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Sam notices.
The way that Bucky’s eyes dart and linger to the side, gluing themselves to the far wall after Zemo touches him, his brow creased in the center to create a wrinkle in his forehead, his mouth downturned in a scared frown… yeah, Sam notices.
How his strong shoulders have drawn themselves in a tight, firm line that would take effort to break, and his fingers have furled into fists at his sides, metal grating when his hand clenches. That’s noticeable.
And Sam definitely notices the subtle wobble of Bucky’s bottom lip, the uneven drag of his chest while he breathes to steady himself. The way he keeps his eyes trained to the side so he won’t have to acknowledge that he notices Sam noticing.
But, after all, how could Sam not? He’s a trained counselor, after all. He would be the one to notice it, if someone had to go through the effort of noticing. Wryly, to himself, Bucky wonders if Raynor would have clocked it if she were here. The way his humanity gets the better of him for a fraction of a second.
Bucky can only hope that Selby doesn’t see. That she doesn’t catch the weakness of his mortality and feelings—oh, God forbid—slipping through the cracks in the Winter Soldier’s facade.
They just have to pull this off for a little longer and then—
While Zemo talks—not talks, maybe that’s not the right word; bargains might be better—Bucky tries his best to pretend he didn’t notice Sam noticing.
But it’s hard not to see Sam’s scowl and his furrowed brow. And it’s hard for Bucky’s mind not to run wild with all the possibilities of what he’s thinking right now. What pieces of him Sam is picking apart and noticing that Bucky can’t hide.
He’s trying so hard to hide them but his heart hasn’t stopped pounding since the fight in the bar, and he keeps thinking about the weight of Sam’s hand on his metal bicep. The way his voice had been teaming with fear when he asked if Bucky was okay.
Zemo told them to stay in character. So that’s what Bucky is trying to do. Even if it means revealing something to Sam he never thought he’d have to. That he never thought he’d have to say to anyone.
He should have fucking known Zemo would know. That Zemo would use it when he least expected it. That little brat knows everything. Sam was right about him getting inside Bucky’s head. Maybe he should’ve listened. Then he wouldn’t have to hover here, avoiding Sam’s gaze because the reflection of pity in brown eyes is going to make him nauseous.
Of course it all goes to shit because of Sam’s fucking phone though and, then, wonderfully, it was all for nothing. All of that exposing and vulnerability and disgusting, repulsive, soft squishy humanity was for fucking nothing.
Sam noticed, Bucky couldn’t stop him from noticing, and the noticing ended up being for nothing.
Bucky exposed himself just for the damn sake of it.
“Hey…” Sam tries when they’re at Sharon’s later, his voice treading this imaginary tight rope that Bucky can practically see traversing the space between them, pulled so tight that twine is raveling off. “About earlier, I wanted to just say—”
“Let’s not do this,” Bucky replies, so stiff and biting that Sam seems to choose it actually is the right thing not to push further.
Good. Bucky’s breathing still hasn’t managed to reach the right tempo again.
“You’re right… We’re on a mission. Can’t get distracted.” Sam’s face contorts like it hurts him to be brushed away and to brush it away—whatever he thinks it is—but he nods to himself just once and tacks on as an afterthought, maybe just to say he did it for the super-star-citizen brownie points, “Later then.”
Bucky rolls his eyes to himself. He prefers the concept of never for this specific conversation. He already knows what Sam is going to say if he gets the chance.
Wow, when I didn’t think that you could stoop any lower. Hydra’s fist and Hydra’s ass too, huh? Aren’t you just popular all over.
Bucky can go without that. He was actually starting to like Sam, even after all their back and forth. But now he can’t stop replaying what Sam looked like when he noticed.
Unfortunately for Bucky, later ends up being only a month following in Louisiana, after a damn dinner with laughing and chatting and living—which is something Bucky sort of forgot he was capable of doing in the last few years—when Bucky’s guard is down and he’s not ready to fight and it’s rude for Sam to ruin a perfectly good evening with his noticing.
Bucky is in his room—except it’s not his room, it’s a room Sam gave him. It was sickeningly kind of Sam to let him stay here, despite his protests, and Bucky resents the kindness just as much as he resents himself for accepting it.
Sam broaches the subject again while Bucky is folding his clothes out of the laundry basket that’s sat beside his dresser.
Sam sits on the edge of his bed—fresh sheets he’s sitting on, mind you, Bucky just washed those—hands in his lap, thumbs fiddling.
He doesn’t look up when he says, “I wanna talk about what happened in Madripoor.” And then, so Bucky can’t feign stupidity or ignorance, he clarifies, “with Selby.”
The words make Bucky’s blood run cold and his hands pause on the t-shirt he’s holding, metal fingers gripped just around the collar.
He glances over at Sam sitting on his fresh, clean, nice-smelling sheets, tight-lipped and bleeding nerves.
He prompts, choosing to play innocent because ignorant is no longer an option, carefully starting to refold his clothes and tuck them away in his dresser drawers, “Do you?”
Sam’s eyes are big and concerned and hopeful all at the same time like some sort of caricature of a therapist, focused up on Bucky with something of shyness hidden in his posture. An uncertainty that is rare for The Falcon. For the new Captain America. He’s supposed to be all poise and patriotism—what’s with this hunching his shoulders and worrying his bottom lip between his teeth? Not very becoming, Bucky reckons. Not very strong.
“Yeah,” Sam tries out the taste of the word on his tongue. “We never got a chance to, with everything going on—”
“Kind of a light way to put it,” Bucky replies with a snort, and Sam has the decency to breathe a laugh through his nose.
Sam agrees again, “Yeah,” and keeps playing with his hands.
Bucky lets out a heavy breath, finally stopping folding his clothes, dropping them back into the basket, and turning to Sam, hip slightly cocked out. He quirks a brow and says, waving a hand, “Okay, let’s hear it.”
Sam seems surprised Bucky said anything.
“You wanna say something. Go on.” Bucky shrugs, folding his arms. “Say it.”
In the back of his head, he’s bracing himself for impact. For Sam to say he’s disgusted by it, that his skin has been crawling since Madripoor, and he hasn’t been able to scrub the itch off. That it’s been hard looking at Bucky since, and the smell of him makes Sam want to retch because other people’s hands reek off of him.
Sam steadies his eyes on Bucky for a second, taking stock of his closed-off posture, and lets out a small breath of laughter. “Just gonna go on record and say I’m usually pretty damn good at this but I’m a little off my game.”
Oh, great, he’s talking about being a counselor. He’s usually good at being a little therapist. But not with Bucky, because Bucky’s problems aren’t exactly typical, even for soldiers. That’s not to undermine any of Sam’s other clients. In fact, their experiences of PTSD are a lot more valid. At least they were inside their own head at the time.
“It’s harder, talking to a friend,” Sam continues, surprising Bucky into widening his eyes just slightly, “because I wanna say the right thing. I want you to know I care, but—”
Bucky lets out a hitching scoff despite himself. Fantastic. He wants Bucky to know he cares. He’s laying it on thick, isn’t he? Trying to get Bucky to lower his guard—to be vulnerable. Easier to attack.
Bucky keeps his shoulders up and his hands ready if he needs to lunge.
His brain marks every exit in the room. There are two. Window and door. The door goes to the hallway, down the hallway is Sam’s room, the kitchen, the living room—lots more doors, that’s too many doors, too many turns if Bucky wanted to run. Window it is. Nothing but glass between him and escape. Second story but that’s okay, the fall won’t be bad at all, especially if Bucky braces with his metal arm.
Sam’s smile turns crooked like he’s fond. “But I figured you’d do something like that.”
“Like what?” Bucky is trying hard not to let his posture change. He needs to be stiff, to be still, to be ready if anything happens.
But Sam is sitting on Bucky’s clean sheets, all relaxed and hopeful and very easy to incapacitate. With the way he’s sitting right now—so defenseless, legs open, hands in his lap, back slightly curved—Bucky could flip him on his spine and have him out of commission in seconds. Grab his wrists, twist them back, then maybe pop his shoulder out of the socket. No problem.
That’s a part that Bucky wishes he could turn off. He thinks surely he wasn’t like this Before—so bloodthirsty. He can’t look at a person now without thinking about five different ways to kill them. If he can’t come up with at least three, he starts getting itchy all over.
Sam needs to sit up straight and get ready to defend himself.
“Like trying to pretend it didn’t happen,” Sam says evenly.
It’s funny, seeing him sit on the bed. Bucky wonders if Sam notices that it’s unslept in. If he can tell how smoothed-out and clean the sheets are. Bucky can’t sleep on a bed, though. He’ll wash and fold the sheets and make it, of course, out of respect for Sam’s house, but… the floor is better. It’s firm and cool and easier to flee from if he needs to. The bed just swallows him up like a big hot bowl of soup. He drowns in the covers, covered in sweat, when he tries.
Bucky shrugs, trying to show a smile. “Like what didn’t happen?”
Sam glares at him, a careful narrowing of warm brown eyes, but he smiles all the same. His voice is tender as he says, “Bucky.”
“That one’s not gonna work on you, huh?” Bucky prompts, leaning against the dresser.
“Nope.” Sam is still smiling. “Nothing gets by me.”
It’s good that he’s smiling. Maybe they can just chalk this up to a silly little joke between the two of them. Maybe Bucky can even pretend it was a lie—that he and Zemo discussed it beforehand because they knew Selby would be into that kind of thing, but that it wasn’t indicative of anything happening previously. Bucky knows that Sam wants to talk about what happened previously more than he wants to talk about what happened with Selby.
“What Zemo said,” Sam goes on, making it clear that nothing gets by him, “about anything, I—”
He’s struggling with this. Bucky slants his eyes curiously and says, “You’re not very articulate for a counselor. I thought this was supposed to be your whole shtick. And you’re stuttering.”
“I told you,” Sam replies, a little more stubborn now, which is good, “it’s hard when it’s a friend. And it’s hard when it’s you and you’re doing the whole staring thing. Seriously, man, c’mon, it’s like you’re trying to burn a damn hole in my forehead.”
He puts up a hand in front of his face like he’s trying to block the lasers shooting from Bucky’s eyes, and Bucky can’t suppress the snort, glancing at the floor.
Sam prompts, “You wanna tell me what he meant by that?”
“Oh, I think you’ve figured it out by now,” Bucky replies in a sharper tone without considering it.
Any sense of softness slips off Sam’s face with the words, replaced by a distressing level of sadness, like Bucky has concerned him. Bucky hates the concern.
For a moment, Sam almost looks like Steve. Steve always got that same overwhelming worry in his blue eyes that cringed his face up and created pained wrinkles in his laugh lines when Bucky said something unsavory.
The worst thing Bucky ever did (not accounting for the brainwashed murder and whatnot) was when Steve asked him to hand something over while they were in his apartment—Bucky can’t even remember what—and Bucky had said, “You don’t gotta ask. It’s not like I could say no.”
He meant it teasingly, of course, trying to make light of the way his fingers twitch with the need to have a mission, to have a behavior to comply with. If he lets the actual weight of something hit him, it will crush him.
But Steve hadn’t thought it was funny. Hadn’t smiled. Hadn’t laughed. He’d just left the room for a while.
“That’s not the kind of thing that matters until you tell me, though,” Sam reasons. “I can make up whatever I want in my head. Doesn’t mean I’m right.” He shrugs off-handedly, like he’s trying to help Bucky relax.
It doesn’t help. It makes it worse, even, to know that Sam has been thinking about it and he has been making things up in his head. And then the question of course becomes, is what he made up in his head accurate, is it better, or is it worse?
“Why don’t you tell me then? What you think he meant?” Bucky says, dipping his head, adjusting his arms more firmly across his chest.
Sam says again, tired, “Bucky,” like he’s well aware of the trap that’s being set up for him.
“Because otherwise,” Bucky goes on, purposefully tilting his hips. “I mean, I just don’t really know what you’re talking about. Sorry, man, I’m trying here but—”
Now Sam just looks exasperated. “Bucky.”
“You’re starting to wear it out,” he huffs back, continuing to shift uneasily on his feet.
His eyes dart down and he realizes he’s not wearing shoes, just dark grey socks. He flexes his toes as though he has to test the air around him. If he makes a run for it, he might slip on the floor. That’s not good. He feels sweat start to prickle on the back of his neck, breathing through his nose.
Sam says, “We don’t have to talk about it if you really don’t wanna. I don’t wanna force you to—”
Bucky thinks about Steve’s horror when he said, It’s not like I could say no. But now, he could turn Sam down. There aren’t any more trigger words, there isn’t anyone controlling him but himself. He could tell Sam that no, he doesn’t want to talk about it, and they’re never going to talk about it, just to prove he can.
“But I wanna talk about it,” Sam offers. “And I think these kinds of things are good to talk about.”
He would think that. Therapist. And Bucky means that like a curse.
Bucky is breathing out of his nose. In, out, in, out. It’s weird. He never used to think about breathing this much Before. Never had to. But, After, all those horrible human attributes are what he notices the most. Sure, as the soldier, he experienced some form of fear, inkling under the surface of his skin, a ghost of a sensation, the acknowledgment that he wasn’t allowed to fail a mission.
But now, fear is white-hot and wet and smothering. It makes his lungs feel thick and his throat feel hoarse and he can only conflate it with what an animal must feel when it catches its paw in a trap. He feels it tugging at his stomach, a downward yanking motion, and he tries to figure out how to breathe right—how a person should breathe.
“Why do you wanna talk about it?” he asks, unable to stop sounding snippy. “Just to say we did or—What, to prove yourself right? I’m sure whatever you’ve got cooking in your brain is more than accurate. Just depends on how colorful your imagination is.”
Sam is playing his bottom lip between his teeth thoughtfully, his eyes never leaving Bucky, taking stock of his posture and his folded arms. Something of a fond smile twists his lips up and he asks, dipping his head just slightly to Bucky, “You figured it out yet?”
It doesn’t seem related to their current conversation and Bucky frowns.
“Your exit route,” Sam fills in, still offering his smile like it’s a gift. “I can see you casing the room. You’re finding a way out.”
Bucky can’t stop his shoulders from slacking. He hates that Sam knows him well enough to notice that. This whole thing would be so much easier if Sam didn’t know him well enough to notice things.
Bucky lets out a tired huff, glancing away at the window. He tightens his jaw before he says, “Window. Probably dislocate your shoulder on the way to make sure you don’t follow.”
Sam is smiling. He teases, leaning forward, “Wow, only my shoulder? Someone might start to think you have a soft spot for me,” and Bucky laughs despite himself.
It’s terrifyingly true, though, when he realizes it. Going for the shoulder is a lot more tame than what the Winter Soldier is accustomed to.
“Yeah, maybe,” he says through a scoff, still looking at the window.
“If I tell you what I’m thinking and I’m wrong, are you gonna correct me?” Sam settles back on the bed, relaxing, like he’s trying to show Bucky how unafraid he is, even if Bucky just theoretically threatened to mangle him. “Or are you gonna deny it no matter what?”
Bucky shrugs. “I think denying sounds pretty good, don’t you?”
“No, I think it sounds like lying.” Sam tries, “We’ve gone in a circle enough times now, man, just talk to me.”
It sounds like he’s pleading. Like he’s trying to take an ice pick to Bucky’s outsides, trying to gauge through to his squishy insides.
There’s not a way out of this, not really. Even if Bucky makes a run for it, even if he dislocates Sam’s shoulder and darts out of the window, he won’t get that far in his socks. It rained last night; his socks will get wet and his feet will soak up the moisture and—Maybe that’s why Sam picked today to bring it up. Because he knew Bucky wouldn’t be able to get away.
“Has that…?” Sam is clearly struggling to think of the right words, which is embarrassing for him because Bucky thought counselors always knew what to say to victims. Except that, wait, Bucky’s not— “Happened before?”
“What, being sold or being bought?” Bucky prompts, stone-faced. “You gotta be specific.”
Sam wets his lips, staring up at Bucky to gauge a reaction. “Being bought, I guess.”
Based on how he cringes inward, it's clear that he doesn’t like saying it.
“Sometimes my handlers—” Steve always folded in on himself like a shitty piece of origami when Bucky said that phrase, but Sam just stares at him sadly— “would loan me out. People pay good money to get 48 hours with the Winter Soldier, and even Hydra needs funding.” He shrugs, avoiding Sam’s eyes. “Can’t blame them though.”
Sam’s expression turns to alarm.
“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it,” Bucky says, knowing full well that Sam probably hadn’t thought of it before the bullshit with Selby. He’s too good of a person. “Someone entirely at your mercy? A series of words, and they’ll do whatever you want? ‘No’ isn’t even part of their vocabulary.” He eyes Sam, wondering if he’s trying to make him feel guilty. “You can’t think that was just used in combat.”
A thin layer of disgust has started to wrap over his words like a flimsy film.
Sam doesn’t say anything back, merely regarding Bucky with his mouth formed into a grimace.
“Plus, I’m a lot warmer than some average-grade sex doll. I even breathe and speak and come and—” Bucky’s breath catches in the back of his throat momentarily and he has to fight past it— “beg. If they wanted. I mean, seriously, talk about an upgrade. Top market.” He plasters on a lopsided smile. “And you can’t say I’m not good looking. Worth the price, I think.”
Sam has a sour expression on his face. He’s trying to hide it, to keep his face unmoving, but Bucky can see the way the corner of his lip twitches, and he knows enough to recognize disgust when he sees it.
“What?” Bucky asks, and he can hear the tenseness in his tone, sharp as a broken metal plate. “You wouldn’t drop a few on this? C’mon, Sam, now I’m just offended.”
The worst part is, he actually kind of is.
Sam’s face contorts like he’s squirming in his skin, and Bucky chastises himself for saying something so stupid—so plain, so clear—and, worse, for feeling so much about it. For being genuinely wounded at the notion that Sam wouldn’t want him.
He can hear his own voice in the back of his head, whiny and desperate, someone’s hand on his jaw to tilt his face up. YA budu khoroshim. The way his handlers’ voices returned, rough and slick and smirking, Soldat. Vsegda tak otchayanno khochu ugodit'.
They liked him most when he was needy, he’d learned that fast.
If they could pretend he wanted it, that was all the more delicious. Except for those that wanted to taste the blood in his mouth, of course.
At first, he’d pushed against it—the requests to want something like that—tried to hold onto his self-respect and his worth before he realized he didn’t have any of that anymore. Then, it seemed easier to beg than it did to be punished. And, always worse than that, he hates that the lines became blurred on if it was a performance or a reality.
How pathetic that he would have done anything at all just to feel wanted and needed. Who cares if at some point that became a synonym for used?
He knows, though, behind the animalistic tendency of panic, that it’s not that Sam is disgusted with the notion of owning Bucky himself, he’s disgusted with the thought that anyone else owned him first.
Bucky keeps trying to tell himself that, but The Asset’s whimpers are playing on a loop. Prikosnis' ko mne. His brow scrunches up in pain against it.
Sam tilts his head just slightly like he’s trying to follow Bucky’s gaze, trying to catch his eyes and understand him, to see what’s going on behind his face, but Bucky keeps his blue eyes trained on the window, lashes fluttering as he tries to keep the acid in the back of his throat to a minimum.
Sam says, low, “How did Zemo know?”
Great fucking question. How did that little weasel find out?
Bucky knows the answer, though, or assumes at least, and grunts, still eyeing his escape route, “Probably saw it.”
Sam makes a face like he’s swallowed lemon juice, recoiling. “What?”
“There’s videos,” Bucky replies simply.
It’s not like he ever saw any, but he saw the cameras through blurry vision. Once, he saw the Polaroid Rumlow kept tucked in his wallet. Somewhere beneath the horror of the evidence, he’d been flattered. It had reminded him of the photo Steve kept in his compass during the war. They were, of course, very different. But the premise was the same, wasn’t it? Proof of belonging.
“I didn’t—” Sam shakes his head, taken aback— “I never saw any of that. That wasn’t in your file. I knew that shit front to back and that wasn’t anywhere in it.”
Well, that’s nice at least. Even with SHIELD’s ingenuity and resources, they couldn’t find them. That’s reassuring, actually. Bucky’s heart slows a pace and he flexes his fist.
“Hydra always kept it off the books,” he says back, trying to hide the relief from his face, but he knows it’s clear. “Don’t wanna mix play with work, y’know? Bad form.”
He tries to offer a toothy smile that doesn’t meet his eyes.
Sam looks sick. “Does Raynor know?”
“Fuck, of course not,” Bucky replies before he can stop himself, tone thick with repulsion.
The thought of telling her that—God. It makes his stomach churn. He can barely stand talking to her about the nightmares he has. He couldn’t imagine having to divulge that he was… No. She’d write it down. Make it his official history.
Until Madripoor, it had never been real. It had been just for him, in the recesses of his mind. If no one else knew—no one in the After, that is—then it wasn’t anything at all.
Sam noticing made it real.
Sam is, naturally, bothered by this. He tries to scold, “Bucky, your therapist should know that you were—”
“Don’t say it.” It comes out before Bucky can even stop himself, eyes snapping dangerous and wild to Sam. Sam closes his mouth and Bucky repeats, hand up like he’s ready to hit something, “Don’t say it.” His bottom lip trembles. “Please.”
Sam just keeps on finding new ways to look sad. His posture is less relaxed now. He seems to think for a second, breathing unevenly, before he wonders, in a voice that’s so tender it’s like petting a trembling dog, “Did Steve know?”
Bucky lets out a cracked scoff. He wants to look at the window again but somehow, he can’t tear his eyes away from Sam sitting there on his bed, staring at him expectantly. He shakes his head in the smallest movement, struggling to say it aloud before he finds his wits enough to murmur, “It would have killed him.”
Like that’s a valid excuse.
What doesn’t leave the tip of his tongue is, Steve never would’ve touched me again if he’d known, and that reason enough to keep it to himself.
Sam lets out a sharp breath that sounds like it’s been knocked out of him. “So no one knows?”
“Zemo knows,” Bucky replies and then, softer, tags on, “You know.”
“Not because you wanted me to.” Sam looks like he really regrets bringing up this conversation. “Why?”
Bucky gives him an incredulous look. “I think you can answer that one yourself. I’m fucked up enough as it is. I don’t need to add… that on top of it.”
Sam just keeps on frowning. “You’re not fucked up.”
“Man,” Bucky laughs, “I am so fucked up.”
He’s a hundred and seven years old and doesn’t understand how to work a telephone with only six numbers in it, two of which don’t go to anyone else’s phone anymore, and he has to sleep on the floor to feel comfortable. He’s fucked up.
An awkward, hesitant smile quirks the corner of Sam’s mouth. “Okay, yeah, maybe, but that’s not Hydra’s fault, that’s just how you are.”
That’s nice. Genuinely, actually, that’s nice to hear. It’s nice to know that he’d be fucked up, Hydra or not. It’s reassuring, for a moment, when Bucky remembers that Sam’s only ever known him in the After. He hasn’t had time to look at Bucky and mourn the person he was. He’s only ever known who he is. And he knows that guy is fucked up, brainwashed assassin or not. Bucky smiles hopefully.
“And it’s not a bad way to be,” Sam adds on, holding Bucky’s gaze. He emphasizes, keeping Bucky trapped in his eyes, tilting his head like he’s imploring Bucky to hear the words right, “You’re not bad, Buck.”
Bucky doesn’t correct him on the nickname for once. His smile is gone, staring at Sam headlong like it would be a crime to look away. Maybe it would.
Sam repeats, quiet, “You’re not bad.”
And it’s funny but the way he says it makes it the first time that Bucky thinks he can believe such a silly thing.