Chapter Text
Sam finds him on a bench outside the New Orleans Airport, all rumbled clothes and messy hair, with his head hanging low to give his eyes at least the semblance of a break from the unrelenting sun beaming down. Bucky doesn’t look up when he sits down next to him with what feels like an undeserving amount of nonchalance.
„Where are you going?“, Sam just asks and fishes a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, the small box all messed up by its mode of transportation, lights one up and takes a deep breath.
„I didn’t know you smoked.“
Sam shrugs and Bucky turns his head to fully look at him. One foot resting on his other knee, one of his hands taking the cigarette with habitual ease to blow a cloud of smoke into the otherwise cloudless blue Louisiana sky. His eyes are hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses, whose purpose might be to protect his identity just as well as his eyes. There are a thousand questions Bucky wants him to ask and not a single answer he could give.
„I don’t“, Sam answers after taking another drag. „Not anymore at least, I used to a lot. But sometimes it just helps with the nerves, you know?“
Yeah, Bucky does. He had grown up between women and men who could not go a few hours without taking a drag, in smoke filled rooms that had taken the foul smell and permanently integrated it in the very structure of the walls. If you scraped the plaster off and put some of it into your pocket, Bucky firmly believes you might’ve been able to take the smell of home with you wherever you went. It had been hard to look at the world back then and not think that breathing was supposed to look like that.
„Hydra beat it out of me“, he says and Sam hums in understanding.
„Maybe you should start again. Might calm you down, I doubt it could do you any harm“, he jokes and Bucky chuckles, leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
An airplane flies low over their heads, a dark shadow of sizes he had only dreamed of back then and Bucky forces himself to not react, to ignore the way his heart picks up in speed. He lost count a while ago, some time after the ninth plane.
„Don’t, actually. You’d set a bad example for the children.“
Sam stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray on the trash can next to him and throws an arm over the backrest of the bench.
„What got you so agitated it warrants a smoke?“, Bucky asks and Sam’s eyes widen in exasperation. He mirrors Bucky in leaning forward and angles his whole body in his direction.
„James Buchanan Barnes, I don’t know if you noticed, but this is not where you’re supposed to be“, his index finger is now pointed at him in usual Sam fashion, a gesture that only sometimes has the threatening effect that Sam intends for it.
„I woke up today, Buck, like any other day, went down to the kitchen, said good morning to you, or thought I did at least, went to make us coffee. I stood there for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Waiting for the coffee to brew, talking to myself about my plans for the day, while I was under the impression you were being your usual grumpy self, only to walk into the living room to see an empty couch, blanket neatly folded and a fucking goodbye letter in the ugliest handwriting I’ve ever seen.“
„I had to write with my metal arm, the right hand was full.“
„That’s your excuse?“
Sam lets his hands and head drop in defeat, shoulders rocking up and down in soundless laughter. Bucky tries to look some type of regretful or embarrassed or grumpy at least, but it’s always hard not to smile when Sam starts laughing.
„I thought we’d agreed you would stay“, Sam finally says after his chuckles have calmed down and he’s wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye and Bucky has hidden the smile behind a poker face he’s perfected for the worse part of the previous century.
„Just. Stuff, I guess.“
„Yeah, I know. I know.“
They sit there for a while in silent camaraderie, and watch the planes disappear into the sky, which slowly starts to gain color in tandem with the sun falling towards the horizon with never changing speed. Bucky planned to take the next flight to New York when he arrived at the airport, back to his shitty apartment, away from Louisiana and the overwhelming sense of community, Sarah and her way too understanding smiles, Sam and his perpetual warmth that hides deep, deep in Buckys bones and that he can’t scrape out of his marrow, no matter how hard he tries.
„When you burn yourself and stick it under really cold water, isn’t that the thing that makes blisters worse?“, he asks and Sam opens his eyes like a cat waking from a comfortable nap in the sun.
„I think so, yeah. Any particular reason for that question?“
„No, just wondering.“
Sam stretches and stands up in one fluid motion.
„Have you ever been to New Orleans?“
„I am right now.“
Sam claps him on the shoulder and Bucky stands up with the gentle guidance of fingers trailing down his back. He picks up his belongings consisting of one small backpack and swings it over his shoulder.
„Oh you know what I mean. We can explore it some time, if you want. Tell me, old man, what was it like in the 30s? Or are the gears in that cyborg head of yours too rusty to remember?“
Bucky follows him down to the street where Sam parked the truck in a sea of other cars. People evade the constant waves of oncoming vehicles loaded with suitcases, backpacks and stress.
„You think we could afford vacations back then? I barely made it out of Brooklyn, farthest I ever went before the war, hell, before the Depression, was fucking Boston, Wilson.“
Bucky has been mentally present for some years now, but he still hasn’t gotten rid of that stinging habit of comparing every step he takes with a similar one he took back in the 20s, 30s, 40s. He sees himself in all of the ways that stayed the same, in smiles, in history, in memories and he tries to see himself in everything that is different, the technology, the language, the details. But it does its fair share of good, this habit of his. He notices all that’s better, all that’s worse, all that pretends to be better, makes him remember how this is still the world he grew up in and that there’s nothing he shouldn’t be able to handle. Mostly it helps him remember how to breathe. Makes him remember how to live. But it also makes him remember how to ache.
„You had family there?“
„Boston? Yeah, an aunt I think. Hag of a woman, couldn’t stand her, she always liked my sister better than me.“
There weren’t as many cars back then, Bucky thinks as they try to find their way between moving and parked cars. Sam unlocks the truck and gets in.
„Y’all went to visit her often?“
Bucky throws the backpack in the leg room and climbs into the passenger seat.
„Just once or twice. I took Steve with me one time, that boy had never been outside his street, thought it would be a nice change for once. She took an instant liking to him. I don’t know what I was doing wrong- Why are you smiling?“
Bucky narrows his eyes and Sam just winks at him before turning the ignition key. The motor roars to life only to calm down to a soft purring.
„Few months ago you couldn’t tell me the name of your sister.“
Sam pulls out of the parking lot, fingers tapping along with the song on the radio, a smug little grin on his face and Bucky's entire body aches.
(So look, it‘s not like Bucky planned to build this weird sense of codependency between them. It’s just that sometimes, when you go through hell, all battle bruised, it will be just you and your body and the quiet assurance that no matter how far you go, there is no staircase. There is no highway where you can hold out your hand with your thumb raised and expect someone to pick you up and drive you out of there, honking at the people stuck in traffic on the other side trying to get in.
And you find a sense of comfort in it, because there’s something stuck in your brain that prevents you from having any rational thought that might’ve been your own. But then someone comes along and rips you out of the comfortable space you built yourself in hell just to drag you into a new one, one where you can’t find that comfort because you fear that every thought you have might actually be your own.
And you start to forgive, because you realize that autonomy might’ve been the one thing you’ve been missing, the key that could take you from simply existing to actually being alive. Trying to find the lock to that key on your own feels too much like you're walking through hell again, but then there’s someone else to smile at you and say: „Well, that’s no problem. I know a lot of locks, one of them might fit“, so you just cave.
You give in and the next thing you know, you’re lying on a soft couch in a lovely house in Delacroix, Louisiana, with the sun slowly rising above the horizon and you’re not quite sure how you got there but you know that leaving is not an option anymore.
Which doesn’t mean you won’t try.)
„You still with me, Buck?“
Deep orange and red falls through the window on Bucky's side and make the color of the upholstery nearly unidentifiable. Sam’s gaze is concentrated on the road in front of him, his face bathed in the soft glow of the sun. The Mississippi River takes a turn and bids them safe passage for the rest of their journey before it's so far behind them that Bucky can’t see it anymore.
„Yeah, just- thinking. About my sister.“
Bucky rolls the window down enough so that the warm wind is softly messing with his hair. Sam grips the steering wheel tighter in quiet contemplation.
„I think she was quite a lot like Sarah, actually“, he adds and Sam looks at him with surprised amusement.
„Really?“
„Yeah, man. Or maybe all sisters tend to be alike? She was younger than me, too. Always got what she wanted, but never let it stop her from being kind.“
„You two were close?“
„Sometimes. You know how it is, with siblings. You drift apart and come back together as if nothing happened.“
„Family tends to be like that.“
There’s comfortable silence for a while. It’s not far to Delacroix now, just a few turns and this deep understanding that seems to have come out between them will slip back into obscurity. Who knows how the next months will play out. There‘s politicians and lawyers they will have to argue with, angry voices that need soothing, scared ones that need reassurance, trusting one’s that will break Sam’s back sooner or later. They can’t stay here forever, far away from any of the big disasters happening. But they sure can try.
„His driving skills haven’t gotten any better“, is the first thing he tells Sarah when they arrive at the house, just when the dark gray of dusk turns into the pitch black of night. She’s sitting on the veranda with a blanket over her legs and a tattered book in her hands that she sets down in her lap to lean into the faint kiss Bucky plants on her forehead.
„Didn‘t expect that to change," she murmurs.
„I’ll remember that statement the next time I have to pick you up at some random airport“, he hears Sam reply from inside the house and Bucky chuckles before sitting down in the chair next to Sarah.
„Well, I’m very glad you got your boy back and I don’t have to keep stopping you from swearing in front of the children. Could you get me some water, dear brother of mine?“, Sarah asks and Bucky leans back in the chair, putting his legs up on the small veranda table.
„No one asked you to, dickhead. I could’ve very well found my way back on my own“, he bites back at Sam. They can’t see the man from where they are sitting, but Bucky knows that both he and Sarah have the same picture of Sam raising one eyebrow stuck in their head. He tends to be predictable like that.
„Oh yeah, and how would you have done that?“, Sam finally asks, now closer to the door.
„Same way I got there.“
Sarah sighs and picks her book up again.
„What, did you like, steal a car or something?“, Sam puts the mosquito net back in its place after he steps out onto the veranda and hands his sister her glass of water.
„No," Bucky says while gladly accepting the beer he is being offered, and there it is. The eyebrow.
„You did, didn’t you?“
Sam sits down on Sarah’s other side, who is probably contemplating getting up to search for a more peaceful spot to finish her book.
„No, I didn’t steal a car. I’m not allowed to do illegal shit, Samuel," Bucky tells him and Sam snorts.
„No one is, Barney, that’s the whole point.“
„Yeah but they don’t end up in prison because of it.“
Sam cocks his head and raises both eyebrows this time.
„Hm yeah, they do, darlin‘. Quite frequently.“
Bucky throws his head back and sighs. There’s a faint smile on Sarah’s lips and she sips on her water to hide it.
„Oh fuck off, you know what I mean. The government has an eye on me, I don’t wanna have to get out of some court mandated therapy session again. I didn’t steal shit, I hitchhiked.“
„That must’ve been incredibly awkward.“
„The family that took me with them thought I was a delight, actually.“
(They didn’t. They cramped him with two small children in the backseat of the car that was not meant for five people and Bucky wouldn’t complain about it, weren't it for the fact that the mother kept staring at him through the rear view mirror. Whether it was because she was trying to figure out where she had seen him before or because she didn’t trust him with the children, he really couldn’t tell.)
„No one has ever used that word to describe you.“
„How would you know? I’ve got a few years on you, my young whippersnapper, maybe I was the center of all delight back in the 40s.“
„See, you say stuff like this and I’m never sure if it is meant to be taken seriously, because you say it with a completely straight face.“
„I have never made a joke in my life, Samuel. You should know that, since you keep track of this stuff so that one day you might actually figure out how to make a good one.“
Their bickering slowly fades into the quiet hours of the night, mixes with the sound of the waves and the song of cicadas, until they’re sitting there in silence, Sarah half asleep, the two men in some sort of quiet truce, ignoring any and all thoughts of tomorrow, the twisting branches of the giant oaks softly swaying in the wind. It’s not a scenario Bucky would’ve been able to imagine a few years - hell, months - ago. It’s not something he would’ve allowed himself to imagine.
Sam follows his sister’s example after a while and dozes off, head leaning back against the wall of the house, exposing his throat. It’s quiet enough for Bucky’s super hearing to differentiate between his heartbeat and that of his sister.
„You’re staring again“, Sam mutters at some point and Bucky just hums in quiet acknowledgement. They know the other knows. They know the others know they know.