Chapter Text
They're both awake when the call comes. They’re leaving from Dulles at 9 am, so they need to be out of the house by 6. A flight like that, Sam usually powers through the night and sleeps the plane, but he probably wouldn’t have slept much no matter what time the plane was leaving. He'd given up staring at his ceiling around 3, and padded downstairs to get coffee on. Steve was in the kitchen, right where Sam had left him at midnight, the folder spread out on the table in front of him.
"You sleep?" Sam asks, and Steve huffs a laugh at him, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
"Took a seventy year nap," he says. "I'm good."
He sounds steady enough, but Steve's the kind of guy who smiles when he's bleeding internally and doesn't want you to know. The coffee machine makes happy bubbling noises as it wakes up, and Sam inhales the smell of imminent caffeine gratefully. He hears papers crinkling, behind him. When he turns back around Steve has shuffled everything back in order, his chin propped on one hand and the other flat on top of the folder, covering the words in red.
Sam fills mugs for both of them and brings them over. He's not sure coffee does anything more for Steve than alcohol does, but he assumes it's the thought that counts.
"You ready to do this?" Sam asks quietly, into the silence between them. Steve considers the question, smiling, and then shakes his head.
"We don't even know he's left the country," Steve says. "Maybe we should be going to Brooklyn instead of Russia. Maybe he hasn't even left DC."
They've had this conversation a few times, and Sam lets it slide. The folder and Natasha's contacts had pointed to a background much heavier on Soviets than HYDRA, and decades of apparent activity in the former USSR. Chatter from HYDRA splinter groups in Europe indicated heavy transport of resources out of the US, and thirteen people had been arrested in the last two days alone, attempting to flee the country with sensitive materials. Eight of them had end destinations in Moscow.
There hasn't been any word or rumor on the Winter Soldier so far, but the file under Steve's hand has a lot to say about a weapon who can barely feed itself or speak. There’s a contradiction there, Sam thinks, from the assassin who single handedly destroyed their only chance at air support, back in DC - but until they find Barnes or one of his handlers, it’ll stay a mystery. Right now they can’t assume that Barnes is able to move under his own steam. If the reality is that he’s more broken gun than anything else, either HYDRA has him or he’s dead already. So, Russia.
Sam had been 11 when the Berlin Wall fell, and most of what he knows about the Cold War comes from 80's action movies. Steve's a lot better versed in it all, and had taken Sam through an impromptu history lesson the first time he read through Barnes' history. "Had a lot of time to catch up on," he'd explained tersely without Sam asking, which Sam thinks is fair enough. Probably explains how he knows Krav Maga and whatever the hell else he was using in DC, too. Steve's a smart guy with a lot of time on his hands, and up until recently he had a lot of people interested in bankrolling his catch up.
Between Steve Roger’s big mug plastered on everything from t-shirts to toilet paper and Sam’s expectation of being the only black guy in Russia, they don’t have a lot of hope for stealth. Mostly, Steve had explained, smirking, they were gonna go in loud and break a lot of heads.
That had been yesterday, though - paging through the Winter Soldier’s file, strategy firing back and forth between them - and since then Steve’s reread the file a few times and got more quiet and more still as the hours wore on and the reality set in. So Sam waits, feeling the early hour deep in his bones.
“He knew me,” Steve says, softly. “You shoulda seen his face, right before ...” He trails off, shifting a little in his chair, and after a long time is able to finish the thought. “I just don’t know how anyone survives this.”
He means the Winter Soldier, probably. It’s the safer assumption. Sam’s called people out the other way before and it’s rarely been what they were looking for. So all he says is, “However this goes down, Steve - we’ll bring him home.”
Steve grimaces, but whatever he’s about to say is interrupted by the buzz of his cell. They stare at it, nonplussed. Steve looks at Sam, who shrugs. The phone buzzes again, and Steve reaches for it. "Tony," he says. "What's going on? It's a little late to be -"
Sam’s not looking at him - he’s staring up at the ceiling and wondering if he’s really packing enough underwear and socks for this - so he doesn’t see the shudder that runs all the way through Steve. He hears the coffee mug shatter as Steve’s elbow jolts and knocks it off the table, and when he looks up Steve’s staring straight at him, his eyes wide and face bloodless.
“Oh my god,” Steve says, and Sam sucks in a breath, understanding instantly.
“Steve - is it him? What’s going on? Who are you talking to?”
Steve holds up a hand, trying to listen to whoever’s on the phone. He’s barely breathing. His fingers are shaking and without hesitation Sam grabs them, gives him something to hold on to.
-
The ride up to New York is tense, to say the least.
Sam filed an insurance claim on his car while he was at the hospital waiting for Steve to wake up - after calling his folks, his sister, his cousins, his friends, basically everyone he knew - but GEICO’s under water with everything else going on in DC and the agent he spoke to couldn’t tell him when his claim would go through or when a temp car would be available. Sam’s sister lives a few minutes away and he has to call her eight times before she finally picks up. She brings over her car still in PJs and robe, and stares unblinkingly at Steve from the back seat as they drop her back at her place.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says, slipping out to give her a hard hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll have it back to you in a few days, I promise.”
She waves him off. She’s working from home for the foreseeable future; her office is block over from the Triskelion. “Holy crap, Sam,” is all she says. “You really weren’t kidding.”
“Yeah,” he says, and hugs her again.
Sam lasts an hour on the road before he reaches a hand over to Steve’s shoulder and tells him, “breathe, dude.” Steve does, sucking in an audible gust of air before his head drops back onto the seat. He’s a ball of tension and misery in the passenger seat, his eyes red rimmed and his hands clenched tight in his lap.
“Well,” Sam says, after a beat, “at least we’re saving the plane ride to Russia.”
Steve lolls his head over and waits for Sam to look at him. “I told you so,” he says.
“He’s still not in Brooklyn,” Sam tells him, and steps on the gas.
-
The funny thing is that Steve and Natasha hadn't told him anything about an unstoppable Cold War killing machine on their trail. In retrospect, they hadn't told him much at all - didn't get much more in depth than SHIELD was compromised, everyone they knew was trying to kill them, and they needed this Agent Sitwell guy. Sam hadn't needed much more than that, to be honest - hadn't asked. It really wasn't until he heard boots on his car roof and saw a metal arm rip the steering wheel right out of his hands that he really understood what he'd gotten himself into.
He'd been back from Afghanistan about two months when the Battle of New York happened. He had heard about Captain America getting pulled out of the ice a week or so before, of course - it had been all over the internet, in all the papers. Sam hadn't really cared, at the time. Too wrapped up in trying to sleep through the night, surrounded by people who loved him but didn't get it. Those were angry days where every hour was a challenge not to scream at his own family for all their petty, safe, day to day living, and Sam had felt pretty much the same about Captain America's revival as he did hearing about the Chitauri invasion, which was basically that he could give a fuck.
Final casualty count from the invasion was seven hundred and thirty four people. Initial reports had put it in the thousands and it had taken more than a week for the official number to be published. Considering that two buildings were demolished almost entirely and five more had at least one floor destroyed, it was a shockingly low number. The minimal body count was a credit to the NYPD, the FDNY, a neighborhood full of office buildings that regularly ran terror drills - and to the Avengers, who had managed to contain the damage to a few blocks and worked closely with LEOs throughout the crisis to evacuate the civilians caught in the crossfire.
But before the bodies had been counted - while the fires were still burning on TV - Sam had thought to himself, good. He'd thought, now they'll know what it's like.
It turned out to be his lowest moment, and he still feels that hot burst of shame even now when he thinks about it, no matter how much he’s talked it out, no matter how hard he works to forgive himself and other people for the feelings they can’t help. Everyone has to hit that point, he says over and over, where they realize they’re not the person they want to be anymore, and that they’re strong enough to accept a little help to get to find their way out.
-
They get in a little past seven in the morning. Sam handed off driving just after Delaware and slept most of the way through New Jersey. He wakes up as they’re passing through the Lincoln Tunnel, gets to blearily stare out the window as they roll into Manhattan. Sam’s never liked New York City much, associates it mostly with a class trip in middle school where they never left Midtown except for a quick trip out to Liberty Island, and the streets don't look too appealing on this side of town.
Stark employs a security staff of a little over fifty people. A group of six of them meet Steve and Sam in the garage below the tower. They fall over their own feet to try and excuse what was apparently a massive security failure to Captain America, who could obviously give two shits about it. Sam listens to them in the elevator ride up, mostly out of pity. Everyone has badges and there are checkpoints at every floor and the ventilation shafts are riddled with pressure sensitive plates and motion sensors and yes, of course stairwell access adheres to fire code but there are redundant systems in place to prevent unauthorized entry, multiple redundancies. Basically they can’t figure out how the Winter Soldier got in, even a little bit. There’s not a frame of security footage putting him in the building until Tony Stark walked into a darkened laboratory and a metal arm reached out of the shadows and grabbed him by the throat.
Sam sneaks a few glances over at Steve through all of this. Steve’s hands are folded in front of him and he’s bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. He apparently got his shit together while Sam was dozing and is Captain America levels of inscrutable and unconcerned.
The elevator opens up on the 63rd floor, directly into someone’s apartment. Sam’s pretty sure his entire house could fit into just the kitchen. Right now there are two guys sitting in there, dwarfed by the open space - one of whom Sam recognizes well enough from the news.
“Begone,” Tony Stark immediately intones at his security team, who scurry back into the elevator. He looks like hell. There’s blood all over his face and neck and a thick knot underneath his eye, which looks like a spider egg ready to burst. The other guy is standing over him with a first aid kit spread out over the countertop, dabbing carefully at the knot.
“Where is he?” Steve demands, striding in like he lives there. Sam follows a step or two behind, trying not to get distracted by the furnishings. He really could’ve used another hour or two of sleep, even if it was slumped upright in the car.
“Hello, Steve,” the other guy says. “He’s in the other room, but hold up a sec, okay?” He looks over at Sam and offers a quick hi. Steve apparently cares as much about manners right now as he did about the security breach, so Sam gets to introduce himself to Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. The face of the latter didn’t ring a bell but the name does, and suddenly the reason why everyone seems so calm about the super assassin in the other room becomes clear.
Steve sits across the counter, folding his hands and fixing Bruce and Tony with a very stern sort of look. Sam spots a full coffee pot and makes a beeline for it gratefully. "So you don't call, you don't write," Tony drawls at him.
"I've been a little busy," Steve grits out. "You may have watched the news at some point last week?"
"Steve, we just wanna know what's going on," Bruce says. He smooths a thick bandage over the worst of the cuts on Tony's face, and starts on cleaning off the dried blood.
Sam sips his coffee, settling against the counter at Steve's left. Tony tilts his head back, cocking an eye at both of them. "So why did Bucky Barnes' evil twin break into my building looking for you? And I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking. He only beat me half to death."
From his position, Sam can’t see much of Steve’s expression. “I don’t know why he came here,” Steve admits. “There’s a lot we don’t know. But that is Bucky. He’s alive."
Tony and Bruce share a glance. "You ever feel like the world got a whole lot weirder since we thawed out American Dreamsicle over there?" Tony asks.
"Were clones or aliens going to be less weird?" Bruce asks.
-
Sam's not sure what he's expecting to happen - Tony has Iron Man gloves on both hands and Steve left his shield in the other room, so Sam splits the difference and decides to only be a little nervous. When they open the door, Barnes is in the corner with his elbows spread along the arms of his chair and his hands curled limp in his lap. He's shifting his head a little, side to side, and Sam can't see his eyes but he knows that kind of restless, blind movement well enough.
Out of the leather and combat gear Sam saw during the maybe 10 seconds total he spent fighting the Winter Soldier, Barnes is a big guy but not crazy big, not Steve big, a little narrower in the shoulders than Sam is himself. He doesn't look up when they all file into the room, Steve immediately going to his knees in front of Barnes like he's got nothing to fear.
"Bucky, I'm here," he says urgently, and Barnes flinches like Steve had hit him hard across the face instead. He glances up at Steve and then away immediately, his eyes darting around the room. It’s the first time Sam actually sees his face.
The Winter Soldier doesn’t look much like James Buchanan Barnes. Sam never went to the Smithsonian exhibit - had meant to, actually, but after seeing the real Captain America around during his morning runs it had felt a little creepy - but from what he remembers from the WWII units in middle school, and the documentaries on the History Channel, and the picture clipped to that folder Steve's got stuffed in his duffle, Barnes was a good looking guy with a round face and sorta buggy, serious eyes.
The guy hunched in the bedroom still has big blue eyes, but also hollow cheeks and stringy hair, and it takes Sam a minute to place what seems off in addition to, you know, the surreality of hanging out in Iron Man's zillionaire skyscraper waiting to see if a WWII hero is going to try and kill them all. He's wearing a hoodie and jeans and although the combat boots were probably part of his gear they look pretty normal. Altogether Barnes looks unsettlingly normal - barring the metal hand visible at the ragged end of his sleeve, he's not someone Sam would look twice at on the street.
And maybe that's the strange part - he doesn't look vintage. Steve's made the attempt to blend in and dress like he wasn't born in 1918 and he can't really help the whole embodiment of white America thing, but when photographed there's just something about him that looks like he should be in black and white. Not so the Winter Soldier, who right now just looks like a homeless kid who's wandered into the VA for the feed they do on Wednesday nights.
"Bucky, don't you know me?" Steve asks, but Barnes doesn't reply.
-
Barnes won't really respond to anyone but Bruce. Sam wants to find this a little funny, especially because Tony Stark is clearly used to being paid a lot of attention to, but Steve is just sitting as close to Barnes as the other man will allow, completely ignored, his attention unwavering. Tony vanishes for a little bit while Bruce does a cursory physical examination. Barnes strips his shirt off without question, moving his limbs for easy access, his face limp and disinterested. He still doesn't look much like Bucky Barnes, to Sam.
Tony returns dragging some sort of machine - some kind of mobile MRI is Sam's guess, but it looks like a very complicated halo on casters - and they see the first real sign of life. Barnes doesn't move, but his eyes fix on the machine and his breath speeds up quick. Tony pauses, clearly gauging whether Barnes is about to attack him again. "You okay there, bucko?"
"You're safe here," Bruce tells him. He said it a few times while he was examining Barnes - when he took blood, when he pressed down on Barnes' belly, checking for internal injury. It doesn’t seem to work any better this time. Barnes is staring at the floor, expressionless. His chest is heaving, his eyes blown wide and unblinking. He looks like he’s having a panic attack, except he’s perfectly, achingly still.
“Bucky, they just wanna make sure you’re not hurt,” Steve says, pitched low and soft.
Barnes’ eyes flash over to him, and then away.
Tony’s still hesitating. He speaks to Steve instead of Barnes: "JARVIS can do a full scan, but we'd have to be back down in the lab for it. This is the only level that's Hulk-proofed, so a freak-out there would not be nearly as ... contained, obviously. Entirely preferable it happens up here. Don't actually know if anyone's cleaned up the blood down there, either."
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Bruce says, and slowly, Barnes leans back in the chair and tilts his chin up, the line of his throat unmistakably submissive. The leather creaks against the bare skin of his back. His panting is very loud in the room.
"Are you -" Tony says, and just as quickly cuts himself off, moving quickly to settle the halo over Barnes' head. "Never mind, just - hold still."
The machine hums a bit as it warms up, and Barnes’s face contracts, screwing all the way up - waiting for it to hurt and just sitting there, letting it happen - and before he can even think about it Sam blurts out, “Turn it off, don’t do it.”
But it’s already over with, and they all get to see the naked, uncertain terror in Barnes' eyes when Tony pulls the halo off him. Barnes doesn't say anything, his eyes flickering down over himself, cataloging. There's a wariness in his expression that seems ... more aware than Sam was giving him credit for, which is actually so much worse. Steve looks gutted, his fingers tangled up between his knees like he has to restrain himself from reaching out. Sam can sympathize.
-
They look at the results of the blood work and scans from the MRI. The words "profoundly brain damaged" are spoken and then argued about. Barnes looks like he's in another world entirely, like they're not talking about what his brain looks like and whether or not he should be a vegetable and whether or not he'll ever be a person again.
He is listening, though. He's staring into middle distance but his head cocks, just a little, to follow who's speaking.
By unspoken agreement, they move back to the kitchen, leaving Barnes in the bedroom. Steve lingers and Sam gets to enjoy a few awkward minutes hanging out in the kitchen with Bruce and Tony.
"You're the guy with the wings," Tony says, abruptly. Sam's a little lost in his own thoughts and the aching pity that's settling around his heart, and it takes him a moment to realize Tony's talking to him. He looks up and and Tony elaborates, "in DC, with Cap. You're the guy with the wings."
"Yeah," Sam says, trying not to make it a question.
"You're all over the news," Tony tells him, and then picks up Steve's duffle and retrieves the Winter Soldier file, conversation apparently over. Sam looks over to Bruce for his cue, but Bruce seems as far away as Sam was a moment ago, staring out the windows to where it is definitely, absolutely, 100% daytime.
Steve chooses that moment to reappear. Hands in his pockets, chin tucked into his chest. He draws back up towards where they're ringed around the counter, lingering in Sam's six like he's not quite sure where to situate himself. He draws in a long sigh when he sees Tony flipping casually through the file, but doesn't say anything.
"Well," Tony says, not looking up. "Obviously he's staying here."
Sam looks back at Steve, whose eyes widen for just a second before he's leaning back, squaring his shoulders. “I can’t ask that of you, Tony.”
“Who's asking? And where else exactly were you planning to go, Cap?” Tony asks, lifting an eyebrow. He's hunched over a page that, if Sam remembers correctly, details a series of assassinations in Eastern Europe somewhere in the 1980's. “Last I checked, Big Brother’s not around anymore. Even if they were, best case scenario is they give your ubermenschy pal there a forever home in a secret prison - unless they thought they could still get a few more murders out of him."
“That wouldn’t happen,” Steve says, but even he doesn’t sound like he believes it.
“No?” Tony says. “Steve, come on. Did you even take a look at the leaked files? Who am I kidding, like you know how the internet works -”
“I’m just so stuck on this whole fire thing,” Steve says, rolling his eyes.
“ - but he’s in there among the many, many morally questionable or outright bad choices in SHIELD’s glorious history. As the Winter Soldier, I mean.”
Steve goes still, like he’s already figured out where this is heading. Sam knows it too, can feel it in the pit of his stomach, and he wants to reach out and stop Steve from saying, “You mean, there’s intelligence on the Winter Soldier.”
“No,” Tony says, and for a minute he actually looks sorry for what he’s saying, just a little bit. “I mean there are directives for him. Protocols for his handlers. Assignments.”
“Fury said he didn’t know about Bucky,” Steve says, but it all makes a lot of sense, like a math equation forming in front of Sam’s eyes. HYDRA had Bucky. HYDRA was SHIELD. Therefore -
“He may not have known it was Barnes,” Tony says, “but there are at least four wet jobs in those files that were carried out by the Winter Soldier, and two of them were signed off on by Fury himself.
"Look, this isn't the point," he rushes on, as if it really is unimportant, as if Steve isn't white knuckle gripping the counter next to Sam like he won't be able to stay upright otherwise. "The point is, and I take no joy in saying this, but you don't have a lot of resources. I do. Resources like a secure facility to hold your little buddy in until he stops being so homicidal - well, if we knew how he got in I'd feel more secure about being able to stop him from getting out, but you get my drift." He looks over at Banner. "You can bunk with me, in the meantime. Or there’s like, I dunno, thirty other residential floors, take your pick. You can have Cap's floor."
"You have a floor?" Sam asks.
"You actually took him up on this?" Steve asks Bruce, an eyebrow raised.
Bruce shrugs. "We're science bros." He offers his knuckles to Tony, who bumps them without looking over.
Sam looks up at Steve, waits for him to look back. "He's got a point," he tells Steve quietly. "It's a lot safer here than out on the streets. What if HYDRA comes looking for him?"
Steve frowns at him, but nods, reluctantly. "Besides," Sam says, "you've seriously been holding out on me with this whole floor in Stark Tower thing."
-
Sam sleeps through the rest of the day, setting an alarm for early evening so he doesn't mess himself up too badly. He forces himself out of bed when it goes off, stumbling groggy and unhappy into the living room. He’s not too surprised to see Steve sitting out on the balcony (terrace is probably the better word for it, and that’s it - Sam definitely hasn’t had enough sleep to deal with this fucking building).
Outside, it’s a nice evening to be brooding on the terrace of Tony Stark’s palatial skyscraper apartment, Sam guesses. The sun is going down on the opposite side of the building and in the distance the outer boroughs look like places people actually live in. There’s a couple low, squishy couches and a glass coffee table out there, and the whole set up seems a lot more rooftop bar than pity party, but Steve is making do.
Sam goes and grabs two beers out of the fridge before sliding open the glass door and joining Steve on the terrace. It's some fancy Belgian bullshit, of course. Sam pops them both open on his ring and slides one over to Steve, who looks at it wryly. "We've had this conversation before," he says.
"I know," Sam says. "Drink it anyway."
Sam lets the silence settle over them for a while. The beer feels like a well earned reward. He's a little surprised to realize it's been about a week since Steve and Natasha showed up on his doorstep. DC is still a disaster zone. Manhattan might as well be on another planet for all it seems affected, although down around below them are a few cranes and craters, still lingering from the battle two years ago.
Sam nudges Steve with his elbow and points towards the river. "I can see your house from here."
Steve squints. "That's Queens."
Sam shrugs and says, knowing the effect it'll have, "Same difference, right?"
His only reward is an exaggerated eye roll, so he nudges Steve again. "You wanna talk about it?"
"No," Steve says, but the smile slips right off his face the minute he tries it.
"I know," Sam tells him. "Do it anyway."
Steve looks down, fiddles with the label on his bottle. Sam can almost see him trying the words out in his head. It's a long time before he finds anything worth saying out loud.
"Do you know how long it's been for me? Since Buck died, I mean." Sam shakes his head. Steve draws in a long, shaky breath. The label peels off in little strips underneath his fingers, dropping down into his lap. "For me," Steve says quietly, "Buck died about two weeks before the Chitauri invaded New York. It took a couple days to get Zola back to London, where the SSR was headquartered. They took a day or so to interrogate him, and then the next morning they told us that Schmidt would be launching his warship within the next 24 hours. We were on a plane by 1100. Schmidt launched the ship that night, and I -". He stops abruptly. Takes a long pull from the beer.
Sam knows all this. The days leading up to Captain America’s assault on HYDRA have been exhaustively studied and analyzed like any other turning point in World War II, like Pearl Harbor or D Day or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He watched a lot of late night television when he first got back, and he'd watched the History Channel's Captain America stuff mindlessly. He'd liked the Howling Commandos a lot as a kid, liked them even after he'd grown up a little and realized what a weird, apocryphal propaganda machine they'd been a part of. The truth about who the Howlies were and what they’d done during World War II had been even more interesting when you ignored the comic books and the Bucky Bears and the Captain America merchandise. He could tell Steve plenty about the aftermath, how the Howlies had taken Schmidt's stronghold after the Valkyrie had launched, and what they'd done in the days after Steve's death.
Abruptly, Sam wonders if Steve really did die - if the serum restarted his heart and pasted his brain back together and didn't just freeze him, but actually brought him back to life. He's never thought about it before. He wonders if Steve knows, if there'd even be a way to tell.
"I was - the crash knocked me out almost instantly," Steve continues. "When I woke up, SHIELD had me and I was in the future. And that was it for me - it felt like the next day, like I'd lost a few hours but not any worse than that. They hadn't even figured out what to do with me when Fury came to ask my help looking for the Cube. That was it. I was fighting Nazis one week and aliens the next."
He glares at the beer in his hand, now empty and its label stripped entirely. "Fuck, I miss getting drunk," he says explosively, and continues before Sam has the chance to say anything. "I missed Bucky every goddamn day. He used to save newspaper articles about Howard Stark, you know that? Tony's dad. He loved technology, science fiction. Even through the worst of it, of trying to, to adapt - I'd see something amazing and think: I gotta tell Buck, he's gonna love this."
“And then you'd have to remember all over again that he was gone,” Sam says. Steve's eyes squeeze close for a long moment. When he comes back to himself he stays silent, staring down across the wide gulf of the East River, where lights are coming on across Queens and Brooklyn.
“And then,” Sam says, guessing, remembering, “you start to realize that you haven’t thought about him in a few days. That maybe it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore when you do think about him. And maybe you want to move on and stop hurting all the time, even though it feels like you’re betraying your friend by letting him go.”
Steve’s eyes are very pale, and he’s staring at Sam with open, hungry relief. "I was giving it a real shot," he says softly, after a moment. "Living here. Being here. I asked someone out on a date, you know that?"
"Yeah, I know," Sam returns, "and I took down SHIELD with you. Best first date I ever had."
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, and Sam has a moment of wild realization that he’s overshot the joke - but then Steve bursts out laughing. "Sorry the second one -" he gestures towards the quiet bedroom - "wasn't quite so much fun."
Sam sighs heavily. "Yeah, psycho exes have never been my style. But hey, you seem like a nice guy. You know how to treat a girl right. Maybe we can be friends."
Steve's grin fades a little, but just enough to turn it into something sincere. "Sam, you were the first friend I'd made since 1925."
“Well, you’ve got good taste,” Sam says.
Steve eyes slant towards the terrace doors and towards who, presumably, is sleeping somewhere inside. "Good taste," he echoes. "Pretty piss poor judgment."
"You didn't know," Sam tells him. "No one knew."
"Fury knew he had a weapon," Steve says. "Guess the rest of it didn't matter so much."
Sam has a moment where he wants to argue the point. Nick Fury had looked like a hard man to Sam, someone who had had to make a lot of hard choices to get where he was. But even if he hadn't known it was Bucky Barnes inside that cryo unit, it had still been someone.
Someone who was, apparently, still aware of what was being done to him. Who was in there, somewhere.
“Bucky was my hero,” Steve says, and for just a second his voice is scraped raw and bleeding, and Sam feels the weight of grief and anger and hurt like Steve's physically moved his to Sam's shoulders. “He always tried to do right by other people. He always took care of me."
"Steve," Sam says, dismayed, but the moment is just that, Steve already folding all those broken edges back inside. He tolerates the hand Sam puts on his shoulder, but he's staring off towards the river, his jaw setting into a hard, determined line. It's an expression straight off one of his propaganda posters.
He looks over at Sam and quirks a Captain America smile at him. "I've saved him before," Steve says. "I'll do it again."
"Steve - it doesn't work that way," Sam tells him, but Steve doesn't seem to hear.