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philtstone · 5 months

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22 (kisses on head) Sam Wilson & dealer's choice

its been 84 years & i finally finished writing this .... inspired by life events bc apparently thats how most of my fatws stories seem to work these days. also shoutout to @foolgobi65, my bestie and co-middle aged fictional man. miss u so much, praying that in 1 month i will be a 60 dollar flight away from u, etc etc

It takes Sam a few tries to make the call.

Okay, so maybe that's hypocritical of him. It's okay to reach out to people when you need 'em, Buck. I'm here if you need to talk about anything, B. You know avoiding the world won't make anything easier, man.

Yeah, yeah -- so Sam's sometimes a textbook example of do as I say, not as I do. His sister would be the first to remind him of this, loudly and annoyingly. Recently, Bucky's taken to agreeing with her -- loudly and annoyingly, after he's given Sam a mildly amused eyebrow at the liberal shortening of his already short nickname -- but it's hard to remember that, and the general cross bleeding of their lives over and across like veins, when he hasn't seen Bucky in a month and their texts have been few and far between.

Not for any nefarious reason or anything. Sam's just been busy. Sitting in interminable meetings with assholes. Getting asked inane leading questions about his stance on global politics. Trying to push through the legal work of actually getting clean water to multiple places in literal first world nations. Bull-fuckin’-shit, Sam thinks. There is perpetual grit behind his eyes. The urge to dangle senators by their ankles from the top of multi-story buildings is real. He and Bucky did that a couple times, in the early days, but then Rhodey got in trouble because of it, so they agreed to ease off for a bit. So now Sam hasn’t even got that as an outlet, and it’s on him to figure out this messed up world for everyone else 'cause for every person who seems to care to try it, there are hundreds more who couldn't give a shit. He needs a vacation. Or a reset. Something to remind him what being Captain America is really about.

And Bucky's -- well, he's definitely not retired, but Sam thinks he deserves some peace and quiet, after everything.

The phone rings a fifth time. It's two in the morning. Sam sits in the dark quiet of his hotel room and is about to swipe end call and just content himself with a short text hey man, how's it going? when suddenly the call connects.

Sam squints.

"Why am I looking at a weird corner of your ceiling?" he asks, before his tired brain can catch up to the possibility that maybe something is deeply, horribly wrong, and there are bad guys there, and their mutual worlds are about to end for the twentieth time.

Then Bucky's forehead pops up from behind the kitchen counter.

“Sam, hey,” he says, before Sam can question further. The phone camera shakes like it’s being propped up against something by a hasty hand, “Gimme a sec, I’m in the middle of something.”

The forehead disappears. Not in a normal way, like Bucky walking out of frame, but in a weird way, like Bucky dropping below the counter to the floor.

“C’mon, ya little twerp, slow down a second …”

“Uh …” Sam wets his lips. “Is now a bad time?”

“‘S fine!” calls his friend’s disembodied voice. “Talk, I’m listenin’.” There is a thump, and a small yowl, and a distinctively Bucky-flavoured grunt.

Sam can see the edge of Bucky's stove behind him and slowly registers the warm kitchen lighting and mess of kitchen implements strewn ... everywhere.

"What ... exactly are you doing?"

"Wrangling," says Bucky. "How've you been?"

Could be better should be Sam's honest response. Instead he blinks at the obvious noises of scuffle, the muffled thud of metal limb against laminate kitchen island, some plaintive meows, and ...

Squeaking?

Peep peep peep peep peep.

“Fuckin’ – Alpine!”

“I told you that cat’s possessed,” Sam says, for lack of anything else to contribute to the mystifying noises coming from his phone.

“Aha!” yells Bucky. There is a particularly despondent screech, and the peeping ramps up in intensity.

Three months ago they’d got caught trying to bust some superpowered underground fight club and spent two days stuck in some underground bunker under threat of fighting in said club. Could make big bucks, taking bets on Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Sam wishes those violence-mongering assholes could see the two of them now.

Bucky’s head reappears.

“She’s not possessed,” he says. Sam can’t exactly agree, when directly to Bucky’s left, the little white housecat he found in the dumpsters behind his apartment last February is doing her best to wage feral holy war against the impervious plates of his left hand, which has got her hovering four feet above the ground by the scruff of her neck. Bucky himself seems unbothered by the crazy feline trying to maul his hand, and in fact unbothered in general, despite his wild case of bedhead, hole-ridden pajama shirt and slightly faded underwear all captured in frame. His other hand, stretched all the way out in the other direction, is held tightly in a fist.

And it’s squeaking.

“Bucky,” Sam says slowly, “I get that you got this whole nonviolence thing goin’ on right now –” It’s been a new thing Bucky keeps bringing up in sardonic therapy speak, always raising his eyebrows to show that he’s the only one allowed in on the joke, as if Sam knows he hasn’t touched a gun in three years – “but is two am really the right time to stop your honest to God housecat from takin’ out a mouse in your kitchen?”

“Mouse?” Bucky says with a frown. Then he grins. “Aw, no, I found him in the elevator today. Dunno how he got there.” Then, with impossible gentleness, he brings his fist up to the blurry camera, so Sam can see the fuzzy yellow crown of a tiny, very squeaky duckling.

Sam stares.

“That’s a duck,” he says.

“Duck-ling,” Bucky corrects. “He’s kind of helpless. Kept falling over on its own ass ‘til I brought him up. I think he was in shock.”

Peep, says the little duckling, as if agreeing. Or maybe as if to say, And then you exposed me to your psycho cat, asshole, you don’t think that was traumatizing?

Maybe Bucky speaks duck better than Sam does, because he only grins, widely, and then proceeds to press a small kiss to the top of the duckling’s head.

Sam feels like he must be dreaming.

“You adopted a duckling?” he manages.

“Not officially,” Bucky protests.

“You can’t just adopt a duckling in Brooklyn.”

“I got a bathtub!”

“You got a shower cubicle, man.”

“Okay, fine, I got a sink.”

“Dude, you can’t rehome a duck in your tiny ass sink.”

“He hasn’t got anywhere else to go, Sam, he’s just a baby.”

Sam gestures in mild distress to the cat, who is still trying desperately to escape her vibranium bonds. “Is this not considered a barrier to duck adoption?!” he says.

Bucky sighs, the kind that slumps your shoulders up and down. He holds Alpine up to his face, sternly. She is midway through attempting to chew his wrist with her pointy little cat teeth.

“You got wax in your ears? Knock it off, Sweets. Whaddaya want, more attention? You want a kiss on the forehead, too?”

“I do not get paid enough for this,” Sam says, putting his head in his hands and staring across the room.

Peep peep peep agrees the duckling.

“Look,” Bucky says, gesturing with his duckling hand. “I’ll think of something.”

“Something stupid,” says Sam.

Bucky doesn’t seem bothered, though. “So what’d you wanna talk to me about?” he asks.

Sam pauses. He’s got to think about it now. In fact – the edge of need that had been present just four minutes ago has mostly disappeared. He takes in Bucky’s disheveled appearance again.

“You still goin’ down next weekend?”

It is a long weekend. Thanksgiving, to be precise. Sam has spent many a Thanksgiving dreaming of his sister’s cooking; he’s not sure he has the mental fortitude to skip out on it this year, when nothing world-ending is happening.

Bucky gives him a weird look. “Sure. Are you?”

“Delacroix’s still doin’ its food drive, right?”

“Sure,” says Bucky again. He scratches an itch behind his ear with the watch strap around his right wrist. The duckling squeaks. “Maybe you should go.”

“Maybe I should,” Sam says. He doesn’t feel relief, exactly, but there is a cousin feeling, somewhere in his chest, that he does not have words for at two a.m., “to make sure you won’t be pullin’ lame moves on my little sister.”

“You wouldn’t know a move if it danced naked in front of you, Sam,” Bucky says, without missing a beat. Alpine, who has been quiet since threatened, makes a sudden, aborted move towards Bucky’s right hand. Smoothly, behind the counter, Bucky takes a couple steps back and opens the empty garbage can with his bare foot before dropping Alpine into it. “Behave,” he tells her muffled protests.

“I know so many moves. I am super smooth with the ladies. And your pasty ass better not be doing any naked dancing, or we’ll have words.”

Bucky lets out a very long-suffering sigh. “Just because Ms. Gloria next door likes me best …”

“She makes a mean sweet potato pie every Thanksgiving,” Sam agrees sadly. “I used to get that extra piece, you know?”

“I can’t say no when Sarah invites me, Sam, come on.”

“So she inviting you now, is that how this works? She doesn’t invite me.”

“That’s ‘cause you invite yourself. Or she bullies you into coming home.”

Both of these things being true, they are both laughing before Sam knows it. He is decidedly less exhausted than before. Tired, sleepy, sure, but not exhausted. Bucky has now moved on to cleaning up his kitchen one-handedly, which he’s gotten pretty good at recently. Bucky himself counts it as progress, and so does everyone else.

Sam catches his breath. “Yeah, alright,” he says. “I should get some rest, then.”

He gets subjected to a long look through the camera. “See you next weekend?” Bucky says finally.

And maybe that was the exact question Sam had been itching to ask. It’s been a long while since he’s had a friend that’s basically family. It hits different. Sam’s happy to get used to it again, bit by bit.

“Yeah, I’ll be there. I don’t think I can tell you all the shit I’ve been dealing with unless we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “For security reasons or Sam-telling-a-story reasons?”

“Man, I can tell a story over the phone.”

“Yeah, but you like having the ambiance. Brings the best out in you.”

“Fishing and stories just mix right.”

“Whatever you say, Sam.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, maybe you can bring that little fluff ball with you. Can you imagine takin’ that thing through airport security?”

Except, oh no. Bucky’s eyes are widening with the sharp glimmer of a new, stupid idea.

“Huh,” he says, aloud. Peep peep, says the duckling.

“You are not foisting that duckling on me,” Sam says.

“You do have a bird-themed costume. And Sarah’s house has a bathtub.”

But before Sam can open his mouth to argue, there is the loud crash of the garbage can tipping over, and the blurry white figure of Alpine pouncing onto Bucky’s head.

“Shit! Alpine!”

Sam divines that he’s dropped the duckling.

“You know how long it took me to catch him?!”

Mroooow, howls Alpine, who is now on the counter, blocking most of the frame.

To the renewed sounds of frantic peeping from the kitchen floor, Sam laughs. “Dude,” he says, “you know your neighbors hate your ass right now.”

And it’s maybe fitting, that the last thing he sees before he ends the call is Bucky’s disembodied metal fist, flipping him the bird.

#my writing #its not much but its honest work #the falcon and the winter soldier #sam wilson #bucky barnes #sam x bucky #sarah x bucky #marvel #touch prompt meme

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