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There was a feather on Bucky’s pillow when he woke up.
It was beautiful, dappled with brown speckles that faded to near-white at the tip. He spent a long moment just looking at it, running his fingers across the soft, delicate little barbs. Sam was usually meticulous about this sort of thing—his wings always impeccably groomed, always carefully contained and folded away, as if they weren’t the most extraordinary thing about him.
As beautiful as it was, the feather wasn’t a good sign.
Sam had once confided that after Riley died—the only other survivor of the EXO-7 program, the insane experiment that had given Sam his mutation—he’d shed constantly.
“I hated it,” Sam had said, his brown eyes gone flat. “I became paranoid, checking my chair every time I stood up, vacuuming, and changing the sheets every day. I was working so hard to keep up a front, pretending that I was fine, that I was strong enough to keep going no matter what. I hated feeling that something that had become such an integral part of my body was betraying me.”
With a pang of guilt, Bucky tucked the feather into his bedside drawer and reluctantly extricated himself from the warm bed that still faintly smelled of Sam’s spicy cologne. He had done this. He had made Sam feel the way he had during the worst moment of his life, stripped raw and coming apart at the seams. What kind of asshole did that to the person they cared about the most?
The kitchen was still dark, the predawn light barely peeking over the distant horizon. There was no fresh coffee in the pot, no plate of breakfast warming up in the oven, and worst of all, there was no yellow Post-it note on the fridge. Sam always left one when he had to head out before Bucky woke. Sometimes it was a quick “same time next week?”, sometimes a bad joke Bucky only half understood. But more often, it was a simple, “Thanks for last night, I needed that,” their unspoken, tacit acknowledgement of this thing between them that wasn’t really a thing, that only existed in the fragile liminal space between their respective hectic schedules.
Bucky had known better than to expect one after their argument last night. But still, the absence stung.
When he’d received Sam’s text two days ago, Bucky hadn’t thought much of it. Eighty percent of their communication was sustained through text messages—bored ones sent during dull, tedious briefings; quippy teasing ones sent after a particularly funny or disparaging headline; raw, painful ones typed with trembling fingers in the middle of the night, when they woke up from a nightmare feeling like speaking to each other was the only thing that could pull them back from the edge.
But this text had been different. Short. Sharp. Not even an emoji or a cat meme to soften the edges. Just: We need to talk.
Bucky had typed back, You know where I live, Pigeon, his finger hovering over the heart emoji before finally opting against it.
I’ll be in DC tomorrow night, Sam had replied. Nothing else.
“Great. Can’t wait! Should I leave some bread for you on the windowsill?”
Sam had not sent any other replies after that, not even when Bucky had sent him a video of a cartoon pigeon dancing to a trendy song.
That should have been the alarm bell. Normally, on the nights when Sam was coming over, they drew it out, riling each other up the entire day to see who would crack first. Usually Bucky. Especially on the rare occasions when Sam pushed the provocation to texting him a racy picture, lounging in bed with nothing on but black briefs, wings spread out wide behind him.
But this time, silence.
Bucky had cleared his entire schedule anyway, lying to his overworked congressional assistant about running a covert mission. He cleaned the ridiculously spacious government-assigned house until it looked almost lived in, then he sat at the window, book forgotten in his hands, jumping at every shadow in the sky.
It was well past midnight when Sam finally landed on the balcony, the powerful beats of his wings making the potted plants shake and the string lights blink. Under his leather flight jacket, he was still in a navy suit and red tie, from whatever meeting had taken up his entire day. His face was strained, his eyes tight from fatigue underneath his goggles.
Bucky had grinned, stupid with relief just to see him, mesmerized by the way the yellow twinkling lights reflected on the slick surface of the wings, making them iridescent.
Sam didn’t offer a smile back. Didn’t tease. Just looked at Bucky with a somber, impatient expression as he folded his wings, “You gonna invite me in?”
Bucky finally snapped out of it, blinking as if he had stared too long into the sun. “Yeah, yes. Come on in.”
It had all gone downhill from there.
“Fourteen months, Bucky! Fourteen fucking months and you said nothing?”
Sam was doing the thing he did when he was really angry. He could carry on a loud chatter like no one, but when he really wanted to make himself heard, he went quiet, his voice dropping to a low rumble that ironically always sent a delicious shiver down Bucky’s spine.
Bucky reached for him, and Sam flinched back. That hurt far worse than any words could.
“Sam, I didn’t mean—” Bucky started, but Sam cut him off.
“Didn’t mean what? For me to find out like this? Or for me to find out at all? What did you imagine would happen, Bucky?”
Bucky swallowed hard. He had shoved the whole New Avengers mess at the back of his mind, into the same mental drawer as his half-written resignation letter to Congress, and the reminder to change out the carburetor on his bike, which had been making strange noises since his stint in the Utah desert. The drawer was labelled ‘problems for later’, bridges he would cross when he got to it. Turns out later had come sooner than he’d hoped, and now Sam was staring at him like he was a stranger.
“Look, Sam, I’m not even really part of it, at least not officially. It’s not even a real team, it’s just—”
“The cease and desist I got sure looked real enough,” Sam snapped. “It was signed by the head of the CIA. The same woman who propped up Walker and helped him undercut us every damn step of the way when we were dealing with the Flagsmashers. And you—” he jabbed a finger at Bucky, his wings shuddering in agitation. “—agreed to be on her payroll? Are you fucking kidding me, Bucky?”
“It’s not like that,” Bucky protested. “She works for us, not the other way around. If you’d just let me—”
Sam cut him off with a sharp, bitter laugh. “Us? And who the hell is us? Walker? A bunch of assassins and spies for hire slapped together so Valentina could play dress-up and rehab her name? That’s your team?”
Bucky winced, his chest tightened. “It’s not like that. It all sort of just happened. At the time, it seemed like a good way of keeping her in line, of making sure she didn’t—”
“Don’t.” Sam’s eyes burned into him. “Don’t feed me the company line bullshit. I already got it from Belova when she called me yesterday, trying to recruit me. I thought you, of all people, would know better than to fall for government propaganda.” He stopped, his jaw tightening. “I fought tooth and nail to prove this legacy meant something. To prove that I wasn’t just some clown with fancy wings trying to wear Steve’s colors…”
“I know how hard you’ve worked, Sam; how hard you work every day. That’s not—” Bucky tried to reach for him again, but Sam stepped back.
“It’s the one thing I thought we agreed on, Bucky; that this fight was supposed to mean something. That name is blood and sweat and—” Sam’s voice cracked, his eyes hardening. “It’s Steve. It’s Nat. It’s Stark. It’s all the people who didn’t get to go home so that everyone else could. And you just turned it into a joke, sold it as some cheap gimmick to slap on the back of cereal boxes.”
“Sam…” Bucky stepped closer again, desperate. “I wasn’t trying to make a joke out of it. I didn’t tell you because…because I didn’t think it would matter.” But even as he said it, he knew how stupid the words sounded.
Sam froze, staring at him. “And that’s the problem. You never think it matters. Not when you shut me out for months. Not when you choose to blame me for your guilt instead of letting me in. Not when you sign up for something like this and expect me to just…roll with it.”
Bucky’s throat closed. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say? I’m sorry didn’t cut it. He’d said it before, promised Sam he’d do better, that they would always have each other’s backs no matter what. That he would never again be the person who added to Sam’s burden instead of taking from it, and he had broken all those promises.
Sam heavily sat down on the indistinct beige leather couch that had come with the house, his face buried in his hands. The rest of his words came out muffled, barely above a whisper. “Look, man, I know we said we could keep things separate, that there’s the work and there’s—”
“Us,” Bucky said, his voice pitched.
“Right. That.” Sam sighed, rubbing at his face. “But I don’t see how we can do that right now. It was not Congressman Barnes or the Winter Soldier who stabbed me in the back by blindsiding me with this shit; it was you, Bucky. The one person I thought I could count on.”
Bucky came to kneel in front of him, gently prying his hands away. “Sam, you can count on me. That hasn’t changed. I’ll fix this. I’ll—” He was desperate to say something, anything to erase that hollow expression on Sam’s face. “I’ll get Valentina to back off. I’ll tell her that you were already in the process of assembling a team, and that she’ll have to come up with another name…”
“Don’t bother,” Sam said, standing up with tired movements. “Pepper’s lawyers are handling it now. The trademark was part of Tony’s estate, and she’s just as pissed off about this as I am.”
Bucky rushed after him, not caring about how pathetic he probably looked. He knew exactly what would happen if he let Sam leave now, like this. Long months of silence, of emptiness, of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had ruined the best thing in his life through his own stupidity and carelessness. He had to find a way to fix it, to make Sam understand…
He held onto Sam’s arm, metal against warm flesh, his fingers squeezing gently around Sam’s delicate wrist bone.
“Sam…please.” He tipped his head forward, pressing his forehead against Sam’s collarbone. He inhaled deeply, feeling Sam’s heartbeat thrum. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…I wasn’t…thinking.”
He felt it when Sam sighed, his broad chest moving up and down with his breath. “Don’t, Bucky. Just fucking don’t.”
But Bucky couldn’t let go. He wrapped his arm around Sam’s waist and pressed his mouth against the spot just below Sam’s ear, and then down to the hollow of his throat, feeling how Sam shuddered, just a little, at every kiss. For all his obvious annoyance, Sam didn’t shove him away, and Bucky clung to that small hope.
“Stay,” he whispered, “Please. Let me fix this. I can fix it.”
Soft feathers tickled the back of his arm as Sam finally extricated himself from the embrace.
“I can’t,” Sam said. His voice was softer now, more tired than angry. “I have to be in Texas by morning. There was a ping on one of the S.W.O.R.D radars, a foreign vessel entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Joaquin and I are gonna go deal with that while you and your buddies stage another press conference or sit around patting each other on the back for being heroes.
“You’re dead on your feet, Sam,” Bucky shot back, gunning for the only argument he knew Sam would listen to. “If you fly out now, you’ll collapse and land in the Potomac. I doubt that would help anyone.”
Sam glared at him, but he still hadn’t moved, so Bucky took it as a win.
“When was the last time you ate? Let me make you something.”
He walked into the too-white and too-modern kitchen, Sam reluctantly trailing behind him. Sam sat down on one of the high stools, loosening his tie with tired movements.
Bucky was, admittedly, not a great cook. But he could whip together an omelet on short notice. He loaded it with bacon, sausage, and whatever veggies had survived his long weeks of neglect in his fridge. Sam ate silently at the marble counter, blinking slowly, too exhausted to keep his eyes fully open. Bucky felt his heart clench as he looked at him.
Shortly after that, Sam fell asleep on top of his bedcovers, wearing one of his old ratty sweatpants, wings spread out carelessly around him. Bucky lay stock still next to him, scared that even the smallest movement might wake him.
Sam looked so peaceful like this, his beautiful face slack and devoid of the perpetual frown that was a regular fixture on his brow these days. He looked so vulnerable too, achingly human and breakable. Bucky promised himself that he would find a solution in the morning. He would figure out a way to earn Sam’s trust again, to make things go back to the way they had been before he’d foolishly agreed to involve himself in Valentina’s mess.
Now, in the gray quiet of morning, the house felt emptier than ever— too cold and too clean, almost sterile.
Bucky set the coffee machine running, and he chewed on some dry toast as he scrolled through his phone, hoping to find a message from Sam that he had missed. Belatedly, he caught sight of the worn-down copy of The Silmarillion he’d been reading, sitting on the counter, a yellow Post-it tucked between the dog-eared pages.
He lunged for it, his heart hammering, and in his excitement, he almost ripped the cover off. He grinned when he saw Sam’s looping handwriting, scrawled across the little bright yellow square. Sam had left him a note! He laughed, feeling like an idiot for not finding it sooner.
His heart sank when his brain finally settled down enough to parse the meaning of the words. He read the sentence twice, turning the Post-it over to see if there was anything else he might have missed. But there wasn’t. There was no smiley face, no clever pun. Nothing besides, I think maybe it’s time for that long, separate vacation.