Chapter Text
Something is wrong.
Sam’s standing on the smoking and ravaged remains of a battlefield, Tony Stark is dead, five years have passed in the blink of an eye and Sam’s apparently just been resurrected, so a lot of things are wrong, really, but the urgent, panicky fear and worry making his heart pound so damn fast right now are too immediate for all of that. He does a self-check for injuries, but he’s all present and accounted for, no injuries worse than unremarkable strained muscles, bruises and scrapes. And yet, his body’s telling him: something’s wrong something’s wrong something’s wrong.
The frantic pulse of fear doesn’t ease until Sam catches sight of Barnes for the first time since the end of the battle: he’s dirty and disheveled, and still, somehow, impossibly, the best thing Sam’s ever seen. The gallop of Sam’s heart slows, and the tightness in his lungs eases so suddenly that it’s like he’s gone buoyant, ready to float away without the help of any wings. Barnes turns as if he can sense Sam looking at him, and when he meets Sam’s eyes, he smiles, and it’s the brightest damn thing on this battlefield, a shock of sweetness in the midst of so much dark bitterness and confusion. Sam smiles back, giddy with joy and relief.
He thinks, thank God Bucky’s okay.
Then he thinks, wait, what the fuck?
Listen, Sam doesn’t dislike Barnes, per se. It’d be a pretty asshole move to dislike the guy for things he had no real control over, like being a brainwashed assassin, being framed for a bombing, and becoming the subject of an international manhunt. Sam has processed his feelings of fear and resentment about all of that, and safely set them aside, mostly. But Sam can’t claim to know the guy all that well either, and he doesn’t think he’s out of line to be occasionally annoyed by Barnes and the ways he complicates Sam’s life. Sure, Sam genuinely appreciates that all the times they’ve been in a fight together, Barnes has unflinchingly and automatically had Sam’s back, has even thrown himself between Sam and danger, and yeah, Sam’s happy his recovery has been going well. But absolutely none of that explains the way Sam keeps feeling like he absolutely has to have Barnes in his eye line at all times right now.
Post-battle, they’ve all ended up at a motel that’s serving as a combination base of operations and barracks while they regroup. There’s been a lot of crying and hugging, and a wildly confusing and practically unbelievable debrief about half of the universe’s population turning to dust and five years of hell and some real hail Mary time travel adventures to fix it, and all throughout, Sam’s been finding himself at Barnes’ side without conscious thought, close enough to feel his warmth, close enough that their arms and knees keep brushing against each other, each glancing contact oddly steadying.
At first, Sam justifies it to himself as both of them being at loose ends in a disorienting and chaotic situation; they’ve both missed out on the last five years, and once the battlefield’s cleared of casualties, there’s not much either of them can contribute, or many people they recognize beyond the original Avengers, who are very busy dealing with the fallout of half of the world’s population suddenly reappearing. But when he and Barnes end up automatically heading for the same double room, no discussion involved, like they do this all the time, Sam has to admit that something’s up.
Barnes must realize it too, because the moment he follows Sam into the double room, Barnes frowns, confused, eyes darting between Sam and the two beds.
“Sorry, I—I should bunk with Steve, maybe,” says Barnes slowly. “I don’t know why I—”
“Sam, Bucky?” calls out Steve, a faint thread of panic in his voice. “Are you two—oh, there you are. Do you two mind doubling up with me and Nat? Me and Bucky can take one bed, and you and Nat can take the other.”
The motel’s not so tight on space that they need to sleep four to a room, but Sam sees the desperate tension around Steve’s eyes, the new lines of pain and unhappiness on his forehead and around his mouth. He’d gone five years thinking Sam and Bucky were gone for good. Sam’s not about to begrudge him some clinginess and a sleepover.
“Yeah, sure, I’m cool with that,” says Sam. “Figure we could all do with a sleepover, yeah? You two can catch us up on what we’ve missed.”
“Course it’s fine, Steve,” Barnes agrees, smiling, but Sam can still see the worry lingering around his eyes.
It’s a long, emotional night. Steve’s broken up about Stark’s death, and Natasha’s quietly a total wreck about Barton’s, and Sam and Barnes can’t do much about any of it but offer shoulders to cry on. With every new detail Steve and Natasha divulge about the last five years, the anxiety and horror settling in Sam’s stomach grow heavier and heavier. Coming back from the loss and return of half the planet’s population isn’t going to be easy. He wants to make things better for Steve and Nat, wants to lift the despair and exhaustion weighing them down and tell them everything is going to be okay now, but the five lost years separating them feel like a chasm none of them can bridge just yet.
Steve and Natasha eventually fall asleep, and unlike all the other times he and Natasha have shared a bed, Natasha isn’t maintaining a careful foot or two of personal space between them. She’s curled up close, not quite cuddling, but close enough that they can feel each other’s warmth, close enough that her face is tucked in against Sam’s chest. When he looks over at Steve and Bucky’s bed, he sees that Steve has gone full octopus, big spooning Barnes with aggressiveness. Or maybe desperation, judging by the way Steve’s hand is clenched tightly in the fabric of Barnes’ shirt. In the dark of the motel room, Sam can’t make out Barnes’ expression, and it occurs to him that Barnes might not be alright with all that physical contact, or with being rendered physically immobile, even if it is in a harmless, cuddling kind of way.
“You cool with being Steve’s own personal Bucky Bear over there, Barnes?” Sam whispers, knowing Barnes’ enhanced hearing will pick it up even from across the room.
There’s no answer from Barnes for a few seconds, long enough that Sam starts to wonder if he’s asleep, before he whispers, “Please don’t tell me they still make Bucky Bears,” and Sam grins into the darkness.
“I don’t know about now, but they absolutely still made them when I was a kid.”
Sam hears Barnes huff out an exasperated breath, and though Sam can’t see him, he knows he’s got one of his amused half-smiles on his face. Which, okay, Sam’s not sure how he knows that, come to think of it—
“I’ve been Steve’s own personal Bucky Bear since we were kids, he always sleeps like this when we share a bed, it’s fine,” Barnes says, and okay, yeah, that’s a fair point. There are times Sam’s had to use some strategic tickling or elbowing to get free of Steve’s sleep cuddling grip. Steve’s never clung to Sam with as much intensity as he’s clinging to Barnes right now though.
“Alright, well, better you than me, Barnes,” Sam says.
“Bucky,” says Barnes. “Call me Bucky, please.”
A pleasant little shiver runs down Sam’s spine at the request, at the low and intimate register of Bucky’s voice.
“Yeah, okay. Surviving the apocalypse together feels like a first names kind of situation, sure,” Sam says, and now maybe he can barely make out the glint of Bucky’s smile in the dark rather than just guess at it.
He thinks Bucky falls asleep pretty quickly after that, and Sam does his best to follow his lead, but he’s got this feeling, this you’ve forgotten something important kind of feeling, like he’s left the oven on or his keys in the door, or like there’s something incredibly important he should have done today and hadn’t. But he doesn’t have an oven anymore, or even keys for that matter, and the world’s already been saved. It’s just post-battle jitters, or the whole weird time displacement situation, probably.
Natasha shifts in her sleep, her head brushing against Sam’s chest, and he nearly jumps out of his skin, because that’s not right, he usually shares a bed with someone else, someone taller—except no, he doesn’t, at least not for a long, long time, what the hell. Go the fuck to sleep, Wilson, he tells himself sternly. Things will make more sense tomorrow, or at the very least, he’ll be more used to them.
In the morning, Sam’s somehow the last to wake up, though only barely so judging by Natasha’s bleary eyes and Steve’s freshly showered exit from the bathroom. The situation is so familiar that for a long moment, Sam thinks the whole thing with Thanos had just been an especially bizarre nightmare, that five years haven’t passed and he and Steve and Nat are still on the run together, but no, Natasha’s hair is long and mostly red again, the still-blond ends like proof of time’s passage. And if it wasn’t all some really detailed nightmare, then where the hell is Bucky, and why is his absence making Sam feel faintly panicky?
“Where’s Bucky?” Sam asks in what he really hopes is an appropriately chill tone.
“Went to get us some breakfast,” Steve says, already casting an anxious look at the room’s closed door, like Bucky being out of sight is worrying him too.
“I’ve got dibs on the next shower,” Natasha says, so Sam puts up his customary protest, and it would almost be normal, unremarkable, if not for the way Natasha’s eyes shine with tears or the way her voice wavers with joy as she shoots back the usual snappy response before she disappears into the bathroom.
Sam distracts himself from the weird antsy feeling in his gut by asking Steve what the plan for the day is, and just when he’s about to snap and find some excuse to go looking for Bucky—which, why, surely the former Winter Soldier can handle getting breakfast and anyway, Sam shouldn’t even care this much—he returns, carefully juggling a big brown paper bag in one hand and a tray of coffee in the other.
“How’s it looking out there?” asks Steve as he takes the tray from Bucky.
“People seem really happy, and really confused, like they’re in a good kind of shock.”
Bucky distributes wrapped breakfast sandwiches from the bag, and Sam raises an eyebrow at him.
“McDonalds?”
“It was the only place that was open.” He tosses a sandwich to Sam. “Extra bacon instead of ham, no cheese, just the way you like it.”
That is, in fact, just how Sam likes his guilty pleasure Egg McMuffins. Steve’s lifting a coffee cup from the tray, about to take a sip, when Bucky gracefully swipes it from his hand.
“Nuh uh, that one’s Sam’s. Yours is on the right. Wasn’t sure how Romanoff takes hers, but I brought some extra sugar and creamer.”
Bucky hands Sam his coffee, and he takes a sip, surprised when it tastes just like his usual: black coffee with two packets of Splenda, which doesn’t taste like poison at all, Steve.
“Thanks,” Sam says. “But how’d you know this is how I take my coffee? And how’d you know that’s how I like my Egg McMuffins?”
Maybe it’s a trivial thing to fixate on; after all, Steve probably told Bucky, or hell, maybe Bucky’s super spy assassin skills are just that good. But it’s one more weird thing on an already weird morning, and when Bucky’s forehead furrows in confusion, Sam’s both vindicated and concerned.
“I—I don’t know,” says Bucky.
Steve frowns over at both of them. “I didn’t tell him.”
Sam bites back a half-hearted joke about amnesia, and is glad he did when Bucky’s confusion shifts to him looking genuinely spooked and unsettled, frowning hard.
“Someone must have told me, but I don’t—I don’t remember,” he says. His jaw clenches for a second before he shakes off his distress, covering with a stiff smile. “What a surprise, the amnesiac has memory problems,” jokes Bucky, but his voice is just a little too shaky for the joke to land.
As Sam eats his Egg McMuffin, the food settling heavier in his gut than even McDonalds food should, he regrets having brought it up at all.
When the most urgent post-battle issues are taken care of, they get some down time and breathing room, enough for Sam to have more than a quick “I’m alive again,” phone call with his family. It’s a long, emotional video call; of his immediate family, only his sister Sarah had lived through the last five years, and their poor mom is totally overwhelmed by the whole situation. It’s all Sam can do to stop himself from strapping on his wings and flying down to Atlanta to hold onto them until everything makes sense again. But his mom is tough as hell, and it doesn’t take her long to come to grips with the situation. When she does, she urges Sam not to worry about them.
“You just keep helping to save the world, honey, your time’s better spent doing that than trying to get down here to us in all this chaos and confusion. Your sister and I will be fine,” his mom tells him.
“Just tell us it’s not going to happen again,” pleads his sister, and that, at least, Sam can do.
“Nothing left but the cleanup,” he promises. And the funerals, he doesn’t add.
That there are only two funerals seems like a kind of miracle: whatever Stark had done when he had control of the Infinity Stones, it must have included saving anyone who may not have made it through the battle otherwise, because apart from Stark himself, no one else on their side had been killed. But Stark couldn’t save Barton, and he couldn’t save himself, and now the Avengers are left to mourn in a world that’s celebrating.
The Barton family has a small memorial service and a raucous wake on their farm, per Barton’s own wishes. He always said he wanted his funeral to be a party, Natasha says, her mouth twisting into something too hurt to be a smile. Sam duly joins the toasts to Barton, and laughs through tears along with everyone else as they share stories of the late Hawkeye. If he feels oddly disconnected from the other mourners, if his laughs come a second too late, well, no one seems to notice, or if they do, they don’t care. He’s just one shellshocked mourner among many here. It doesn’t matter that he never knew Barton all that well: he’s here to honor the man’s sacrifice the way it deserves to be honored, and at the very least, he’s here for Steve and Nat’s sakes too.
A couple days later, it’s time for Stark’s funeral—the private funeral, that is, the one free of the media storm that’s fast brewing—and Sam feels even more superfluous and awkward here than he had at Barton’s wake. Despite being one of the recipients of Stark’s generosity with cool tech, Sam had known Stark even less well than he’d known Barton, and he’d been ambivalent at best about Stark on a personal level, an ambivalence that had nearly tipped over into genuine antipathy thanks to how things went down with the Accords and in Siberia. It’s been well over seven years now, but not for Sam, and Sam can admit that he’s the kind of person who has a real long statute of limitations on grudges. Which doesn’t feel great, given how Stark’s just died to help save the universe and all.
Get over yourself, Wilson, he tells himself. This isn’t about you.
Lucky for Sam, there’s at least one person who’s definitely going to feel even more awkward and weird about Stark’s funeral than Sam does, and that person is Bucky. Bucky and some of the others had stayed behind at the motel that was serving as the Avengers’ HQ during Barton’s wake, on the off chance there’d be some new attack, and clearly Bucky’s been hoping he’d be able to do the same for Stark’s funeral.
No joy. When Bucky floats the idea, Steve goes full puppy dog eyes. Sam’s pretty sure no one can resist Steve’s big sad puppy dog eyes.
“Of course you have to come, Buck,” Steve tells Bucky.
“It just feels really awkward on account of how I murdered his parents,” Bucky says.
His tone and expression are admirably even, but he’s got some definite crazy eyes action happening, and despite the pleading look Bucky casts Sam’s way, Sam is not getting in the middle of this. If Sam can’t get out of this, he’s taking Bucky down with him.
Steve clasps Bucky’s shoulder comfortingly. “Tony forgave you for that, these last few years. He knew you didn’t do it willingly, that the blame was on HYDRA. I promise, no one’s gonna think it’s weird for you to be there.”
Sam easily translates the quickly suppressed twitch of Bucky’s eyebrows to mean I think it’s pretty goddamn weird for me to be there, Steve! But Bucky must decide it’s not worth arguing about because he lets it go, and then talk turns to the logistics of getting everyone to Stark’s lake house for the service and how Steve and Natasha would be returning the Infinity Stones after that. After Steve and Natasha leave the motel room, Sam takes pity on Bucky.
“Hey, I’ll be your wingman for this funeral, if you want. We can lurk awkwardly in the back together.”
“Thank you,” Bucky tells him, with wide-eyed sincerity.
“No problem, man,” Sam says.
He ends up reconsidering the offer when he sees what Bucky’s wearing for the service.
“Where did you get a suit from?” asks Bucky, emerging from the motel room’s bathroom looking distinctly frazzled.
“Uh, Rhodey rustled one up for me, why are you dressed like you’re gonna roll up to Tony Stark’s funeral looking like his hot sidepiece sugar baby or whatever?”
And okay, Bucky’s in dark colors, yeah, but surely those black skinny jeans are not funeral-appropriate attire. They do look real good on Bucky’s long legs though, and add that to the slim cut of his black or maybe dark blue zipped jacket, and all in all, he’s a real tall drink of water right now, the dark colors making the blue-gray of his eyes especially sharp, his hair a little mussed as if he’s just gotten off a motorcycle and—jesus, focus, Wilson, what the fuck.
Sam has eyes, he knows Bucky’s a damn good-looking man, but that does not mean Sam thirsts after the guy, especially not when they’re about to go to a goddamn funeral. It’s just that Bucky’s narrow waist in that jacket is somehow very tempting right now, and Sam just knows his hands would neatly span that space, thumbs resting perfectly on the crest of Bucky’s hips—and okay, no, Sam is stopping this train of thirsty thought right in its tracks.
Sam’s never been given to post-battle and/or funeral-inspired horniness the way some people are, but there’s a first time for everything, he supposes.
Bucky must be totally unaware of the suddenly lusty turn of Sam’s thoughts, because he runs a hand through his hair and fidgets with his jacket as he says, “Okay, well, not all of us could rustle up a suit! I just came back from the dead, again, and if I even have any more clothes still, they’re all in Wakanda, so this is the best I could do!”
To Sam’s amused concern, Bucky hadn’t sounded this anxious when they were literally staring down an alien invasion. Somehow, his current display of obvious nerves is kind of charming.
“Alright, alright,” soothes Sam. He’s struck with the sudden urge to hug Bucky in apology for even bringing up the clothes issue, which is, wow, inappropriate and not at all the kind of relationship they have. Why is Sam’s brain being like this. “It’ll be fine, no one’s gonna care.”
Bucky does not seem much comforted by this, but Sam’s proven right, no one cares, if they even notice. He and Bucky stand near the back as Stark gets his final sendoff, the moment quiet and solemn, but full of gratitude too. In the end, Stark had done right by the world, and the universe, by making the ultimate sacrifice. It’s a genuine tragedy that Stark won’t live to see the new world he helped bring back from the brink of ruin.
Sam hears Bucky sniffle quietly, and mingled grief and affection fill Sam up so rapidly that they nearly overflow in tears. Leave it to Bucky goddamn Barnes to be genuinely sad at the funeral of a man who’d tried to kill him for things he’d done while brainwashed. He puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, and when Bucky leans into it, Sam steps closer, lets his hand slide down to rest on Bucky’s lower back. He should be more surprised than he is about how easily his hand fits there, how readily Bucky sways towards him.
It’s just the weird situation, Sam tells himself. They’re getting what comfort they can from whoever they can. And if the position feels too familiar, if Sam has to keep himself from tugging Bucky even closer, if Sam keeps expecting Bucky to put his arm around Sam’s waist—it’s nothing, it’s just—just a weird manifestation of some suppressed need for good old-fashioned human contact.
After the funeral, Steve and Natasha suit up to return the Infinity Stones (and Thor’s hammer, apparently?) to their proper timelines. Sam still hasn’t got a good handle on this time travel bullshit, but he knows he doesn’t feel too great about Steve and Nat going on a mission where they’ll be cut off from any potential backup.
“We’ll be back in five seconds,” promises Natasha, which isn’t as comforting as she thinks it is, given Sam’s recent experience. He’d thought he’d only been gone a few seconds too, only to find out, nope! Five years had passed!
“You’ll barely have enough time to miss us,” adds Steve.
Any heavy goodbyes feel like admitting something could go wrong, so Sam settles for quick hugs from Steve and Nat, and even Steve and Bucky go with a short bro hug rather than their usual clingy bearhug. When Steve and Natasha blink out of sight, Sam can’t help the morbid thought that they’ve died just like Sam and Bucky and half of the rest of the world’s population had, and there aren’t any convenient magic rocks to bring them back.
“They’ll be fine,” murmurs Bucky, bumping Sam’s shoulder with his own. “Five seconds are almost up already.”
So Sam waits, counting down the last couple seconds, and okay it’s definitely been more than five seconds now, something’s gone wrong, how can they be late when they have a time machine, maybe Steve and Nat aren’t coming back—
“Breathe, Sam,” says Bucky, his voice and face reflecting nothing but impossibly calm patience, and Sam hisses back, “It has been longer than five seconds! It’s been, like, fifteen! Banner, is something wrong? I knew we shouldn’t have—”
Just as Sam’s working up a proper panic, Banner says, “Quantum tunnel’s activating again,” and Steve and Natasha reappear.
They’re significantly more bedraggled than when they’d left: Steve has a beard again, and both of their quantum suits have gone grey with grime and maybe even blood—an object lesson in why superhero outfits should never be white—but they both seem more or less okay. And while Steve’s down a hammer, he seems to have picked up the shield again, because it’s on his back now, shiny and new, unlike the shattered version Steve was left with after the battle with Thanos.
“So? How’d it go?” Banner asks.
“Went off without a hitch,” reports Natasha with a grin. “Or, no big hitches anyway.”
“Oh good,” says Banner, then he squints over at Steve. “Wait, is that your shield? Please don’t tell me you stole your shield from some other timeline’s version of you.”
“I didn’t steal my own shield,” says Steve. “Some other timeline’s version of me gave it to me.”
Banner scowls, a distressingly Hulk-like expression, then he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“You know what, whatever! Whatever! If the multiverse collapses, it’s your fault.”
Steve and Natasha pay Banner no heed, both of them heading straight for Sam and Bucky.
“How long was it for you two?” asks Sam, as Natasha hugs him tightly. “And what did y’all get up to aside from returning the Infinity Stones?”
Natasha kisses him on the cheek, still smiling, a welcome twinkle in her eye rather than weary grief. “Don’t worry about it,” she advises.
When Sam glances over at Steve to gauge just how much he should or shouldn’t be worrying about it, he sees Steve and Bucky wrapped up in each other, Steve’s mouth close to Bucky’s ear as he tells him something. There’s an odd mix of joy and grief on Steve’s face, and Sam’s not sure if he should be concerned about the tight clench of Bucky’s fist in the fabric of Steve’s uniform, but then Bucky lifts his face from Steve’s shoulder and he’s smiling, albeit tearfully.
“Of course it matters, Steve, thank you,” Bucky says, and when Sam raises his eyebrows at him, a silent everything okay? Bucky just nods, a short, don’t worry kind of gesture. Before Sam can wonder just when he became so fluent in the language of Bucky, Bucky lets Steve go and pushes him towards Sam, and it’s Sam’s turn for his own personal clingy hug from Steve.
“Everything alright?” Sam asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s perfect. Just—I wanna ask you something. C’mon.”
Steve leads Sam away from the quantum tunnel platform and over towards the lake, where there’s a bench. He unclips the shield from the harness on his back and sets it down with a relieved sigh before he sits down on the bench with a heaviness that betrays how tired he is. Sam notices all over again the small but unmistakable signs of age and sorrow on Steve’s face: the way the furrow on his brow seems permanent now, the deeper brackets around his mouth. He hopes it’s not too late to smooth them out a little, replace them with evidence of happiness instead.
“This isn’t bad news, is it?” Sam asks as he sits next to Steve
“No,” says Steve thoughtfully. “I don’t think it is, anyway. Not for me, and hopefully not for you either.” Steve rests his hands on the edge of the shield, looks down as he smooths one fond hand over the shield’s edge. “I’m done being Cap, Sam. I’ve been done for a while, if I’m honest. It’s been a long time since I could be the kind of Captain America the world needs.”
“Is this about the Accords? Because Rhodey told me there’s no way they’re—”
Steve shakes his head and interrupts him. “It’s not about the Accords, no. When I took up the shield, it was to fight a war. And I’m not sure that’s what the world needs anymore, not from me and not from Captain America.”
“So you’re retiring,” says Sam, and Steve nods. Sam puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezes. “That’s definitely not bad news. I’m happy for you, Steve. This has been a long time coming, yeah?”
“Yeah, it has,” says Steve, with one of his trademark sad smiles. “World still needs Captain America though,” he adds, then he lifts up the shield and holds it out to Sam. “So, what do you say? You up for it?”
Sam takes the shield from Steve’s hands on autopilot as his thoughts race. He can’t take his eyes off the shield—his shield? The words didn’t compute. “Steve, I—”
“Before you say anything, just—you gotta know, I spent a lot of the last five years thinking, what would Sam do? What would Bucky do? And the answer was always, help people, don’t give up. So I did my best: I found a support group, and after a while, I led one myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” says Steve his smile gone more sweet than sad now. “And I don’t know if I’m the best at it, but I think—I think I know better than anyone what it feels like to lose years and come back to a world you don’t recognize. I think helping people deal with that is how I can do the most good. And I think the kind of Captain America the world could really use right now isn’t the guy who was made for the war, but the guy who was made for the rescue.”
Sam wipes tears from his eyes before they can fall. “Jesus, you oughta give a guy a warning before you give him that kinda speech in such close quarters.”
“So? What do you say? You can take time to think it over, of course—”
He should take the time, maybe, but Sam finds that he already has an answer for Steve.
“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll—” Sam laughs, struck by how unlikely and amazing the words he’s about to say sound. “I’ll be Captain America.”
After Steve leaves to give him some quiet time to process, Sam runs his fingers over every inch of the shield, mapping its smooth surface and the curve of its edge. He’s held the shield before, even used it, but now it’s his. The little kid inside Sam is giddy, like this is just another game of make-believe and finally he gets to be Cap. Adult Sam knows it’s more than that: it’s an honor and a privilege and a burden all wrapped up together, and he hopes to god he can do right by it.
“No need to start panicking already,” says Bucky, and sits beside him. Sam hadn’t even noticed Bucky joining him at the bench, but somehow, he’s not surprised either. “You’re gonna be a great Cap.”
“You think so?”
Bucky smiles, the close-contact blast of brightness of it enough to warm Sam up like he’s got a small sun sitting right next to him.
“I do,” he says, soft and sure. Sam should make some kind of joke, or maybe he should even doubt Bucky’s motives in saying it, but instead, he’s actually goddamn moved, the sheer certainty of Bucky’s words enough to fill Sam with hopeful, wondering resolve. “Don’t think you should give up your old superhero callsign entirely though. I kinda like the sound of Falcap.”
And there it is, the catch. Bucky’s grinning goofily as he nudges Sam’s shoulder, and Sam laughs, charmed despite himself.
“That’s really what you’re going with? I’d have thought Captain Birdmerica was more your speed.”
Now Bucky’s laughing, and Sam’s immediate reaction is of delight—finally, he’s goddamn managed to get a real, proper laugh out of Bucky, even if Sam’s made far better jokes before that were a lot more deserving of this particular prize—but that delight is swiftly followed by a baffling sense of comfortable familiarity, like this isn’t a new sight at all, like Sam’s often angling for a laugh from Bucky and usually getting it.
Something like deja vu hits Sam with such suddenness he’s dizzy with it. Sam’s certainty that this moment is familiar crashes up wildly against the reality that it isn’t, that at most Sam goads Bucky with jokes and light ribbing to get the guy to lighten up, that they’re not close enough to justify all of today’s casual touches and easy conversation. Maybe Bucky realizes the same thing, because he goes stiff and tense beside Sam with whiplash speed, and the air of unforced comfort between them disappears like it had never been there at all. But it had been, and Sam doesn’t know where the hell it had come from.
Neither does Bucky, apparently, because he stands up abruptly. “I have to—I’m gonna go find Steve,” he says, and walks off, fast enough to almost be jogging.
Later, Sam finds Wanda back at the lake house, accepts her hug of congratulations for the Cap thing before pulling her aside. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Have you been having...I don’t know, like, a lot of weird deja vu since we came back? Or do you keep feeling like you’ve forgotten something, something important?”
Wanda frowns, shakes her head slowly. “No...mostly I’ve just been missing Viz,” she says.
“Shit, I’m sorry—” starts Sam, and Wanda cuts him off with a quick touch to his arm.
“It’s alright, Shuri told me she thinks he can be restored, though it will take time and he will lack his powers.”
“Yeah? I’m glad to hear it, then,” he says, and Wanda gives him a watery, grateful smile.
“Thanks, Sam. So what’s this about deja vu?”
“It’s nothing, probably. Just some kinda weird side effect of missing five years or coming back from the dead, I bet,” Sam tells her, and tries for a breezy, reassuring smile.
“I can take a quick look around inside your head for any undue influence,” Wanda offers.
Sam bites back his automatic denial; it’s creepy sure, but Wanda’s powers are undeniably effective, and he knows she’s careful with them. Having her poke around a bit is probably worth the discomfort.
“Yeah, could you? I’m just—weirded out by this whole back from the dead thing, I guess.”
She smiles reassuringly at him as she brings her hands up to his temples. “I don’t blame you,” she says. “Now just relax, this won’t take long. I’ll only look for any sign of outside influence.”
Like she says, it doesn’t take long, and he doesn’t feel a thing, apart from the odd sensation of another presence in his head, careful and distant, and somehow very red. Just as he’s noticed it, it withdraws, and he finds he’s closed his eyes. He opens them again to Wanda’s gentle smile.
“No one but you in there, and no sign of any other influence or tampering.”
“Thanks, Wanda,” he says.
So alright, it’s just a weird side effect, Sam tells himself. If some jarring deja vu is the only consequence of being fully dead for five years, he’s getting off lightly.
After the funerals, the slow work of recovery starts in earnest. The Avengers and company relocate to Avengers Tower back in Manhattan with Pepper’s blessing and Rhodey’s help. The old Avengers’ floors there are dusty and empty, and the place feels strange without Stark’s presence—Sam half expects Stark to have installed himself as an AI, ready to activate upon his death and haunt them all—but it’s only FRIDAY who welcomes them, powering everything up again with a cheerful welcome back. Just having a familiar base of operations and place to live helps Sam feel steadier, less unmoored.
Sticking together with Steve, Nat, Wanda, and Bucky helps too, even if Bucky had been distinctly nervous about stepping into Avengers Tower.
“Honestly, I’m kinda expecting a robot to shoot me on sight,” he’d muttered, eyes darting around suspiciously, until Steve had just pushed him inside the lobby.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a fancy shield now, I’ve got you covered,” Sam had told Bucky, surprised to find the words coming out with far more sincerity than lightness.
But hell, having Bucky’s back is the bare minimum, isn’t it? And it’s not weird to stay in Steve’s old apartment in the Tower together rather than use the other guest rooms, not if Steve and Nat are there too. The fact that Sam automatically heads for Bucky’s chosen bedroom at the end of the day is just—Sam’s just tired, is all, and it’s the room he’d have picked first if he’d had the chance. And if having a bed to himself again feels weird and lonely, well, that’s just because he’s been keeping close quarters with Steve and Nat for so long.
That night, he dreams for the first time since coming back, or at least, it’s the first time he remembers his dream: a flaming amber sunset, and arms wrapped around him, a warm voice murmuring in his ear—but he can’t hear what it’s saying, is desperate to know what that beloved voice is saying, because maybe then he’ll know why he feels so happy and so sad all at once.
When he wakes up, there are tears on his cheeks, and something deep inside of him is aching. It’s almost a good ache, like the kind he gets after he goes on a long hike, tired but grateful for it. But god, it still hurts, a tight kind of pain like his heart is reaching for something it has no hope of catching.
“Riley?” Sam whispers into the pre-dawn dark, as if his most beloved ghost has come back for one last sweet haunting.
There’s no answer, of course. There hasn’t been for a long time.
With a real base of operations established, the Avengers step up to tell the world the whole wild story of what went down with Thanos and the Infinity Stones; at least, the whole story apart from the time travel parts, on the reasonable grounds that the last thing they need is everyone knowing time travel is possible.
“We are not kicking off some Terminator-style time travel arms race,” Rhodey had declared. “Not on my watch.”
Banner had sighed and nodded, looking kind of wistful about it. “We should probably destroy the quantum tunnel, just in case.”
Steve takes the opportunity to publicly pass the shield on to Sam, and to commit himself to supporting the Avengers’ global recovery efforts rather than actively superheroing. He gives a hell of a heartfelt speech about why Sam deserves the shield that has Sam barely holding back tears, but Sam gets it together enough to give his own speech, a short and sweet promise about the kind of Captain America he hopes to be: standing up to bullies and fighting the fights that need fighting, but always focusing on the people who need protection, who need rescue.
The soundbite that ends up all over the news cycle is of Sam’s closing words: “I’m just another soldier who wants to do right by everything this shield stands for, but more than that, I’m pararescue too. And I can promise all of you now that I’ll always live by the pararescue motto, that it will guide everything I do as Cap: so that others may live.”
He’s not quite the orator Steve is, but it goes over pretty well anyway.
When they return to Steve’s apartment, Bucky’s sitting on the couch, watching the news play a clip of Sam’s speech. All the nerves Sam had avoided during the press conference and while actually giving the damn speech start jangling now.
Shit, everyone is going to see this, he realizes. Not just the reporters who’d been at the press conference, not just the other Avengers, but everyone. He’s not a minor superhero anymore, he’s Captain America. The Sam Wilson on the TV screen looks the part at least, with the shield on his arm, his expression emotional but dignified while Steve, Nat, and Rhodey look on with beaming pride. Here and now, Bucky glances over his shoulder at Sam, his bright eyes creased up in a smile.
“Not bad, for your first Captain America speech,” says Bucky, and most of Sam’s nerves fall away.
“Yeah?” he says, and nods at the TV screen. “How’re the other reviews?”
“Pretty damn good. Though even if they weren’t, fuck ‘em. You’re doing great.”
The positivity drowns out the predictable racist outrage at any rate, and even the worst of that dies down after a couple news cycles. The world’s too grateful, and too busy dealing with the fallout of half the population reappearing, to spare much time for tearing Sam or the Avengers down. While Banner and Stark were exactly the kind of geniuses who could account for the logistical complications of restoring half the universe to life and wiping Thanos out—Banner had said I thought of it like a really complex bit of code to execute, put in a lot of conditions to make sure people were returned safely, and I know Tony would have done the same too—they couldn’t do shit about all the interpersonal and sociopolitical fallout.
Though maybe even that will prove to be more short-lived than expected.
Given that people are starting to call the last five years the Blip instead of the far more apocalyptic Decimation, Sam’s getting the impression that the world is real keen on treating the last five years like a weird, inconvenient aberration. There’s also a whole lot of backpedaling going on when it comes to the Accords, pardons and apologies being thrown around like candy as the Accords are redrafted into something less rife for abuse.
Unfortunately, Bucky’s situation is a little more complicated, and Bucky, Steve, and T’Challa decide it’s safest if he waits it out in Wakanda while the lawyers handle it. Logically, Sam knows they’re right, and he even agrees. And yet, here he is, stomach fluttering unhappily at the prospect of Bucky leaving, for reasons he straight up does not understand.
The former Winter Soldier is not your security blanket, Sam tells himself firmly, because whatever projection or displacement or what-the-fuck-ever is making him be all weird about Bucky Barnes, he’s got to get over it. They barely even know each other, for fuck’s sake.
Still, it’s only polite to see the guy off. Sam’s not sure when they’ll see each other again, after all. So when the Wakandan talon jet comes to pick Bucky up, he goes up to the Tower’s roof with Steve and Nat and Wanda to say goodbye.
“We’ll get this all worked out soon,” Natasha assures Bucky, or maybe she’s reassuring Steve, who does not look at all ready to let Bucky go.
Sam’s honestly still not sure whether Steve’s new willingness to hug is a sign of personal growth or a symptom of his trauma, but the hugs seem reasonably therapeutic, and Bucky clearly doesn’t mind, even if he does look faintly exasperated.
“I’m not headed off to the front, Steve,” he says, rubbing Steve’s back. “You can still come visit me in Wakanda any time, you’re not a fugitive anymore, remember?”
Steve loosens his grip on Bucky a fraction. “Oh yeah,” he says and lets Bucky go, a sheepish grin on his face. “See you next weekend then?”
Bucky rolls his eyes and grins. “Yeah, sure. Bring me bagels!”
Sam offers Bucky his hand to shake, because even if Bucky looks like he gives really good hugs, they are not at a hugging kind of place in their weird almost-friends, almost-teammates relationship, and Bucky agrees apparently, because he reaches out to take Sam’s hand.
Later, Sam will realize: it’s the first time they’ve touched, skin-to-skin, since coming back from the dead.
In the moment though, it’s as if everything since he’s been returned to life was just him fighting his way through a layer of thick and chilly clouds and only now is he breaking through to clear skies and hot sunshine. The strange, almost ignorable pull he’s been feeling towards Bucky snaps tight and flares into zinging, overwhelming light and heat, like Sam’s the kite and Bucky’s the string, and they’ve both just been struck by goddamn lightning.
Bucky yanks his hand back, eyes wide.
“What the—”
“Holy—”
“Uh, you two okay?” asks Natasha.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says absently, still feeling the pull, the lightning, a bright line of shock running between him and Bucky. He rubs at his palm, half expecting to feel the crackle of static on his skin. “Just, uh, static electricity I guess.”
Bucky looks back at him, his eyes as wide and faultless as the skies above them. “I guess, yeah,” he says, not sounding especially convinced.
But that has to be all it was, Sam thinks wildly. Because what the hell else could it be?