Chapter Text
-Sam’s POV-
Sam had asked for the salt almost thirty seconds ago.
Not because he desperately needed it, but he’d asked, and usually that was enough. Bucky would complain first, call him demanding or lazy or say something about having two perfectly functional hands before sliding it over the counter with an expression that suggested doing Sam a favor caused him physical pain.
Instead, nothing.
“Earth to Sergeant Barnes.”
Sam glanced up from the stove. Bucky was still standing exactly where he'd been the past five minutes, one hand braced against the counter, staring at absolutely nothing.
Sam reached over and grabbed the salt himself.
“Man,” Sam muttered, shaking some into the pan. “Either you dissociated again or you genuinely don’t care I’m cooking for you.”
He said it to himself. Rhetorical. Wasn’t even really expecting-
“Your cooking’s not exactly motivation to stay present.”
Sam rolled his eyes immediately, more relieved than he wanted to admit that Bucky had finally spoken.
“There he is,” he said, pointing the spatula toward the table. “Go sit down.”
And Bucky sat.
Sam blinked at the back of his head.
Huh.
Usually there would've been an argument first. Not a serious one. Bucky just seemed physically incapable of following directions without acting like he was being oppressed. Sam said sit down, Bucky said make me, Sam threatened to throw a spatula at him, and then eventually everybody moved on with their lives. It was a system.
This? This wasn't the system.
No argument. No second jab. No muttered insult under his breath.
And that was how Sam knew. Bucky only got agreeable like that when his head was already out the door.
He was going out tonight.
The amends thing had been getting worse the past few weeks. Or better. Depends on how you looked at it. Every few days Bucky disappeared for hours with that little notebook and came back quieter than before. Sometimes relieved. Sometimes looking like he hadn’t slept in three days. Sam had stopped asking for details after the third ‘I handled it’.
Sam flipped the eggs and left it alone.
Okay, so the living together thing. That was… that was a whole thing.
And honestly? That one was kind of Bucky’s fault. The official story, if anyone asked, was that it made sense logistically. Sam was in DC more now. Bucky was in DC always, because apparently the man had nowhere else to be and the city had already absorbed him like a stray cat someone made the mistake of feeding once.
The real story involved Louisiana, a barbecue, and Bucky Barnes running his mouth to Sarah while showing off by letting two kids hang off his vibranium arm like he was a human jungle gym. Sam hadn’t been eavesdropping. He wanted that on record. He'd just been outside. In his own backyard. Near his own family. Very different things. And from across the dock he'd heard Bucky say, “Sam and I could move in together. The truth is, I would do it. It’s just- he’s just not… He’s not good at sharing anything.”
Like an asshole.
Sam had stared across the dock so hard Bucky should’ve felt it. Because first of all, rude. Second of all, sharing? Bucky Barnes, a man who guarded leftovers in the fridge like classified government property, was standing there accusing him of not sharing? Unbelievable. Sam hadn’t said anything at the time. Three days later he'd texted him instead.
Sam: i’ve got a second bedroom if you actually meant what you said in Louisiana. it’s empty anyway
Bucky: I know.
Sam had stared at the screen for one minute straight.
Sam: you KNOW what
Bucky: About the second bedroom.
Sam: how tf could you know that. you’ve never been in my apartment
Bucky: Or have I?
Sam: that is not funny.
Bucky: It’s not a joke.
Sam didn’t like that answer at all.
Sam: that is not an answer that makes me feel good about anything
Bucky: Relax.
That was the whole story. Magical, right?
The apartment was Sam’s at first, and it showed. That was a relief, honestly. Not because Bucky tried to change anything. Quite the opposite, actually. The man had absolutely no opinion on interior design whatsoever. Sam was pretty sure Bucky would’ve been perfectly content living in something that looked like a Danish prison cell with good lighting. Sam knew this because early on, a few days after Bucky had dragged his single duffel bag through the front door, he had made the mistake of asking, “So what do you want to add to the place.” Just to be polite. Just to make it feel like Bucky’s space too.
Bucky had looked around the apartment for a long moment. Then he’d said, “I don’t know. A chair?”
Sam had stared at him. “We have chairs.”
“Another one,” Bucky had replied, shrugging.
Sam had let it go.
He had kept the apartment the way it was, the way it always had been - warm colors, wooden furniture, comfortable personal clutter, plants he didn’t let Bucky go near. There was a throw blanket draped over the couch, mismatched mugs in the cupboard, a bookshelf that was more chaotic than organized but had a logic to it.
It looked lived in.
And slowly, without Sam even noticing when exactly it happened, traces of Bucky had started appearing everywhere too. A leather jacket over the back of a chair. Boots abandoned near the door. Those stupid plums Bucky kept buying for some reason. Books with folded corners stacked on the coffee table. That one terrifyingly extensive knife set Bucky had silently ordered after claiming Sam’s kitchen knives ‘felt like they came free with motor oil’.
The truth - the truth Sam had figured out somewhere between month one and month two - was that Bucky did care. He just had no idea what to do with caring without it going sideways somehow. He cared about things in his own way. Like he didn’t know how to admit he liked comfort now.
So instead of saying I like living here, Bucky argued with Sam about thermostat settings and replaced broken cabinet hinges before Sam could get around to it.
That was just how he loved people, apparently.
Through maintenance.
Through staying.
And despite the bickering - and dear God, there was so much bickering - Sam was glad he was here.
Because he remembered the small stuff Sam forgot and forgot the stuff Sam actually wanted to forget. Because living with him was easier than living without him, even on the days Sam would’ve argued that to anyone’s face.
Because both of them had bad days.
There were weeks where the shield felt like it was made out of lead and Sam was carrying it around his neck instead of his arm. Where the press said something or the government implied something or some guy on the internet had thoughts. Those nights Bucky never pushed. Never made it a whole thing. He’d just… be there, existing nearby. Sometimes that meant silently handing Sam takeout and changing the channel to a terrible reality TV. Sometimes it meant sitting at the opposite end of the couch, reading one of his history books while Sam complained himself empty. Sometimes it meant staying next to each other, shoulder to shoulder in complete silence, until Sam’s breathing evened out again. Once, after a particularly brutal week, Bucky had wordlessly stolen the shield from where Sam had left it against the wall, carried it into his room, and refused to give it back for two days.
And somehow, stupidly, it had helped.
Bucky had his moments too. Worse ones, maybe.
Sam knew about the nightmares mostly because Bucky was absolute garbage at pretending they didn’t happen. He heard him sometimes, at two, three in the morning, the uneven breathing through the thin apartment walls. Then the creak of floorboards when he was trying very hard to be quiet, the soft sounds of him in the kitchen, running water, the clink of a glass. Sometimes Bucky paced. Sometimes he sat on the fire escape outside the living room window until sunrise. He always looked a little wrecked about it in the morning, in that specific contained way, like he was waiting for Sam to bring it up so he could deflect.
Sam never brought it up.
But he started leaving the hallway light on before he went to sleep.
Bucky had noticed eventually, of course. He noticed everything. But he’d never mentioned it. Just like Sam never mentioned the way Bucky always checked the locks twice before bed now. Or how he automatically made coffee for two every morning, even when they were annoyed at each other.
Emotionally constipated, both of them.
Sam slid the toasted bread-slash-sandwich onto two plates and added the eggs over the top, seasoning them with more care than Bucky deserved considering the amount of slander his cooking endured on a daily basis. Which was insane, by the way, because Sam was objectively the better cook. Living with Bucky had taught him that the man had somehow survived nearly a decade almost entirely on bad coffee, takeout, and whatever garbage he found in deli sections at two in the morning. But he didn’t want to get into all of that right now.
So instead, he grabbed both plates and carried them over to the table. Bucky was still staring off into space. His arms were folded loosely over his chest, jaw tight, gaze fixed somewhere past the kitchen wall.
Sam set a plate down in front of him.
Nothing.
Pulled his own chair back and sat.
Still nothing.
Sam squinted at him for a second. Then he reached over, grabbed a dish towel, and threw it directly at Bucky’s face.
Bucky startled badly enough that his knee hit the underside of the table.
“The hell-”
He grabbed the towel off his own face and looked around like he was reorienting himself to the physical plane, which, to be fair, he was.
“Welcome back,” Sam said calmly, taking a bite.
He dragged the towel off his shoulder and muttered, “Sorry.”
Sam just raised an eyebrow.
Bucky looked away first.
Yeah. Definitely bad tonight.
They ate in relative silence after that. Bucky barely touched his food at first. Sam noticed because of course he did. The guy usually ate like he was trying to prepare for hibernation. Now he just pushed the bread around the plate absently, shoulders a little too stiff, metal fingers tapping once against the table before going still again. Nervous. Most people probably wouldn’t have caught it. Bucky hid nerves by going quieter, not louder. By making himself smaller somehow, despite looking like that.
“When’re you heading out?” Sam asked finally.
Bucky’s fork slowed slightly against the plate.
“Later,” he answered after a second.
Careful answer. Neutral answer.
Sam glanced toward the windows. It was already getting dark outside. He chose not to comment on it. And he didn’t ask if he should wait up either. Mostly because Bucky always got weirdly guilty when he did, even though the dumbass clearly liked coming home to someone awake. Sam had figured that out a while ago too. There was always this almost-imperceptible way Bucky relaxed when he walked back into the apartment and found Sam still on the couch pretending not to wait for him.
Bucky picked at another bite of food.
“You should eat more than three bites if you’re planning on brooding dramatically around DC all night,” Sam said.
Bucky looked up at him. “I’m eating.”
“That was one bread molecule,” Sam replied.
Bucky huffed softly into his plate, which honestly counted as a laugh at this point.
Sam let that sit for a moment before adding, quieter, “You don’t gotta do all of them at once, you know.”
There it was. The slightest tightening in Bucky’s shoulders.
“I know.”
Sam believed that Bucky thought he knew. That was the problem. Bucky had this habit of treating guilt like it was something measurable. Like if he suffered through enough sleepless nights and enough horrible conversations and enough people looking at him with hatred in their eyes, eventually the scale would balance out somehow. Sam didn’t think it worked like that. He also knew better than to say it outright. So instead he nudged Bucky’s foot lightly under the table.
“Hey,” he said.
Bucky looked up.
“Don’t let anybody make you feel like a monster tonight.”
Something shifted briefly across Bucky’s face then. Fast enough most people would’ve missed it entirely. But Sam saw it.
The guilt. The affection. The hurt.
All tangled together.
Bucky looked back down at his plate after a second and muttered, almost reluctantly, “Your eggs are overcooked.”
Sam pointed his fork at him immediately. “Get out of my home.”
The corner of Bucky’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile but was adjacent to one.
For a little while after that, things settled again. The tension was still there, but Bucky finally started actually eating, which Sam counted as a victory considering where they’d started ten minutes ago. Sam ate his food. Bucky ate his food. Somewhere upstairs someone dropped something heavy and they both looked at the ceiling for a second and then back down.
Normal. Whatever that meant anymore.
He still looked wound too tight though. Every now and then his gaze drifted somewhere else entirely before he caught himself and forced it back down to his plate. Eventually he finished the last bite of food and cleared his throat softly.
“I’ll do dishes,” he muttered, already standing.
Sam snorted lightly. “Wow. You nervous or possessed?”
Bucky just flipped him off over his shoulder.
Sam opened his mouth.
Bucky was already in the kitchen.
Sam closed his mouth.
And there it was. That weird, uncomfortable feeling in Sam’s chest. Because yeah, Bucky always got quieter before amends. More withdrawn. But this felt different somehow.
Sam stayed sitting at the table for another minute, listening to the sound of running water filling the apartment.
Bucky had been off all day.
Sam thought back now. The distracted silences, the way he’d checked the notebook twice before breakfast, how he’d nearly poured orange juice into his coffee that morning because he’d been staring at the wall.
Something about tonight mattered more.
With a sigh, Sam pushed himself up from the table and wandered into the kitchen. Bucky stood at the sink with his back partially turned, sleeves shoved up past his elbows. Warm yellow light spilled across the metal of his left arm, catching gold along the grooves and plates every time he moved. Sam leaned against the counter for a second before climbing onto one of the barstools opposite him.
Bucky glanced over briefly.
“I’m supervising you,” Sam said. “Considering the last time you did dishes you somehow flooded half the counter.”
Bucky huffed softly under his breath and looked back down at the sink. Then silence again. Sam watched him scrub the same plate for way too long before realizing he’d stopped moving entirely. His gaze had gone distant again. Jaw tight. Shoulders locked.
Gone.
And yeah, that always did something to Sam he didn’t really have a name for.
He rested his elbows against the counter.
“Look, man,” he started carefully, “I’m not your therapist or anything, but…”
Bucky blinked once and looked over.
Sam shrugged one shoulder. “You know you can talk to me, right?”
Bucky’s shoulders tightened just slightly, eyes flicking away on instinct before coming back.
Sam softened his voice a little anyway.
“I know you hate talking about this stuff. Trust me, nobody on Earth is unaware of that fact.” He tilted his head slightly. “But you don’t gotta keep every single thing locked up in that terrifying murder brain of yours all the time.”
That finally earned him the faintest hint of amusement. He dried his hands slowly on the dish towel, gaze lowering for a moment before lifting back to Sam again.
And there was something in his expression then that Sam couldn’t quite place. Like someone had just told him his cat died. Which was a weird thought, because Sam was pretty sure Bucky didn’t even like cats. Or dogs. Or anything with fur and feelings and opinions.
Bucky quickly ducked his head again and muttered, quieter this time, “I know.”
Sam held his gaze for another second anyway. Just to make sure he meant it.
“And I’m not gonna make you talk about anything.” Sam picked at a scratch on the counter. “But I’m also sitting right here, so… if you wanted to tell me what’s actually going on in there...” He gestured vaguely at Bucky’s head. “...I’m available.”
Nothing for a second.
Bucky exhaled through his nose. “There’s nothing going on.”
Sam stared at him, unimpressed. “Uh huh.”
“I’m fine,” Bucky muttered.
Sam kept looking at him, waiting. Bucky’s shoulders moved once, that small defensive hike, the one that meant I hear you and I am choosing not to engage with you, and then dropped again. His hands slowed in the water.
“It’s one I’ve been putting off,” he said finally, quieter. “That’s all.”
Sam didn’t say anything for a second.
“Hard one?”
Bucky nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Sam said.
That was it. He wasn’t going to pull it apart or fix it or offer some kind of solution, because there wasn’t one and Bucky didn’t want that anyway. He just wanted to get through dinner and get out the door and do the thing, and Sam could respect that. He did respect it.
Bucky kept doing the dishes.
Sam stayed on the barstool for a moment longer than necessary, watching the water run down the drain like it was doing something meaningful. Then his phone buzzed against the counter. He glanced down at it. A notification from Joaquin, a forwarded email chain with the subject line re: re: re: Thursday briefing that was already long enough to make Sam tired just looking at the preview. He picked the phone up, scrolled two lines, put it back down.
Then picked it up again. He sighed through his nose.
"I gotta go into the office for a bit," he said.
Bucky looked over his shoulder. "Now?"
"Just for a couple hours."
Bucky turned back to the dishes. "It's nine o'clock."
"I'm aware of what time it is, thanks." Sam stood up from the barstool and grabbed his jacket off the chair. "I'll be back before you."
Bucky didn't say anything to that.
Sam glanced at him.
"Don't wait up," Bucky said. Flat. Preemptive.
"I wasn't gonna."
Bucky didn’t even look up. "You were gonna."
Sam put his jacket on. "I'll see you later, Buck."
A beat.
"Yeah," Bucky said, quiet, not looking up from the sink. "See you."
Sam grabbed his keys and headed for the door. It was already dark outside when he stepped out into the hallway.
He didn't look back.
Behind him, the apartment stayed quiet, the hallway light still on.