Chapter 3
This, what has happened to them and happened specifically in Bucky’s body, is unspeakably awful. It is among one of the more awful events of Sam’s life. That awfulness threatens to take hold of Sam and press him down, to force him under the surface of all he is feeling and make him drown, gasping hopelessly for air while both him and Bucky suffocate. But, Bucky remains frozen in unclean and possibly unsafe water, still bleeding if the darkening of the water is anything to go by, and Sam needs to fix that before he can be engulfed.
“You-we need to get you up and cleaned off. We should drain the tub,” Sam says. It’s helping him to have orders to give and actions to take. It’s preventing him from thinking about their loss too much and subcomming to the pull of sorrow. Bucky doesn’t hear him, or maybe he does and chooses not to react. He keeps his back flat to the tub and his face horrifically blank. Sam yanks up a large tug of air through his nose and sets a palm on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky slumps against it, “Hey, we have to-”
“Yeah, okay,” Bucky sighs. He rises up with no force, drips of bloody water falling off him with small clinks. Sam reaches in front of him and pulls the stopper off the drain. Everything sludges down and away. The repellent viscera alongside all their hopes and imaginings of what their lives were to be swirl away together. Sam blinks roughly a few times and the tears subside. No time to dwell; Bucky needs to be cleaned up.
The boxers get taken off before anything else is done. Sam shoves them into the trash can and considers burning them the first chance he gets. After that, Sam undresses himself and turns on the spray of the shower. He watches Bucky stand lifeless in its path, the jets of water slamming his chest and face and legs. Sam comes to realize after a few seconds of this that Bucky doesn’t intend to move at all. So, Sam does what needs to be done. He picks up a loofa, deposits some body wash into its middle, and starts scrubbing Bucky’s body himself.
“Did . . . did you ever end up telling Sarah?” Bucky asks as Sam lands at his chest. Bucky has been so rigid and silent that, when he speaks, it shocks a jolt through Sam’s body. It takes him a moment to understand the question.
“No.”
He and Bucky were supposed to do that together. It was going to be an event when they told Sarah. Sam had even been considering sending her one of those cheesy, mass produced ‘Best Auntie’ shirts to arrive alongside their call, which Bucky had shot down outright. But they didn’t make it there.
“That’s good,” Bucky mutters. Sam’s hand drops from Bucky’s sternum. Is it? Sam guesses it’s for the best that they didn’t let anyone in on their small, shared joy only to have to tell them what has happened now. Though, mainly, not getting to tell his sister and nephews about their family growing feels like another robbery.
Bucky ducks under the water, shaking his hand through his hair as he does, and waits until all the soap has run off him. Then, without a word, he leaves the shower and Sam standing there with an over soaked loofah squashed in his hand. His breath trembles roughly out of him, and he can’t. He can’t stand here where he found Bucky, rusty marks on the white porcelain still coming off under his feet. He switches the water off and grabs a towel before he heads to the bedroom.
Bucky’s laying on the bed, turned away from the door, when Sam comes into the room. He hasn’t gotten dressed, instead wrapping himself tight in a towel.
“We need to call your doctors,” Sam tells him. Bucky doesn’t respond, “We need to go in and get you looked at.”
Bucky grunts as he shifts his body to curl deeper in on itself. Sam’s breath catches. A circle of crimson has formed on the back of the towel, wet and lurid.
“Buck, you’re still-we have to go, please, you’re still bleeding.”
Bucky’s head lifts from the mattress and he tilts his gaze to his back. His lip quivers when he clocks the growing stain. He sits up, his back a stiff, uncomfortably firm line, and tremors in a breath.
“Okay,” he shudders, standing slowly.
Sam calls Bucky’s lead OB/GYN to let them know they’ll be coming in and reports the facts he knows of the situation. It’s not much, unfortunately, not enough, because Bucky is nonresponsive and Sam’s only been home for less than an hour.
“We can get more details from him once you come in. There was always a high risk of this in with his case,” the doctor says and indignation boils up in Sam. He wants to know why he wasn’t warned, why no one thought to tell them that Bucky’s pregnancy was always looming one inch away from tragedy. But, when he thinks about it, maybe they did and he was too stupidly optimistic to listen.
Bucky puts on an absolutely massive sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants. He ties a towel around his waist before they walk out the door with the mumbled explanation that he doesn’t want to mess up the leather in Sam’s car. They drive the fifteen minutes to the doctor’s office with no music, no speech, no sound at all.
When, after a scan with no heartbeat confirms it, Bucky and Sam are informed they will no longer be parents, it doesn’t come as a surprise to either of them. They had known at the apartment; Sam had been told by the blankness that had taken over Bucky’s whole being. So, it’s not shock that covers them while the doctor turns off the ultrasound machine, excuses the technician that had operated it, and tells them what they already know; it’s the heavy weight of grief.
“You should wait outside or something. You don’t have to be here for this part,” Bucky tells Sam as he slips into the hospital gown he’s been given. They want to do more physical examinations of Bucky to determine the next step of treatment. Sam’s heart beats up in his throat.
“No, no, I want to-”
“Sam,” Bucky says firmly, the most certain his voice has been all day, and Sam quiets, “I just need some time to myself.”
Sam’s first reaction is to fight it. He wants to remind Bucky that, even if Sam leaves, he won’t be alone, he’ll be surrounded by medical personnel and cold technology to test him with. That Sam can help Bucky handle it all and care about him in a way those people won’t. But, Sam had decided at the beginning of this journey that, ultimately, even if he majorly disagrees, whatever Bucky wanted to do about the pregnancy was his choice. This is still a part of that decision.
“Okay, if that’s . . . I’ll go into the waiting room, but, if you need me, you have to let me-”
“I know where you’ll be,” Bucky states, matter of factly, end of conversation. Sam frowns and nods. He leans to kiss Bucky, who ducks his lips away so automatically that Sam thinks he could sob. Instead, he kisses Bucky on his hairline and says he’ll see him in a bit.
The waiting room of the OB/GYN office is painted a pastel peach and is filled with soft chairs Sam can crumble down onto. There’s no one else in the room because Bucky’s case was and remains to be immensely hidden and the doctor who runs this office canceled the day’s appointments as soon as he heard Bucky would be coming in. Meaning Sam can sit completely alone with his thoughts and stare at the wall across from his seat for however long Bucky will keep him out of the examination room.
There are three framed stock photos on that wall across from Sam; the palms of a happy, straight couple cradling a pacifier and rattle, a woman’s heavily pregnant stomach with her hands resting on the top and bottom of the curve, and, finally, a freshly born baby nestled in the arms of a woman who looks way too polished and sterile to have just given birth. Sam’s eyes keep tracking over the course of them, rehashing the story they are telling. It’s the progression this whole thing is supposed to take, from discovery to baby. It’s something he and Bucky would never have, even if Bucky had carried to term, because Bucky is not a woman. There could be no joyous announcements and pictures on social media, no predictable and expected running order. Bucky’s body was not meant for this, no matter how HYDRA and these new doctors tried to science it into working. It was never going to pan out perfect, but Sam and Bucky-or, hell, mostly Sam, he’ll take the blame for having an abundance of ill-placed faith-had the idiotic will to believe in the impossible. They’ve been impossible before; come back from the dead, saved the world, beat the odds. Why wouldn’t they think it could happen again?
“Mr. Wilson?” a doctor, not the lead one but rather one of his overly fascinated associates, says, and Sam breaks his prolonged observation of the pictures, “I’d like to go over our treatment plan for Mr. Barnes with you.”
Sam stands, runs a hot hand down an even hotter face, and meets the doctor where he stands. The doctor opens the folder he holds and launches in immediately.
“After evaluation, we’ve determined that Mr. Barnes’s miscarriage was not complete. We’ve decided to perform a D&E procedure.”
Sam’s head pounds. He doesn’t know the terms, hasn’t read them on his cheery pregnancy apps that tell him when he and Bucky should start making a birth plan and sharing their happy news with loved ones.
“Sorry, I don’t know what a-”
“D&E? It stands for dilation and evacuation. We are going to remove the placenta and any remaining fetal matter from the uterus to prevent infection. It’s a very minor surgery typical for miscarriages after twelve weeks. It usually only takes thirty minutes, though, of course, I do expect this one to be longer considering Mr. Barnes’s atypical anatomy.”
The urge to punch this man squarely in the face crops up in Sam, aggressive and sudden. His coolness in discussing the extraction of fetal matter that was-is their baby is pushing Sam’s already abused patience. However, unlike some of Sam’s super friends, he doesn’t start swinging whenever he gets the impulse. He takes a deep breath and flattens his lips into neutrality.
“Can I go in there and talk to him?” Sam asks, level. The doctor nods, looks down at his paperwork, and scratches something out in the middle.
“We just gave him a sedative, so he’s likely a bit out of it, but go ahead.”
All Sam needs is the go ahead to see Bucky, so he moves around the unfeeling prick of a doctor and down the hallway.
They’ve already transferred Bucky into a rolling bed and inserted an IV into his vein at the elbow when Sam gets there. The room has cleared of its large mass of people and one nurse remains, checking the IV drip.
“It will be another fifteen minutes or so before we wheel him into the OR. Do you want me to give you two some time alone before he goes in?” she asks. Sam scans over to Bucky, who blinks absently at the ceiling, and feels the full weight of the day on him.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
The nurse clears out with a pitying smile and pat on Sam’s shoulder. He pulls up a chair next to Bucky’s bed and Bucky rolls over to look at him. His eyes are glossy and dazed, but Sam can see the tint of sorrow around their edges.
“Hi, ba-” Sam starts, almost saying the word he knows he can’t, the precious little thing they’ve lost, “Bucky. How you feeling?”
“Pretty drugged,” Bucky answers, blinks some more, and drags his tongue over his bottom lip. He’s uncomfortable feeling like this. Sam can see it in how he shifts around in the bed. He’s pretty sure this is the first time Bucky’s been altered like this since he was given the serum. Sam can imagine the lack of control of his own body is a less than welcome memory. Sam sighs and rubs his thumb against Bucky’s temple. Bucky stares up at him as he does.
“They told me why it happened.”
“What?” Sam asks, chest filling with caught breath. Bucky shakes his head, pinching his eyes shut.
“No, wait, that’s not . . . they didn’t . . . I overheard, I mean,” he tries to explain, “They were mumbling, and I heard. They, uh, they said the uterus had been damaged. From previous pregnancy losses.”
Sam’s whole system comes to a halt and he gapes at Bucky, whose eyes have slipped closed again. Previous pregnancies. He repeats that fact in his mind. He doesn’t understand how or when, and especially not why; why Bucky wouldn’t have told him and why he wouldn’t have noticed.
“Not with you, Sam. Not yours,” Bucky says, and pats his cold, metal hand on top of Sam’s clenched fist. Bucky groans, rubbing his palms into his eyes, and turns onto his back, “I didn’t . . . I was having nightmares about it but I didn’t . . . I thought they were only nightmares, not memories, so I never said anything. . .”
“Hey, hey, Buck, look at me,” Sam says, and his mind and heart are both running on overdrive trying to figure out what Bucky is telling him. It’s important, though, he’s certain, and also probably something he can only hear now, while the sedation has knocked down all the barriers Bucky keeps up around his trauma. Bucky squints at Sam, his best attempt at focusing, “when were you pregnant before?”
“HYDRA, they’d, uh, there were these guys they’d send in with me, I don’t know who, and . . . and it happened like five or six times, maybe? It was always a different guy, someone trying to make me . . . It’d work, but it always ended like-like this. Sometimes I’d lose them early and one time really late, I think, but, I don’t . . . Sam, it’s really hard to remember, so I can’t-”
“Bucky, shh, you don’t have to . . .'' Sam trails. He leans back in his chair as he clutches tightly to Bucky’s hand, struggling just to breathe in and out. What Bucky has told him is horrible, the kind of horrible that leaves no words, that dries up any response. Sam has no way to begin to imagine going through this loss five or six times over, even if Bucky may not fully remember the losses he had. Sam knows that almost everyone who did this to Bucky is likely either dead or in jail, but that doesn’t feel like enough. This wrong they have enacted, that Bucky has told him they enacted over and over on a body that obviously couldn’t manage, deserves to be righted further. Sam wants to make them suffer by his own hands. But that, along with everything else he is feeling, matters a hell of a lot less than the fat globs of tears coming from Bucky’s eyes right now.
“So, yeah . . . sorry you had to plant your seed in such rotten soil,” Bucky winces. Sam shakes his head and he is crying, too, because he loves Bucky so much and he wanted so badly to sow his seed with him, to grow with him, to let their love bloom into more than them. He rests his head on the bed next to his and Bucky’s interlocked hands and they cry together, Bucky shaking with soundless sobs.
“I’m sorry, Sammy, so sorry I fucked up. That I couldn’t hold onto them, that I-”
“Please, please, don’t. Don’t go down that road and blame yourself. You know it’s not your fault. There’s no way you could’ve . . . and we tried, yeah? We loved them so much, Bucky, but they . . . they just couldn’t be with us. And, I’m sorry, back then, about what they did to you and that you had to lose the . . . Bucky, oh God, I’m sorry. I can’t-I’m so sorry,” Sam rambles, one long, confused, teary mess. His head falls again and he wets the sheets with his tears. He shakes in a lumbering breath and tilts his eyes back up to Bucky.
“I wanted to love them. I wanted them to be ours,” Bucky whimpers. Sam sucks in his lips not to wail and rubs a palm up Bucky’s arm, careful around the IV. He’s not sure how much Bucky will retain of this once he comes back to himself, but Sam will keep it all, tucked close to his heart, grateful to mourn together for this brief moment.
“I know. I know you did. I wanted it, too,” Sam whispers. He kisses the knuckles on Bucky’s flesh hand, one by one, and makes a private vow to himself that he will love this man forever.
He’s not sure how long it is before the nurse is back to wheel Bucky in for the procedure. He kisses Bucky before they take him away, with the salt of their tears on their lips and Bucky trembling under his touch.
“I love you, okay? I love you so much, and we’re gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay, Buck. They’re gonna take care of you and I’m gonna take care of you, too, okay? I love you,” Sam tells him.
“I love you, Sam. I’m sorry, so sorry. I love you,” Bucky says in a repeating, slurring pattern. The sedation has fully settled in, his words becoming a challenge to make out, but Sam answers every one with another ‘I love you, too’, another ‘it’s okay’.
They take Bucky away. The nurse tells Sam it could be up to an hour and he should come back when it's done. He sits in his car so he’s close if they need him. Everything hurts.
He doesn’t know why, but he calls Sarah.
She knows something’s wrong as soon as Sam says hello with a shaking voice. When she asks him what’s going on, everything spills out.
Sam is immensely thankful Sarah doesn’t stress him to explain the science or the technicalities of it all, or ask why she hadn’t been told sooner. She is quiet and comments only when he asks her to. She lets him ramble, allows him to lose track and find his way back, however long it takes, and listens through all his tears and unsteady words.
“I’m so scared for him,” Sam admits once his explanation is through and he has given Sarah her time to process it, “Bucky is literally one of the strongest people on this planet. He’s a supersoldier, for fuck’s sake, but, sometimes, I feel like . . . like if I look at him the wrong way he’s gonna fall apart. Like, at some point, he’s just gonna break into a million little pieces and I won’t know how to fix it.”
“You can’t try to fix him. Maybe you have to let him break and fix himself,” Sarah says.
“I can’t. I can’t let that happen to him. I have to save-”
“Sam, stop. Listen to me. You gotta stop trying to swoop in with those wings of yours and save everyone you know from getting hurt. It doesn’t work like that.”
Sam huffs, slamming his eyes shut. Sarah may be right, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll keep trying. In his head, he can save the whole world if he can only keep working at it, if only he doesn’t falter. He faltered and failed with Karli, and now she’s dead. He won’t falter with Bucky, because losing him will break Sam, too.
“Okay,” he tells Sarah, and if she can tell he’s lying, she doesn’t say. She just sighs into the phone and lets Sam breathe for a minute.
“I know I said this already, but I’m so sorry this happened. It’s not right,” Sarah says.
“It’s not,” Sam agrees, because Bucky has already suffered so much in his life and this on top of it feels massively unfair, “I . . . I was really excited to tell you about it, you know? I was trying to think about the perfect way to do it, cause I knew you’d freak out, and Bucky was so nervous about people knowing, but . . . but I just wanted to tell you guys so much.”
“Sam, oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Sarah replies in a hush, a tremble to her words, and Sam whimpers. Tears fall heavy in between gasping inhales.
“You tell Bucky I’m thinking about him, alright? You tell him I love him and he can call me anytime. Let him know I’m here,” Sarah insists. Sam scrunches up his face and grinds a palm against his temple. He’s not sure he can even let Bucky know this conversation happened without him freaking out, nevermind get him to call Sarah.
“I will,” he tells her anyways. His phone shakes with another incoming call from the doctor’s office, “They’re calling me. He’s probably out of surgery.”
“Okay, go get your boy. I love you both,” Sarah says.
Sam thanks her, deeply and honestly, and says he loves her, too, before he heads back to retrieve Bucky.
Bucky is silent and void again when Sam returns to him, curled into his sheets with his head shoved into his pillow. The lead doctor stands next to the bed and hands Sam a packet of papers.
“These are the post-op care instructions for Mr. Barnes. It should cover everything in there, but I’d like to discuss some specifics. I’ve prescribed him an antibiotic to prevent further infection, he’ll take that twice daily. Also, his bleeding could last for up to a week, so I’d recommend . . .”
Sam is still listening, sort of, enough to get the gist of what’s being said, but his focus rests mainly on Bucky. He looks small, like he’s been diminished. It looks like something has been taken away from him, which Sam guesses it has.
They leave with three different medications and no baby.
“When you were sedated, you, um, you told me some things. Do you remember any of that?” Sam asks as he drives them home and Bucky slumps his head onto the window. Bucky sighs and readjusts himself, pulling his arms around his chest.
“The stuff about HYDRA and . . . uh, yeah, sort of remember telling you that,” he mutters. Sam’s eyes flick over to him, though he’s as shut off as he has been.
“Do you want to ta-”
“No, I don't,” Bucky spits before Sam can get the question out. Sam clenches and unclenches the hand he has on the steering wheel.
“Okay. That’s okay. I know today has been so much and I wanted to say-”
“Can we actually not talk at all, please?” Bucky says. Sam bites down into his lip and draws a spot of blood as the day continues to erode him down to one big, raw wound that stings at every upset.
“Bucky, Jesus, fuck! You can’t shut me out like you always do!” Sam yells, full on yells at Bucky in the small space of the car as they zoom down the freeway.
“Well, sorry I’m such a fuckup in every way! Sorry I don’t want to relive all the awfulness of the day, bit by bit,” Bucky growls, swallowed in on himself with his legs held to his body and his chin burrowing between his knees. Sam forces his stare forward. He really needs to be paying better attention to driving, and not to being eaten alive by anger on top of guilt on top of heartache.
“Sorry, I . . . I’m sorry,” he sighs. Bucky mumbles something Sam can’t make out before he tucks back into the blockade of his body.
Coming home, as they open the door to a dark apartment full of tense silence, feels like stepping foot in a crime scene. Every spot has a recently etched, terrible history to it, like the hasty mess they made of the key bowl as they rushed to get Bucky to the doctors, or the blood stained towel that rests like an eyesore on the chair across from their bed. Sam isn’t sure how he’ll be able to ever use their bathroom again, giving serious thought to showering at his gym from now on.
“I’m going to sleep. Maybe for a few days,” Bucky mumbles, landing hard on the mattress. It’s seven, Sam should be making Bucky dinner so that he can take his antibiotic with food. But, he knows Bucky wouldn’t eat if he cooked. Sam can’t imagine eating either. Bucky slips his legs under the sheets as he grabs his long forgotten phone. He freezes when he clicks it on, head never making it to the pillow.
“Sam,” he presses, sitting up as a ragged breath comes firing out his nostrils. Sam’s heart is beating erratically with massive overwhelm, because what can it be now? What thing of terror has appeared on Bucky’s phone to worsen the worst day?
“Yeah?” he asks, stepping in closer to Bucky and prepping for damage control. Bucky’s eyes shoot up to him with anger, the most emotion he’s seen in them today outside of when Bucky was under sedation.
“Why do I have a message from Sarah saying that she hopes I’m doing okay?” Bucky demands. Sam’s throat goes tight as he forces down a rough swallow.
“Uh-”
“Actually, to be precise, it says ‘I’m so sorry to hear what happened. I hope you know it’s not your fault and that you’re doing alright. Text or call if you need me. Love you.’ So, um, seems like you might have told her something.”
“Bucky,” Sam begins, defensive and apologetic at the same time, “you were in surgery and I was freaking the hell out. I needed to talk to someone! I couldn’t-it felt like I was underwater. You have to understand why I called her!”
“Surprisingly enough, I know the feeling,” Bucky hisses. The sting to it makes Sam back off a few steps. Bucky’s eyes sweep over to the wall as he shakes his head and tugs his lip between his teeth, “I can’t believe you would tell Sarah.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve asked. I get that. But, if I didn’t talk to someone while you were in surgery I was going to lose my mind,” Sam says. He’s lowered his voice, because Bucky is volatile and fragile and yelling will do nothing but make it worse. Bucky quivers a breath in and squeezes his metal palm worryingly fierce around his knee.
“Yeah? Well, I was in that surgery. It happened to my body. They had me sedated, but it . . . I was still conscious. I could hear them. It’s foggy and weird and mixed up, but I know I heard them talking about what they were doing. What they were taking out.”
Bucky stops and clenches up his jaw. His eyes pinch into angry folds and Sam realizes what’s happening. He’s trying not to cry. Sam reenters Bucky’s space, cautiously, and sits next to him. With a gentle hand, he rubs along Bucky’s spine.
“Shit,” Bucky shudders, losing his fight with his own emotions. The first, small lines of tears emerge from his eyes. Sam keeps rubbing a hand on his back, moves their bodies even closer, and tries to take his other hand up to wipe Bucky’s tears. Bucky shoves the hand down, “No, I can’t. I need-no, I need you to-”
Bucky stands and Sam follows automatically. He wants to hold Bucky so badly it feels like the want is ripping a hole in his chest but Bucky is not letting him. In fact, Bucky is actively fighting him on it. Hand gripped into the fabric of Sam’s pull over, Bucky is pushing him out of the room.
Bucky rarely uses his full strength on Sam. He’s learned, through time and work, how to tone it down when he needs to. He can keep it at half volume for sex, all the way down to quarter volume when he’s being tender. So Sam often forgets that there is very little he can do to Bucky turned all the way up. He squirms and shoves back against the pressure as Bucky gets him almost out the door, but it’s on the same level as fighting back against a brick wall. Sam easily ends up in the hallway outside their bedroom, door slammed in his face and rattling in its frames.
Sam wraps his hands around his head, tightens his grip, and doesn't care if Bucky hears him scream.
Beer. He wants a beer. He wants multiple beers.
The first thing he sees when he arrives at the fridge is the ultrasound scan. It’s placed at eye level, the way they had wanted it. Sam holds back a whimper and yanks it out from under the magnet, dreading the idea of Bucky having to walk into the kitchen and be hit with it’s black and white imaging of what they lost. He tucks it in his pocket and opens a beer before he goes to sit on the patio.
Sam takes two hearty sips of his drink, one right after the other, and takes the scan out of his pocket. He looks it over. He tips back another sip. In the black oval that is Bucky’s womb, the baby lays on their back with a small curve of a body, gigantic head, and a jut of legs. Those legs had kicked so fast, something both Sam and Bucky had interpreted as the first sign of the little firecracker they were going to have. They had still thought that this morning, when the baby was their lemon, nestled in what they thought was the shelter of Bucky’s body. One abrupt sob rips out of Sam and his hand flies to his mouth with the shock of it. He shakes his head and continues on in his self-torture by opening his photo app on his phone.
The album of Bucky’s bump photos, meant to fill up with something around a hundred pictures and currently containing only twenty-one, is titled BABY MOMMA, in all caps and bordered on either side by a variety heart emojis. Sam had titled it without telling Bucky, who would without a doubt delete the whole album without a second thought based on that name alone. He scrolls through the pictures and tracks the barely noticeable growth of Bucky’s bump. Sam had grand plans for the completed album. He was going to make one of those bump time-lapses he’d seen online and set it to music, maybe some Bill Withers or even one of those dumb 40’s songs Bucky is so caught up on. He would show the finished product to Bucky and Bucky would have laughed and slapped his arm and called him a giant dumbass. It would have ended with a picture of the baby.
It would, it would, it would, it . . . .
Another sob erupts out of Sam, though this one doesn’t stop at just one. They come endlessly and on top of each other and Sam uses the moments he can catch his breath to fill his system with beer.
This hurt feels like losing Riley. It’s different in so many ways, of course, but the level of intensity and depth of its damage on him is the same. And it doesn’t make sense, because Riley had been in possession of Sam’s whole heart for nearing five years when he died. Their lives together had been filled with countless memories; joys and sorrows and laughter, to mourn. Riley made up all the best parts of Sam’s life for so long that it took years for Sam to realize he could have any more best parts without him. In comparison, his barely over a month of knowing this baby seems so meaningless. He didn’t even actually know them. But, when he closes his eyes and thinks about them, didn’t he?
Didn’t he know who they were going to be? They were a girl, in Sam’s head, for reasons that are not clear to him. She would have eyes like Sam’s momma, molasses brown and warm as melted sugar, but she’d smile just like Bucky, with his stupid grins that turn up on his left side. She’d go to school and tell everyone her daddies were heroes, that Captain America himself was her dad, hers. And every mission Sam would do would be for her. After each day out saving the world, he’d rest his wings at a tiny house, maybe in DC, maybe in New York, maybe even in Delacroix with his girl’s auntie and cousins, and Bucky and his daughter would already have dinner ready, waiting with matching smirks and no patience for him being late.
Sam considers that some day, when Bucky’s recovered, that they could have that, still. But, no. No, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be this lemon, the one in the scan he holds tightly in his left hand. No matter what, never this little lemon again.
Four beers taken down later, Sam takes wobbly, unsure steps back into the bedroom. The lights are off and Bucky is in pajamas under the covers, but his eyes aren’t closed.
“You good with me being in here?” Sam checks. Bucky gives a small nod. Sam walks to his side of the bed and slips off his shoes and pants. He slides under the comforter and stares at the back of Bucky’s head, vision twisty from alcohol. His heart squeezes tight and he wants, no, needs, to be able to feel everything in him with Bucky right now. They need each other, he thinks, because no one else could understand the exact lifts of joy and plummets of despair they’ve had in this short month.
“I wanna hold you, if . . . if that’s good with you?”
“Just don’t touch my stomach,” Bucky whispers and it chips away another piece of Sam. He rolls over and positions his arm around Bucky’s chest, far away from his stomach. His chin falls into its place in the crevice of Bucky’s neck. Bucky burns as warm as he has been, but it’s got a different charge to it now, feels almost feverish. Bucky sniffles and leans into the hold.
“I got you,” Sam tells him. And he will do everything to make that stay true.