Archive of Our Own

After the barbecue, Bucky gives him a quick, backslapping hug, then heads off into the sunset; Sam has no idea whether he's gonna see the guy again anytime soon. But two weeks later, on his his first official mission as Captain America, there Bucky is, leaning against Sam's plane in the hangar, ankles crossed, arms crossed, staring, waiting.

"Heard you could use some help."

"Well, if you know of anyone actually useful," Sam replies, and Bucky's mouth turns up, just a little, at the corner, and he claps Sam on the shoulder as they board the plane.

They work together beautifully, that mission, finding and then dismantling a lab where some harebrained doctor was trying to recreate the super serum (again) after hearing about Nagel's success. They follow the evidence, track down the materials, arrest the scientists, subdue the guards, and have their hands on the research before anyone even gets turned into the Hulk. It's comforting, having Bucky thinking and fighting at his side, even if the lab itself is depressing as hell to look at.

"Gonna be dealing with this for a while," Sam sighs, when the last vial of knock-off discount super serum is destroyed.

"Yeah. Steve used to say, they'll never stop trying to recreate what Erskine had." Bucky pokes at a now-wiped computer hard drive with his foot.

"People need to move on. Science like this could be curing cancer."

"They don't want to cure cancer, they want to make a new version of Steve."

Sam glances up at him, but Bucky doesn't look emotional when he says it, just keeps glaring dispassionately at the lab equipment.

"You'd think they'd have learned from Walker that you can't just dose any old white boy with super serum and get Steve Rogers." Sam shakes his head, full of grief at the reminder of Steve's absence, and, simultaneously, anger at the idea that anyone would think Steve was mass produceable. "The man's gone."

Bucky shrugs. "Someone's funding them. Guess they think nostalgia sells better than medicine."

"Guess so."

Afterwards, when they go their separate ways, Bucky clasps his shoulder, tightly, and meets his eyes for a moment. In a way, it does remind Sam of Steve.

In another way, his work with Bucky is something else, something new, something the two of them create together, that they wouldn't have if Steve were still around. Sam finds himself grateful for it.

*

After that mission, Bucky just keeps showing up, almost every time Sam goes out in the uniform: running backup, telling Sam his ideas are bad, saving his life, making fun of him, and, sometimes, bringing snacks for the long plane rides that he grudgingly shares. Captain America's sidekick, Bucky Barnes. Sam isn't going to say no, and after a few more missions together, he starts to get used to Bucky's annoying, smug, humorless, but admittedly useful presence.

When Bucky doesn't show up for one of the missions on his own, Sam texts him to tell him to get his ass in gear. Bucky does.

The anti-terrorist stuff with the Flag Smashers is what made headlines, and they do have to keep on top of the apparently still-lucrative super serum industry, but the majority of their new missions together are relief, not combat: Sam flying supplies in to isolated disaster areas, Bucky guiding and protecting refugees as they flee dangerous situations, that kind of thing, as the Global Repatriation Council and the United Nations, in addition to the US government, make increasing use of their services. At a California wildfire, Bucky builds firebreaks with super strength and speed, unaffected by the smoke, while Sam airdrops water and supplies; when a train derails near Incheon, hanging on a high trestle over the water, Sam's able to fly Bucky in to punch through the steel, and together they get the survivors to the rescue boats.

"Your Korean is very good, but a little . . . old fashioned," an older gentleman tells Bucky, in English. Bucky's carrying him bridal-style, and his hastily-bandaged head wound is dripping on Bucky's shoulder. Bucky thanks him, and asks him some questions in Korean to keep him talking while they get him to the nearest medic.

"He meant, I sound like a North Korean," Bucky tells Sam, after. "I need to update my lingo."

"There's an app for that," Sam suggests.

In Torino, it's long days and nights spent protecting a camp of displaced persons who've had more than one bomb scare, until they can catch the bomber; in Florida, it's building emergency heat shelters on a remote island where he and Bucky are by far the fastest way to move and assemble the materials. Their new, tentative partnership begins to take its shape during those missions, not the ones that people might think of as superhero work, the two of them coordinating strategies for rescue, for aid, and only rarely for kicking anybody's ass.

Not that they don't kick ass when the situation calls for it.

But Sam uses his wings far more than his shield, and his shield mostly for protection; Bucky, beside him, or on the ground beneath him, does the same with his arm, his speed and resilience, his body: he keeps people safe.

Sam watches him do it, and he likes the look that Bucky gets at the end of those missions. Something settled; something like peace. Sam figures that rescuing people from a flood or destroying a weapons cache isn't the kind of work he imagined doing, when he was convinced he could only be effective as a weapon himself. Every time someone thanks him, he looks baffled, then belatedly pleased; it cracks Sam up, but it's a good look for Bucky.

Anyway, Sam knows that same feeling, or the edges of it: what might be peace, or purpose, in what the two of them can do together. In what they can do for others. It's what he once imagined being Captain America would look like, what he wanted it to be.

The fact that the new stars and stripes on Sam's uniform make his government more likely to actually care for and feed people in need, including its own citizens—for the optics, of course—works just fine for him. Whatever gets people fed and keeps them safe. Where he and Bucky go, the world's attention follows, so they go wherever they're welcomed, in this new, strange, broken, global community: wherever people need the most help.

He's not surprised that he likes the work, or finds it fulfilling. That he likes doing it with Bucky, or finds Bucky's presence fulfilling, well, that's a little surprising. He and Bucky have been pretty solid for a while now, only paying lip service to their old animosity, but it's still a shock, how pleased Sam feels to be working with him, how right it feels to have him close to hand.

"Good work today," Sam tells him, after sixteen hours of grueling rescue work on a sinking ship off the coast of Seattle. There had been a little group of people living on a shitty decommissioned container ship, billed as a refuge for anyone who returned from the blip and ended up unhoused. Three hundred and eight people, and Sam doesn't know where they'll go now, but at least they won't be at the bottom of the ocean.

Bucky looks at him sidelong.

"What, I can't give you a compliment?" Sam laughs.

"Not usually," Bucky grumbles. He sighs, running his ungloved hand over his face. "Feels wrong to rescue people and not give them anywhere to go."

"Yeah." Sam hopes it'll end up on the news. Maybe people will open their homes. Stranger things have happened. "I'll call a friend of mine in Seattle social services, see if he can look out for them while they wrestle with the GRC."

Bucky nods. They walk on, shoulder to shoulder, their part of the job done, at least. Even the silence between them, these days, feels good.

*

Despite how fucked up the world is, though, there are a limited number of situations that actually call for their skills, and plenty where the attention they'd bring would fuck things up more, so they end up having a lot of downtime. It's weird as hell. Sam feels like he's been running nonstop for years, including the years he didn't exist; the prospect of days or even weeks off from superheroing is unsettling, makes him feel strange, paranoid and irritable.

He babysits for Sarah, mends the fishing lines, takes the boat out and brings in the catch on the days Carlos can't do it, and he loves every minute but itches under his skin the whole time.

"You all right?" Sarah asks, one night when she catches him still awake, well after two a.m., while she's on her way to the bathroom.

"Yeah," Sam says, not looking up from his laptop where he's digging for leads on the next likely super serum lab. "I'm just, you know. Keeping on top of things."

She comes over to peer over his shoulder at the screen, then bends to kiss his head. "Shut it down," she says, kindly. "The world'll be there in the morning."

It will, that's the funny thing. Riddled with problems and crises, held together only by the sheer force of will of all the people who want to see it thrive, but the world will be there in the morning.

"In this business, I've had lots of nights where that wasn't true."

"The charter and fishing slash restaurant business?" Sarah asks, archly, and that makes Sam actually close his laptop and turn to look up at her.

"You know what I meant."

"Oh, your part-time gig, that Captain USA thing. Yeah, seems like they don't pay you enough for you to be doing that in the middle of the night."

Sam chuckles. "I got a lawyer now who says she'll make them pay me better."

"Still. Save the late nights for when the world actually needs you, okay? Because otherwise I need you to take the kids to school in the morning."

Sam sighs, but stands up, heads for bed.

The world is there in the morning; it doesn't mean he sleeps any easier in the meantime.

He knows what he'd tell one of his old clients at the VA who was feeling that way. He knows he'd encourage them to engage with the civilian world, to remember that life isn't all combat and danger, that it's okay to rest and enjoy life.

Hell, he remembers telling Steve exactly that, the first time they met. Remembers blurting out his old your bed feels like a marshmallow speech, the one he'd given to plenty of other vets, and remembers the satisfaction of seeing it hit home.

Giving himself that same speech doesn't help much, but he tries to breathe through the itchy sensation and not freak out every time he's not fighting or flying.

It helps that he's reconnected with Sarah and the kids. At the end of each mission, he heads back to Delacroix, back to his family and his people and the water he grew up on, rather than returning to DC, even though his GRC contact hints more than once that he'd be "better placed" in Washington. He hears from old friends at the DC VA, from Air Force buddies of his, and he knows that a lot of people are doing the same, these days. Going home, if they can find it. If it still exists. Sam's lucky, that way.

Back in DC, before the blip, he had a job he loved, friends, a therapist (way, way better than Bucky's weirdly aggressive therapist), a favorite spot to go for drinks, an ex-girlfriend who lived in his neighborhood who he felt embarrassed about running into on the street, a cool barber shop where he was a regular, and a truly amazing dentist: a full adult life, even though he inhabited it less and less ever since that day he tried to run fast enough to impress Steve Rogers. Over time, as the crises mounted up, he didn't get back often, but he maintained his lease, went for a haircut when he was in town, kept up his therapy appointments as best he could.

Now, though, he finds himself actually having to make the decision, and it's easier than he would've thought. He feels like his old life is finally fading away entirely, drowned out by the sound of the waves lapping against his family's boat, eclipsed by the taste of his sister's cooking and the feel of the slick, swampy heat on his skin. He's been called home, and he knows better than to ignore that call. It's predictable, to some extent. He always knew he'd be back here someday. Breaking his lease by being snapped out of existence for five years just sped up the process.

The interesting thing, he thinks, the less predictable thing, is that after their first few missions, Bucky starts taking his downtime in Delacroix, too. He asks, the first time, if Sam minds company on the flight, company back home, mumbling the question like a kid, with his hands shoved in his pockets. It's pretty cute. Sam tells him no, of course not man, come along, and then teases him about it the whole way there.

"You're like a puppy, you know that? A little tiny lost puppy with big brown eyes, following me around." They're hefting their duffel bags onto their shoulders and stepping out of the airport's aggressive air conditioning and into the muffling embrace of New Orleans humidity.

"Oh, so you've noticed my eyes," Bucky clips out, deadpan.

Sam has, in fact, but he's not gonna say so.

"Seriously, aren't you paying rent in New York?" Sam's genuinely curious about this.

"Might start subletting," Bucky says. "I . . . finished the business I had there, I think. And, I dunno. I like it here."

"Well, I suppose, since you're family now, you're always welcome," Sam sighs, patting Bucky's back before he steps forward to cross the street, heading for the short-term parking lot.

Bucky doesn't say anything to that, not while they load all their crap into Sam's truck, not while they get themselves situated in the front seat, not for the first five minutes of the drive.

"Thanks," Bucky says, while Sam messes with the radio at a stoplight. Sam looks up at him, but he's looking down, fiddling with his glove. "Thanks, Sam. Means a lot."

Sam licks his lips, surprised by the vulnerability in Bucky's voice. He replies softly, matching his tone.

"Of course, man."

*

Gradually, it becomes their routine: catch a flight back to New Orleans together from wherever they are in the world, navigate the same airport, breathe the same rich thick air when they step out to find their ride. Bucky still asks every time, but his question gets shorter, more rote: hey, Sam, is it okay if I, uh, come back with you again? turning into okay if I come back with you? and then okay if I come?

Sam says yes, every time, surprised by this, too, that Bucky's enjoying being part of his life, just as much as he's enjoying having Bucky in it. Whatever, it works. His sister and nephews get used to seeing him, to the point that Bucky sometimes only gets a bored hey from Cass and AJ when he comes in, and only merits a friendly nod from the neighbors, like someone who lives there instead of a circus attraction.

So Bucky becomes a feature at his sister's house, asleep on the couch, playing with the kids, eating all the sugary cereal. He does way, way more than his fair share of chores, he gets to know the names of all the kids on the street so he can yell at them to get off the lawn, and he flirts with Sarah in that respectful, forties-guy way that makes everyone in the vicinity roll their eyes while also being charmed.

"Hi, Sarah," he says, smiling in the way he mostly doesn't. "Help you with those bags?"

"Thank you, you're a godsend," Sarah says, as Bucky springs into action.

"I would've helped you with your bags," Sam grumbles, still on the couch.

"I like it better when Bucky does it," Sarah replies, and then Bucky asks her how her day was while they walk to the kitchen.

Sam's one of the people in the vicinity; Sam's rolling his eyes while also being charmed. Bucky doesn't actually ask Sarah out, and Sarah seems to enjoy the flirting while not expecting it to go anywhere, so Sam only has to threaten to beat him up as a joke. Then he stops even joking about it, because AJ tells him that's really sexist, Uncle Sam and Sarah laughs at her brother caught out and gaping like a fish at his feminist nephew.

He should actually be happy, he thinks, at the idea of Bucky and Sarah dating. He cares for them both, wants good things for them both. Bucky's a displaced time-traveler, a traumatized former assassin, and a complete dick, but he's honest and cares about people, and if Sarah wanted to date him, she could do worse. Has done worse, plenty of times.

He's not happy, though, seeing them flirt; he's relieved that they don't take it any further. It's the kind of weird, possessive feeling Sam would take to his therapist, if Sam's therapist weren't with Sam's barber and his dentist and his drinking buddy Roland back in DC. Too bad more therapists don't do teleconference appointments, like on Skype or something. Sam should probably find a new one.

But as much as Sam probably needs to deal with that feeling, that jealous guard dog feeling inside of him that says my new friend, mine, stay back when other people get close to Bucky, he's happy to experience the other side of it, the small satisfied rush he gets when Bucky's sprawled out in his family home, or mowing the lawn, or fixing the sink so it stops dripping, comfortable in a short sleeve shirt even around the kids. Like Bucky belongs here, with them. With Sam, in the new life he's building.

It's the feeling he has the morning after they get back from Antwerp, when he walks into the kitchen after his run to find Bucky with his left arm open on the table, doing something to the insides.

"Hey, the Wakandans make that thing so you can mess with it?" Sam asks, opening the fridge and pulling out the orange juice. "I thought they were all about proprietary technology and black boxes."

Bucky snorts. "Yeah, no, this is just a maintenance routine they taught me. Any sophisticated repairs, I'd have to go see Ayo, and she'd take it to Shuri or someone."

Sam sits down next to him, raising the juice to his lips, then stops when Bucky shoots him a sharp glance. Sam sighs.

"You ain't my mama, Barnes," he mutters, but gets up to get a glass.

"No, but your sister'll kill me if she knows I sat here and let you drink straight from the carton, man. And she's scarier than you."

"Yeah, you seem terrified," Sam says, sitting back down with his glass of juice. Bucky glances up at him for a second, eyes narrowing. Sam has no idea what's going through his big thick head, half the time.

Sam watches in silence for a little while as Bucky makes minute adjustments with his toolkit, which looks like an eyeglasses repair kit except possibly made out of vibranium. A million-dollar eyeglasses repair kit. Sam wants, suddenly, to touch it, to be part of what Bucky's doing.

"Teach me," Sam says, which earns him Bucky's gaze on him, eyebrows arched in question. Sam shrugs. "I should know how to take care of you in the field. Partner."

He chooses the word purposefully, and he's glad when it makes a satisfied expression pass over Bucky's face. They both of them lost a partner, the person who made their relationship to each other make sense in the first place, but lately it feels like they're on the way to something new, something different than just who they used to be minus Steve. That's good, Sam thinks; they can't be the same people they were before, especially not with each other.

"Well. In that case," Bucky drawls.

Sam shuffles his chair a little closer, wiping an arm over his sweaty forehead. Bucky scowls.

"You know you're gross and disgusting, right. You're gonna sweat into my arm."

Sam pulls his t-shirt up by the hem and uses it to wipe his face and neck. When he drops the shirt again, Bucky is blinking at him, a blank look on his face.

"There, better? You need me to shower before you can teach me how to prevent your arm from exploding? You've smelled worse things."

"Yeah, in Soviet gulags," Bucky says, shaking his head. But then he twists towards Sam, angling his arm and bringing them closer, so that Sam can see inside his body. His arm is full of complex machinery, gleaming with that same impossibly perfect vibranium shine that he sees on the inside of his shield.

"Wow. Beautiful," Sam breathes, and Bucky laughs softly.

"Don't drool in my arm either," he says, and Sam glares at him. "Okay, so, I'm checking the pressure here, to make sure there isn't too much stress on this internal joint. Wanna feel?"

Sam takes the tool from him, their fingers brushing, and lets Bucky guide him towards the correct component.

*

By the time they've run through the entire maintenance routine, Sarah and the kids have come and gone for breakfast and it's pushing lunchtime. Sam really should get up and shower, but the process of teaching Sam about his arm has made Bucky downright chatty, which is so rare that Sam doesn't want to break the spell.

"It's a lot lighter, and it's connected—like, the points of connection are better distributed, I guess? So that it doesn't hurt to have it on. The old one, the weight, the way it pulled . . ." Bucky frowns and shakes his head.

Sam can't always turn off his VA social worker brain around superheroes, even when he wants to and knows he ought to, and this is one of those times: he thinks about Bucky being in constant pain for over seventy years, about what that would do to a person. He worked with plenty of vets who had chronic pain, who were powerfully changed by it, but nothing to that extent, that length of time.

He doubts Bucky would appreciate a question along those lines, though. And a pain counselor might not be welcome after his last bad experience with therapy.

"You couldn't take the old one off?" Sam asks, instead, a partner question rather than a social worker question. "Like, for sleeping, or whatever?"

"The old one didn't come off. Not without a lot of work to disconnect it, and I couldn't reach to do it even if I wanted to. That's why we put in the quick release on the new one."

"So you could have control," Sam says, and Bucky nods acknowledgement. "That was undercut just a little by Ayo taking it off you."

"Well, I didn't know she had the quick release code," Bucky drawls. "I still prefer this to having it permanently bolted onto my skeleton, though."

Sam winces, shaking his head. "So, was the idea that you could switch it out? Get different attachments? Vacuum cleaner, whisk, chainsaw—"

Bucky glares at him. "Yeah, it makes total sense to swap out my working hand for devices that are easy to operate with hands," he points out, and Sam chuckles his acknowledgement, shaking his head. After a few seconds, Bucky continues. "I have a—they offered me a kind of, a normal one. Without super strength or whatever. I could theoretically swap them out." He coughs, then looks away for a second, mouth in a hard line. "I could teach you how to do the quick release, if you want."

"What, in case I need to fight you?"

Bucky shrugs, keeping his gaze on his open arm. "Whatever."

"I don't think I need to know, buddy."

"Not like you to turn down a strategic advantage, Sam." But now there's a hint of a smile on Bucky's face, which Sam likes a lot better than the frozen, unhappy look he had a second ago.

"I got plenty of advantages over you already. Don't need a cheat code to beat your ass."

"In your dreams." Now Bucky's truly smiling, underneath his scowl, and it makes Sam smile too, warmth pooling in his chest. It's not the first time he's noticed how handsome Bucky is in the mouth and jaw area, or how cute he is when he smiles, so he doesn't particularly notice himself noticing that. It's background noise to him, at this point.

Probably a good time to stand up, though. Go take that shower. Stop sitting so close to Bucky and thinking about the spark of their banter, the way they can't resist poking and prodding one another. Sam knows it started out as genuine hostility, but sometime when he wasn't paying attention it became something else, a language unique to the two of them.

"You still stink, by the way," Bucky says, after a little silence.

"I'm going, I'm going," Sam says. "Let's grab lunch when I'm done."

*

They get lunch at a grungy little food stand near the water, a place run by two ladies who've been there since Sam was a kid. He's never asked if they're friends or sisters or girlfriends or what, they've always been such a part of the landscape.

"Tell me that isn't Sam Wilson," one of them, Jennifer, exclaims. "Getting hard to recognize you these days."

"I wish that were true, ma'am," Sam laughs, because he signed three autographs for three separate kids in order to get here.

"She means because you're looking a little scruffy," the other woman, Berniece, puts in. "Your new friend hide all the razors in your house?"

"That is something that he'd do," Sam says, running a hand over his cheek, where his beard isn't. He has gotten a little more lax about keeping it neat, since he's been working on the boat so much. He turns to glance at Bucky, who's on about day three of his five day stubble cycle. "Jennifer and Berniece, this is Bucky, he's staying with the family while we're on leave."

"Oh, we know who you are," Berniece smiles. "Met at the barbecue, didn't we. What'll you have, darlin?"

Bucky lights up and flirts right back at her, more flirting than Sam has ever seen from someone ordering a pulled pork sandwich, and it's just as sweet and charming as it is when he does it with Sarah.

Sam's just as charmed as he is when Bucky flirts with Sarah, too, and almost as annoyed.

"All right, come on, good lord," Sam says, once they have their order, pulling on Bucky's arm to drag him over to the picnic tables nearby. If he's a little rougher than he needs to be, if he gets a little closer to Bucky than he needs to get, well, that's something to tell his therapist about whenever he gets around to finding one.

"You're absolutely hopeless," Sam tells him, stabbing some coleslaw with his fork.

"I got told I should be more friendly," Bucky replies reproachfully. "Do less weird staring. Wasn't that being friendly?"

"Seriously, I will murder you."

Bucky smiles softly and drops his voice. "You wouldn't. You like me too much," he says, teasing, and Sam has to remind himself that it's not the same as flirting, even if it kinda feels the same. He rolls his eyes and changes the subject.

When they finish eating, Bucky gathers up their cardboard cartons and takes them to the trash. Sam watches him, then notices himself watching him, and frowns.

"I'm gonna head out for a shave and a haircut," Sam says, when he comes back to the table, thinking that it might do him some good to be out of Bucky's company for a few hours.

"Jennifer really got to you, huh," Bucky teases. Sam flips him off.

*

He tries out a new barber shop in NOLA, a place the old-timers who came to their boat-raising told him about. It's not hip like his place in DC, which was full of young guys and minor local celebrities and the occasional Washington Wizard; instead, it's one of those traditional places that feels like it's witnessed the slow march of history, measured out in the up-and-down pumping of the chairs, the click of the scissors, the strop of straight razors against leather. There are signed pictures on the walls of old jazz greats, Louis Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, plenty of others who Sam doesn't recognize. Sam doesn't talk much, while he sits in the ancient orange chair, just listens to the old guys shoot the shit, free from the usual demands on his time and attention, enjoying the hot towel on his face and the kind, careful hands against his skin.

Afterwards, he feels calmer. Rooted.

On his way out, one of the old guys grabs his shoulder tightly and shakes his hand, giving him a long slow nod, which is how he knows he got recognized; other than that, they all treat him like they'd treat any youngster. It feels good, being known, and beyond that, being known well enough that he doesn't get grilled and questioned. And the fade he got isn't bad at all.

Maybe, he thinks, if he goes for long enough, if he stays for long enough, they might ask him to sign a picture for the wall.

*

"You get a haircut?" Sarah asks him, that night, grabbing his still-smooth chin to tilt his head this way and that. Bucky, on the other side of the kitchen, pauses in the process of making tea and watches them quietly.

"Yeah, yeah, it's not news."

"You trusting your head to anyone around here is news," Sarah points out.

Sam bats her hands away from his face. "Shut up, I'm not twenty anymore."

"He is pretty fussy, though," Bucky puts in.

"Very fussy," Sarah agrees, laughing. Then, looking over her shoulder at Bucky, she breaks into a story about Sam when he was in training, trying to settle on a haircut that would be fashionable but pass unnoticed by his Air Force superiors.

"Mama loved it, but I think she was the only one," Sarah finishes. By that time, Cass and AJ are in the kitchen too, hanging on every word about Uncle Sam being vain and picky.

"Can't believe you'd come for a man's haircut," Sam says, mostly for their benefit. "Is nothing sacred?"

Sarah tsks regretfully. "Nothing at all."

The kids disperse again, and Bucky goes back to his teabag and hot water. As Sam leaves the kitchen, Bucky speaks again, low enough that Sarah doesn't hear.

"You do look good, though."

Sam glances up at him sharply, but Bucky just shrugs and pours milk into his tea.

Just being friendly, Sam reminds himself. Jesus.

*

The next morning, Sam keeps thinking about Bucky's arm, the satisfaction of running through the maintenance routine, of having someone to talk with about the Wakandan tech. He'd like another project like that, he thinks, and there's one he's been putting off.

He finds Bucky down on the boat, replacing that belt in the engine that Carlos was worried about. Sam doesn't say hi, and Bucky doesn't either; Sam just jumps in and holds the other end of the belt while Bucky gets it placed. Bucky grunts his thanks, screwdriver held in his mouth. Then Sam holds the outside plate while Bucky closes it, screwing it into place right-handed.

"What's up," Bucky asks, after they finish, wiping his hands on a rag.

"Got a project, could use your help with it."

Bucky nods and follows him, easy as that. When they get back to the house, Bucky lets out a low whistle, seeing Sam's wings spread over the kitchen table, gleaming, all of the joints articulated to show as much surface area as possible. Sam feels a little stirring of pride; he didn't make them, but they're his, and they're damned impressive.

"I thought, since you have all that experience doing maintenance on Wakandan machinery," Sam says.

Bucky laughs, the quiet choked one he has when he's surprised. "Not the same thing. I don't even know how these work."

"Oh, but you know how your arm works?"

Bucky glowers at him.

"It came with an instruction manual," Sam wheedles. Bucky's glower doesn't soften. "C'mon. I'll get Sarah to make that chicken thing you like."

Sighing, Bucky waves him off. "It's fine. You helped with mine. Where are the instructions?"

Sam holds them out wordlessly. Bucky looks at them, then looks at Sam, then looks at the instructions again.

"These are in Wakandan."

"I thought you spoke Wakandan."

Bucky loses his shit a little at that, which is hilarious. "Yeah, I speak it, some, like a, a fucking, Wakandan baby. I don't read it! It has clicks, I don't know how you write clicks! They don't even have Wakandan on Duolingo, and you want me to—"

Sam holds up his hands, laughing. "Relax, relax. There's English on the other side. And Xhosa, Yoruba, and I think Igbo. Lots of options."

Still grumbling, Bucky settles down with the English side of the instructions and pulls out his toolkit. Between them, they manage to figure it out, arguing back and forth about which part of the wings corresponds to Section 14E on the diagram, admonishing each other not to lose any pieces, cleaning and checking to make sure nothing's bent or damaged.

"S'kinda fun," Sam says, as they clean and lubricate matching joints. It's a good two-person job, since once they figure something out, they can each take a wing. "It's like putting together IKEA furniture." He glances at Bucky, then says, "That's furniture from this Swedish—"

"I know what IKEA furniture is," Bucky grumbles, interrupting him. Sam would bet hard cash money that he actually doesn't, and is just saying that to shut him up, but then he adds, "Of course, if you mess up building a table or whatever, the worst that can happen is it wobbles or you spill your coffee."

"Yeah, where on the other hand, we do this wrong, I'll crash and die, and it will be your fault, and Sarah will kick your ass."

"Relax. My arm has this thing . . ." Bucky's hands rove over the control pack, steady and confident, his fingers eventually catching on a little edge Sam hadn't noticed and pulling back a flap to reveal a set of glowing lights. "Diagnostic panel," Bucky says, smug and self-satisfied. "If we mess it up, something here will glow red. So you won't crash and die, worrywart."

"What a relief." Sam shakes his head. "And worrywart? Who says that?"

"I say that."

"You're a fossil."

"You historically like hanging out with fossils." Bucky looks up when he says it, and Sam feels a soft pang through his chest.

"Got me there," he says, after a beat.

There's a little silence while they check the alignment of the upper attachment points together, hands moving almost in unison. Sam tries to imagine Steve doing this task, sitting in Bucky's place, and he can't do it. It feels more natural for Bucky to be the one at his side, these days.

Bucky interrupts his train of thought.

"I gotta say, I love that you didn't give up the wings when you got the shield. Captain America with wings, it's fucking great. You think Steve knew that he was allowed to have wings and a shield at the same time? I bet he'd be pissed."

Sam laughs. "Yeah, he complained about having to walk all the time. Or like, about stairs. 'All the other Avengers get to fly, or ride on Hulk, and I'm stuck running up forty flights—'"

"Jeez, Buck," Bucky joins in, doing a pretty passable impression of Steve, "You'd think they could invent us some kind of flying motorcycle or something, I feel like such a chump."

"Why don't we have flying motorcycles, that is a good question. We oughta get one for you so you don't have to take the stairs like a chump."

Bucky's laughing along with him now, low and real, little snorting chuckles that Sam's never heard out of him before.

"Can you imagine how pissed Steve would be," he adds, still laughing.

"He would've looked like a dork on a flying motorcycle anyway," Sam says, dismissing the idea with his hand. "You'll probably just look annoyingly cool."

"Aw, it's fine, I'll just get a lift from you. That's what you and Steve used to do, right?"

Their laughter dies away a little, and Sam meets his gaze. Bucky's still smiling, and Sam thinks it's good, that they're both able to talk about Steve this way, missing him, but not hollowed out about it, not like they were.

Fuck, Sam wishes he and Bucky had been able to connect before this, before they got thrown together. If anyone knew what it was like; if anyone could've grieved with him. He texted Bucky, but not as much as he should've, and he knows now that Bucky wasn't in a place to reach out to him. He takes a breath.

They're here now. And Bucky wants Sam to carry him in the air.

He shakes his head. "Yeah, but it can get kind of awkward. The wings work best if I'm horizontal in the air, like, lying prone" —Sam demonstrates, sticking his arms out— "which makes it hard to do a bridal carry, and a fireman's carry doesn't work either."

"What about the like, the arm-clasp thing? We've made that work a couple times."

"Yeah, it sort of works, but not if either of us needs to carry a gun or supplies or the shield while we're flying. Plus it's tiring for both of us. Steve and I tried to do that as little as possible." Even Steve, with his super strength, started sweating and slipping out of Sam's grip after a while, and Sam didn't have super strength to start with.

"Hm."

Bucky looks down at their work and clicks the last component back into place.

"Moment of truth," Sam says, opening the diagnostic panel and turning the wings on.

The panel lights up green, green, green. Bucky grins at him, clapping him on the shoulder. It's the same way Steve used to clap him on the shoulder. Sam figures it's what guys did before the invention of the fistbump or the highfive. He's always liked it, and finds he doesn't like it any less when Bucky does it, Bucky's right hand warm on his shoulder, Bucky's fingertips pressing gently into his skin.

There he goes again, noticing. He's really gotta cut it out. He and Steve settled in at shoulder clasps and affectionate hugs, and that's bound to be where he'll have to cut things off with Bucky, too.

He really should get that therapist. And maybe, separately, laid.

"You should take it for a spin."

"In a residential neighborhood?" Sam asks, incredulous. "Mister Johnson down the street'd cuss me out for days. When I was fourteen he yelled at me for walking wrong, and you want me to fly over his house?"

"Well, now I kind of do."

Sam gives him a warning look. Bucky holds up his hands, smiling.

"There's that field where the local kids play ball," he offers, instead. "Plenty of open space there."

Of course Bucky's noticed the field where the local kids play ball. Sam thinks about it. "All right, fine."

"And I have an idea," Bucky adds. "Hang on, I just need to get something."

The something he needs to get turns out to be a strap capable of bearing his weight; after Sam's lifted off and done a few modest swoops over the field, Bucky attaches it to Sam's harness and wraps it around his left hand, knuckles held tight against Sam's chest.

"You sure I'm not gonna throw off your balance?" Bucky asks.

"Nah. Just hang on tight. Most people do this two-handed." Even Steve, he thinks, usually did it two-handed, given the option.

"I'm not most people," Bucky says, teeth flashing in a smug little grin, and, yeah, Sam can get with that. He jumps into the air without any further warning, trusting Bucky to hold fast.

Bucky does something to lock his elbow so that it stays bent, keeping his body closer to Sam, and does a few experimental crunches and twists in the air while Sam flies. Below them, the neighborhood kids begin to gather, yelling and pointing upwards. Sam waves a few times, to scattered cheers.

"Got a pretty good range of motion," Bucky calls, over the rush of the wind, and holds out his right hand, index and middle fingers mimicking a gun barrel, thumb pressing down as he pulls the imaginary trigger. "This could work."

"Don't know why I never thought before to strap a robot assassin to my chest while I was flying," Sam replies, bringing them in for a landing. He manages to angle it so they both land upright, on their feet, at about the same time; not too awkward for his first try. It'll take some practice before he can do fancy shit like barrel rolls with Bucky attached, but he thinks he can learn. They can learn.

The kids immediately rush over towards them from across the field, and Sam gets himself ready to sign something.

"Ex-assassin, thanks," Bucky says, in his usual sarcastic tone. "And I'm not a robot." But his eyes are still bright, his mouth still smiling, and Sam feels the waves of heat pouring off his body as he turns to look at Sam.

He's still holding onto the strap, which means he's got a fistful of harness he could use to drag Sam around, if he wanted to. Sam looks down at it, and Bucky belatedly lets go.

"Sorry," he says. He takes an awkward step back, out of Sam's personal space. "Forgot to unlock the hand."

"We'll have to work on that in training," Sam says, trying to keep his tone mild.

Bucky's grin is wild, unrestrained, at the mention of them training together. Sam grins back, helpless.

The kids catch up to them then, bursting the charged, quiet bubble around them. Sam signs a few more autographs, and Bucky fields the usual questions about his arm before lifting a couple kids up with it. It's becoming routine, when the two of them are out together.

*

They keep running missions together, maybe one every week or so, and it's no longer a question whether Bucky's coming along. They're mostly supply runs and escort duty, but occasionally there's an attack, a fire, an explosion, something that has them running, gasping, moving together through fear and danger. Over the months, Sam gets used to having Bucky at his back, and he gets used to keeping Bucky safe. They figure out moves they can do together, daring midair stuff that relies on Bucky's unshakable grip and Sam's unassailable balance, pushing themselves further and further as they test each other's limits. It's a kind of joy Sam hasn't felt in a long time, maybe since Riley, since the first time he strapped on a pair of working wings and leapt up and away from gravity.

Sometimes, not every time, but often, Bucky comes home with him when the mission is over. Sam's Captain America money finally starts coming through—apparently they were paying Walker, so Sam's lawyer argued that they had to do the same for him, with backpay in fact—and he gets himself a house in NOLA proper. He closes on it in no time at all despite his credit history, since it's been on the market for a long damn time and Sam can nearly afford to buy it outright, and before he knows it he's hauling all his stuff from Sarah's house into a bright, beautiful old shotgun house that was already falling apart before it got neglected for over five years.

He can walk to his barber from the new place, and he's thinking of planting something in the yard. Vegetables, maybe. Something he can come back to after missions, maybe something he can cook with. He likes the idea of fixing up a big pot of something after a tough mission, gathering folks together and seeing all their faces around the kitchen table.

And a project would be nice, to distract from the itchiness he still feels sometimes, the sense of unease he gets when the days off stretch out in front of him.

The property itself is a project, but Bucky shows up and helps without saying a word about it, the same way he did on the boat, the same way he did for every chore he could around Sarah's. "Proper home training," Sarah had called it once, approvingly, while Bucky was fixing her screen door, and much as Sam hates to give Bucky any credit, he has to agree. Bucky replaces the rotting boards on Sam's porch and paints the front room and helps Sam cut and haul away all the tangled-up greenery from the overgrown side yard, glistening with sweat in the sunshine.

After working on the place together during the days, they usually sit out on the porch to cool off in the evenings, drinking a beer and waving at folks from the neighborhood passing by. Folks are pretty friendly, and Sam gets to know some of his new neighbors.

"You boys are doing a credit to the old property," Mrs Bergeron from next door tells them, one day as the twilight is stretching up and down the street and the mosquitos are starting to come out. "Good to see young folks moving in and keeping the place up."

"It's a beautiful house," Sam says. "Oughta be treated right."

Mrs Bergeron nods her approval. "And you're both settling in nicely? No trouble from anyone?" There's a sharpness to the question that Sam can't quite place.

He shakes his head. "Everyone's been really welcoming, ma'am."

Bucky nods. "Couldn't ask for better neighbors."

She pats Sam's hand. "Good. That's good."

They chat for a little while longer, and she secures a promise from Bucky to come over and clean out the eavestroughs before she shuffles on to her front door.

"You're gonna be doing favors for every grandma and titi up and down the block, you keep going like that," Sam laughs.

"Yeah, so be it," Bucky says, a soft smile tilting up his mouth.

Across the street, Mr Roy comes outside to get his mail, and waves at them. They wave back.

"I don't have a lot of clear memories, you know, from the old days," Bucky says, quietly, surprising Sam into silence with his introspective tone. "As clear as the Winter Soldier stuff is, the stuff from before . . . a lot of it's, uh. Broken up, in pieces. Or blended with what happened later. Or just—emotions, images without context." He takes a swallow of beer, and Sam stays shutting up. "It was . . . hard, to talk to Steve about that. He remembered so clearly, all that stuff I had lost. But. This." He gestures at the neighborhood with his bottle. "I remember this just fine. Sitting on the stoop in the evening, after work. Seeing folks."

Sam waits, but he doesn't say anything else. He supposes not much else needs to be said.

"I know what you mean. I have good memories like this, too." He remembers his dad, who seemed to know every person in their town, in NOLA, in the whole state, at least in Sam's childish view of the world, along with everything about their family history and the goings-on of their most distant cousins. Anyone could stop by their back door and Paul Wilson would have something to say to them. He tries to put some of that into words. "My dad was a big fan of the stoop."

Bucky nods, acknowledging this. "Y'know, when I met you, I never would've pegged you as from here. But now I see you here, it makes sense."

Sam agrees; Sam thinks it's making more and more sense with each day that passes. He can hear his accent sliding back to where it was when he was a teenager.

"The question is what a born and bred New Yorker like yourself is doing down here," he offers, taking another sip of his beer.

Bucky squints up into the settling dusk. "I don't really think of myself as from anywhere, anymore," he says. "Might as well be here. I like it here."

"You like the free accommodation and free food," Sam snipes, just to lighten the conversation. He's thinking, for some reason, of the time Steve felt the need to tell an enemy combatant he was from Brooklyn during the middle of a superhero fight.

"You like the free labor," Bucky snipes back easily. "I pay my debts." He stretches out his legs in front of them; he's wearing khaki shorts, the first time Sam's seen him in anything other than pants or jeans, and his shins are hairy. Sam stretches his legs out, too, so they match.

The mosquitos increase, and Bucky hurts himself trying to slap his flesh arm with his vibranium super-arm. Sam starts sniggering and progresses into a full-blown laughing fit.

Bucky shoves him gently. "They get aggressive when it gets dark, I gotta protect myself."

Sam gets himself under control and wipes his eyes. Bucky still looks grumpy about it, so Sam shoves him back.

"You know you're welcome to stay, right? Free labor or not," Sam says, watching a little tension ease in Bucky's jaw when he says it. Bucky's stayed in the guest room a dozen times now, and seemed to require an invitation each time, so Sam figures he'd better be more explicit. Since Bucky's such a stubborn mule and all. "You're welcome to stay anytime you like, I mean. As long as you like. When I said you were family, I meant it, and family don't have debts like that. The spare room's yours, as far as I'm concerned."

Bucky looks over at him and nods, then holds up his beer for Sam to clink, which Sam does. The bottles are beaded with condensation, cool and damp when Sam takes another sip.

It occurs to him that it's only the second time in his life he's asked someone to live with him. It feels easier now than it did before, inevitable. When he asked Alyssa he'd been so nervous.

"You're just saying that to keep me away from your sister," Bucky says, after a beat, and Sam hits him with a paint stir stick.

"My sister's a free person who can make her own choices, I have been told," Sam says. "But she's also way too good for you."

"Hey, I agree," Bucky says, easily, ducking a second blow.

Sam can't quite remember when their banter got so easy, so comfortable.

"Goodnight, boys," Mrs Bergeron calls out her screen door.

"Goodnight," they call back.

From then on, Bucky hangs around the house with him a lot more, cooking, watching tv, staying over most nights. Sometimes, he disappears for days at a time, and comes back quiet, but Sam doesn't push, just lets him slot back into his space in the house like he hasn't been gone.

He hears from folks at his new barber shop that Bucky's been fixing things up for quite a few of their neighbors, too, not just Mrs Bergeron; mostly, for elderly folks who need some help, which is solidifying him in the eyes of the locals. Bucky doesn't bring that up, so Sam doesn't ask, but he does wonder if that's what he does when he's away. Good deeds. Service. Atonement.

Sam doesn't particularly think that Bucky has much to atone for, aside from having a terrible sense of humor and being a giant pain in the ass, but Bucky seems to feel differently, and Sam's not going to stand in his way if it helps him to spend his weekends mending fences and shoring up the levee.

Maybe it's something else, anyway. Maybe, like Sam, Bucky's trying to keep busy in the face of downtime. It's hard, Sam figures, not to be a robot anymore.

Either way.

So Sam settles into it, the seesaw between two lives: the brief periods of utter chaos when they do disaster relief or rescue work, Bucky dangling from his chest while they dodge bullets or lightning in the air, adrenaline-inducing spikes of activity that act as punctuation for the rest of it, for their mundane lives: helping out at his sister's restaurant, fixing up the house, hauling nets on the boat, playing with his nephews, being roommates.

He finds he likes it, likes the pace of both of his lives. He likes that Bucky's in all of it with him, a constant. He missed Steve as a friend, but Sam's only now realizing how much of his sense of loss was also about missing a partner, someone to count on. Bucky's headstrong and sarcastic and a complete fossil, but he's also nothing at all like Steve; the shape of him in Sam's life is something Sam hasn't ever had before.

Gradually, Sam takes over Bucky's arm maintenance routine for him, since it's easier than Bucky doing it himself one-handed, and they do his wings together once a week, getting into enough of a rhythm that they barely have to talk while they move through the steps. Those are the times Sam likes best, working on a project together in synch, concentrating on the minute details to make something perfect. He gets used to the feeling of his fingers inside Bucky's body, to the sight of Bucky's hands on his wings.

*

Sam tries a new therapist, Darryl, who's based in New Orleans. Sam finds him on a list of queer-friendly Black therapists, which is part of why Sam lets his guard down too much, probably. In their second session, after Sam has made maybe too many jokes about valiantly ignoring how hot his annoying new partner is, Darryl asks, "So what's stopping you from asking your friend how he feels about you?"

There's an easy answer to that, so Sam offers it.

"I mean, I don't wanna upset the whole balance, y'know, the ecosystem. We've got our thing, it's going well."

Darryl shrugs. "Seems like you want it to be going differently, though. You sound a little focused on your attraction to him."

For a minute, Sam's at a loss. There's no way he can articulate, in a couple of sentences, how little his own wants have historically mattered in his life; duty's always come first. That's the point of therapy, to have somewhere to express those things you can't ever act on, to work through them safely. But it's the tip of an iceberg, and Sam's exhausted just thinking about how to explain all that. He misses his old therapist Alex in DC. Alex would've known what the issue was right away.

"Yeah, well, what I want isn't always the most important factor in a situation," Sam tries. He wishes he could explain the calm he feels when Bucky's around, how the two of them have finally started to click as partners. How surprising that is, how rare.

Darryl shakes his head. "I get what you mean, but what you want is important too," he says.

There's a long silence.

"Okay," Sam says, eventually. "But the work is more important than sex."

"Is sex all you want with him?"

There's another long silence. Sam wants to tell him about all the times in his life he's denied himself, all the times it was the right choice and he would go back and do it again. All the times he's kept his feelings from going beyond lust, kept himself from wanting more in the first place. He wants to explain that it's not internalized homophobia, that he's done it with women as well, that it's a choice and not an issue.

He doesn't.

The session wraps up not long after. Sam decides to look for another therapist. Maybe after they get back from the next mission.

*

"We're out of peanut butter," Sam says, dismayed, looking down into the basically-empty jar in horror.

"No, I got some at the store," Bucky says, not looking up from his Duolingo app. "It's in the pantry."

*

"So, Bucky's living with you now?" Cass asks him, one Saturday when Sam's babysitting so Sarah can get some time out with her girlfriends.

"Yeah, pretty much," Sam replies. He's distracted, putting together their lunch (chicken soup) and texting with his GRC contact about a new mission (international gun runners) at the same time.

"Oh, that's cool," Cass says, and the too-casual note in his voice makes Sam look away from his phone and the soup on the stove and take in Cass's determined little face, his hands stuffed hard and defiant into his pockets. "That's really cool. We like him."

"He likes you guys too," Sam manages, not sure what else to say.

"He gonna be sticking around for a while?"

Sam's chest clenches at the hopeful look in Cass's eyes, and he reaches out and wraps his arm around his nephew's shoulder, bringing him in against his side. Cass comes along easily, body falling in towards Sam's as if in relief, like he just needed permission to get close for a hug.

Goddamn boys. They grow up too much, too fast. Sam squeezes him a little harder. He thought he'd have more time, before he'd have to do this with them. Before he'd have to be this, for them. They were just babies, before the blip.

"We'll have to wait and see, buddy," Sam says, which is less than he wants to say but hard to get out. He can't think how to correct the assumption he thinks Cass has in his head without doing any damage, can't even think of how to articulate that assumption. I'm bisexual, and living with a man, but we're not in love, and we're not fucking isn't a thing Sam can say to a kid. Especially this kid.

Cass nods against him anyway, apparently satisfied.

"And you know I want—you know you can tell me anything, right?" Sam tries. It's a bad line, but Sam can't think of any others. He hopes that one will be enough.

Cass looks up at him and rolls his eyes, way cooler than he has any right to be. "I know, Uncle Sam."

*

Sam goes on clasping Bucky's shoulder and having his shoulder clasped in return. He thinks about Bucky sleeping down the hall from him, about his bare feet on the worn wood floors in the mornings, about the heavy humidity in the air in the bathroom after he takes a shower and the way it holds his scent.

What's stopping you, Darryl asked, and Sam had so many reasons lined up. They're hard to remember, when Bucky grins at him over a mission plan, a Wakandan prosthesis, a bowl of cereal. When Bucky is part of his routine, existing next to him, body warm and moving and beautiful, more beautiful with every second it's present and steady in Sam's universe.

*

For the anniversary of Riley's death, in September, Sam decides to take a trip up to DC, just to do the yearly ritual, visit his grave, tell him what's been going on. The last few times he's done it, he's had lots to tell him, blah blah government conspiracy blah blah Avengers, and he figures this year will be the same. So, it's been a while since I've visited, but I was blipped out of existence for five years and then became Captain America, his speech will start.

"No big deal, just something I have to do," he tells Bucky, feeling weirdly shy about it. He's never told Bucky about Riley, and it happened so long ago that Sam doesn't need condolences; this is more like maintenance, keeping up his vigil for an old grief that still matters to him.

Sarah knows, though, because Sarah was there when it happened, back when Sam was still torn up inside by Riley's death. He came back to Delacroix then, too, the safest place he could imagine in the world, and Sarah had been one of the people to hold him together while he broke down.

He tells her about the upcoming trip one day when he's helping her pack takeout containers for a huge lunch order, and she turns to him with a soft smile.

"Be sure to say hi for me, willya."

"Of course."

"And get him some flowers."

"I always get him flowers, Sarah, what do you take me for?"

She shrugs. "You gonna tell him about the new cute white boy in your life?"

He rolls his eyes. "Well, I doubt that I'll put it like that, but yeah."

They finish the order, and Sarah prints out the receipt to stick on top while Sam puts all the food containers into a box. "So how you gonna put it?" she asks, after a minute, and Sam gets what's behind the question. Sarah's the only one in the family who ever knew about Sam's occasional boyfriends, and she was always sweet about it, too, asking when Sam needed to be asked, listening when he needed to talk. She used to gently encourage Sam to tell their parents about it, though Sam never quite got up the courage. She's probably wondered about Bucky staying at Sam's place, just like Cass has, and Sam doesn't blame her.

"New partner," Sam says, offering her a half smile. "New friend."

"Those are good too," Sarah says, hefting the box and taking it to the pickup window.

*

"You'd probably hate him," is what Sam ends up telling Riley about Bucky. "He's so fucking . . . dour. And such an asshole. Hell, I hated him at first. But he grows on you."

It used to be, when Sam came to the cemetery to talk to Riley, he'd hear Riley's voice in his head, answering back, making jokes, asking questions. That's faded over time, along with Sam's grief. He knows it's a good sign, but it makes him sad, too, that each year he's a little further away from his memories. He supposes this yearly visit is his way of bringing Riley back into his life, if only for a short time.

It's not technically a yearly visit anymore. He missed 2018, because he was poofed out of existence. Then he missed 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, because he was poofed out of fucking existence, but he tries not to focus on that. He's been here every year in his memory, at least. Steve even helped him sneak back, during the time they were international fugitives. He tells Riley about the boat, about the community rallying around their family business, about the new house and the DIY, about the missions he's been running, about helping people. He tells him how hard it'd been to become Captain America, how fraught, and how it's a uniform he's still learning how to inhabit.

"Anyway," he says, winding down, "I miss your dumb ass. Bucky Barnes ain't gonna drag me out to a gay bar or give me a piggyback ride through an Air Force base." He smiles, thinking about the image, about how young they were back then. "Turns out arrogant, heroic, adrenaline-junkie white boys aren't all as interchangeable as you might think."

He does hear Riley's voice in his head at that, amused and cocky: you forgot pretty, Sam. It's something Steve might've said, too.

"You are all predictable, though," Sam says, which isn't really fair given Sam's the one doing both sides of the conversation, but what the hell. "Wish you were here."

*

While he's in town he takes the time to hit up his old barber shop, his old bar, but it feels like everything has a layer of dust on it, and he finds himself comparing it all to his life in New Orleans. He realizes that his new barber has way better local gossip than his old one, that he prefers Abita to Flying Dog, that the swamp heat of DC doesn't feel quite the same as the swamp heat of New Orleans.

He was a different person, when he lived here, he realizes, and not just because of the superhero stuff. He wants a slower pace of life than he had here, wants community more than he wants variety. He wants to be settled, as much as possible given his day job, and he wants his family by his side.

He manages to make a short-notice appointment with Alex, who's delighted to see him, makes him feel comfortable, and then says the exact damn thing that Darryl in New Orleans said about Bucky.

"Sorry, sorry," Alex laughs, while Sam glowers menacingly. "But he's not wrong, even if he might not be a good therapist for you in other ways. You know you make early presumptions about people and then rest on them, Sam, and you know you deny yourself happiness for no damn reason."

Sam sighs. He tries to remember why he wanted an insightful therapist who knows him, again. "Well, don't tiptoe around it, or anything."

"We've only got the one session," Alex objects. "Seriously. What about setting a threshold? If Bucky does X, you'll do Y."

It's a technique they've used before, to keep Sam from overextending himself at work, or to force Sam to set boundaries with friends, or to figure out exactly when Sam could tell Tony Stark off without seeming like a dick. If they're asking you to work more than ten hours of overtime, you say no. If he asks you to talk to his boyfriend on his behalf, you redirect. If Tony gives you a mean-spirited nickname, you can tell him to fuck off. Shit like that. It works for Sam, and Sam gets why it works for him, and he hates that he understands himself so well but still needs it sometimes, because his intellect isn't always enough to beat out bad habits.

He knows his habit is to not care for himself, and to care for other people instead. He knows it's a habit worth breaking. He knows.

"Okay," Sam sighs. "Like what?"

Alex talks him through scenarios, and Sam imagines, for the first time, what it would really be like. Not as an idle fantasy, but the reality of it, Bucky's body up against his, all of the sweat and strangeness and contradiction of him held entirely in Sam's arms.

*

When he gets back home, he finds that Bucky's finished painting the back rooms, put in raised planter beds in the yard, and installed that ceiling fan that Sam's been procrastinating about for weeks.

"Wow. I was only gone a couple days," Sam objects, and Bucky shrugs.

"It's boring around here without you."

If he expresses particular interest or joy in your company, had been one of Alex's thresholds.

Sam takes a breath and says, "Yeah, I missed you too." If he expresses particular interest or joy in your company, don't belittle; reciprocate.

Bucky doesn't say anything else, just nods jerkily and turns away, but later that night he gets out a ladder and replaces the flickery lightbulbs in the pantry and laundry room. Sam can't help but walk over to him, bracing the bottom of the ladder, even though it doesn't really need to be braced.

"Thanks," Bucky says anyway, absently, as he screws the light fixture back into the ceiling with the new bulb inside it. Sam's tossed Bucky into the air, thousands of feet up, and caught him again; he's dropped him fist-first from a height into deadly situations; he's flown the both of them into the edge of a hurricane; but he still holds on to the perfectly sturdy ladder legs while Bucky steps two feet off the ground. It's funny, but it's important, too, in a way Sam can't quite place.

"Dunno why it's an emergency to fix the pantry lightbulb at ten pm," Sam says. At this, Bucky glances down at him, then looks back up.

"It needs doing. I thought it'd help."

"Help what?" Sam asks, and then Bucky's hands still, and he climbs down the ladder so they're standing face to face.

"Look," he says, holding out one placating hand, making his voice low, "Sarah told me where you'd gone. What you were doing."

"You—she is such a snitch, ever since we were kids—"

"Yeah, she said not to tell you she'd told me."

Sam spreads his hands. "Oh, so you're both snitches."

Bucky shrugs. "Anyway. I wanted to help."

"You wanted to help—you wanted to help me with, like, grief, and so you painted my house."

"Guess so?" Now Bucky's wincing, that charming helpless look he gets sometimes that works on other people, and not on Sam.

Sam forces himself to take a deep breath, then let it out. "I'm fine. I didn't need surprise home makeover therapy."

"Mmm, don't know what that is," Bucky says, clearly lying, because Sam has seen him watch HGTV. "I'm too old."

"Fuck you, you're too old," Sam huffs.

"My ma used to say that resorting to foul language was the sign of a goddamn unoriginal thinker." Now Bucky's got a grin on his face, the asshole.

"Yeah? Well my daddy used to say that smart alecks would one day have to account for themselves before the Lord."

"Probably because he was raising two."

Sam breaks and laughs, which makes Bucky laugh, too.

"Thanks for fixing the lightbulbs, Buck," he says.

Bucky looks startled for a second, then he smiles warmly and nods once. Sam leaves him to his work.

It's not till a few minutes later that Sam realizes that he hasn't called Bucky that nickname in a while, not since Bucky told him they hadn't known each other long enough for Sam to use it.

Well, maybe they've known each other long enough, now. Bucky seemed to like it this time.

Later that night, Bucky comes to find him in the living room, where he's not paying attention to the tv, thoughts of Alex's thresholds running through his mind instead. He doesn't know how to place what happened between them earlier, whether it counts for when he goes out of his way to show he cares for you or not. Whether Sam wants to react to it if it does.

He's not always great at implementing the thresholds he and Alex set, but at least he thinks about them. That's gotta count for something.

"Hey, Sam," Bucky says, lingering in the doorway. He leans his shoulder against the door frame, but the rest of his body language is tense, not casual: jaw tight, fingers interlaced, neck bowed.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about your friend. Sorry to hear about it."

Sam meets his eyes, nodding slowly. "Thanks. Appreciate that."

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says, because he is.

"Sorry," Bucky repeats.

Sam huffs out a breath. "It's not your fault, man, you didn't kill him."

"I know," Bucky says, a slow grin coming over his face. "It's a nice change for me."

Sam throws the remote at him, but Bucky catches it easily in his fancy robot arm, cackling.

He comes to sit on the couch next to Sam, watching the game with him for a while before speaking again.

"If you want to talk about him. Um. You can."

Sam glances at him, but Bucky's eyes haven't left the screen. This definitely hits one of Alex's thresholds, he thinks. So he does the best he can to return the gesture.

"I could tell you some stories," he ventures, and Bucky nods. So Sam does, tells stories about him and Riley being young and reckless, puts up with it when Bucky cackles and makes fun of him for all his past indiscretions. He starts slow, with the simple stuff, how they met and work they did and pranks they pulled, but after a while, when Bucky keeps asking good questions and nodding along, Sam tells the harder stories, the ones that he's only ever told to Sarah, or his therapists. Some of them are about Sam being an asshole, or about Riley being one; some are deeply unflattering. And some of the stories have little asides in them like of course he knew I was in love with him or so he sets me up with this guy who was in our robotics class, which, well, is as good a way to come out to Bucky as any, assuming he doesn't already know, if they're going to be real friends. But Bucky doesn't move away, at the unflattering stuff or the queer stuff, just stays shoulder to shoulder with him on the couch and keeps murmuring questions and wry interjections in a low, quiet voice.

"That's a real partnership," he says, after a story about them flying a mission together while absolutely furious with one another. "Even when you can't stand one another. Ain't no different. You still get shit done."

"That must mean you and I are great partners, then," Sam offers, elbowing him gently to soften the comment. Bucky smiles down at his hands.

Sam tells one of his favorite stories, then, a raunchy one about trying to get laid and almost getting the shit beaten out of them, about running gasping through unfamiliar New York streets in the dark and, through a series of strange twists, accidentally stealing an old woman's Pomeranian in Central Park.

Bucky laughs and laughs at that one, not least at the part about how Sam was too awkward to cruise a dude properly and ended up claiming to be a dogwalker.

"Shut up, unless you want to tell me you were never a twenty-year-old asshole," Sam says, feeling his face heat up.

Bucky's laughter trails off, and he raises his hands, conceding the point. "I could tell you some stories," he agrees.

Sam grins at him. "I'd like that."

Bucky's stories are strange, partial, like someone describing a dream, and Sam feels touched, privileged to be allowed to hear them, when Bucky had kept his memory loss even from Steve. A lot of the stories feature Steve, and Sam likes that, too, getting to see the asshole twenty year old version of a man Sam only knew after his mind and body were changed so deeply by war, and loss, and the weight of the world.

"Of course, he knew I was in love with him," Bucky says, at one point, echoing what Sam said about Riley earlier. His voice is flat, like there's no emotion attached to the memory, and he's looking into space, instead of towards Sam like he had been.

Sam just nods, letting the information settle inside him. He kind of figured, but. It's different to know it. "Hard for anyone not to be," he says, after a minute.

Bucky lets out a breath and picks up the story again, and this time it sounds like he has more detail, like it's coming back to him, as he tells Sam about the time Steve took Bucky's little sister Rebecca to a dance hall just so they could spite a bully.

"Sounds like something Sarah would do," Sam offers, and Bucky grins at the comparison.

"Wait, she'd do the gallant Steve thing or the spiteful Rebecca thing?" he asks.

"Both," Sam laughs.

They keep talking for a long time, but eventually they're exhausted, yawns punctuating every sentence, so they agree to call it a night.

"What you do for Riley," Bucky says, slowly, as they walk down the hall towards the bedrooms. "It's good. The regular visit thing. Maybe we could do that for Steve, sometime."

Sam nods, thinking about the hidden grave in Brooklyn, about how it would feel to stand next to it with Bucky at his side. "I'd like that."

Bucky squeezes his shoulder and nods, leaving Sam at his door as he walks towards the back bedroom, scratching his neck, still yawning.

That night, tired as he is, Sam doesn't sleep right away; instead, he thinks about Bucky lying in bed in the next room, about Bucky lying there, still and relaxed, asleep and vulnerable, safe under Sam's roof.

*

Two days later, they run another mission, getting emergency supplies to refugees in a remote camp in Alaska. Once everything's delivered and secured, they fly back to base to report in to the emergency director; it sounds like they might need to make another trip up here in a month or so.

As they leave the building, Bucky eyes the army vehicles that are supposed to take them back to Anchorage with distaste.

"Wanna take the fast route?" Sam asks him, before he can open his mouth.

"Well. Otherwise I'm gonna mess up my Duolingo streak," Bucky frowns.

Sam snaps his goggles into place and spreads his wings.

"Beautiful," Bucky says, securing his harness and locking his arm. Sam jets them up into the air.

He doesn't even notice Bucky's weight anymore; it feels more natural to fly with him than without him.

*

Of course, the one thing Sam didn't learn about Bucky's arm is the one thing he ends up needing to know in the field.

By the time Bucky tells him where the quick release is and how to activate it, by the time Sam gets his fingers pushed into the right part of Bucky's body and gives the mechanism the right twist, the bomb is about to go off and the whole building is about to come down on them. They barely get out the door ahead of the crumbling concrete, Bucky's arm left behind in the machinery where it got pinned.

"Shit," Sam breathes, looking behind them. "That is gonna be a pain in the ass to dig out."

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, frowning down at his shoulder, obviously thinking that he'd have an easier time digging out his arm if he had his arm.

"Teach you to try to reach through an industrial press to get at someone."

Bucky ducks his head, huffing a laugh. "If it'd worked it would've been so badass, though."

"Too bad it sucked and looked terrible and got your arm stuck in a giant machine which it then broke," Sam replies.

Bucky narrows his eyes at Sam, unimpressed, before looking past him, back towards the building, and sighing. "I could go back in and get it," he says. "It's not that dangerous."

Sam notices for the first time that Bucky's bleeding from a cut on his forehead. "No, nuh-uh, no way," he says. He whips out the first aid supplies from his belt kit and slapfights with Bucky, who tries to wave him away from the cut.

"Will you just—fine, whatever." Bucky sighs and gives up, letting Sam fix him. "I've been in more dangerous situations, Sam. The building's not gonna collapse twice."

"First off, you've been in more dangerous situations when you had no conscious ability to care about your own welfare," Sam says, cleaning out the cut carefully. "Which, you know, we would all hope that you'd behave with more self-preservation now you're not a robot."

"I was never a robot," Bucky grumbles, as Sam slaps a bandaid on the cut.

"Second, the building can absolutely collapse twice, that is why we don't go into buildings that have collapsed, so they don't collapse on us further. I know you're strong, but there's only one truly indestructible part of your body and you left it inside."

Bucky frowns, then grunts out something like acknowledgement. He looks at Sam. "Feels weird to leave it," he says.

"Yeah."

"You've got—give me that," Bucky says, taking the first aid stuff from Sam's hands. Sam, because he's not a baby like Bucky is, tilts his head where Bucky indicates, giving him access to his neck. Bucky cleans the wound carefully and bandages it, biting his lip in concentration. Sam tries to think about something other than Bucky's fingertips against his skin, the plushness of his lip where it's bitten.

He's noticing himself noticing those kinds of things again lately. It's almost as bad as it was when he and Bucky first started working on the same team, except now he doesn't loathe the guy like he did back then.

It's getting inconvenient.

"Thanks," he says, when Bucky finishes, touching the bandage on his neck. It feels secure.

"Don't fiddle with it," Bucky admonishes him, handing back the supplies for Sam to tuck away.

"You gonna be okay without your arm for a few days?" Sam asks. "It's really not gonna be safe to go in there until we get some help." Sam's already scrolling through his mental contacts list, trying to think who he knows in search and rescue who might owe him a favor. There weren't any workers in the building, thank God, and the weapons smugglers they were chasing got the hell out before blowing the bomb, but that means that it's not gonna be a high-priority job for anyone qualified to do it. Maybe he could convince Jason to fly down to Galveston from DC.

"I'll be fine," Bucky says, but with such a grimace that it would be funny if it weren't upsetting.

"Okay, tough guy," Sam says, and slings an arm around Bucky's shoulders, pulling him in for a sideways hug. Bucky moves a little jerkily, maybe off-balance without his prosthetic. "Come on. I'll drive."

Bucky scowls at the joke, but he relaxes against Sam's side, too.

*

Jason is busy, but he recommends his colleague Andrea instead, who's a Texas local and so efficient that she has people picking through and stabilizing the wreckage within a couple days. Which is good, because Bucky's already being kinda weird, stalking around the house one-armed and wild-eyed, restless.

"We should have your arm back in time for that transport mission next week," Sam tells him, sipping a cup of coffee in their kitchen while Bucky cleans up the breakfast table.

"Thank God for that," Bucky murmurs.

Sam watches him moving restlessly for another minute. "You know you can take a break, right? You don't have to be useful at every minute." It's something Sam's therapists have often had to say to him, but whatever, it's true.

Bucky looks up at him, a confused expression on his face. "Better to keep busy. Keep distracted." He shoves a box of cereal back into the cupboard.

Sam furrows his brow. "Because . . . of your arm?"

Turning to look at him, Bucky sighs and sits down at the now-clean table. After a second of stony silence, Sam sits down next to him.

"Yeah, it's—I don't know how to say it, but it feels weird, in my head, when it's not there. Like I'm—like it's empty. The connectors are still old HYDRA tech."

"Connectors." Sam puts it together. "You mean, inside? In your brain?"

"Yeah. The Wakandan doctors said it was more dangerous to take that shit out than leave it in. So they made the arm to work with my existing wetware."

Almost like a reflex, Sam's hand comes up towards Bucky's temple, as if to find the scars from his nonconsensual 1940s cyborg brain surgery. Bucky flinches, and Sam flinches back, realizing what he's done.

"Hey, sorry, I didn't have any right—" Sam starts.

Bucky shakes his head, then takes a deep breath. "Nothing to see, anyway. Serum means I didn't scar." Deliberately, he turns his head to expose his left temple, and Sam slowly runs his fingers through the short hair there.

"Who'd know you were a robot inside," Sam breathes.

Bucky humphs. "Not a robot," he says, which makes Sam grin, which makes Bucky's scowl tip just slightly into a smile, and then their faces are close and they're making eye contact and for one brittle second Sam thinks they're gonna kiss. For the first time, he feels it as potential, as something that could happen in the real world: he could lean in, just a couple of inches, and kiss Bucky's mouth.

Sam draws back. "Um," he says, taking his hand away from Bucky's face. "Well, I know some guys who work with veterans with prostheses," he says, trying to find their original topic. "If you ever want to talk to someone who knows about that shit. Phantom limb is something we know how to help with, even if we don't have Wakandan arm specialists."

"Thanks," Bucky says, easily. He's giving Sam some kind of indecipherable look. "I'll think about it."

"In the meantime, didn't you tell me you had a replacement arm? A non-murder arm?"

Bucky opens his mouth, then closes it again. "Y'know, I do."

*

Which is how he and Bucky end up taking a trip up to New York, to a storage unit in Long Island with way more than the usual locks and safeguards. Once they finally get in, Sam sees that it's basically crammed full of terrifying weapons and the occasional old-looking computer—stuff Bucky probably seized from HYDRA bases, very sinister—but eventually they find the case that holds the spare arm.

"It's easier if someone else does it," Bucky says, pushing his sleeve up past his shoulder to expose the metal connection port. Sam glares in disbelief.

"You're just gonna stick a dusty arm directly into your brain without checking it first?"

Bucky frowns and looks down at the arm in his hand, which appears to be mostly plastic and titanium, like a normal prosthetic, lighter and weaker than his other one.

"Of course you were. Okay, come on, let's just run through the maintenance routine."

Sam flips the arm open at the control panel, holding out his hand for Bucky's toolkit, which he coughs up a second later from some hidden pocket.

"Gotta look after everyone. Such a mother hen," Bucky says, which is a pretty crappy insult. Sam snorts.

"Yeah, you're my little baby chick. C'mere and hold this, will you? It's a little different from the other one."

Bucky uses his right hand to stabilize the part Sam's indicating, while Sam runs pressure and power checks on the components. Their breathing is loud in the quiet, claustrophobic space.

"It's not a bad thing," Bucky says, after a few more heartbeats. Sam glances up but doesn't meet Bucky's gaze.

"What are you even talking about," he mutters.

"Looking after people. Steve was like that too. Cared about people, was careful with them. Even when he wasn't careful with himself."

Now Sam does meet his eyes. "I know," he says. "He was like that with me."

"I'm not—good at that," Bucky says. "I'm not good at taking care of people. I got out of practice."

"You mean, when you were a brainwashed killing machine."

Bucky nods, for once not objecting to Sam calling him a machine. It fits, in this instance, Sam thinks with a pang. "Yeah. Then."

Hesitating, Sam adds, "And you know you don't—have to be him. Steve. You don't have to do what he did."

"Yeah," Bucky says, "but someone has to look after you." At Sam's raised eyebrows, he adds, belatedly, and without heat, "You dumbass."

Bucky coughs and looks away, then, and Sam looks back down at the machinery, pulling out the little control panel and flicking it on. Green, green, green. Sam thinks about Bucky painting his kitchen, replacing his lightbulbs, checking his wings for damage, slow and meticulous. All concrete, physical actions. All things Bucky chose, very carefully, to do. Because he was out of practice, but.

But he wanted to look after Sam.

Sam closes the control panel, then the maintenance hatch, careful with the delicate components.

"This probably won't fry your brain now," he says, hefting it carefully. "C'mere."

"Slowly," Bucky says, licking his lips, and then he's leaning in, meeting Sam halfway, and with a little thrust from each of them the arm slots into Bucky's shoulder. Bucky gives a grunt and closes his eyes, and Sam is suddenly aware of how close they're standing, of the heat of Bucky's body, of the little machine clicking sounds as the arm fits into place.

"You feel it?" Sam asks, his voice hoarse. He waits for Bucky to open his eyes, and when he does, they're clear, the muscles in his face relaxed in the absence of pain. Sam smiles. "Yeah, you feel it."

Bucky takes a deep breath, like he hasn't been able to breathe in days. "Yeah," he says. "Feels better to have something there."

"You're gonna have to marry that arm, you get any more sexual about it," Sam says, trying to deflate the tension. Bucky laughs, warm and low, which does not help.

"If I weren't a little high from the feedback to the receptors in my brain right now, I'd make a really filthy joke," he says, and Sam just has time to be fascinated by that before Bucky raises his arm, clenching and unclenching his fist, watching as it moves with his needs, his desires.

"Looks good," Sam manages. It does, even though it's so different from his other one: a light matte grey in contrast to the usual black and gold metallic gleam. It's run through with darker veins of vibranium, like nerves, and it has some kind of barely-visible texture along the fingers and the backs of the hands. It looks . . . softer. When Bucky moves, it seems more supple, the joints bending with grace and ease.

"Thanks," Bucky says, touching his prosthetic gently with his other hand, presumably to feel the sensory feedback.

Sam takes a deliberate step back, out of Bucky's personal space. Desperately, he looks around the storage space, hoping for something else to talk about; to his surprise, he's struck by an idea.

"Hey, you want me to help you sort through all this stuff so you can take what you want back home to NOLA? It's not doing you much good sitting here. And I don't wanna see that HYDRA ray gun on Storage Wars if you forget to pay your rent someday."

Bucky looks around. "Back home," he repeats, and nods. "Yeah. Okay."

It's a good two-person job, Sam thinks. And they could both use something to do.

*

Sorting through all the weird crap Bucky's been collecting since he's been deprogrammed takes a while, but Bucky consigns most of it to the trash heap, collecting data off the computers before wiping them with astonishing ease. Maybe it's because Sam was once at the other end of The Winter Soldier on a kill mission, but he sometimes forgets that a lot of his missions were covert information-gathering, military espionage, that kind of thing, that he's not just a blunt instrument. Sam sorts through a lot of the other stuff, mostly weapons that shouldn't be left lying around and weird odds and ends that remain inexplicable.

"Yeah, I was trying to remember stuff," Bucky says, when Sam wordlessly holds up a creepy-ass broken doll with weirdly rolling eyes. "I don't need that."

"Ain't nobody need this cursed shit," Sam mutters, which Bucky must hear, because he laughs.

In the end, they emerge with some guns (Sam talks Bucky down from ten guns to four, the rest to be dismantled and destroyed), some suspicious HYDRA-looking devices, a handful of USB sticks, and a box that Sam's not allowed to touch.

"Personal effects," he says, when Sam asks, and Sam shrugs his agreement.

After they finish with the storage unit and fly home, Bucky spends the next couple of days showing off with his new hand: juggling eggs at breakfast, doing card tricks that he probably learned from some street hustler in the 30s, tapping on his computer keyboard with newfound confidence.

"This one's got more dexterity and haptic feedback than the other one," he explains to AJ and Cass, while they all play MarioKart together. Sam finds it cute, then tries not to find it cute, then reconsiders.

One of Alex's thresholds was if you find yourself having to actively repress your feelings for him to a point that it's distracting.

Sam really can't deny it, at this point. So the question is what to do about it. His first instinct is to repress harder, so he searches for his second instinct.

His second instinct is scary as hell. He thinks about diving through the air to catch Bucky by the arm, about the seconds of freefall when anything could happen.

"You doing all right?" Sarah asks, coming to sit next to him on the grownups couch, handing him a beer.

"Yup. Just watching your three children over there."

Sarah makes a noise of negation so vehement that Sam's pretty sure it would carry the same meaning in just about any human language.

"The one in the middle belongs to you, Samuel Isaac Wilson," she says.

"Oh, you're full naming me over that one, huh?"

"Guess so. You're the one who brought home a stray. Remember what mama used to say about bringing home strays?"

"Check them for fleas first," Sam says, firmly.

Sarah nods. "That's right."

"I swear I hosed him down, Sarah."

She smiles, patting Sam's knee.

Sam gets lost in thought for a minute after that, watching Bucky with the kids, wondering if this is what AJ and Cass are going to get used to, Uncle Bucky a constant fixture in their lives for years to come. He could just as easily disappear tomorrow, become a fuzzy and indistinct memory to them, that guy with the metal arm who used to hang around their house.

"Remember Auntie Pam?" Sam asks, looking hesitantly over at Sarah.

"I do," Sarah says, slowly, meeting his eyes. "She passed a couple years ago, when you were gone."

"I didn't know that," Sam says, startled.

"Well, you know how it is. We lost touch somewhat after Aunt Lillian went."

"Yeah," Sam says. He wonders if that would've happened if Lillian and Pam had been married. He wonders if they ever wanted that, if that's what they were to each other. The family all assumed they were a couple, never talked about it, but Sam realizes in that moment that he never truly knew.

He thinks back to Cass's tight, defiant face when he asked if Bucky was living with him now. He thinks about it for a long moment, about what Bucky means to him, but also what Bucky means to his whole family.

Sarah nudges him with her shoulder, breaking him out of his train of thought, and when he looks over at her there's compassion on her face, the complicated kind full of family history and shared secrets, compassion that can only come from someone who knows you as well as you know yourself.

"You're not Aunt Lillian," she says. "Times are different."

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I know."

"So long's you're aware," she drawls.

*

Sam gets a text from Andrea, the search and rescue specialist, and has his wings on before he can even stop to think about it. Which is a mistake, because it's really hard to get your boots on when you're already wearing fairly heavy vibranium wings, and he almost tips over in the foyer twice.

Bucky's off somewhere, incommunicado, doing whatever it is that he does when he's not electrocuting himself trying to rewire their bathroom fan. Sam hesitates for a second, wondering if he should wait, then shakes the idea off. Bucky's sometimes gone for days, and Sam knows he'd want this done immediately.

He jumps into flight from the front porch and swoops low over the neighborhood to gain speed, ignoring Mrs Bergeron coming out of her house to frown at the sky, then texts Andrea back from a thousand feet in the air.

When he gets back home with his cargo, hours later, Bucky's still out, so Sam showers as fast as he can before breaking out the toolkit and the cleaning supplies. Bucky's arm was buried under a ton of concrete and steel, but it's mostly just dirty and scuffed, not at all dented. He runs diagnostics anyway, has to reset one of the pressure valves, but nothing major seems wrong with it.

It's strange to do the work when the arm isn't connected to Bucky, when Bucky isn't even in the room, like he's touching Bucky without him knowing about it. Weirdly, when Bucky's attached to his arm, Sam has no problem poking and prodding and diving in to peer at the inner workings, but now he stays polite, distanced, like he's a medical doctor performing a procedure. It feels more respectful that way.

When Bucky walks in, he finds Sam sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up his last polish, the metal gleaming perfectly under his hands.

"Look what came home," he says, making a ta-da! gesture at the arm on the table. Bucky's face lights up.

"Finally," he says, pleased, coming over and rolling up his sleeve.

"I thought you were enjoying your new dexterity," Sam teases him, standing to help Bucky with his shirt. Bucky turns his shoulder so Sam can access the quick release, which he does with confidence this time.

"Yeah, but I want to punch through steel walls more than I want to win at MarioKart," he says. Then, considering, he adds, "Most of the time."

"We'll keep this one around for video games and adding the right amount of salt to eggs," Sam agrees, setting it down carefully on the table before picking up Bucky's usual arm.

"You love my eggs," Bucky objects, then draws back. "Hey, don't we need to run the diagnostics first?"

"Already did 'em, baby," Sam says, smiling, holding up the arm for Bucky's inspection. Then he reconsiders, thinks about how he might feel in Bucky's place. "But, uh, hey, if you want to run 'em again, we can do that—"

Bucky blinks at him, mouth open, then licks his lips and holds up his shoulder, just like he did before.

"Go ahead."

Sam slots the arm on wordlessly, watching Bucky's face, and when that little self-satisfied smile turns his mouth up at the corners, Sam feels something click inside himself, just like the clicks from Bucky's arm, pieces matching and sliding into place. In that second, he makes the decision not to let this opportunity pass him by like he has all the others.

And, of course, if he's just too cute to pass up, Alex had said, like a joke. Of course, of course that's the one Sam acts on. Adrenaline has always been one of his strongest motivators.

Sam kisses Bucky softly, holding himself back as much as he can, controlled and gentle, still gripping his left arm at the bicep and letting his other hand drift from Bucky's shoulder down to his chest. It doesn't last long, just a warm, easy press before Sam pulls back.

"Been wanting to do that," Sam says, like it's nothing at all, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

"Yeah?" Bucky asks, his voice low. His brow furrows, like he's trying to work out a puzzle, but he doesn't give away any other emotion.

Sam nods, the slightest of movements. "Yeah."

"What else do you want?"

Without conscious intention, Sam clenches his hand that's still lying against Bucky's chest, fisting a bunch of his shirt and probably some chest hair; Bucky inhales sharply.

"That depends on you," Sam says, after a long moment.

Bucky doesn't move, either to get closer or draw back, just stands in the twilight space between them, breathing, waiting, eyes darting across Sam's face.

"I've been. I've been wanting it too," he stutters, at last, and Sam feels like the words themselves light him on fire. His skin is hot. He licks his dry lips.

"Show me," Sam says. The words sound rough, like they've been torn out of his throat. He swallows, tries again. "Show me." He can hear the challenge in his own voice: prove it. Prove you want me like I want you.

"Yeah," Bucky says, in the low, appreciative tone of voice he uses when Sam's proposed a strong tactical strategy, "yeah, I want to."

He finally breaches the space between them, hauls Sam back in and kisses him in one smooth movement, the kiss hard and open before it softens again. Sam notices himself learning the shape of his mouth, the movement of his tongue, and then Bucky pulls away. Sam almost follows him back, almost chases his mouth. He feels hungry, ravenous, as if getting just a little of what he wants is waking him up, making him want more.

"C'mon, man, that all you got?" he teases, grinning until Bucky stops him with another rough, demanding kiss. They fall into that one for a while, Bucky's mouth fast and desperate while his hands come up to cup Sam's shoulder blades gently, more tentative than Bucky's touch on him has ever been. Sam gives back as good as he gets, grunting low in his throat as the kiss deepens and he gets his hands on the dip of Bucky's lower back. He feels so good in Sam's arms, so sweet, so fucking hot. Sam wants to just keep going, let one touch flow into another and let his mind drift away, but. But.

He moves forward, hands still curved around Bucky's waist, like they're dancing; leads Bucky into the hallway, up against the wall. Bucky moves with him easily, not resisting Sam for the first time basically ever, and God, Sam can feel how good their energy would be in bed. Will be in bed, fuck. He pushes again, holding Bucky's shoulders to the wall, and breaks their kiss, drawing back.

He's panting like he's just been fighting Thanos, but Bucky's chest is heaving under his hands, so at least he's not alone.

His thoughts come to him, slowly, one by one, while he and Bucky look at each other and breathe fast against each other. Sam shakes his head to clear it a little.

"This isn't just—you know this isn't just, uh, casual, for me," he manages, eventually, because it seems important to say. He hopes Alex would be proud of him. "I don't want casual."

Bucky blinks at him twice, and Sam has a horrible sinking moment when he thinks he'll have to explain the use of the word casual in the context of modern sexual culture, but then Bucky's mouth goes from pink and pleasure-slack to his more usual asshole grin.

"Whaddya want, then? To marry me?" Soft and just a little mean.

"Fuck you," Sam says, with vehemence. "Maybe. Who knows."

Bucky licks his lips. "Sam, I never thought this was . . . look. Where I'm from, if you ask a guy to move in with you and tell him he's family, it's not casual."

Sam laughs; he feels like his chest is full of light and heat, bursting with it, and it moves him forward again, to kiss Bucky again, softer and slower this time. Bucky meets him, Bucky knows where and how to meet him, kiss for kiss, touch for touch, the way he knows how to fight with him back to back.

God. They know each other so well. Sam didn't even notice it happening.

"We can start with fucking, though," Sam says, between kisses.

"Thank God, because that was a shitty proposal," Bucky grins.

But his hands move over Sam with care, the same care he shows to Sam's wings, Sam's house, Sam's life. Confident, teasing, knowing.

"God, I fucking want you," Sam murmurs, against his lips, and Bucky shudders where Sam's still got him pinned to the wall.

"You can have me," he says, voice low. "You can have anything you want."

The prospect of that makes Sam feel dizzy, and he clutches at Bucky's torso only to realize that he's got his hands up underneath his t-shirt, that his palms are pressed against Bucky's bare skin.

"I can, huh," Sam says slowly, coming to the truth of it inside himself. "Ain't that something."

He strips off Bucky's t-shirt, laughing when it gets tangled on his head, when Bucky grumbles from inside the white fabric. They finally get it off, and Sam turns Bucky's breathless laughter into a low groan, pressing his hands to his abdomen, running them hard and firm up over his nipples, thumbs to his throat, then down over his shoulders, all in one greedy push.

"C'mon, c'mon," Bucky pants, stripping off Sam's belt with ruthless efficiency before practically tearing his shirt off, right there in the hallway. They kiss again, Bucky's wide, sloppy mouth drifting down to kiss at Sam's jaw, to lick the stubble there. If Sam had known he was gonna finally make out with Bucky, he would've shaved, but right now it doesn't seem to be bothering him any, with the way he's nuzzling his face against it, like he wants the burn of it.

Sam's had more than one occasion to wonder what sex is like if you have super strength and healing; he figures beard burn immunity might be one happy perk.

Bucky draws him out of that thought with a sharp little nip to the jaw. Sam yelps, feeling Bucky's answering laughter as a puff of air against his neck.

"What do you like," Bucky asks, kissing his throat, hands on Sam's hips, taking the lead now and moving them towards his bedroom. "What do you need." He gets Sam up against the wall this time, right next to his bedroom door, while he grazes his teeth over the delicate skin behind Sam's ear.

"I—" Sam grasps for an answer to that, feels like his brain is shutting down. He knows the kind of thing he usually says: I want what you want, just this is good, just let me be close to you, however you want me. Bucky bites his earlobe. He swallows. "God. I wanna fuck you. You like getting fucked? Or, uh, are you too forties gentleman for that kind of thing?"

He knows, he knows the second after he says it, the effect that the not-quite-dare will have on Bucky, and he's not wrong: he finds himself suddenly in the air, picked up in Bucky's strong arms for a tantalizing few seconds, carried easily through the doorway, and then tossed onto Bucky's bed. Before he can blink, Bucky is above him, on him. Bucky's only got an inch or so on him in height, but in weight, with his arm, it's more like twenty pounds, and Sam can feel all of it, the sweet pressure bearing him down.

"Fuck you, Wilson, I used to work as a drag club bouncer in Harlem. Nobody ever once called me a gentleman."

"Really?" Sam grins, delighted. "That sounds like a story."

Bucky moves to pin his wrists, but Sam hooks his leg and flips them, puts himself on top, knocking a laugh out of Bucky's chest along with his breath. Sam grins and starts pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses down Bucky's sternum to his belly button. Bucky half-laughs at that, half-groans, maybe feeling something between being loved and being tickled.

"Plenty of queens gave it to me in alleys, is all I'm saying," he manages.

"Weird thing to get competitive about," Sam says, opening Bucky's jeans, pulling them off along with his underwear. He's so pretty naked, sweaty and hairy and soft, arching up to meet Sam's hands.

This is what he's been denying himself, he thinks; he's been trying so hard not to notice and appreciate Bucky's body for months. Years, maybe. He sits back on his heels and looks his fill.

Bucky frowns, confused at first, then settles into it, his big hands coming to rest on Sam's thighs, stroking up and down slowly.

"I like getting fucked," Bucky says, softly. "Actually, I kinda like this too."

"What, me looking at you?" Sam asks, softly, smiling. Bucky nods, and Sam can see his blush. Jesus. That anything Sam could do would make a guy like Bucky feel shy. He loves it.

He runs his hands up Bucky's thighs again, over the curve of his hips. "I didn't really take you for a vain little bottom, but now I think about it, it fits," Sam pronounces.

Bucky flicks Sam meanly on the stomach while Sam bends down to kiss him again. Their kiss turns into breathy laughter, then back into a kiss. Sam pushes Bucky's wrists, one cool and one warm, down to the bed, just as a little experiment for himself, and Bucky groans.

"Fuck, you're hot when you take control," he says.

Sam feels himself getting harder, heat pooling in his belly. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, I mean, if you stop talking about it and do something, you got an entire naked man underneath you and you've still got your fucking pants on—"

"Jesus Christ," Sam swears, laughing, sitting back up. "Get my fucking cock out then, you want it so bad."

Bucky's hands fall immediately to Sam's zipper; fast and efficient, he opens Sam's jeans and shoves his underwear out of the way. He gets his right hand on Sam's dick, slow hard pulls, and Sam falls into his grip.

Bucky holds him up.

"Yeah, you like that," Bucky croons. "You want it."

"I mean, I've had better. It's a little dry," Sam says, which makes Bucky roll his eyes and squirm sideways toward the bedside table. He pulls out lube and condoms, then kind of chucks them at Sam.

A little lube on Bucky's palm gets things moving slicker and faster, so Sam's gotta close his eyes and lean into Bucky's grip for a few beautiful seconds. He gets himself together and opens his eyes to find Bucky grinning up at him, pretty and cocky. Sam has to kiss that mouth again.

"Want me to finger you a little?" Sam asks, pressing their foreheads together.

"Yeah," Bucky groans. "Please. I'd do it myself, but—" he gestures with his metal hand.

"Yeah, I'm the one who cleans that thing, let's keep it out of your ass," Sam agrees, sliding his slick fingers slowly into Bucky, curling them up to press and massage where it'll feel good.

"We'll have to try out the one with more dexterity," Bucky jokes, even as his head is tilting back and his body is stiffening, pushing against Sam's fingers.

"Okay, I admit I was a little curious about that," Sam chuckles, smooth slow strokes into Bucky's ass, watching the beautiful curve of him as he arches upwards into the touch.

"I already told you, I'm right handed," Bucky says, eyes closed, the long column of his neck exposed. "I don't think to use the left."

"Unimaginative," Sam chides. Under his touch, Bucky's legs fall open a little further, and a quiet noise escapes from between his teeth.

"Oh, I can imagine plenty of good things," Bucky says, voice a little too strained to really sell the teasing. "Been imagining."

Sam braces his free hand on his belly, just to feel it move with his breath. He's fascinated by the idea, Bucky fantasizing about him. He wants to know he's been on Bucky's mind, like Bucky's been on his. "Yeah?" he breathes. "Like what?"

"Like, like what else you can do with your fast mouth other than shit talk me," Bucky huffs, grinning, and Sam huffs a laugh.

"Jesus, you should talk."

"And like what you might do to shut me up," Bucky adds, like a counterpoint, and Sam obliges by bending down and kissing him.

"Like what you'll feel like if you ever get around to actually putting your dick in me," Bucky murmurs, softly, against Sam's ear. It's hot and annoying in equal measure, like Bucky always is.

"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" Sam moves a little faster, dragging his fingers against Bucky's prostate, drawing out a groan.

Bucky throws his head back against the messed-up blanket. "I'd make an ass joke but, fuck, you're fucking killing me, Wilson, come on."

"Yeah? You want it?" Sam knows he's maybe drawing it out too much, but the teasing is so good. Sam loves it, every second of it, knowing that he's driving Bucky out of his mind.

"Jesus Mary Mother of God," Bucky swears, and grabs Sam by the shoulders, pulling him down, so they're face to face on their sides. Sam's fingers slip out of Bucky's ass, but then Bucky's on him, right up against him, chest to belly to cock.

"I want it. Fuck, I want it. I want you." Bucky kisses him, then, long and sweet, until Sam's gasping, needy, leaning in for him when he pulls away. Bucky gets his hand, still lube-slick, around Sam's cock, then around his own, stroking them both slow and hard. "What do you want?"

"Just this," Sam says, trying to get his breath, arching into Bucky's grip, "is good."

"Just this," Bucky echoes, quietly, kissing Sam's jaw, kissing down to his neck. Sam leans back to give him access, wanting it to go on forever, wanting wanting wanting. Bucky sucks at his adam's apple, at the hollow of his throat, the point of his collarbone.

"I want you to want things," Bucky murmurs into Sam's chest, so quiet Sam almost doesn't hear it. "I want to give you what you want. It's so fucking hot. Sam. C'mon."

Sam lets his head spin at that a little bit. He bites his lip, kneads his hands into the thick muscle and metal of Bucky's shoulders.

"You, you too," he manages, eventually. "I want that for you, too."

Bucky's smile is small, wry, a little rusty. "Works out good that I want you to fuck me then, doesn't it?"

"Works out pretty good," Sam agrees, feeling that light and joy filling his chest again.

Bucky gets him all worked up, palming his dick, kissing his ears, rubbing up against him. They wriggle Sam's clothes the rest of the way off, and then Bucky's leg slides between his, warm and sweaty and bare, the two of them kissing wet and desperate.

Sam's too lost in it to keep track of logistics, but Bucky gets a condom on him and rolls over, all of himself up against Sam, his left arm splayed uselessly and decadently against the bed in front of him while he reaches back with his right to pull Sam in by the hip.

They end up fucking like that, with Bucky on his side, Sam spooning him, and Sam is already thinking that it's a surprisingly romantic position for the two of them when Bucky takes his hand, interlaces their fingers, and draws their hands up to press against his bare chest.

"Bucky," Sam breathes, his name all he can think to say. He fucks slow, falling into a rhythm that they find together, Bucky rocking back against him as he rocks forward.

"Yeah. Just like that. Fuck, you're good—good at this," Bucky gasps.

Sam laughs, biting down on his shoulder, needing another outlet for this wild, escalating feeling inside of him. "Gonna remember you said that," he warns.

Breathing out on a laugh, Bucky pushes back against him, making Sam groan. "So long as you, ungh, do it again, I don't give a fuck."

"Christ, are you kidding, I wanna fuck you every day. All day. Just, just this." He thrusts, speeding up just a little, pushing Bucky's leg a little higher. He kisses the back of Bucky's neck, and Bucky squeezes his hand, hard. "I wanna keep you here."

"Yeah," Bucky groans. "Yeah, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere, you fuck me like that. Keep fucking me, Sam, fuck, you feel so good—"

And Bucky's pushing back harder, taking him deeper, Sam's hips pressing flush up against his ass. He hears himself making a sound, something low and involuntary from deep in his chest, and then Bucky's letting out a fast series of breathy little moans, and for a long time they move together like that, noises instead of words, moving together without thought.

"You got—can you hold, is that, is your leg—" Sam pants, letting go of Bucky's hand and reaching down to lift his thigh. Bucky's got fucking amazing thighs, thick and muscled, Sam could probably draw them from memory, but they're trembling, now, a fine little shiver that betrays how long they've been fucking.

"M'fine," Bucky replies. "I could take this for days."

"Really," Sam smiles against his shoulder, fucking him a little faster, pushing a little harder, taking Bucky at his word.

"Give me what you've, oh—God—what you've got," Bucky says.

"You got it," Sam says, and he means the fucking, Bucky means the fucking, but he reaches back up to take Bucky's hand again, interlace their fingers again, hold him close. "You got it."

Sam stops thinking so hard and falls into the sensation, instead, of their bodies moving together, trusting Bucky to hold him, to catch him if he falls.

A while later, Bucky squeezes his hand a little harder, hips squirming, a broken little noise escaping his lips. Sam closes his eyes, breathing against Bucky's ear, loving the sound of Bucky trusting him with this.

"Let's get you off, Buck," Sam says, running teeth against his neck. "You wanna come while I fuck you? Let's make you come."

"Yeah, yeah," Bucky pants. "Please." He pulls Sam's hand down, over his belly, until they're both holding his cock, fingers bumping as they stroke together. Bucky arches into it, forward, then back again to take Sam inside, over and over, his dick hard and hot and wet in Sam's palm. It turns Sam on, taking Bucky from both sides, makes him feel like he could hold all of him in his hands, like he could touch all of him at once.

"Fuck, that feels so good, Sam, please, God, you're fucking me so good. Jesus."

"You feel, fuck. Amazing," Sam tells him, kissing him, pressing up against him, covering him. "So good."

Bucky groans, arches, going motionless for a second before panting. "God. Don't stop. I'm gonna come."

"Yeah, Buck, I want you to," Sam groans, then laughs a little. "Good teamwork."

Bucky collapses back against him, head falling onto Sam's shoulder as he laughs, helplessly.

"Oh, oh, fuck," he says, and for a second Sam can't tell if he's still laughing or coming, until Bucky stills and shudders and spills over their hands, and Sam is so overwhelmed by the sheer trembling mess of him that he has to fuck a little faster and bite Bucky's shoulder and come too, the feeling long and deep and satisfying, until he's shaking and gasping for breath as he comes back to himself.

"Really good teamwork," Bucky says, dryly, and Sam can't help but laugh again.

*

They clean up perfunctorily—it's Bucky's bed, Sam doesn't care—and fall into a nap, arms and hands in loose contact, thighs brushing. It's nice, Sam thinks. He's always liked sleeping with people, the way it makes him feel anchored as he slips into unconsciousness. And he knows Bucky, how he moves and sounds and smells: it's easy to sleep next to him, as easy as anything.

When he opens his eyes, Bucky's already awake, lying on his side, one corner of his mouth tilted up in a tentative smile. Sam smiles back.

"Hi," he says.

"Hey," Bucky replies.

Bucky runs his hand slowly up Sam's body, from his hip to his shoulders, then back down again, like he's taking joy just in touching. Sam lets his eyes slip closed again, pleased, vulnerable and beautiful under that caress.

After a couple of minutes, his thoughts start to filter in again. One thought in particular.

"So, I think there's a thing we should discuss and just get it out of the way, like, clear the air," Sam says, opening his eyes to look at Bucky. To his surprise, Bucky looks amused.

"No, I never did that with Steve," he snickers, making Sam explode with sudden laughter. Bucky's hand keeps moving on his back while he shakes, and then Bucky asks, "You?"

"No," Sam chuckles. He pauses, licks his lips; he can feel all the stories they're not telling each other yet. "I wanted to."

"Yeah," Bucky sighs. "Why didn't you make a move on him, like you did on me?"

"I dunno. Maybe because he was so focused on you, for most of the time I knew him. Hard to compete with a brainwashed robot who may or may not be dead."

"Not a robot."

"Or maybe because when I was with him, it never felt . . . real, somehow. Being with Steve, you felt like you were really part of something big, important, you know?"

Bucky nods, hair rustling against the pillow. Yeah, he knows.

"But it was too much, maybe. How I loved him. It didn't fit into my real life."

Bucky runs his right hand up and down Sam's body again. His hand is big and hot, his calluses catching occasionally against Sam's skin. It makes Sam want to purr like a damn cat.

"He was like that," Bucky agrees, then frowns. "I guess I'm part of your real life, huh."

"Yeah, I mean, I guess it seems that way," Sam teases. He shimmies closer, further into Bucky's embrace, and kisses his mouth. It feels a little weird to do, now that they're not in the heat of the moment, after all the time he's spent not kissing Bucky's mouth. From the look on his face, Bucky's a little bemused, too, but he kisses back.

Maybe they'll get used to it. Maybe, Sam thinks, putting a kiss on the tip of Bucky's nose, it'll become routine.

"I didn't mean for—I just liked it here," Bucky says, a little flustered. "I didn't expect this."

He kisses Sam again, like punctuation.

"S'good, though, right?" Sam asks, softly. "We didn't expect it, but it's good."

"Yeah," Bucky sighs, against his mouth, falling into another kiss. "It's good."

*

Sam kisses him the next day, and the next, and it doesn't get boring, but he does come to expect it: Bucky's smile up against his own in the kitchen, in the front room, or when he's trying to get to the shower after his run and Bucky blocks his path; Bucky's heat and strength up against his own in bed. They fuck a lot, those first few days, but they get some gardening done, too, and get out on the boat to do a few repairs and help Carlos with the catch, and Bucky pulls up the loose floorboards in the hall that they usually have to step around. Because he does it while wearing only his distracting little denim shorts—Sam thinks he's trying to show off, which is cute as hell—he gets a nasty splinter in his thigh in the process, on the side, where he can't reach it easily. After a few minutes of twisting and swearing, he finally lets Sam pull it out.

"Androcles and the lion," Sam laughs, wielding the tweezers. "Now you always gotta be kind and gentle to me."

Bucky snorts. "Oh, I'll be kind and gentle to you," he says, somehow making it sound like a threat and like innuendo at the same time.

"Here I used to think you were good at flirting," Sam says, shaking his head.

"How about if I ask you to kiss it better?" Bucky asks, grinning down at him. "Is that sexy?"

"No," Sam says, but he does kiss it better, slowly, looking up over Bucky's hip to make eye contact with him while he does it. Then he kisses a bunch of other parts of him, and they don't get the floorboards done that day.

*

He tells Sarah about it, a couple weeks in, when it really doesn't feel anything like casual anymore. She nods seriously, giving it the consideration it deserves.

"What made you change your mind?" she asks, getting to the root of the thing like always.

"I . . . he . . . he took care of me," Sam says, surprising himself by having the words so ready to hand. "And he kept taking care of me."

"Well." Sarah nods again. "About time you let someone do that."

*

"How are you, Sam?" Vernon the barber asks, coming to stand behind him, their eyes meeting in the mirror. Vernon's not quite old enough to be Sam's father, he doesn't think, but it's close, and something about the white hair at his temples and the wiry strength in his arms make Sam feel young around him.

Sam's done his barber shop reconnaissance before deciding to answer this question the way he's about to answer: talking about his third cousin in Charlottesville and his husband, or Captain Marvel and her girlfriend, things like that. Testing the waters has gone pretty well on all occasions, but he's still nervous about it.

At the same time, there's part of him that's relaxing now that he's about to do it. He thinks he's releasing the tension he's carried around with him, living multiple lives, being different things for different people. He's looking forward to being one whole person, inhabiting one life. The new therapist he's trying, Maria, told him to remind himself that if the life he wants to build doesn't fit in here, in this space, he can find another barber shop.

"This is New Orleans," she said, smiling. "We can always rebuild. The key is to rebuild stronger. With better supports."

It'd made Sam laugh at the time, but the metaphor sticks with him.

So he answers Vernon's question.

"Good," he breathes. "Got a new boyfriend."

The barber sucks his teeth, raises his eyebrows. "And how's the young man you're living with feel about that?"

Sam breaks out laughing, along with the other guys in the shop. "That's who I meant."

"Seems to me you need to learn the meaning of the word 'new,'" John, the barber at the next chair over, puts in.

"Is that why I come here?" Sam demands. "So you all can get on my case?"

"Our best service," Vernon says, holding up a hot towel. Sam lies back, still shaking his head, and lets Vernon drape it over his face. He closes his eyes, relaxes his shoulders, and basks in the feeling.

*

It doesn't happen for a while, because Bucky isn't always around and the two of them do have missions to run and the house is, in some small ways, a death trap at first. But when they've got the loose floor boards all taken care of and they've had an electrician out to fix whatever mess Bucky made of the bathroom fan, and when they've—most importantly—fixed up the kitchen properly, they invite Sarah and the boys over for dinner.

Some of Sam's vegetables have even started to come up. He's made a little salad, and he's resigned to the fact that Bucky can definitely tell how proud he is of it.

"You're hilarious when you're nervous," Bucky says, sitting on the counter, thighs spread, beer in his hand. He's being completely useless and distractingly pretty, smirking at Sam while Sam messes around with the cupboards, like cleaning them again is gonna make them look any less manky.

"Yeah, yeah, must be nice to be a formerly brainwashed immortal robot assassin who doesn't have any living family," Sam snaps back. "Pardon me if I'm nervous about preparing a nice evening for our guests."

Bucky hops down off the counter, takes a swig of his beer, then sets it down on the counter. Sam watches him warily. Bucky takes him by the shoulders and kisses him, still tasting like Abita Amber, and Sam feels his shoulders unclench by a knot or two.

"Not a robot," Bucky murmurs, softly, then frowns. "Wait, why are you never this nervous going into a firefight?"

"Because I don't gotta fight my sister, I gotta . . . impress her," Sam sighs, and draws Bucky back in, palming his ass for good measure while he deepens the kiss. He lets himself get a little lost in it, finds himself matching Bucky's breath, his rhythm, Bucky's steady heartbeat making it possible for his own to slow.

A minute later there's a knock at the screen door, and thank God Sarah didn't choose to just walk in, because by that time he's got Bucky's whole hip in his hand and Bucky's leg is wrapped against his waist.

"Better go answer that, honey," Bucky says, asshole grin back in place. Sam gives him a smack on the ass.

"Stir the stew," Sam commands, and Bucky tosses off a smart salute.

"Hey, Sam," he calls, just as Sam reaches the kitchen door.

"Yeah?" Sam turns back, expecting another dig, but Bucky looks unsure, something like . . . bashful. Sam turns more fully to face him. "What is it?"

"I, uh. I do have living family. My little sister's alive. Rebecca. I go see her sometimes, up in Jersey. Seems as good a time as any to tell you." He makes eye contact with the stew. "Thought you might like to come along with me, next time I go."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Sam says softly.

"It doesn't have to be a whole deal," Bucky mutters.

"Oh, it does, and it will be," Sam promises.

Now Bucky does look up, wincing, searching Sam's face for emotions. "You mad?"

"No, asshole," Sam blurts out. "I mean, yes, I'm mad, and this was definitely not 'as good a time as any' to tell me, man. But." He sighs. "But I get it. I'd like to meet your sister."

"Yeah?" No one does kicked puppy like Bucky. Sam rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, and maybe I can get the fucking dirt on you as a kid, like you've already got on me."

"Oh." Bucky smiles. "Okay."

"And now I'm gonna go let my sister in the door before she assumes we forgot she was coming over and heads back to Delacroix in a huff."

"I'll just, uh. Stir, then."

"Damn right."

Sam stalks to the front door, still shaking his head, and smiles to see Sarah, Cass, and AJ on the other side of the screen.

"Hey, y'all," he says, smiling. "Come on in. Dinner's almost ready."

"Sounds like you and Bucky are getting on same as ever," Sarah smiles. She's holding a casserole dish, but it's a little one, so Sam doesn't have to be insulted.

"Usual routine," Sam agrees. "He's a pain in the ass, but you can't really get rid of him."

"I heard that," Bucky calls, from the kitchen, where he's still dutifully stirring.

"Uncle Bucky!" AJ yells, pelting for the kitchen like his ass is on fire. Cass grins, running after him.

Sarah stops Sam from following them with a soft hand on his shoulder; he looks over at her, curious.

"I'm really glad for you, Sam. He's good for you."

"Yeah," Sam says, slowly. "I guess he is."

"Heard that too!" Bucky calls, cheerfully.

"Just what you need," Sarah laughs.

*

Bucky's sister Rebecca is ninety-eight years old, about ninety-eight pounds, on oxygen, and just as quick and sarcastic as her brother; she lives in an assisted living home, but has her own apartment in it, though no kitchen.

"Oh, they don't let you, with the oxygen," she explains. "Think we'll all blow ourselves up. Probably a lot of them would."

"Don't know why one of your grandkids couldn't take you in," Bucky grumbles. "These places are weird."

"Jonathan's sixty-four and has more health problems than me," Rebecca sighs, leading them slowly into the sitting area, wheeling her little gas tank behind her. "Arthur and Ben both live too far away, and Helen has enough on her plate with her daughter moving back in after the divorce. Jackie and Michelle have both offered, but it would be a strain, I know. They all visit, when they can."

"I . . . didn't know Bucky had any nieces or nephews." Sam frowns. "Grand-nieces and nephews, I guess."

"Well, he refuses to actually meet them, so the extent to which he has them can be questioned," Rebecca replies.

Sam glances at Bucky, who honest to God rubs the back of his neck with his hand like a little boy in a midcentury cartoon. Sam half expects him to say aw shucks.

"Wasn't really ready," he mumbles.

"Maybe Sam here can go with you. Hold your hand."

Bucky scowls. "I don't need my hand held, Becca."

Sam, pointedly, takes his hand and pats it consolingly, which makes Rebecca chuckle.

"Family's not easy," she sighs. "Much less when you have to be dropped into it like a stone, and can't get used to them slowly."

"I threw Bucky into life with my sister and nephews," Sam offers. "He did fine."

"Your sister and nephews aren't thirty-four people," Bucky protests. "My sister produced, by herself, thirty-four other human people, Sam."

"Well, it wasn't entirely by myself," Rebecca grins. "But I had three kids, and then, you know, time happened."

Her attention shifts to focus on Sam. Sam kind of wants to rub the back of his neck with his hand.

"Do you have parents living, Sam, if you'll forgive me asking?"

"No, ma'am," Sam replies. "They both passed some time ago."

"Ah. I am sorry. You're young for that."

Sam nods his thanks.

"But it does mean fewer people around to disapprove of you dating my brother, I suppose," she adds, and Bucky groans, putting his head in his hands.

"I disapprove of him plenty, I promise," Sam laughs.

"Well, that's a start," Rebecca says, clapping her hands together cheerfully. "James, and you were worried about introducing me to your boyfriend! I like him just fine!"

"Whether or not you'd like him was not what I was worried about," Bucky intones darkly.

"I was hoping you could tell me a few stories of what he was like, in the old days," Sam confides.

Rebecca rubs her hands together. "Where to start!"

Bucky drops his head back into his hands.

A couple hours later, they emerge from Rebecca's apartment, promising to come again soon, and Sam slings a friendly arm around Bucky's shoulders while they walk down the hallway.

"Cheer up, only about half of those stories were wildly embarrassing."

"Why is it more embarrassing when it's something I did that I can't remember? It's like being ambushed by your own terrible past self."

"Do you start to remember more, when she talks about your past?" Sam asks, curious. Bucky leans against him, letting Sam take a little of his weight as they walk.

"Yeah. A lot—a lot comes back to me. I liked that you were there too, to ask questions."

"I liked being there," Sam says. "Not just for the dirt. I like your sister."

"I noticed. Did you have to tell her she has pretty eyes? She's ninety-eight, Sam."

"Oh, like you don't still flirt with my sister. And it's not my fault she has the same pretty eyes as you," Sam grins, and plants a kiss on Bucky's temple. Bucky shoves him away.

They get to the rental car in the parking lot, and slide inside. For once, Bucky lets Sam drive without an argument first.

"Where you at, Buck?" Sam asks, dropping the teasing.

Bucky nods, then smiles slowly. "Yeah. I'm—I'm all right. I'd like it if you could come here with me again."

"We'll make it a regular thing," Sam promises. Then, gently, he raises Bucky's hand to his mouth and kisses it. "I'm glad she found you again, after so long. It obviously meant a lot to her, to see you again."

"Well," Bucky's voice sounds choked, and he clears it loudly. "Well. Anyone'd be lucky to have me in their life."

"I wouldn't go that far," Sam breathes, and kisses away the tear on his cheek. Then, relenting at the sight of Bucky's shocked, disbelieving laughter, he kisses his mouth, and adds, "But I am." He kisses him. "I am."

*

They settle into a routine: wing and arm maintenance on Wednesdays, mission-permitting, and Sunday dinner with Sarah and the boys, also mission-permitting. Every two weeks or so Bucky goes up to see Rebecca, and every other visit, Sam goes with him. The garden keeps the time of the seasons, and the house keeps the time of their relationship, coming up beautifully as they continue renovations and improvements. The foundation they build together supports the chaos of the rest of their lives: rescue missions and firefights, two growing nephews who sometimes need chasing around, occasional aliens/androids/wizards, the natural disaster relief work they do in their own backyard when hurricanes sweep their city.

"But we rebuild," Sam says to Maria, during one of their biweekly therapy sessions.

"We rebuild," Maria agrees.