Chapter 4
The door snapped shut behind Bucky, cutting off the sound of the waiting room. The man didn't seem to have realized he was being followed, and he whirled to face Bucky.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"What are you doing here?" Bucky asked. If there was one thing Bucky knew how to do, it was to sound threatening in the face of someone who was a threat. Bucky had a headache from the antiseptic smell and fluorescent lights, his hand was swollen and painful, and panic was making his insides churn. But he knew this guy wouldn't be able to see any of that. Bucky only needed one sentence, and he knew this guy saw him as someone who could end his life in an instant.
The man reached for something at his side. Bucky reacted on instinct, and the gun was in Bucky's hand before Bucky had even consciously realized that there was a gun. Some part of Bucky registered that there was a door next to them, and he knew from the waiting room that this style of door meant stairwell.
He kicked the door open, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and threw him down the stairs. There was a thud but not a crack, and Bucky entered the stairwell to see that the man wasn't dead, as he had kind of hoped, and was instead scrambling backwards across the floor.
Bucky descended the stairs. "You shot Sam," he said. It wasn't a question.
"The Avengers are evil. They killed my wife. They-"
The man reached behind him, and Bucky realized that somehow, he had managed to get into the hospital with another gun.
That was the last straw for Bucky. He wasn't playing nice anymore. He was not going to risk Sam, and he was beyond claiming that this was even an accident.
He jumped down the last few stairs, landing in a crouch just as the man was pulling the gun out. This time, he snapped the man's wrist as he disarmed him. The man cried out, reeling backwards.
Bucky took the opening, and he snapped the man's neck.
The man instantly went limp. The whole fight had taken maybe thirty seconds. Maybe a minute since they'd left the waiting room. And now Bucky had two guns and one corpse. But Sam was safe, and that was all that mattered.
And that was when Bucky heard the sound of footsteps.
That made sense. You weren't generally supposed to hear crashing and banging in a hospital, and he was pretty sure they had not been quiet. People were probably coming to investigate.
Bucky hurried up the stairs, and he had made it to the landing before hospital security opened the doorway.
"Hey," he said. "There's a dead assassin in your stairway." He gestured back at the man lying crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, neck at a brutal angle. "I did it, but it was self-defense. He had two guns."
The two security officers gaped at him, guns out and half-raised. Bucky, in turn, raised his hands, opening them to show that they were empty. He wasn't really in the mood to get shot by panicked security guards today.
"I left the guns at the bottom of the stairs," Bucky told them, just in case they were feeling a bit on the trigger-happy side. "He was trying to kill Captain America. I brought Sam in a few hours ago."
The female officer lowered her gun, nudging her partner in the side. "That's the Winter Soldier," she said in a not-so-subtle whisper. "Look, his hand…. And they told us to be on high alert, that Captain America got brought in…."
Bucky resisted the obvious comment about how he'd hate to see their medium and low alerts, if high alert resulted in an assassin getting into the hospital with two guns, and opted for a fake smile instead.
"That's right," he said. "Can I put my hands down now?"
"Oh. Yes. Sorry, sir," the woman said. "Umm, you're probably going to have to talk to the police. They're...they'll be here really soon." Her partner nodded.
Bucky sighed. "Yeah, okay. I figured." He headed up the stairs towards the duo, hoping that this wouldn't take that long, and that he'd be able to see Sam as soon as the doctors would let him.
Sam felt weird. He wasn't really in pain, although his shoulder felt stiff, and he thought it might hurt if he moved. He just felt floaty, and kind of tired, even though he suspected he'd been in and out of sleep for quite a while.
Sam had been injured often enough to know that this meant that he was on quite a lot of painkillers. He also knew that if he was even able to form thoughts, that meant that this probably wasn't the first time he'd woken up since...since arriving at the hospital.
His eyes opened after only a few tries, and Sam blinked until a white patch of ceiling came into focus. That didn't seem very interesting, so he turned his head until a familiar dark-haired head appeared in view.
Sam grinned softly. "Bucky," he said, as loudly as his voice could manage, which wasn't very loud.
Bucky snapped upright, that beautiful smile of his opening up across his face and creeping into his eyes. Sam basked in it, too high off the painkillers to stop himself. Actually, he wasn't sure he needed to, now. Unless he'd hallucinated the last half of his and Bucky's conversation before leaving his apartment (which wasn't entirely impossible), he was pretty sure that the only reason Bucky had turned him down was that he hadn't realized he was being asked out. Hope remained, and between that, the drugs, and not being dead, Sam was feeling pretty damn good.
"You're awake," Bucky said, sounding actually happy about it. He barely ever sounded happy about anything, even when he was. So that was...that was something.
"Yeah…," Sam said, although he didn't feel entirely awake. "What...what happened?"
Sam remembered Bucky hauling him into the hospital. He remembered a lot of yelling, and then he remembered being laid down on a gurney. He remembered squeezing Bucky's hand, which had been...weird, although not entirely horrible. And then he mostly just remembered looking up at lights and hearing beeping sounds and soft words he couldn't understand being spoken to him and then a whole lot of nothing.
"You got shot in the arm," Bucky said, suddenly sounding worried. "You're in the hospital. You-"
"Remember all that," Sam said. He waved his uninjured arm a little, and then immediately regretted it as the movement did something very unpleasant to his insides.
The idea that Sam might not remember the period immediately before getting to the hospital abruptly struck Sam as funny. Of course Sam remembered. The date conversation. That was important. Unless it was a hallucination.
His thoughts were going in circles. God, he was high. He relished the...not pain that he was in because of the painkillers, but he didn't know how long he would be able to tolerate this horrible fuzziness inside his head.
"You had to get surgery on your shoulder. Repaired some of your...I don't know. Joints, or nerves, or something. They said a normal person probably wouldn't have needed surgery, but they wanted to make sure everything was in good working order, since...you know, you're Captain America. And you need your shoulders to operate the wings."
It hadn't even occurred to Sam to worry about losing mobility in his arm. Now, he was kind of glad that it hadn't. The feeling of panic was washed away by the drugs he was on, and it sounded like Bucky had said everything would be fine anyways.
"How long has it been?" Sam asked.
Bucky checked his watch. "About six hours since the anesthesia started to wear off. This is the third time you've woken up, you know. Doctor said it would be perfectly normal if you didn't remember the first few times though. You were high as a kite."
High as a kite. Yeah, that sounded right. Sam settled deeper into the pillow, wincing at the aches and pains that were, well...everywhere. As far as he knew, his only injury was the bullet wound in his shoulder, so he didn't know why his entire body had to feel so weak and tender. He felt like he'd been hit by a truck. A slight headache was starting to bloom behind his eyes, and the drugs were making him queasy.
"Are you good?" Bucky asked, suddenly impossibly gentle. "They said the painkillers might make you sick to your stomach, and you'd still be exhausted even when you woke up - do you want me to get a nurse?"
Sam didn't think he wanted a nurse. He wasn't sure what purpose that would serve - he was pretty sure the drugs were plenty active in his system. Probably, all they would do would be to poke and prod him and cause him more pain before announcing that everything seemed to be fine.
But before he could even really think through all of that, Bucky was already half out of his seat. "I can call one, but I'll have to hide in the bathroom or something…. It's past visiting hours, they already almost caught me once…."
Sam blinked. "How'd...how'd you get in?"
Bucky nodded to the opposite side of the room. Sam tracked his eyes to an open window. Maybe usually, Sam would be a little stressed at the idea of Bucky breaking into his hospital room, but right now, it just seemed hilarious.
Sam giggled, wincing as the movement jostled his arm. "You really like windows, man," he said.
The corner of Bucky's mouth twitched into a smile. Two smiles in under five minutes, that had to be some kind of record for him.
"Guess I do," Bucky said, then frowned again. "Do you want the nurse, though?"
Sam shook his head, carefully. "Nope. They really don't know you're here?"
Bucky shook his head. With impeccable comedic timing, Sam saw a nurse walk by the slightly open door to the room and pause. Her eyes locked on the back of Bucky's head, and she rolled her eyes and sighed. Sam blinked at her, then back at the oblivious Bucky. By the time he glanced back at the hallway, she was walking away, shaking her head.
"No idea," Bucky said contentedly, leaning back in his chair.
"Course not," Sam mumbled. "Dunno what I was thinkin'."
Bucky looked around at the small room, eyes narrowing. Sam lay still, content to watch Bucky watching things.
"This is a shitty room," Bucky grumbled, frowning viciously at a somewhat sad painting of a duck on the wall near the open window.
"'S kinda like every other hospital room," Sam volunteered. "It's okay."
"Any idea when you're getting out of here?" Bucky asked.
Sam hadn't really thought about that yet. The doctor may have said something to him the last time he was awake, but there was no way he was going to remember that.
"Probably be kind of a while," Sam answered, drawing on his past experiences with hospitals, doctors, and serious injury. "Usually don't let you go home if you don't have anyone to monitor you."
Bucky crossed his arms, rolling his eyes in apparent disdain. "I'm pretty sure I can monitor you just fine. How hard could it possibly be?"
Sam considered. It probably wouldn't be that hard, and Bucky clearly did know some back-alley first aid. He was sure he could manage to change Sam's bandage and take his temperature, or whatever it was the nurses would ask him to do.
And then Sam considered some more. "Wait a second," he said slowly, wondering if the drugs were causing him to miss something obvious. "Don't you...not live at my place?"
"I practically do," Bucky snarled. Sam rolled his head to look up at him. Just in time to see Bucky look down, suddenly unsure. "Or...I could stay. I would stay. For a week, I mean. Until you get back on your feet."
Sam wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. He didn't want to turn away a sincere offer of help from Bucky, not when they were on the edge of...something, certainly. He also honestly kind of wanted the help - as scary as Bucky was, as hard as he could be to live with, Sam would 1000x rather be in his home with Bucky than in the hospital with a bunch of strangers. Especially if there was someone out there trying to assassinate him.
But he also didn't want to ask this much of Bucky, not unless Bucky was really sure. They were...co-workers, technically, and you generally didn't ask your co-worker to move into your house for a week or two and take care of you while you recovered from a bullet wound. Sam was pretty sure he wouldn't even have asked Steve for something like that.
He thought it might be good if he could get all of those thoughts from inside his brain to outside of his mouth. But that seemed sort of impossible right now - he was too sleepy and there were too many drugs. Instead, he settled on "Are you sure?"
To Sam's relief, Bucky didn't answer right away. Sam would have felt worse taking him up on a knee-jerk reaction, and he hoped it was clear that even though Bucky had offered, he was perfectly allowed to say no.
But Bucky slowly nodded. There was a sincerity in his eyes that told Sam he didn't need to question this anymore.
"Good," Sam said. There was a long pause - Sam was completely exhausted, and his thoughts were coming slower. Finally, he smiled. "You'll be like my...bodyguard. Protecting me from...that guy. You know, making sure I don't get shot again."
Bucky looked away from Sam.
"What?"
Bucky didn't say anything.
"What?"
"I already killed him."
Sam thought he must have misheard. "Sorry, what?"
"When you were in surgery, and I was waiting for you to wake up...he...came after you again. He had a gun. Two guns actually. So I threw him down the stairs."
There was a loaded pause, and Sam wondered if he should be freaking out.
"And then I snapped his neck."
If Sam had had two working arms, he would have buried his head in his hands. "You can't...do that, Buck. Oh god, you're going to get arrested, and you're already on probation."
A slow smile crossed Bucky's face. "Actually, I won't."
"What?"
"The police already questioned me, before you woke up. Since he'd brought a gun to a hospital, it was pretty clear self-defense. And I needed to take him out to protect you. There was really no other choice, so they're turning a blind eye."
Sam blinked. "Oh. Umm, good. That you aren't arrested." He thought that he should probably focus more on the part about Bucky snapping someone's neck, but he was drugged and confused and that all seemed a lot easier if he sorted it out later.
"Thanks," he said sleepily, and Bucky waved his words away impatiently with his metal hand. He sat back in the chair, crossing his arms.
Sam narrowed his eyes at Bucky, his exhausted, sludgy thoughts finally putting a few pieces together. If Bucky...if Bucky had already stopped the assassin, then...then he didn't have to go back to Sam's apartment. He didn't have to be sitting in this hospital room, waiting for Sam to wake up. If he was here, it meant that he wanted to be at Sam's side, not that he was there to fulfill some kind of duty Bucky felt that he owed.
A rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the painkillers swept over Sam, and he was pretty sure all the blame for what happened next was attached to that one feeling.
"Think I owe you a beer," Sam blurted out, before he even realized what he was saying. Immediately, he wished he could take it back - Sam had already fucked up the last time he asked Bucky out by being too casual with it, and here he was making the same mistake over again. Besides, Bucky was from the thirties, he probably expected to be asked out in some kind of romantic setting, not by a guy lying high off his ass in a hospital bed. Sam bit down on the inside of his lip. He almost hoped Bucky wouldn't realize what he was asking, and once Sam was back on his feet he could do it right.
Another smile spread across Bucky's face, not the slow smile from before, but a real one, where his teeth showed and his blue eyes sparkled. All of a sudden, he looked like his pictures in the museum, and Sam was finding it hard to breathe. He was pretty sure it wasn't because of the drugs.
"Are you askin' me on a date?" Bucky said, looking Sam directly in the eye and cocking his head a little to the side.
Was Bucky actually asking, or was he flirting? Sam knew that usually, he'd be able to tell, but the fucking drugs were muddling his head and the last attempt had not gone well. He shifted, squirming his way slightly higher up the pillows, and caught Bucky's eye again.
"Uhh, whaddya think you'd say?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow at Bucky.
Bucky ducked his head a little, came up still smiling. He gave a half-shrug. "Think I'd say yes."
"Thank god," Sam mumbled, keenly aware that the drugs were really wrecking his game in the smooth department, while being fully unable to stop it. "Wasn't positive." His eyes closed of their own accord, shutting out Bucky's smile.
"Shit!" Sam forced his eyes open, using the last of his strength to turn towards Bucky again. "I...I am asking you out. To be clear."
Bucky's eyes softened even more, and he laughed slightly. "I did get that. Finally. Umm...and the answer's yes."
He reached out for Sam's hand, a little tentatively, and Sam moved it close enough for Bucky to take in his own. This time, it didn't feel weird, probably because he didn't think he might be dying, and because Bucky wasn't furious at him over a stranger, and Bucky had moved from being his "co-worker" to being the guy Sam had finally asked on a date.
Sam moved his thumb over Bucky's knuckles, and Bucky visibly relaxed in his seat, tension Sam hadn' even known was there melting away from his shoulders. Sam paused, feeling scabs and swollen flesh under his fingers.
"What happened?" he asked, frowning at the Super Soldier. "You okay?"
Bucky nodded, his lips curling into yet another smile, this one soft and a little sad, but mostly...content. "I am now."