick and easy smile, his avid and animated interest. Sam almost forgets about the mission entirely, until Torres calls back to them from the cockpit.

“ETA one hour!”

“Shit, guess we oughta get ready, huh?”

“Yeah, but put on that ‘Born to Run’ song while we do,” says Bucky.

“I feel like there are a lot of possible jokes about you being into Springsteen, but honestly, I can’t blame you, he’s pretty much a national treasure,” Sam admits.

Bucky offers him one last sunny grin before he puts his stern superhero game face on and gets back to business. 

“So I was thinking about it, and I know it’s not any of the blueprints or imaging, but we should keep an eye out for any secret underground tunnels or exits, could Redwing scan for that—?”

This is Sergeant Barnes talking, and the Winter Soldier, and the White Wolf, solemn and competent, the kind of guy you want on your six. Even so, Sam’s surprised by a fierce and almost childish stab of missing. He misses Bucky, who both is and isn’t right in front of him right now. He shakes the feeling off quickly. You are on the job, Wilson, and so is he. Be a professional. A mission is the last place Sam wants to get distracted by inconvenient feelings.