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He knows it makes Steve nervous, but Bucky’s taken to talking to the TV lately. No one comes into their apartment without them both knowing, so whenever Steve hears him mumbling to himself in an empty room he’s worried Bucky’s lost it. Steve might not even be aware that’s what he’s worried about, but Bucky can read his face like the back of his own flesh and blood hand, and he sees the worry lines whenever Steve pops his head into the sparse living room and double checks there’s a screen that’s on and receiving Bucky’s tangents.
He doesn’t bother checking when Bucky yells, “Fuck off you arrogant dick.” The TV has been on since the night Steve’s replacement was announced, and Bucky’s had lots to say since.
“He served his time. Three medals of honor, Buck,” Steve tries while he washes dishes, knowing Bucky’s enhanced hearing will pick up his words.
“War’s different now, Stevie.”
“Are you talking about the Big Three too?”
Bucky turns to him. “The what?” When Steve waves him off, Bucky looks back at the television. “They don’t give you a medal for killing Nazis now. The good guys kill civilians. You should see the way they are in the field. Un-fucking-real. Don’t get your star-spangled heart caught up in this shit.”
“I followed his career very closely as an Avenger,” John Walker says on TV and Bucky shakes his head. It wasn’t a career. War isn’t a career. Steve did what he did to keep people safe. That’s all it ever was. As soon as you see the fight as a career you save your own salary by keeping it going.
“Even though I never met him… he feels like a brother.”
The news gets turned off after that. Actually, the whole TV system does. Bucky puts his fist through it, metal to wire.
“You shouldn’t have given up the shield,” he yells, hoping his voice echoes loud enough that John Walker six states over can hear.
“Good to see you too, Buck,” Sam snorts and Bucky’s arm whirs at the nickname. Sometimes he thinks it’s a little too enmeshed in him, even if that was the goal.
Sam stalks past him and Bucky follows close behind, hissing, “This is wrong.”
“Hey, hey, I’m working, alright? So all this outrage is gonna have to wait.”
You can’t schedule emotions, Dr. Raymor mocks in his head, but he shakes it off and points to the posters that 70 years too late he can see as propaganda bullshit. “You didn’t know that was gonna happen?”
“No of course I didn’t know that was gonna happen,” Sam growls, and Bucky has the decency to feel ashamed that he accused him of it. “You think it didn’t break my heart to see them march him out there and call him the new Captain America?”
“This isn’t what Steve wanted.”
“Oh, well that’s funny, because he hasn’t said a damn word about it to me. Does Steve even know you’re here?”
“He’s not my fucking guard dog.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“You had no right to give up the shield, Sam.”
Sam stops him dead and grabs his shoulder. “Hey. This is what you’re not gonna do. You’re not gonna come here in your overextended life and tell me about my rights. It’s over, Bucky. Besides, I have bigger things to deal with now.”
“What could be bigger than this?”
Steve deserves much more than a text reading, “Sam sucked me into a mission. Munich. Should be home for breakfast tomorrow.” But it’s all Bucky has time for before suiting up and getting into a plane to continue arguing with Sam by helping him.
They debate the Big Three for at least fifteen minutes and then the critical acclaim of The Hobbit ’s original release for forty-five. Bucky leaves out the fact that when Steve was sick, real sick, Bucky would sit next to him in bed and read it to him while Steve faded in and out of consciousness. Steve trusts Sam but Bucky still thinks this new century is just a precipice, a fantasy of his younger self and all he’s doing is waiting to say the wrong thing about him and Steve and Sam could kill their whole reputation and yeah, possibly even them.
Steve texts back, “I guess you’re set on keeping all the stupid with you. Stay safe, Buck.”
Bucky manages over a minute and kicks Sam’s ass in a staring contest, but Sam wins seventeen rounds of rock-paper-scissors and Bucky can’t remember for the life of him how the Howling Commandos managed not to kill each other.
There’s no plan. Why would there be a plan? Who would need a plan when running into an open war zone?
Bucky thinks that if he and Sam had met when they were thirteen they’d be inseparable by now. Fortunately for both of them they met when Bucky was a brainwashed assassin and Sam was trying to help kill him, so they can keep driving each other up the wall.
“Enjoy the ride, Buck.”
“You can’t call me that,” he grits out.
“Why not? That’s what Steve calls you.”
“Steve’s known me longer.”
“Oh, so when I’m 105 I get to call you Buck.”
“And Steve had a plan,” Bucky snaps, and both of them laugh because if Steve Rogers is anything he’s a reckless idiot and they are two of the handful people on the planet who know it.
“I have all of that on camera, you know that, right?” Sam’s tinny voice tells him over the comm.
“Steve never sees it,” Buck wheezes out, knowing it’s important enough to waste his wind on. He thinks about the Alps and he thinks about the Valkyrie and Steve’s already at home pacing a hole into the wood, he can feel it, and he doesn’t need to ever give Steve more reason to panic.
Sam understands what he means immediately, and for that Bucky decides not to kill him when he says, “No, but Natasha will.”
And then Bucky decides not only not to kill him, but to trust him, when Sam says, “I think they have a hostage,” and he moves as quick as Bucky does. Plans are bullshit when innocents are involved.
It just makes Bucky all the more angry that Sam ever put down the shield.
“The guy had the fucking nerve to introduce himself as Captain America. To us.” Sam shakes his head, disgusted.
“Oh, I thought we had a mission to focus on,” Bucky mocks.
“I told you that I have bigger things on my mind. Doesn’t mean I can’t be pissed, alright?”
They walk a few more minutes in silence, Bucky flexing his metal fingers instinctively to make sure he still has full use. If he came back damaged after a fight as the Winter Soldier, he was fucked. Old habits die hard when they’re electrocuted into you.
“So Steve really jumped onto a grenade back in basic? That’s not just a myth?”
Bucky grinned, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, he did. 5-foot-nothing and scrawny enough I could lift him with one arm and he dives on top of it without even hesitating. If I’d have been there I’d have…” Bucky wants to say kiss him, but battlefield trust is a little different than trusting someone with a 100-year-old secret. “I’d have knocked some sense into him. Not an ounce of self-preservation in him.”
“Now that we can agree on,” Sam laughs, and he doesn’t bring up Bucky’s hesitation.
“It’s past lunch,” Steve says before the first ring even goes through.
“I know,” Bucky sighs, angrily running a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t exactly the milk run we thought it was gonna be.”
Milk run, Sam mouths mockingly, and Bucky flips him off before turning away from him and quietly talking into the phone.
“Listen, looks like I might be in the field a little longer than I thought.”
Steve hesitates. “Everything alright? You and Sam safe?”
“Yeah, we’re great. I mean, Sam’s uncooperative—”
“Uncooperative? It’s my fucking mission—”
“And borderline impossible to have a normal conversation with—”
“Until this moment I didn’t even know you could talk because the only language you speak is aggressive staring—”
“But years with you have me used to this kind of work environment, so it’s fine.”
“He’s got you there, Steve,” Sam agrees, loud enough for him to hear over the phone.
Bucky knows Steve well enough that he can hear the eye roll. “Well, it sounds like you boys are having fun at least,” he says in a tone that mimics Sarah Rogers so well Bucky would be half-convinced she was on the phone if he hadn’t visited her grave himself.
“Oh, loads. This is the time of my life. Couldn’t imagine anything better,” Bucky deadpans. “Really though, we’re fine. Pass that along to Romanoff, would you?”
“What time should I expect her at the fire escape?”
Bucky laughs. “Listen here you punk,” Bucky starts jokingly.
“No you listen,” Steve says, suddenly serious. “I’m worried about you. Just stay safe, okay?”
Bucky twists his lips hesitantly. “‘Course, Stevie. I got a vibranium arm, right? And Sam can fly. I’ve survived a hell of a lot more than a couple of rogues.”
Steve takes a steadying breath and it takes everything in Bucky not coach him through breathing like he would in his asthmatic days.
“You’re not in Munich anymore?” Steve asks.
“No.” Bucky anticipates the response before it’s said. “I’d rather not say where we’re going over the phone.”
It’s not exactly untrue, he tells himself. Paranoia really is a hell of a drug, and Bucky hates saying anything into phones after the number of bugs and bombs he’s planted in them himself. But he’s also not exactly true because phone or no, Bucky wouldn’t tell Steve where they were headed.
“Okay. You know when you’ll be back?”
“End of the week. If it takes that long.”
“Alright.” Both of them pause for a moment, before Steve says, “I love you, Buck.”
“Sam’s here,” is all Bucky can manage, and he knows Steve knows what he means but it hurts like hell for both of them to hang up the line.
“I’m not a killer anymore.”
Rule #2 says so.
“You think you can wake up one day and decide who you wanna be? It doesn’t work like that.” Isaiah pauses, shaking his head. “Well, maybe it does for folks like you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Isaiah? How could nobody bring him up?” Sam demands. Bucky doesn’t know what to say—nothing he could say would make any of it better. Isaiah is always going to be a man experimented on for the sake of white soldiers. Sam is always gonna be a man who bears that knowledge. “I asked you a question, Bucky.”
“I know.”
He looks angry enough he could spit and honestly if he did worse Bucky wouldn’t blame him. “Steve didn’t know about him?”
“He didn’t,” Bucky promises. “I didn’t tell him.”
“So you’re telling me that there was a black Super Soldier decades ago and nobody knew about it?”
Bucky barely notices how loud Sam is until the cops pull up, and then it’s all he can notice as he clenches his fist. He wants to step between the cops and Sam, but he thinks about how Morita and Jones had told them to act when people said shit about the Howlies being desegregated and he won’t do Sam the disservice of fighting battles he didn’t understand.
They end up at the station anyway and even though Bucky’s the one in trouble Sam’s hands are shaking worse than any stress tremor Bucky’s seen, which is more than fair. He can’t do shit to fix it but he doesn’t try to lighten the mood because he knows there isn’t a joke in the world that can change what cops are like.
Half the reason Bucky complies with this bullshit mandatory session is to get Sam out of the interrogation room quickly.
The fucking call Steve is gonna get later about Bucky and Sam having to to couple’s therapy, Bucky swears. See what happens when I try to play nice, Steve?
“Are you familiar with the miracle question?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Of course not.”
Bucky might have a metal arm but honestly Dr. Raynor’s fist might end up through the table by the end of this. He’s not sure how anyone could keep sane talking to people like him all day.
“Okay, it goes like this. Suppose that while you’re sleeping, a miracle occurs. When you wake up, what is something that you would like to see that would make your life better?”
Bucky, with his ever present sense of team spirit, decides to bite the bullet and go first. “In my miracle, he would… he would talk less.”
“Exactly what I was gonna say. Isn’t that ironic?” Sam snaps and look at that, they’re working like a well-oiled machine.
For a minute when he glances at her out of the corner of his eye Bucky realizes Raynor is doing a damn good impression of Steve whenever he hears Sam and Bucky talking.
“You guys are leaving me with no choice. It’s time for the soul-gazing exercise.”
Bucky grins. “I like this one!”
“Oh my God, he’s gonna love this,” Sam groans over him.
“I’m ready.”
“This is right up your alley.”
Dr. Raynor ignores their conversation and directs them to face each other and get close. They scrape their chairs together and their knees bump and Bucky considers it an accomplishment that he doesn’t flinch away like he does with most touch.
And then she tells them to get even closer and Bucky doesn’t like this at all, and Sam asks, “Why you gotta have your legs open?” and Bucky realizes there’s no way Sam knows about him and Steve because he wouldn’t want to touch Bucky if he did.
He shoves it to the side because this is more important than his comfort because this is his pride and if this is going to be his last regular therapy appointment for awhile he might as well fuck around and mess it up any way he can.
“It’s very close,” Sam agrees. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
The Howling Commandos wouldn’t touch him for weeks the first time they put two and two together and realized what he was.
Maybe there was interference from Raynor’s fingers but Sam still blinks first so Bucky decides he won the staring contest again. He almost points it out, just to derail them, and then Dr. Raynor cuts right to the core of the problem like she always does.
“Alright, James, why does Sam aggravate you?” He grins and gets ready to list out the reasons he’d texted Sam the last time he’d try to reach out on Steve’s request, but she stops him. “And don’t say something childish.”
Bucky thinks about Steve’s lack of nightmares since he started therapy and medication and then he thinks about his own sleepless nights on hardwood floors and for the first time in a long time, he feels jealous of Steve.
So he tries it.
“Why’d you give up that shield?”
“Why are you making such a big deal out of something that has nothing to do with you?” Sam snaps.
“Steve believes in you,” Bucky says because that statement has power, he knows it, it’s the only thing that gets him out of bed some mornings. “He trusts you. He gave you that shield for a reason. That shield? That is everything he stands for. That is his legacy. He gave you that shield and you threw it away like it was nothing—”
“Shut up—”
“—So maybe he was wrong about you, and if he was wrong about you, he’s wrong about me.”
Bucky doesn’t cry even after his worst night terrors, but he finds himself choking on his words. Sam waits and doesn’t say anything about the tears in his eyes because Sam’s a good guy like that, no matter how much Bucky hates every part of himself he sees in Sam.
“You finished?”
“Yeah,” Bucky sighs.
“Alright, good.” Sam’s face hardens. “Maybe this is something you or Steve will never understand. But can you accept that I did what I thought was right?”
Bucky says nothing. And he hates himself for it.
“I know that look,” she says before he can get out. “What’s wrong?”
He turns to her. And he thinks that in this moment he needs exactly one thing from one person, but that person is back at their apartment making his own dinner, alone, while Bucky throws himself around the world and pretends it’s in his honor. He sighs.
“What was rule number three again?”
“You are no longer the Winter Soldier. You are James Bucky Barnes.”
“Right,” he says, like it means anything at all.
“You gonna call Steve?” Sam asks as they stalk away from John Walker.
“You gonna call your sister?” he counters. “You’ve got people hovering over you too.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t in jail.”
“Steve doesn’t need to know.”
“I disagree and that’s why I called and told him.”
Bucky lets his head fall back in frustration. “Fuck you. He’s not my handler.”
He hates how accidentally honest Dr. Raynor makes him, and Sam gives him a look at his phrasing. Bucky waves him off. “You know what I mean.”
Sam’s still not going to let it go, so he says, “I’ll text him on our way.”
“Our way to?”
Bucky pauses because he knows Sam is a hell of a lot more prone to willing survival than Bucky is, and he’s not gonna like this idea.
“When Isaiah said ‘my people…’”