A Slow Simmer
The sun was still low when Sam and Bucky slipped away from the house, the old wooden gate groaning behind them as they stepped beyond the pasture fence and into the forested stretch of land that bordered the back of Yelena’s property. Here, the world quieted in the way only a forest could manage—leaves shifting above in lazy conversation, birds chirping low in the underbrush, the crunch of gravel and pine needles underfoot their only constant soundtrack.
It was peaceful. Earthy. Alive.
Sam walked just ahead, his hand brushing the tops of the tall grass that lined the path, his silhouette long in the dappled morning light. Every few steps he glanced back to make sure Bucky was still beside him, grinning when Bucky caught him and muttered something sarcastic about being baby-sat.
“I’m just making sure you don’t wander off and get eaten by a bear,” Sam said.
Bucky scoffed, rolling his eyes as he fought back a smile. “Please. A bear would take one look at me and turn around.”
“Too much metal?”
“Too much attitude, Wilson.”
Sam snorted and kept walking, hands in his pockets now. “I’ll let it know you’re not worth the cholesterol.”
Bucky snorted, shaking his head as he followed Sam deeper into the thicket. The banter helped. The woods were open and sun-splashed, not dark or menacing. The trees were wide and ancient, trunks dappled in moss and light, and the air smelled like pine and wet earth. Bucky breathed it in and felt something loosen just a little deeper inside his chest.
Here, next to Sam, where the world was filtered through leaves and light and calm, the edges of his mind didn’t feel quite so sharp. The itch at the back of his neck dulled—not gone, not forgotten, but quiet.
They walked in silence for a while, letting the rustle of the woods speak for them.
It wasn’t until they reached the shallow creek that Sam spoke again, voice low.
“What did you remember?”
Bucky had already crouched at the bank, letting his fingers sift through the water-worn stones. He picked one up, turned it over in his palm, thumb running the groove of a white quartz line that split the rock unevenly.
“I’m not sure,” He mumbled, brows furrowing slightly. He tossed the stone gently, and it splashed into the stream, ripples pushing out in even circles. “It wasn’t like before. Not like the others.”
Sam knelt beside him. “How do you mean?”
Bucky didn’t answer right away. He picked up another stone, then another, turning them over and over like they might hold answers in their weight. Finally, he said, voice rough around the edges, “As the Winter Soldier, I remember the people I’ve killed. Every face. Every command. It’s not a fog—it’s branded into me.”
He frowned, lip twitching. The scar in his palm burned dully.
“But this… it was different. Not a mission. Not a name or a face. Just—just a feeling. The weight of something heavy on my shoulder. The cold calculation. I remember taking aim… and knowing I was going to end something. Someone.”
He stood abruptly, tossing the stone so hard that it hit a nearby tree with a THUD, embedding into the bark with a sharp crack.
“I don’t know who. I don’t know why. But it’s there now. In the back of my head. Whispering.”
Sam stood slowly, placing a steady hand on Bucky’s lower back.
“That doesn’t mean it was something you did,” he said. “You’ve been triggered before by things that weren’t yours to carry.”
“But this one FEELS like mine,” Bucky murmured, gaze still on the tree trunk. “And if I buried it that deep… what does that say about it?”
Sam stepped in front of him, took his face gently in both hands. “It says you were protecting yourself the only way you could. You’re not that man anymore. Whoever he aimed at—whatever he did—you’re not him.”
Bucky let out a breath, his eyes closing as Sam pressed a kiss to his forehead. The contact grounded him. Reminded him of who he was, in the HERE and NOW. Not just who he used to be.
“Come on,” Sam said softly, hand still around Bucky’s wrist. “Let’s head back. Before Yelena arms Torres with something truly catastrophic.”
That got a half-smile out of Bucky, small and tired.
They walked back through the woods slowly, the sun now higher, golden light cutting through the tree canopy in strips. The cottage was visible again in the distance, smoke curling gently from the chimney, the sound of voices drifting faintly over the fields.
And then—
The unmistakable whine of turbines. The rhythmic whir of metal wings slicing through the air.
Followed by Yelena’s gleeful cackle.
They broke into the clearing just as Torres soared overhead, wings catching the sunlight, dipping low and fast over the pasture while Yelena stood in the middle of the field—
—with a bazooka aimed skyward.
“What the fuck—” Bucky breathed.
There was a sharp WHUMP, and a large paintball—red and furious—exploded against a tree as Torres banked sharply left and dodged it with an ecstatic whoop.
“She loaded it with paintballs?” Sam asked, stunned.
“I tactically modified it!” Yelena shouted from the field. “This is training!”
“THIS IS AWESOME!” Torres yelled, looping back for another pass.
Bucky’s blood turned to ice.
The sound-
That fucking SOUND-
He was back—somewhere else, some other place, smoke in the air and the weight of metal in his hands. A target below. His finger tightening on the trigger. The thud of fire leaving the barrel. The heat. The screaming. The flame as it fell.
The fall.
The fire.
‘I made it burn.’
“No.”
He was sprinting before he could think.
Across the grass. Toward the field. Toward the bazooka and the wrongness and the screaming memory in his skull. Yelena turned just in time to see him rip it from her arms with more force than necessary.
“Holy shit, Barnes—” she started, but stopped, the look on his face freezing her in her tracks.
“Are you out of your MIND?!” he snarled, voice sharp, trembling with something too big for words.
Yelena froze.
Torres landed a few yards away, wings retracting with a metallic hiss, brow furrowed. “Buck?”
Bucky’s chest was heaving. His hand gripped the launcher so tightly that the casing groaned—and then bent with a sickening crunch.
Sam caught up seconds later, eyes scanning the scene with immediate concern. “Bucky—what happened?”
Bucky looked down. The bazooka—cracked and dented—sat in his hands like something monstrous.
“I—” he started, then let it drop. It hit the grass with a soft thud.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t—”
He couldn’t breathe.
Sam was beside him in an instant, both hands on his shoulders, voice low and steady. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Sam said.
Yelena, slowly regaining her footing, shrugged off the tension and rolled her shoulders. “Shit bazooka anyway. Bought it broken. Consider it retired.”
Torres gave a small, reassuring smile, wiping sweat off his brow with an overexaggerated flourish. “I was getting tired anyway. My thighs are killing me.”
They tried to laugh. Tried to ease the moment. And maybe it worked a little.
But Bucky’s hands still trembled.
And that memory—the weight of the launcher, the heat of the missile, the screaming as something fell—stayed in his mind.
Something had broken loose.
And it wasn’t going back in the box.
------------------------------
The truck rumbled down the winding two-lane road, windows rolled halfway down to let in the soft breath of early summer air. Pines flanked both sides of the road, tall and swaying, breaking occasionally into sprawling fields and faded barns with peeling paint, each one looking like it had stood for a hundred years and meant to stand for a hundred more. The bench seat in the back of Yelena’s truck was crowded—Torres was already sprawled across half of it with all the long-limbed exuberance of a puppy, and Sam sat beside Bucky in the middle, one knee touching his as the truck jostled gently over uneven pavement.
Yelena drove like she did everything else—aggressively, confidently, and with absolutely no regard for posted speed limits.
The atmosphere inside the cab was alive with energy. Yelena, practically bouncing in her seat, was rambling excitedly about the new feed mix she’d special-ordered from a supplier upstate. “It’s a senior special blend, all beet pulp with no sugar added,” she explained, steering with one hand and gesturing animatedly with the other. “Boss is going to hate it, which means it’s probably good for him.”
Torres perked up. “Are we going to the same feed store with the weird donkey out front?”
“Harold is not weird,” Yelena replied hotly, pinning him with an annoyed look from behind her aviators. “He’s just misunderstood.”
Sam chuckled from the passenger seat, his hand resting loosely over Bucky’s knee. “I swear, this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone get hyped about a grain run.”
“You get hyped for karaoke, Wilson.” Yelena snapped back.
“Because karaoke is fun.”
“So is grain, asshole.”
Torres nodded solemnly. “I’m with Yelena on this one. I love a good feed store. The smell of alfalfa? The potential of mystery buckets? It’s all very rustic and sexy.”
Bucky barely heard them, gazing into the distance as his knee quietly bounced up and down.
He was staring out the window, his hand clenched around the door handle tight enough that his knuckles were white. The blur of pine trees rolled by like a lazy filmstrip, but he wasn’t seeing them. Not really.
Instead, something else pressed behind his eyes—a heat, a pressure, the shimmer of light on sand.
The woods were gone.
He was in a desert.
Bright sun overhead. Too bright. Blinding. The kind that made the horizon waver and pulse with mirages. His boots crunched on loose rock as he crouched low near a scrub brush, the sting of sun-baked metal burning into his shoulder port. Wind whistled through a narrow ravine below him—hot and dry and filled with grit—and high above, jagged cliffs waited, the cliffside sharp and deadly.
He looked up. The path was narrow, nearly vertical. There were no ropes. No gear. Just fingers, bruised and bloodied, and an order. A directive: ‘Get higher.’
So he climbed.
The memory hit in fractured glimpses—fingertips digging into stone, the rasp of fabric tearing as he scraped against the rock face, his breath shallow and steady despite the altitude. Methodical. Detached. Not like now. Not like Bucky Barnes.
Back BEFORE. The Winter Soldier. Efficient. Cold. Inhuman.
And yet… something else pulsed beneath it. A frustration. Not the detached obedience of most missions, but something closer to anger. He was hunting something. Or someone.
The mountain gave way beneath his memory. The rock fell. The sand blurred. And just like that—
“Buck.”
The word was soft, but it might as well have been a thunderclap.
Bucky blinked hard and turned, Sam’s hand warm and grounding against his thigh.
They were parked.
The feed store rose in front of them like a living postcard—faded red siding, hand-painted signage curling slightly at the edges, a rusted tractor out front. A wide awning stretched over wooden rocking chairs and shelves of seed packets, and sure enough, Harold the donkey stood pensively in a paddock near the edge of the lot, chewing slowly and judging everyone.
Yelena and Torres were already out of the truck, mid-argument.
“I just want one lesson,” Torres insisted, arms crossed. “Just ONE.”
“I like you,” Yelena said. “I don’t want you dead.”
“I’ve got good instincts!”
“You screamed when a duck looked at you.”
“That duck was aggressive!”
Sam exhaled a soft laugh and turned back to Bucky, the lines around his eyes creased in concern. “You okay?”
Bucky hesitated.
He should’ve said no.
But instead, he nodded, sucking in an unsteady breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
Sam didn’t push. He just opened the door and helped Bucky down, his hand lingering a moment too long at Bucky’s waist—steady, warm and familiar.
Bucky plastered a smile onto his face. It felt wrong, the skin across his jaw pulled tight. It felt like it belonged to someone else, another mask.
But it was good enough to fool everyone. At least for now.
They walked across the gravel lot together, the sharp crunch beneath their boots oddly grounding. Bucky forced himself to listen, making himself stay present to Torres’s running commentary about grain quality, Yelena’s long-suffering sighs, and to Sam’s occasional amused hums. The sunlight spilled warm across his shoulders, the scent of hay and cedar thick in the air.
But all he could see were cliffs, the burn in his arms as he had climbed.
Something had happened there—wherever THERE was.
And whatever it was, it wasn’t good. He could feel it in his bones.
------------
The feed store sat just off the main road, tucked between two old oak trees and a long stretch of fencing that had seen its fair share of sun and rain. It was one of those buildings that seemed like it had been there forever, stubborn and proud in its simplicity. A hand-painted sign hung above the door—“Carter’s Farm & Feed”—with faded green lettering and a small hand-drawn chicken in the corner. The porch was shaded, wrapped in creaking planks and rocking chairs that looked older than time itself, with flower boxes blooming lazily in the July heat.
Inside, the air was cool and dry, humming with the low churn of ceiling fans and the scent of cedar, hay, leather, and molasses. Dust swirled in lazy motes through the beams of golden light slanting through the high windows, and the wooden floor groaned pleasantly underfoot. It was a space that felt lived in. Reliable. A piece of the past that had never stopped being useful.
The bell above the door jingled cheerfully as they stepped in, and Yelena was immediately in her element.
"Alright, peasants," she said, grabbing a cart and tossing in a bag of Funyuns like it was a weapon. "You have one job. Don't get in my way."
Torres, naturally, bolted toward the back of the store, calling over his shoulder, "Sam! You gotta see this—there's an entire section of horse snacks shaped like tiny donuts!"
Sam, grinning, gave Bucky a quick squeeze to the shoulder and followed after him.
Bucky lingered by the entrance for a moment. The calm of the place seeped into his skin, helped by the smell, the quiet, and the low murmur of distant chatter. Then Yelena waved him over with a dramatic flourish, and he found himself trailing behind her through rows of halters, grooming kits, and towering stacks of grain bags.
“This one,” she muttered, squinting at two nearly identical tubs of fly spray. She brought them both up to Bucky’s face, nearly smacking him in the nose. “This one smells like desperation, and this one smells like death. Thoughts?”
Bucky raised an eyebrow, grimacing at the near miss. “Is ‘smells like nothing’ not an option?”
Yelena scoffed, tossing the bottle that apparently reeked of death into the cart. “You’re so dull, Barnes.”
They continued, Yelena narrating every aisle like a tactical operation, peppering her analysis of horse vitamins and feed composition with one-liners that made Bucky crack a smile more than once. It wasn’t that she was trying to make him laugh—Yelena didn’t try for much—but there was something about the sharpness of her, the way she met the world head-on, that cut through the haze that had been weighing down on him since the moment they arrived in Southern Pines.
“You’re unusually quiet,” she said at one point, tossing a stack of saddle pads into the cart.
“Taking in the majesty of equestrian retail, is all.” Bucky deadpanned, quirking a brow at an oddly shaped hoof pick.
“Good. Learn something. I’ll quiz you later.”
He followed her through the aisles with a strange sense of peace blooming in his chest. There was no mission here. No pressure. Just the rustle of plastic bags, the murmur of the old radio by the front desk playing country music from three decades ago, and the low hum of air conditioning that smelled faintly of pine.
By the time they rejoined Sam and Torres near the register, the cart was overflowing with an eclectic mix of practical supplies and deeply questionable impulse buys, including a novelty grooming brush shaped like a unicorn.
Sam was holding a bag of licorice treats and smiling warmly at Bucky. “You two bond over the fly spray?”
“I tried my best,” Bucky said simply, rolling his shoulders. “She chose the one that smells like death.”
“Effective and thematic,” Yelena added.
Torres held up a package of glitter-infused hoof balm. “Do you think Boss would like this? You know what? Never mind. I want it either way.”
They bantered through the checkout process, laughing as the cashier scanned item after item with increasingly bemused eyebrows. Yelena paid in cash and a bag of homemade dog biscuits, apparently part of some old southern barter system that Bucky was clueless to. Outside, the sunlight was bright but not overbearing, and together they loaded the truck with feed bags and supplies, moving like a well-oiled, chaotic machine.
Torres sang snippets of a country song badly. Sam called out to him every time he tried to stack things wrong. Yelena directed them all like a four-star general with a bag of Funyuns hanging out of her mouth.
Bucky moved among them easily, muscles working out of habit as he hauled fifty-pound sacks and stacked grain with a quiet competence. There was a rhythm to it—sweat, sun, laughter—and the occasional whistle from Sam that made him look up and meet that warm, familiar smile, that soft burn coiling low in his gut.
They were halfway through loading the last of the fly spray into the truck bed when Yelena turned to him, one boot propped on the tailgate and eyes squinting against the sun.
“Hey, Barnes,” she said, casually. “When we get back, want to help me paint the barn?”
Bucky blinked.
The question was simple. Offhand. But it settled deep in his chest like an anchor in still water.
“Yeah,” he said softly, gently picking at a piece of hay stuck to his henley. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Yelena gave a sharp nod, already grabbing the last two items. “Good. I’m thinking red. Or black. Haven’t decided yet. Depends on how dramatic I feel when I open the paint cans.”
Bucky chuckled, and Sam nudged his shoulder gently as they climbed into the truck. “You just volunteered for an entire day of chaos.”
“I’ve had worse,” Bucky replied, and meant it.
The truck rumbled to life as they pulled out of the gravel lot, the road ahead stretched beneath the long afternoon sun, and for the first time in a long while, Bucky felt something he hadn't in weeks—not just calm, not just functional.
He felt wanted.
He felt home.
--------------
By the time they pulled back into the long, sun-drenched drive of Yelena’s property, the air had shifted into the mellow warmth of late afternoon, thick with the scent of pine, sunbaked grass, and distant honeysuckle. The feedstore trip had left them all a little more dust-covered, a little louder with leftover laughter, and entirely more tangled together in the kind of domestic chaos Bucky was beginning to realize he genuinely enjoyed.
The truck rattled to a stop near the barn, gravel crunching under the tires as Yelena threw it into park with more enthusiasm than precision. The structure loomed just ahead, solid and old but well-kept—its white paint peeling at the corners, the trim faded from sun and weather. It stood like a sentinel at the edge of the pasture, horses dozing in the afternoon heat behind it, tails flicking lazily at flies.
Yelena hopped down from the driver’s seat and rounded the back, her eyes narrowing as she took in the barn with a critical squint. “Right,” she said, ripping open the first can of paint with a pocketknife and a little too much flair. “We’re going black.”
Torres, stretching dramatically as he climbed out of the truck bed, blinked. “Like… the whole thing?”
“Black is modern. Sleek. Slightly evil. It says ‘we have hay, but also secrets.’”
Sam laughed, already starting to unpack the wings from the storage case strapped to the back of the truck. “It says we should probably not leave you alone with power tools.”
“That too,” Yelena said, waving a hand. “Barnes, grab a brush.”
Bucky obeyed without hesitation, sliding off his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his henley. He moved toward the barn like he’d done it a hundred times before, grabbing a brush and dipping it into the smooth black paint without fanfare.
Yelena joined him on the ladder, scooting up one side while he tackled the other. They worked in tandem, the scrape and slap of brushes against wood the only sound between them at first, comfortable and companionable.
In the nearby field, Torres and Sam had moved into their training. Sam launched into the air with an easy burst of his wings, sleek and fast and absolutely seamless as he arced upward. The wind caught his jacket, flared it out behind him like a second set of wings, and Bucky stilled for a moment—paintbrush dangling in one hand, the other braced against the ladder—just watching.
It was impossible not to.
Sam flew like he was made for it. Like the sky welcomed him. The gleam of sunlight off the vibranium wings, the way he twisted midair with such precise control—it took Bucky’s breath away every time. Even now, even after all this time, something in him stopped cold when he saw Sam like that. Like he’d caught sight of something divine.
He didn’t even realize he was staring until Yelena cleared her throat sharply, and he turned just in time to see her raise an unimpressed eyebrow.
“Gross,” she said, flicking her brush in his direction and sending a splatter of black paint across the cuff of his shirt.
Bucky chuckled, low and sheepish. “What?”
“You’ve been watching him like you’re in a Jane Austen novel,” she muttered. “He’s flying, not proposing.”
Bucky wiped at the splatter with a rag and shook his head, still smiling. “Can’t help it.”
“Ugh. Disgusting. I hope you two never break up. It would ruin my faith in love.”
He dipped his brush back into the paint, giving her a sly smirk. “You have faith in love?”
“Only when it’s between dramatic war veterans and self-righteous superheroes.”
They kept working, the sun shifting behind them and casting long golden shadows across the barn. The rhythm of the painting settled into something meditative—back and forth, coat by coat, slow and deliberate. Occasionally, Yelena would hum under her breath or make a dramatic show of insulting Torres’s form in the field. Sam, in return, would shout something witty from the air, and Torres would laugh, breathless, trying to keep up.
For once, everything felt… good.
It wasn’t loud or grand or exceptional.
It was just steady.
The kind of day Bucky never used to think he’d have.
They were about halfway through the second coat when the crunch of tires on gravel broke the calm. A black SUV, too far to make out much else, pulled into the driveway, dust curling in its wake.
Yelena cursed under her breath. “Shit.”
Bucky looked over, alert immediately, but she waved him off with a sigh.
“Riding lesson,” she said, already climbing down the ladder. “Forgot I booked it this afternoon.”
“You need help?” he asked, halfway ready to put down his brush.
She shook her head. “Nah. You’ve got this. Besides, it’s therapeutic, right?” She gave him a sharp smile and added, “Barns don’t judge. Besides, you’re shit with horses.”
He watched her jog off toward the approaching car, calling something over her shoulder in a Russian accent that sounded faintly like a slur.
And just like that, he was alone. Not in a bad way. Not in a lonely way. Just… alone.
He picked up his brush again and turned back to the wall, shoulders settling as he began methodically painting again.
It felt good.
To be trusted. To be doing something useful. To not be watched like a bomb that might go off.
The sound of laughter drifted from the field as Sam swooped down toward Torres, and Bucky paused for a moment, letting the echo of it settle in his chest like the last note of a song he never wanted to stop playing.
He stayed like that for a long heartbeat, standing on the ladder halfway up the barn wall, one hand resting on the edge of the wood where he’d been brushing the second coat of black paint. The sun caught in the high beams of the old structure, casting long glistening bars across the tall grass, and for a moment everything slowed. The laughter, the rustle of leaves, the occasional snort of a horse in the pasture beyond—it all became the low, comforting thrum of life.
This life.
A good one.
He glanced toward the field where Sam and Torres were still mid-flight—Torres twirling unsteadily, shouting something dramatic, and Sam laughing so hard it echoed like music over the trees.
Bucky exhaled and turned back to the barn.
Focus.
He dragged the brush steadily along the sun-warmed wood, watching the black paint soak into the grain, filling old grooves and weathered scratches like they were being sealed away. It helped, a little. The repetitive motion, the weight of the work. It gave him something to anchor to. Something to do besides spiral.
Because ever since they’d gotten to Southern Pines, something had been gnawing at the edge of his mind like a dull, invisible blade. Not sharp enough to cut, not yet—but persistent. That ache of memory trying to surface, of recognition brushing just out of reach.
But right now—right now—he didn’t want to think about it.
He wanted to hold onto this. To the quiet hum of a day well spent. To the half-finished barn gleaming beneath the early evening sun. To the scent of pine and dust and the faint metallic tang of paint on his fingers.
To Sam.
God, Sam.
Bucky had never known it could be like this. That love could be warm and constant, not some violent flaring thing that burned too hot and too fast. With Sam, it was steadier. Quieter. Like a tide rolling in, again and again. Gentle. Sure.
Sometimes, Bucky still found himself stunned by it. By the way Sam looked at him like he was whole. By the way he laughed and leaned into Bucky’s shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world. By the small touches—fingers brushing his wrist, a hand on his back, a kiss to his temple when no one was looking. Each one was a thread in the net that kept him grounded, tethered to this life he never expected to have.
And sometimes—when he let himself think too long—Bucky felt like he didn’t deserve it. Like all the blood on his hands, all the years he’d spent as something else, someone else, should disqualify him from this kind of peace.
But Sam had never treated him like he was broken.
Sam had only ever seen him.
And loved him, anyway.
The sound of footsteps caught his attention, and he looked down in time to see Yelena striding past beneath the ladder, her blonde braid swinging behind her and a little girl trailing after her, holding a lead rope too long for her tiny hands. The girl couldn’t have been older than nine, with scuffed boots, jeans two sizes too big, and a helmet already slightly askew.
Yelena glanced up with a smirk. “You missed a spot, Barnes.”
Bucky huffed a soft laugh. “You’re just mad I’m doing it better than you.”
“That’s debatable,” she called over her shoulder as she ushered the girl into the barn. “Try not to fall off the ladder and traumatize a child.”
“No promises.”
He heard the girl giggle, the high, bright sound drifting out just before the barn doors swung shut behind them. The moment passed, and he returned to his painting, but his lips stayed curled in a small, amused smile.
Yeah. It was a good day.
Then there was the sound of turbines—the soft, familiar hum of Sam’s wings just before he appeared, hovering lazily at ladder-height, grinning like a damn fool.
“Hey there, soldier,” Sam said, casually bobbing in place, arms crossed over his chest like he hadn’t just flown a graceful loop over the field two minutes ago.
Bucky paused, leaned back slightly, and tilted his head, giving Sam a slow appraising look. “Show off.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “You’re just mad because I look better doing aerial flips than you do climbing a ladder.”
“Ladders are a lost art, Samuel. This takes a special skill.”
Sam smirked, then tilted his body slightly in mid-air, coming closer until his boots hovered just inches from the rung Bucky was standing on. His eyes softened, the teasing melting into something gentler, something that always made Bucky feel like the only person in the world.
“I love watching you like this,” Sam said quietly. “Just… here. Doing normal shit. It looks good on you.”
Bucky didn’t know what to say to that. Not really, his heart starting to race at the close proximity.
So he didn’t say anything.
He just stared at Sam with that same quiet awe he always felt when he realized—over and over—that this man loved him. Had chosen him.
Sam leaned in, brushing a kiss to his cheek, featherlight and fleeting.
And then, just as quickly, he grinned again. “Gotta go—Torres thinks he can outrun me in flight if he stays low to the ground. Time to crush his hopes and dreams.”
Bucky blinked. “You’re such a menace, Wilson.”
“You love it,” Sam called back, already flipping backward mid-air.
“I do,” Bucky whispered, smiling to himself.
He turned back to his painting, heart full, breath caught somewhere between laughter and something deeper.
And then—right on cue—Yelena’s voice rang out from inside the barn, sharp and scandalized.
“HEY! There are children here! Save the eye-fucking for later!”
The silence that followed was so sharp it could’ve cut wood. Even the birds seemed to stop chirping.
Then, as if realizing her mistake in real time, Yelena’s voice came again—this time an octave higher and pitched with an almost cartoonish innocence.
“I meant… eye-contacting! You know. Friendly gazes. Like—like good coworkers share.”
From inside the barn came the small, incredibly unimpressed voice of a child.
“Miss Lena said a bad word.”
There was a beat.
“No, I didn’t,” Yelena replied flatly. “You misheard. I said—fluff. I said eye-fluffing.”
“‘Fluff’ isn’t a word.”
“What? Of course it is! How can you- you know what? No. Never mind. It is now. Congratulations, you’ve learned something today.”
Bucky nearly dropped his paintbrush again, shoulders shaking as laughter bubbled up. He was halfway down the ladder, gripping the rung with one hand and trying not to double over as he listened to Yelena fumble her way through this linguistic disaster.
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” he called toward the barn, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
A moment later, Yelena came striding out with Boss’s lead rope in one hand and a sugar cube already held out in the other—bribery in action. The kid beside her looked vaguely smug. Boss, the grumpy old gelding with more attitude than grace, followed behind them with his usual lumbering gait, ears flicking in annoyed half-turns like he had better places to be.
“I heard that,” Yelena called back to Bucky, raising her voice over the crunch of gravel beneath her boots.
Bucky raised a brow, giving her a mocking look. “I wasn’t whispering, Belova.”
“You know what happens when you mock me, Barnes?”
“You fall down a well and I laugh?”
Yelena turned, walking backward with one hand still holding the cube toward the kid. “One day, I’m gonna get really rich and famous, and you’re gonna be stuck painting barns for the rest of your life.”
“Joke’s on you,” Bucky muttered, going back to work, “this is the most peaceful I’ve felt all week.”
“You’re sad!” she tossed over her shoulder.
“You love me, though.”
Yelena snorted. “I tolerate you. There’s a difference.”
Boss huffed behind her like he agreed.
They kept going, the kid walking proudly with the reins in hand while Yelena adjusted the girl’s helmet and continued muttering under her breath about the decline of language and the dangers of affectionate eye-contact. Bucky shook his head, still smiling, and dipped his brush back into the paint, the thick black streaks spreading clean and even against the sun-bleached wood.
The quiet settled in again, the kind of quiet that wasn’t really quiet at all—just made up of softer sounds. The rhythmic scrape of his brush against the barn siding. The distant thud of hooves in the arena. The low hum of cicadas. And beyond it all, further out in the field, the sharp whoosh of Sam’s wings and the occasional muffled curse from Torres when something didn’t go as planned.
It was peaceful, but alive.
Full of sound and sun and something that felt like... home.
Bucky worked steadily, taking pride in the clean lines of the barn wall, the way the paint caught the light just right. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t heroic. But it was tangible. Real. Something he could do and finish and step back from with a sense of accomplishment.
Somewhere behind the barn, he heard a shout.
“WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE LEFT WING?!”
Torres.
A beat later—crashing. Something large and definitely unplanned.
Then: “Ow! Fuck! Oh my God! I ate a lizard... SAM!”
Bucky paused, brush mid-stroke.
A second later, Sam rocketed into view over the barn roof, moving fast enough that the wind hit Bucky like a slap—snapping his shirt against his chest and sending loose grass skittering across the dirt. Sam was howling with laughter as he shot past, twisting in the air like a showoff, his wings gleaming in the sun.
Bucky blinked after him, shaking his head as he went back to his painting. “Children,” he muttered.
The side of the barn was almost done now, and he paused long enough to take a drink of water, leaning against the ladder as the sun began to sink lower in the sky. The light had turned golden, casting long shadows across the grass and bathing everything in a warm, sleepy hue. The air smelled like hay and paint and the faint, sharp bite of sweat.
From the arena, he could hear Yelena again.
“Sit up straight! Boss is not your couch!”
“I’m trying!”
“Boss does not care. He has no sympathy. He’s basically a bitter old man in a horse suit. Respect him accordingly.”
The kid giggled. Bucky could hear it even from this distance. It was a good laugh. Bright and free. The kind of laugh he’d never thought he’d hear on Yelena’s property, of all places.
He finished the last board in silence, then stood back and admired the work for a moment, feeling something in his chest loosen. The paint glistened in the sunlight, neat and dark and uniform. It looked good.
He turned toward the arena.
Yelena stood in the middle, her hands on her hips and her braid slipping loose from its tie, giving instruction with the sharp precision of someone who’d clawed her way toward this kind of peace. Boss moved in slow, wide circles, his gait steady under the little girl. And Yelena—Yelena coached with a voice that was clear and strong and full of surprising patience.
She was good at it.
Better than he’d expected.
Better than maybe she even realized.
He leaned against the fence and watched for a while, listening to her guide the girl through a new transition, calmly correcting posture, giving small encouragements when it went well. He remembered when he’d first met her—angry, wounded, a wild thing barely containing her grief and rage. He remembered her eyes: too big, too haunted. A kid pretending to be a soldier.
And now—this.
She’d built something here. Something honest. Something lasting.
It hit him then, slow and deep: pride.
Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that sat in his chest like a warm weight.
He was proud of her.
Of everything she’d survived. Everything she’d chosen to become.
From assassin to instructor. From escapee to protector.
Yelena turned her head and caught him watching. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then she raised a brow and mouthed across the distance:
“What?”
Bucky shrugged.
She squinted, then pointed at him, mouthing again, slower this time: “Still gross.”
He grinned.
God, he loved her. Like a sister. Like someone who had seen every broken part of him and kept coming back anyway.
And now—he watched her give that same stability to someone else. It felt like a small miracle.
Bucky leaned forward against the sun-warmed fence, arms folded, weight pressed into the worn wood, his chin slightly dipped as he tracked the slow movement of Boss making lazy circles around the arena. The girl atop him looked confident, reins loose in her hands, the sweat-damp edges of her hair stuck to her cheeks. The lesson was winding down, and there was something about the stillness of it—the slow rhythm of hooves, the low encouragement of Yelena’s voice, the way the light filtered hazy and soft through the trees—that made him forget, just for a moment, how much weight he’d been carrying since they’d arrived in here.
Yelena gave a few more brief instructions, sharp and specific, then nodded once. “Let him walk a few cool-down laps, loose rein. Don’t let him cut corners.”
The girl chirped an obedient “Yes, ma’am,” and Boss huffed like he was personally offended by the concept of work but obeyed anyway.
Yelena wandered over, her bootsteps crunching in the dirt, and leaned against the opposite side of the fence, arms slung casually across the top rail. She looked... peaceful. Bucky had seen her in a lot of modes—deadpan, bloodthirsty, emotionally repressed—but not this. There was something almost domestic in the ease of her posture, the quiet satisfaction that softened the corners of her eyes.
He smiled.
Immediately, she scowled.
“What?” she snapped.
“Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me like you just watched a baby deer take its first steps. Cut it out.”
“You get all soft and maternal, I get sentimental. It’s science.”
“I will staple your mouth shut.”
“Boss would never allow that.”
“Boss would spit on your grave.”
They both fell quiet, watching the little girl tug gently on the reins as Boss curved around a corner. The sun had dipped lower now, and shadows stretched long across the yard. Cicadas hummed faintly in the distance. For a few minutes, everything felt still and golden and good.
Until the engine broke it.
Low. Smooth. Familiar in all the wrong ways.
Bucky stiffened before he even turned. Gravel crunched as a sleek black SUV rolled down the drive, too clean for a place like this, its tinted windows gleaming. Government-issued, or close enough to make his teeth grit.
“That’s definitely a SOCOM-issued SUV,” he muttered under his breath.
Yelena sighed long and loud beside him. “You are like a retired bloodhound with PTSD.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“No. That’s the problem. Apparently he’s special ops or former, I don’t know. The kid’s sweet. They pay me. Boss tolerates her. That’s all I care about.”
The SUV rolled to a smooth stop. Two doors opened in tandem. The mother exited first, a blonde woman with kind eyes and a light sweater tied around her waist. She waved with an easy smile as she walked toward the arena, calling out to Yelena with warm thanks and praise for the lesson.
Bucky barely registered her.
Because the man who stepped out next was already locking eyes with him.
Everything about him was calculated. His movements were measured, posture loose but alert. He had the broad frame and square jaw of someone who could disappear into military anonymity if he needed to, but his presence was too sharp, too focused to fade into the background.
His eyes found Bucky’s and held.
Not curious. Not admiring. Evaluating.
Sizing up.
Bucky felt the familiar pull of adrenaline tighten behind his ribs, but he didn’t move. Instead, he shifted just enough to seem relaxed, leaning a little heavier into the fence rail, lips twitching upward into a lazy, unreadable smirk. He returned the stare evenly.
The man approached.
“Beautiful day,” he said, voice even and deep. Friendly enough to pass for casual. But too clean. Too deliberate. The kind of delivery that came rehearsed.
Bucky let the smile curl into something just shy of mocking. “Is it?”
The man tilted his head a fraction. “You local?”
“Nope.”
“Just visiting?”
“Something like that.”
The guy smiled then—polite, empty. “Military?”
“Once.”
The man chuckled as if they were sharing a joke. “Aren’t we all?”
There was something about the way he stood, the way he didn’t glance at anything else—just Bucky—that scraped at the back of Bucky’s skull. That itch was roaring now. The kind of itch you didn’t scratch because it meant a knife might be coming next.
“You look familiar,” the man added, his gaze dropping—inevitably—to the glint of vibranium catching the sun at Bucky’s wrist. “Can’t place it, though.”
“Guess I’ve got one of those faces.” Bucky said sarcastically, his tone biting.
“Or arms.”
Bucky didn’t blink, keeping his gaze cool and even. “You want a picture?”
The man’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Already got one. Probably.”
And there it was.
Bucky leaned in just slightly, voice quiet. “You always interrogate strangers at your kid’s riding lesson, or am I just that special?”
The man raised his hands in mock surrender. “Just curious. Always nice to know who’s around your family.”
Bucky nodded slowly, like he was chewing it over. “Sure. I get that. Real protective. Got the look of someone who sleeps with his boots on.”
The man’s smile twitched. “Sometimes the job stays with you.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Their eyes locked, a beat too long. Neither of them moved. The air between them tightened.
Then the sound of tiny boots thudding against packed dirt broke the moment as the girl ran up to the gate, grinning ear to ear.
“Daddy!”
The man turned just in time to scoop her up effortlessly, shifting from predator to father in an instant, voice warm and low. “There’s my girl. You ready to go?”
She nodded enthusiastically, arms thrown around his neck.
He turned, carrying her toward the SUV, the sunlight catching the hard lines of his jaw, the way his hand cradled the back of her head with practiced ease.
But just before he reached the car, he glanced back.
And his eyes met Bucky’s one last time.
This time, there was no smile. Just a cold, careful study, as if he was logging the final details for later.
Then he disappeared into the vehicle, the doors shut, and the SUV pulled away with barely a sound.
Bucky didn’t move for a long moment.
Yelena sidled up beside him, Boss’s lead rope in her hand. She didn’t say anything at first, just stared down the road where the SUV had vanished.
Then, flatly: “That felt like a stare-down between two trained assassins, and I hated every second of it.”
Bucky let out a slow breath through his nose. “Something’s off about him.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That was... not how he usually acts. He’s usually invisible. Lets the wife do the talking. Today he stared you down like he knew your blood type.”
Bucky’s fingers flexed slightly around the fence rail. “I think he knows something. Or wants me to think he does.”
Yelena glanced sideways at him, eyes sharper now, a familiar glint in her eye. “Think he’s a threat?”
“I don’t know,” Bucky muttered. “But he’s watching. That much I’m sure of.”
She jerked her chin toward the barn. “Come on. You can angst over it while we feed the diva. He’s already giving me the look.”
Boss snorted like he agreed.
Bucky pushed off the fence and followed, but his eyes lingered on the empty road long after the SUV was gone. And that itch—deep, burning, clawing at the edge of something he couldn’t quite name—had only gotten worse.