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“Your sister's great,” Bucky says, and he's never seen Sam turn dead serious so quickly.
“You keep a respectful distance, you understand?”
“Respectful to you, or her?”
“Now I know you didn’t just say that to me.”
“Relax,” Bucky says, grinning. “I’m pulling your leg, man.”
Sam gets the chef’s knife out of his face.
“Damn well better be,” he mutters, slicing into a celery stalk with prejudice.
It's a balmy evening in the Wilson digs, a place that is rapidly climbing Bucky's list of favorite places. Nothing he'd ever admit to Sam, obviously, but there's a homeliness to these walls that Bucky, if he's honest with himself, hasn't felt since 1943. Even in Wakanda, he was palpably aware of how un-Wakandan he was. His new shithole apartment in Brooklyn had been a lateral move from his old shithole apartment in Bucharest; a couple blankets on the floor and a modified SIG-Sauer P226 do not a home make. It goes without saying that the Winter Soldier had no concept of “home,” much less anecdotal experience with it.
It's more than just the worn sofa cushions and matching silverware sets. Any asshole can paint their clapboard baby blue and retrofit a gas cooktop into the kitchen, just like any asshole can stash a go bag beneath hardwood floors — having stuff doesn't make a home. Not that Bucky has any way to know that, having always had fewer personal belongings than fingers on both hands. But he suspects that if the Wilson family found themselves transplanted into Bucky's Brooklyn shithole, that dump would become a home quicker than blinking.
It's them. These people. It's the way Sarah Wilson comes home from work every day to play catch with her sons, the way Cass and AJ do their homework at the kitchen table, the way Sam tidies on instinct and knows where everything goes. Just the knowledge that love exists in this place makes it feverish with warmth.
Bucky makes much quicker work of the remaining celery than Sam. It's not always a competition, unless Bucky is winning, in which case Sam is the loser and everyone needs to know it.
“Stop stealing my celery.” Sam steals a stalk from Bucky's stash.
Bucky swats his wrist. “Said the celery thief.”
“Don't swat me with a knife in your hand!”
“You put that knife in my face not two minutes ago.”
“One of us is a super soldier with a metal arm and lightning reflexes. I think you'd be alright.”
“So you're saying if I came at you with this knife, you couldn't defend yourself?”
“Don't put words in my mouth. And no knife fighting in my sister's home.”
“Sounds like the words of a quitter,” Bucky sings, leisurely chopping the celery he stole from Sam's pile.
“You can't goad me into a knife fight. I'm much more scared of Sarah's wrath than yours.”
“Yeah, that's fair.” One place Bucky would not like to be is anywhere in the vicinity of Sarah Wilson’s shit list.
They mince a healthy amount of garlic, then divide and conquer: Bucky takes the onions, Sam takes the peppers.
“Are you crying?” Sam asks.
Bucky glares at his cutting board. “No.”
“You are.”
“I'm not crying, I'm cutting fucking onions.”
“Spoken like a man who never learned to cut onions.” Sam pats his shoulder. “It's okay to cry, man. Just let it out.”
“You are so annoying,” says Bucky, blinking through tears.
Sam laughs. “Next time, I'll take the onions.”
A tear drips onto the cutting board. Bucky wipes his eyes with a dish towel and ignores Sam's smug laughter in favor of finishing his chop job. The quicker it's done, the quicker he can stop getting teary-eyed over kitchen work.
“What does it say about me that the first time I've cried since I broke conditioning is from cutting onions?”
His knife keeps meeting the cutting board in a satisfying rhythm of thnk sounds, so at first he doesn't notice the silence. When he looks up, Sam is staring.
“What?”
“You haven't cried since—” Sam shakes his head. “You haven't cried?”
“The hell would I have to cry about?” Bucky holds up his hand, which really holds up his knife, and says, “Don't answer that.”
“I just don't understand.”
“I'm not a crier. It's not a big deal.”
“That would be more reassuring if I had even the slightest impression you were dealing with your trauma in some other healthy ways.”
“I'm fine,” Bucky says. Thnkthnkthnk, goes the knife. “I go to therapy.”
“You went to therapy, past tense, for about six months. Court-mandated therapy, with a therapist who, if you don't mind my saying, kind of sucked.”
Bucky snorts. He's not wrong. Dr. Raynor had always been more of a symbolic peace offering from Bucky to the United States Government. In the realm of effective therapy, not so much.
He sniffles, aggravated by how much these onion-induced tears feel like real tears. “I don't know what to tell you. When I was growing up, I couldn't afford to cry. People were counting on me. I guess the habit stuck.”
“You mean Steve?” Sam asks.
Bucky flickers his eyes to Sam and away. “Yes. Steve.” For a minute he can hear Steve's wounded voice going I can get by on my own, and he nearly misses the onion with his blade.
“You two deserve each other,” Sam mutters. “Two of the most stubborn dicks I've ever met, of course neither of you wants therapy.”
“Sam, therapy in my day meant they zap your brain with a hundred volts and they tell you to fuck your mother. Can you really blame us for being skeptical?”
“I don't blame you, but you have to see the world is different.”
Sam starts in on the green onions, cutting in uneven lines that needle at Bucky's perfectionism. He looks at his own flawless handiwork and wonders who in their right mind would trust Sam Wilson with a kitchen knife.
“I could get used to this.” Sarah bangs through the front door with her children in tow, as if summoned by Bucky's thoughts. “Kitchen full of superheroes cuttin’ vegetables? It's my lucky day!”
“Don’t start,” Sam says, beaming. That smile finds his face whenever his family enters the room, and Bucky can't always pull his gaze fast enough. It requires no visible effort. Bucky tries to recall the last time he smiled that big without planning it first, and draws a boat-sized blank.
“You heat the pot yet?”
“In a minute. Bucky's just on sausage duty.”
“I’ll melt the butter,” Sarah says. “Hi, Bucky.”
“Hey,” Bucky says, smirking at Sam while Sarah's back is turned. Sam waggles his knife threateningly in Bucky's direction. “How’s it going?”
“Better than it's been,” Sarah says. “Maybe it's just fixing up the boat, but…I got a whole new outlook these days. Today I got six customers tellin’ me I seem happier than ever before. One of them was Kimberly’s mama, who I ain’t ever heard give a compliment in my life.”
“That woman scares me,” says Sam. Bucky cleaves sausage links into half-inch rounds as butter melts over the heat. Sam relieves him of all his hard work, scraping in every chopped-up vegetable in sight into the heavy pot. They hit the base with an aromatic sizzle.
“Kimberly’s nice, though,” AJ pipes up. “She always smiles at me.”
“Kimberly's mama don't never smile, though.” Cass frowns. “She scary.”
“Exactly right,” Sam says.
“If she keep eating her weight in étouffée, I don't care if she a space lizard,” Sarah says, turning her back on the jambalaya-to-be. “How was it out on the boat?”
“Sam nearly fell in,” Bucky volunteers.
“Because you pushed me.”
“Ah, rumors.”
“It's not rumors, you straight-up pushed me!”
“But who will the children believe?” Bucky winks at AJ, a slightly easier mark than his older brother, and AJ looks like a kid on Christmas.
“Wait ‘til I push you in,” Sam says. He’s gotten lazy with his threats, which Bucky takes as a good sign of their developing…partnership? Or something. “See how you like eau de bayou on that arm.”
“Hey, at least I pulled you back.”
AJ, eager to join the conversation, yanks on Bucky's metal fingers. “Do you think you would drown faster because your arm is so heavy?”
“AJ!” Sarah sounds stricken. Even Sam looks alarmed.
Cass hits AJ. “How he gonna know that?”
“It was just a question!”
“The arm isn't actually that heavy,” Bucky offers, flexing his fingers. Not this one, anyway. Learning to orient himself around an altered center of gravity had been one of the most perplexing parts of his new arm. He kept finding himself listing right, trying to compensate for a burden that no longer existed. It wasn't until he had the vibranium arm that he realized just how much work it was to lug around the titanium one, and if not for Wakandan medicine and a bastardized serum, he'd probably be crippled with back problems because of it.
“But it's so strong,” Cass says. His curiosity has outweighed his disapproval of AJ’s question, maybe now that it's clear Bucky wasn't offended.
“Yeah, it's vibranium,” Bucky says. “Like Cap’s shield. It's real light, but strong.”
He glances at Sam, and Sam's already looking at him. It's a look Bucky has seen before, and he thinks he hates how good it makes him feel — this gooey I'm-proud-of-you or look-how-sweet face, like Bucky is the second coming of Christ because he doesn't mind fielding questions from eight-to-ten-year-old boys.
“Alright, that's enough,” Sarah says. “Boys, showers before dinner. Go.”
“Dibs first!” Cass hollers.
“No! I'll race you!”
They're off like bullets, ricocheting from wall to doorway until their gleeful shrieks grow muffled.
“Thanks for prepping everything,” Sarah says.
“Happy to be of service,” Bucky says. “Anything else we can do?”
“You want to wipe down that counter?” Bucky goes for the rag behind the faucet, but Sam snatches it up as Sarah adds, “Not you, Bucky. You've done enough.”
“I barely did anything.”
“I got it,” Sam says. “Take a load off.”
“And do what?”
“Relax,” Sam says. “You don't have to earn this meal, and even if you did, you already have. Congrats, you have the right to remain stationary.”
“Sam is right,” Sarah says, smiling warmly at Bucky. “Much as your help has been greatly appreciated, you are still a guest, and the spirit of my parents would string me up if I let you keep working instead of deputizing my insolent brother.” She nods at the living room. “We have cable.”
Bucky squints. “Did I do something?”
“See, this kind of thing is why you need therapy.” Sam pokes Bucky's chest. “Sit your ass on that couch and put your damn feet up, Barnes.”
“So this is what Southern hospitality means.”
“Sam, shrimp?” Sarah gestures, and Sam passes the platter of uncooked shrimp. “Bucky, thank you for being a sous-chef, but we will take it from here.”
So Bucky submits to the couch and cable television, watching college baseball with the volume on low. He can hear Sam and Sarah catching up, and wonders if Sam knows he can still hear them and just doesn't care, or what. They share a chuckle as Sam relates Bucky's losing battle against cutting onions — that fucking traitor — and compare notes on best practices re: jambalaya preparation.
“You call that seasoning?”
“Don't get your panties in a twist, Samuel. We got hot sauce.”
“You breakin’ Mama's heart. She just rolled over in her grave.”
“I’m trying to be sensitive. I don't know this white man’s tolerance, and the usual spice get my eyes watering.”
Bucky considers calling out to inform them that his motto has always been the spicier the better, but they’re the ones who benched him, so this spat is not his problem.
“He's fine. He'll eat anything.”
True.
“Fine, but it's your ass.”
“Far as Bucky is concerned, it's always my ass, even when it ain't. Especially then.”
Also true.
A humiliating double play draws Bucky's attention back to the ball game. The future may have evil space aliens and no Steve, but at least they got televised baseball. One of those little things Bucky forgets to enjoy, on account of being wholly unaccustomed to manufacturing his own happiness nowadays. He should start keeping a list.
Sam would love that. Sam would flip his shit. That could be its own reason to do it.
The savory, rich aroma of forthcoming dinner taunts Bucky, flavor floating in from the kitchen alongside quiet laughter and bickering. Cass and AJ are on table-setting duty when they emerge from their showers, sporting clean clothes. Bucky itches to get up and help, but he doesn't want to break his oath of Not Pissing Off Sarah Wilson in its infancy.
LSU scores twice. Then they give up five runs. Their defense is in the gutter. Cass and AJ join him on the couch to watch the game when the table is sufficiently set, and they make their own game of trying to predict what will happen next. AJ is terrible at it; Cass does significantly better than chance. Anyway it keeps them distracted from asking when dinner will be ready every two minutes, not that Bucky can blame them.
Finally:
“Dinner!”
The boys trip over each other getting to their seats, squawking dibs on first serving. Sam is filling a pitcher of water, and Sarah has just ladled heaping servings of red jambalaya into the last bowl, when Bucky takes his place at the table.
It's as bafflingly heartwarming as every Wilson family function. The boys have their mom’s laugh, but something in the buoyancy of their smile is reminiscent of Sam. There's an unbroken flow of talking (and in Cass and AJ’s case, reaching) over one another. Sarah chides the boys and then entreats them to share their favorite part of their day. AJ got an A on his book report for a book called Matilda. Cass got invited to his best friend’s birthday party. Sam’s turn: he tells them he's just happy to be here. He knuckles Cass’s head as the kid tries to declare that cheating, but then all eyes are on Bucky.
Bucky hasn't taken a bite in a minute, but he swallows hard.
“What Sam said,” he says. “Just grateful to be here.”
“That's totally cheating,” AJ agrees with vehemence.
A couple beers on the back porch, in full view of the undisturbed bayou, may eclipse the actual house for Bucky's new favorite place. Late spring curls around him like a gentle hug, drifting into the trees and grass before kissing the water’s surface. A symphony of chirps and croaks arise at unpredictable interval, seemingly in conversation, but it's not anathema to the calm — more like a soothing wash of white noise.
Sam is good at sitting in silence. Not as good as Bucky, but it's not his fault Bucky has decades of experience shutting his trap, so Sam gets a pass and a respectable second place pedestal.
Behind them, the Wilson household is winding down. It was bedtime for the boys an hour ago, and Bucky put all of his Winter Soldier stoicism behind demanding Sarah let him wash up from dinner. Sam undertook drying duty. They banished Sarah to rest and relaxation. They could, at least, agree on that.
“Back to New York in the morning?” Sam asks, setting down his beer with a clink.
“Yep.” Back to the shithole. Back to sleeping on a cushion on the floor with a 9mm pistol behind the leg of the armchair. One plate, one glass, one frying pan. Easy, lonely living. “And you go back to D.C.”
Sam exhales, that way people exhale when they mean it is what it is. “Yeah.”
“Back to being government property.”
“Ha.” Sam leans back on his elbows. “We’ll see.”
“Well, if you need tips on how to disappear,” Bucky offers.
“Once was enough for me,” Sam says. “Thanks, though.”
An owl hoots off in the distance.
“Yeah,” Bucky says, copying Sam’s lean, “if I were you I wouldn’t run either. You got a good thing here.”
Sam has the kind of smile you can hear when he talks. “Yeah, I sure do.” He’s quiet, then says, “I’m glad you’re here, Bucky.”
“Really?” Bucky lifts a disbelieving eyebrow and tosses back a swig of his drink.
“Yeah, really. You fit right in. Charmed the pants off the neighbors, the boys clearly love you, and Sarah thinks you're great, which I say with reluctance and under the assumption that you’ll continue to leave room for Jesus if you know what’s good for you—”
“Sam, I’m not actually into your sister, would you relax with all that?” Bucky sets his beer aside and flashes a crooked smile Sam’s way. “She’s swell, but…not my type.”
Sam pauses. “Now I’m not sure if I should be more offended on her behalf.”
“Jeez, there is no winning with you.”
“Alright, okay, let me wrap up my point,” Sam says. “You just…you have a spot here, you know? I know you and I haven’t always been…”
Bucky ventures, “Best buds?”
Sam chuckles. “Whatever we weren’t, I think we are now. And the beautiful thing about this community is that people don’t ask questions. You show up for us, we show up for you. It’s that easy.”
“That easy, huh.”
“Yes, Bucky,” Sam says firmly. “It is.”
Bucky gazes across the water, where the dock is fixed impassively past the reeds. It stretches out like an arm, extending far beyond its natural boundary without any discernible objective. Outreach for its own sake, just to prove it can be done, see how much further I can go? You thought I was bound by the riverbank; how do you like me now?
What would it be like, Bucky wonders, to be that brave?
“I like your family,” he tells the dock. “You and your sister get along well.”
“We have our moments.”
Bucky clears his throat. “She reminds me of my sister sometimes.”
“You have a sister?” Sam sounds earnestly surprised. Must not have come up when he and Steve were on Bucky’s trail; he feels a rush of gratitude for his old friend. “I had no idea. What's her name?”
Bucky fingers the label on his beer, sliding his fingernail underneath one corner so he can peel it back. The fingers on his metal arm make a tinny clink when they come in contact with the glass.
“Rebecca. Her name's Rebecca.”
“Older? Younger?”
“Younger. Never acted like it, though, the mouth on her. Such a smartass from such a young age.”
“I know something about that,” Sam says, glancing back at the house. “So you're an older brother. Huh.”
Bucky looks at him. Sam’s got his thoughtful face on, and Bucky doesn't trust it. “‘Huh’ what? What's that mean?”
“No, nothing, just…of course you are.” His lips make a crescent moon smile, thin and bright. “It makes perfect sense. You're a stubborn know-it-all with a martyr complex to boot, of course you're the oldest.”
“Wow, thank you, Doctor Freud, for that touching analysis. Maybe you could be my new court-mandated therapist, ‘cause I feel seen.”
“Like I'd ever try to do therapy on your ass.”
“You're the one saying I need it!”
“And I stand by that. Doesn't mean I want to be the one to give it. Even if I was qualified, which I am not.”
“Yeah, well, that's for the better.” Bucky’s outgoing laugh tapers off. “You think that explains why we make such a terrible team? Because we're both the oldest?”
“I don't think we make a terrible team,” Sam says steadily, then amends that with, “Anymore.”
“I'll drink to that.”
He wonders whether Sam knows that this beer might as well be water for all the effect it has on him, but Sam's no idiot, contrary to the many names Bucky has called him. Still, something inside of him feels shaken loose. It's not the identity salad he’s been wrangling since he pried HYDRA’s grip off him. That grip left a bruise, and his brain may always bear a resemblance to scrambled eggs, but this is different. This is a ball in a pinball machine, leisurely ping-ponging its way from a passing thought into actual words.
“Next time you're in New York,” he says, “I'll take you to meet Rebecca.” His shoulders by his ears, he half-jokes, “You deserve to know the person who gave me this martyr complex, after all.”
Sam does not ask the obvious question.
“Count me in,” Sam says.
They descend into peaceful stillness, conversation having run its course to its natural end, and both quietly watch over the bayou for a little while longer.