Work Text:
After two years of being an international fugitive, one would have thought that clandestine spycraft would be at least a tiny bit more available to Sam, but forgetting that his phone was on vibrate had proven otherwise.
That one was gonna haunt him for a while.
At least the adrenaline rush of needing to escape an assload of assassins and the shock of running into Sharon provided a suitable distraction to the embarrassment. She even gave him a way out of the horrific pimp suit and into real-person clothes. Her jaded, blasé attitude was a bitter pill to swallow—another blindside blow to add to his list—but after the week he’s had, what was one more?
Sam stood in the dim, loud throng of the party, the bone-weary exhaustion riding between his shoulders at war with the anxious buzzing of his brain. After the amount of globe hopping they’d done, he couldn’t even begin to guess what time his body thought it was, but sleepy-time certainly wasn’t it. It would be smarter to rest, even if he couldn’t sleep, but Sharon’s offer to come to the party sounded a little less like an invitation and a little more like a requirement for her to keep eyes on them as long as she was awake, so here he stood.
Camping out at the edge of one of the bars nursing a beer felt like the safest option, but by the time Sam made the decision he was already becoming aware of having lost the familiar lurking shadow behind his back. He spun in a deliberate circle, even as he recognized the futility of trying to pick a white guy in a black jacket out in a sea of forgettable white guys with black jackets.
Even if this one is less forgettable than most , Sam thought with begrudging affection.
The neon lights catching on the dark vibranium of Bucky’s knuckles finally sent out a beacon, not terribly far away. Sam pushed through slithering, gyrating bodies on the dance floor, getting to Bucky’s elbow just in time to watch him throw back a test tube full of some clear liquid.
Sam knew having to play at Winter Soldier, Lapdog Extraordinaire had been a bad time, but apparently it had gone worse than he knew.
“Maybe you should slow that roll,” Sam said, right as Bucky downed test tube number two.
“We’re at a party: we’re supposed to be blending in,” Bucky said. Even with the heavy bass and electronic wail of the house music playing, Sam could hear the grim determination in Bucky’s tone, as if it were another mission to brace for rather than an opportunity to relax.
“We can blend in and not die of alcohol poisoning at the same time,” Sam pointed out.
Bucky rolled his eyes. “I haven’t been able to get drunk in almost eighty years, Sam. I don’t care if Madripoor’s vodka does taste like bleach-soaked underwear, it’s still just vodka.”
“Actually, in point of fact, I do not believe you have ingested vodka at all.” Zemo spoke as though he had always been a part of their conversation and not just randomly materialized with no warning.
“If you could go ten minutes without spooking the shit outta me, I’d appreciate it,” Sam said archly.
Zemo, nonplussed, held up a test tube of his own, the long glass filled with clear liquid and topped with a dropper. He inspected it with idle fascination. “This is the newest designer party drug a local chemist is hoping to sell to the American market soon. Its properties illicit a response similar to a combination of ecstasy and molly, with a dash of GHB to administer a hazy, dreamlike recollection of events that transpire. They’re currently calling it twilight, but I think the name needs work.”
A brief flicker of panic bloomed on Bucky’s face, before being replaced with a scowl. “How the hell would you know? You’ve been in jail for the last eight years.”
Zemo gave him a bland look. “Because I asked.”
Sam resisted the urge to throttle either of them. Or both. It was a constant battle these days. “Okay. Okay, a double dose of some party drug shouldn’t be too bad with Bucky’s metabolism—“
“Oh no. Not double, no,” Zemo said with a small shake of his head. “I believe James has invested roughly twelve to twenty doses of twilight.” He held up his test tube again, pointing to the dropper. “A vial is meant to be shared.”
Bucky blinked. “...Yeah, well, okay.”
“Okay? The hell it’s okay. You gotta throw up.” Sam grabbed Bucky’s upper arm, feeling the mechanical plates whirl and twist in resistance to his pull towards the exit. “I’m serious, man, I don’t think Sharon’s version of us having a good time includes you ODing on the dance floor.”
Bucky shrugged his arm out of Sam’s grip. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Plenty of people have tried to drug me over the years, it never takes.”
Sam couldn’t help but stare as he processed that statement. “Right, I need your therapist’s number. I gotta send her a list of all the shit you still need to be unpacking.”
“I dunno which is worse, when you’re mouthing off like my little sister or nagging like a surrogate dad,” Bucky snapped. “I don’t need looking after.”
“Skipping right over the fact that you do,” Sam said, folding his arms over his chest. “I won’t be the one doing it. Only thing I’m gonna be doing is taking embarrassing tiktoks of your high ass in the next hour.”
From the sidelines, Zemo tilted his head. “Is this the appeal of reality television, I wonder?”
Bucky scowled. “Y’know what, go have your fake fun somewhere else. This is my section of the party now.”
“Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be?”
“Yeah I think it is.”
“Just gonna draw an invisible line down the dance floor?”
“Why not?”
At some point during their sniping—or perhaps oh so slowly throughout all of it—the two of them had crept closer until they were practically nose to nose, the irritation radiating off of Bucky’s form. The truth was, it was a relief to feel the familiar heat of it. Sam had been trying to coax Bucky out of the detached cold the Winter Soldier left in its wake all night. He had forgotten just how unnerving it was when he looked into those gray-blue eyes and only saw emptiness staring back.
He was shocked by how much worse it felt tonight, actually being able to recognize the barely-contained panic and pain swimming right there beneath the surface when everyone else only saw a well-oiled machine.
Suddenly aware he had been too quiet for too long, Bucky’s scowl softening with just a hint of confusion, Sam took a hasty step back, holding up his hands in surrender. “Y’know what, fine, when you remember you dunno how to People without me around, you come find me.”
As Sam retreated back towards the bar, it only took a moment to realize he was being followed. But when he looked back over his shoulder, he did a double take at the sight of Zemo being the one behind him.
“I was thinking perhaps you might want to accompany James on his journey,” Zemo said, holding up the glass vial once more. “Perhaps it could be enlightening for you.”
“...Yeah that is a whole lotta hell no.”
Twenty Minutes Later
Beer number two landed in front of Sam and, for approximately the fifty eighth time that night, he beat down the urge to blink first and go find Bucky. He had already shown a stupid amount of patience in going along with Zemo’s insane plan; in agreeing to work with Zemo in the first place; hell, in letting Bucky come with him to Germany. The last thing he needed to do was give into some super-soldier sulking and go after the guy.
So why was that all he could think about?
Best not to pull on the thread. Sam had tugged on it once or twice in the past. When he opened his phone and saw the twenty-three unanswered text messages he’d sent Bucky’s way, and proceeded to send twenty-four more. When he saw Bucky’s head about to kiss pavement at seventy miles an hour and had only a single heart-stopping moment to succeed in getting him out alive.
He couldn’t look at it too close. God, he didn’t have the bandwidth.
Instead Sam glanced down at his watch and wondered how much longer he needed to put in an appearance before he could crawl off to bed. He resigned himself to at least another half an hour, bringing the bottle up to his lips with a faint grimace, when Bucky dropped down heavily on the stool next to him.
“Sam. Hey Sam, I…” Bucky trailed off, waiting for Sam’s full attention.
Because he wasn’t above being a petty son of a bitch when the occasion called for it, Sam kept the bottle up, deliberately sipping his beer while maintaining eye contact.
Bucky raised an eyebrow, vibranium fingers drumming an anxious tattoo on the bar. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sam held up a finger and he clapped his lips shut again. After what felt like an appropriately annoying amount of time, Sam finally put his beer down on the bar.
“I’m sorry, you were saying?”
Bucky broke into what could only be described as a grin. Not the tense behind-the-eyes experience that passed for smiling he normally managed, but an honest-to-God, lopsided, utterly charming grin. “Y’know, it’s sweet, how you use being a dick to show you care.”
Sam blinked. “What now?”
Bucky spun on his stool, leaning back against the bar with his arms stretched out against the varnished wood, his gaze sweeping over the dance floor. “Have you ever thought about how music feels on your face? The way the vibrations hit your skin?”
The slow dawning realization made Sam wheeze. “It never takes, huh?”
Bucky slouched further, practically melting off of the edge of the stool. His t-shirt rode up, just enough to show how low his jeans hit across his hips, a thin strip of pale skin suddenly getting highlighted by the green and blue strobe lights of the dance floor. “Y’know what freedom tastes like? An egg cream, that’s fucking what.”
Unable to hold it any longer, Sam barked out a laugh. “Buck, you are higher than a goddamn kite!”
“Huh?” Bucky rolled his head back, his brow furrowed but that endearing grin still plastered on his face. “Pfft. Nah, doll, I’m just loose .”
Sam choked on his beer with the elegance of a surprised duck, but what else could he do? Never in his life had he ever been called doll .
With sudden, certain clarity, Sam knew that this was the Bucky Steve had talked about in wistful tones. The Bucky that was quick with his smiles and flirted like he breathed, constantly and without thought. The Bucky that lit up rooms, and broke hearts, and was the life of whatever event he was at. When Steve had talked about the Bucky he had grown up with, Sam never had found a way to say outloud what he was already convinced of: that some things you don’t get to come back from. Even if they got Hydra out of Bucky in all the practical ways available, the guy Steve grew up with would still be long gone. Sam had been sure of it, until right now. Now, he could see a sweet light shining out from a century’s worth of trauma and pain, still there against all the odds.
It was already bad when Bucky was just a damaged, sarcastic, highly capable grump. Now he was a damaged, sarcastic, highly capable grump who wanted to be a light-hearted charmer. Christ, Sam was so screwed .
The music shifted, the tempo increasing, though otherwise it still sounded like any other generic piece of a house playlist. But something in it caught Bucky’s notice; he popped to attention like a golden retriever spotting a squirrel, his hand slapping down on the bar on top of Sam’s. “I love this one!” he declared with more passionate enthusiasm than he had ever used in the 21st century. “C’mon, let's dance!”
He stumbled as he slid off of the stool, tripping over his own feet but righting himself quickly. Laughter and panic warred within Sam in equal measure, panic winning out when Bucky actually succeeded in dragging him to his feet. “You dirty rotten liar, you don’t even know what this music is!”
“S’got a beat, s’a good one,” Bucky insisted, wheeling around to face Sam. His movements were languid but wild, and he very nearly face planted right into Sam’s chest before managing to pull up at the last moment.
Sam grabbed hold of Bucky’s shoulders in an attempt to steady him. “There is no way on God’s sweet majestic green earth I’ll let you flail out there among other people,” he said with a grin. “You uncoordinated white boys always make fools of yourselves, and I don’t have an interest in being a fool by association.”
“You think I dunno how to dance, Sammy?” Bucky asked, his voice practically a purr. The sound of it shot right through Sam, stirring something he was in no way prepared to deal with. Which was perfectly fine, because then Bucky’s hands were on his hips, his gaze was heavy and hot, and suddenly Sam had a whole other mess of shiver-worthy stimuli he absolutely could not handle. “C’mooonnn. Dance with me, Sam.”
Taking a deliberate breath, reminding himself sternly how very wrong it was to engage in anything when someone’s facilities were empaired, Sam forced himself to take a step back. Bucky needed someone to get him through whatever kind of trip this party drug was sending him on. “How ‘bout you let me buy you a drink instead? The nicest, coldest bottle of water they got.”
Bucky’s bedroom eyes immediately vanished. “Hell yeah, water is the best .”
Now they just needed to ride it out. With Bucky’s metabolism, it shouldn’t take long.
It couldn’t take long.
Right?
One Hour Later
“...And then there was the time that Steve got beat up behind the movie theatre, for the third time inside of one month, y’know, he actually used a trash can lid like the freaking shield, before he even had the shield, y’know that, a freaking trash can lid, just like that, just right in front of ‘im…”
Sam plucked the empty water bottle out of Bucky’s hands and immediately replaced it with a freshly opened one. Bucky paused in his rambling only long enough to down half the bottle in one long pull.
“But then there was this other time, this was years before, many years, mega years—it was the month before, yeah, we were in this alley beside this diner, god, I loved that diner, it had the best fried potatoes. D’you think there’s potatoes here? Fuck me up with potatoes, I could eat a truck load right now…”
Twenty Minutes After That
The party didn’t have potatoes, but it did have canapes of an unidentified variety.
Bucky ate three trays worth.
Sixteen Minutes After That
“See? This. This is why you ain’t going out there.”
Out on the edge of the dancefloor, Baron Helmut Zemo, international super villain, killer of kings, danced like no one was watching.
Bucky stared for another moment. “Well, it wouldn’t look like that!”
Ten Minutes After That
He’d lost him. Sam turned his back for thirty seconds and he lost him like a kid at an amusement park.
He was gearing up to mentally curse James Buchanan Barnes and the day he’d been born when Bucky materialized out of a shadowy corner. In one hand Bucky held a pair of water bottles, in the other was a bundle of cocktail napkins hastily wrapped around something.
“The hell, man, you can’t just wander off like that,” Sam said.
In lieu of a response, Bucky shoved the napkin package into Sam’s chest. He took it automatically, one hand holding it while the other peeled back the edges to look inside.
“Olives?” Sam looked up, then back down in confusion. “Why did—where did—y’know what, no, I do not wanna know where you got a handful of warm olives from, nope, no way.”
“You gotta keep up your strength. You’re always so strong, strong for everyone else. You need these.” Bucky pointed aggressively at the olives. “You need these, y’know? You deserve nice things, Sam, I want to get you nice things, y’know?”
“...Okay, so you thought about nice things and what topped your list was stolen olives from the cocktail bar?” Sam asked.
“You didn’t eat. You fed me but you didn’t eat,” Bucky said, and the sad earnestness in his voice was shattering. “You need to eat, Sam, you’ve had a shit day. Days. Multiple days. People eat when they’ve had shit days, I’ve seen it in stories and everything.”
Sam couldn’t decide if he was going to laugh or cry. He settled for popping an olive in his mouth. “Y’know what, I have had a shit day. Thanks.”
Twenty Minutes After That
For the seventh time, Sam caught hold of Bucky’s lapels, holding the jacket in place while Bucky squirmed in an attempt to shrug it off.
“Wanna take it off!” Bucky whined with the grace of a toddler.
“Yeah, well, you should’ve thought of that when you picked a tight ass t-shirt to wear under it,” Sam shot back, holding firm. “Low profile means not flashing that sweet wakandan arm for the world to see.”
Bucky let out a quiet version of his patented frustration scream, thumping his forehead down against Sam’s shoulder repeatedly. “But I’m hottttt.”
Sam turned his gaze up towards the heavens, silently asking for strength.
Twenty-Five Minutes After That
“It’s a good thing you cut your damn hair, cause I would not be holding it back for you right now!” Sam called through the closed bathroom stall door. The only response he got was the sound of tray number three coming back up Bucky’s throat and hitting the toilet.
Sam sighed. Who was he kidding, he absolutely would have been holding that hair.
Thirty-Two Minutes After That
“I didn’t want you to be obligated to spend time with me.”
Sam looked over to his side, where Bucky was sprawled on the low couch they currently occupied. Bucky’s top half rested away, but his legs were practically draped across Sam’s ankles. A thoughtful intensity radiated in Bucky’s eyes, which were finally beginning to lose the giddy sheen of designer drugs.
“Whoa, hold up.” Sam twisted slightly, angling to get a better look at Bucky’s face, trying to get a read in the dim light. “I’m pretty sure whatever the first half of that conversation was, you had it in your head instead of out loud.”
Bucky’s face creased in a frown, his gaze dropping down to the lapels of his borrowed jacket. “That’s why I didn’t text back.”
Sam took a moment to let it sink in, to acknowledge the gut-wrenching sadness he felt for Bucky and the tired irritation he felt for himself simultaneously. The boneheadedness of this exhausting-ass man-child should have worn out his patience months ago. He really was in over his head.
“Aright, listen, I know you’re still halfway round the bend, but we’re doing this.” Sam sat sideways on the couch, drawing one of his legs underneath him, one of his hands reaching out and poking Bucky’s shoulder. “Eyes on me, geezer, I need as much attention as you can muster.”
Bucky slapped at Sam’s prodding, but he was a full three seconds behind, and only succeeded in slapping his own shoulder. “For what?”
“For getting it through your skull that I need you to start respecting my autonomy.”
Bucky slid against the back of the couch, bringing his head closer to Sam’s chest, his eyes suddenly roaming over Sam’s form as blatantly as a physical touch. “Oh, I got respect,” he murmured, his voice a quiet rumble.
Sam felt his face flush, his pulse jumping forward without his permission. “Autonomy, Buck, not anatomy.”
Bucky blinked slowly. “Right… Right.”
“I am a grown ass man: I just want to be treated like one,” Sam continued, not wanting to get sidetracked. “You keep making decisions that affect me without consulting me, and that’s gotta stop.”
“I did that, like, one time.”
Sam gave him a look. “Busting Zemo outta jail. This undercover-boss-gone-wrong shit. Got me dragged into a freaking therapy session about your pain right after you dropped Isaiah's existence on me with no warning.”
Bucky went back to picking at the non-existent lint on his jacket lapel. “Okay so I did that, like, a bunch of times,” he mumbled, the slightest quaver sneaking into his tone. “I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t mean for it…”
“Hey.” Sam reached out, laying his hand lightly on Bucky’s shoulder. “I get it. You know what it’s like to have decisions taken away. You don’t wanna be that guy. It’s not intentional. But that doesn’t change that you’ve been doing it, y’know?”
Bucky let out a hard breath, tipping his head against the back of the couch. “Shit. I’m such shit at this.”
“You are. You definitely are. But you’re also outta practice,” Sam assured him. “You think we oughta do something, that’s cool, man, just check in. Ask.”
That intensity came back into Bucky’s eyes, unreadable but there as he looked in Sam’s direction. Moving with the same slow deliberate actions he’d been taking since the trip to the bathroom, Bucky sat up properly, now overwhelmingly close.
“I think we oughta dance,” he said, voice soft and low. “I want to. With you.” He stood, only to bend at the waist, extending a hand, a ghost of that grin he began the night with returning to his face. “May I have the honor of a dance, doll?”
Sam stared at the offered hand, his brain buzzing with all of the reasons why he knew it was a terrible idea. All it took was the one clear, quiet thought of why it could be good to make up his mind.
“Don’t make me regret this with sorry white boy moves,” Sam said as he stood.
Like a switch being thrown, Bucky’s smile lit up his whole face. He took Sam’s hand, and with a single gentle tug spun Sam under his arm like he’d done it a thousand times before. “I wouldn’t dare.”
The Next Morning
“That was a most interesting display last night,” Zemo said, in that annoyingly polite tone he had. “I do believe that might have been the first instance of swing dancing to techno music most people had seen last night.”
Bucky, looking more than a little like he’d been run over by a truck, or at least a small school bus, gave Sam a confused look. “The hell is he talking about?”
He had expected it. Zemo had been pretty clear on the probability of memory loss associated with the drug, so Sam had expected this… didn’t make it hurt any less.
If there was one thing Sam was truly good at, though, it was pushing his pain aside. He’d had plenty of practice.
So Sam put on his best shit eating grin as he poured the cups of coffee. “Right, which you wanna hear about first, how many times you tried to take off your pants and wade into the fountain, or how the phrase ‘fuck me up with potatoes’ is now gonna be a permanent mantra in our lives?”
Bucky stared at him with a mixture of horror and suspicion. “Exactly how much of this is gonna be things that actually happened versus just shit you make up?”
“Man, you will never ever know.”