summer's end

“Who’s Sam?” says a voice on the other end, foreign and cruelly amused. Sarah hears her brother stutter, briefly, before the line constricts into tense silence. Heart sinking, she holds her breath, fingers braced tightly against the kitchen countertop.

There’s no sound from either side. Here it’s late, and the boys are either long-asleep or stealthily playing video games again. Across the line she only hears a moment of breathing, and then a swell of violence: scuffling, indecipherable clatters amid harsh gunfire. She jumps, free hand flying to her temple, before the line dies.

“Fuck,” she whispers, staring at the silent screen. “Fuck, Sam.”

But there is nothing she can do. He’s half the world away, and she’s here in her kitchen, today’s dishes floating half-washed in the sink. She takes a breath, shakily gathers her braids and ties them back at the base of her neck, and sighs.

Sam is an idiot most of the time, but he's an idiot who can fight. He'll be okay. He has to be.

And there’s nothing she can do, so she might as well finish the dishes.

Sam calls again twenty minutes later, and her heart seizes when her phone vibrates against the counter. She picks it up immediately.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and Sarah drops her forehead into her palm as relief thrums into her fingertips. “But—”

“What the fuck is going on?” she interrupts, struggling to whisper.

Sam sighs, quick and frustrated. “Listen, I’ll tell you everything, okay, I just—I need to come home, just for a little bit.”

She pauses. “Why?”

“We just need somewhere safe. I swear, nobody’s gonna follow us.”

“Who’s ‘us?’”

“Bucky,” Sam says. “No one else, I promise.”

“Sam, I don’t want anything happening to the boys, I’ve told you that—”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Sam tells her, desperation bleeding across the line. “Bucky’s hurt, we just need somewhere to get back on our feet.”

Fuck. Sarah scrubs a hand down her face and huffs out an exhale, hoping Sam can feel her frustration from whatever weird supervillain place he’s ended up in.

“Fine,” she concedes, and hears Sam deflate on the other end, relieved. “But when you get here,” she adds pointedly, “we’re talking about that damn boat.”

Sam shows up late the next morning. Sarah finds him there when she opens the door, looking apologetic. Across his shoulders is a metal arm, black and veined with gold, and it’s attached to the guy she’s pretty sure Sam hates. His head is hanging against his chest, so it’s difficult to see his face, but he’s pale and breathing raggedly.

She raises her eyebrows and glances from him to Sam, who exhaustedly shakes his head.

Stepping aside, she pulls the door open. “Come on in,” she deadpans.

Sam immediately takes Bucky to the couch, where he slumps unceremoniously against the cushions and almost immediately falls over. Sam crouches before him and steadies him with a hand on each shoulder.

“Can you help me?” he asks, looking up at her. Her brother’s face is pinched in concern, and the man on the couch is looking worse every second. She nods.

She retrieves Sam’s old pararescue bag, forgotten in a hallway closet, and moves back to the living room, but stops in the doorway.

Bucky’s lying down now, face pained and eyes squeezed shut, and Sam is crouching near his head. One of Sam’s hands is at Bucky’s hairline, moving gently back and forth, and the other is braced on his non-metal arm, a warm reassurance. Sarah feels her lips part, her mouth open in a silent question. She shuts it.

“Here,” she says, moving forward, and Sam looks up. His hands abandon Bucky and move to rest against the edge of the couch.

“Thanks,” he says. As she opens the bag, Sam peels back Bucky’s shirt, revealing a wad of messy, hastily-applied bandages near his sternum, soaked in crimson.

“Jesus,” Sarah breathes. “Sam, he needs a hospital.”

Sam looks like he wants to agree, but shakes his head. “We can’t.”

“Why?”

“He sort of might be… wanted-ish.”

Sarah glances back to Bucky’s paling face. “I thought he got pardoned.”

“Well, he was,” Sam shrugs. “We might’ve broken a couple pardon rules in Madripoor.”

Sarah grimaces, lowering her voice. “Sam, I don’t… if he doesn’t get to a hospital, I don’t know if he’ll make it.”

She’s surprised when Sam’s face becomes something devastating, a poorly-masked expression of grief and fear and denial. It reminds her of his appearance many years ago—that constant expression he wore surrounding the end of Riley’s life.

But he had loved Riley. And this is just… Bucky. Bucky, who she’s heard him complain about at every opportunity, who, just a couple months ago, he claimed to hate.

Sam swallows and shakes his head. “He will,” he tells her. “He’s got… super-juice, or whatever.”

She looks back to the bandages, at the extensiveness of the bleeding and the wound’s closeness to the heart. “Is that gonna be enough?” she asks quietly.

Sam nods, blinks, looks away. “Yeah,” he says.

She won’t argue, not now. “Okay.”

She watches Sam peel back the bandages, biting the inside of her lip when the wound is revealed, a mess of blood and inflamed skin. This is bad, but she won’t say it. Sam knows.

“I need to take the bullet out,” he says, almost mechanically, and she nods. She rifles through the bag for a moment before she finds a small case. There’s a small knife inside, clean and sharp, and she slips it out and hands it to her brother.

“Thanks,” he says, and she nods.

Sam sits up on his heels and leans forward, over the bloody expanse before him. Gingerly, he dabs away the worst of the blood with the old bandages, then sucks in a breath and brings the blade down against skin.

Bucky, who slipped into unconsciousness during their conversation, groans awake and makes a feeble attempt to lift his head. With his free hand, Sam presses down on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Buck,” he says. “We’re just gonna take the bullet out, and then you’re gonna be fine, alright? Just… hold still. You’re okay.”

Again Sarah is appalled by his gentleness, and again she refrains from commenting.

Bucky gasps as Sam makes two small incisions on either side of the wound, then uses the flat of the blade to spread it open. Again Sam murmurs a dozen reassurances, then turns back to face her.

“Can you take it out?” he asks.

Sarah gapes at him. “What?”

“Can you take out the bullet?” he repeats. He’s pulling his phone out of his pocket with his other hand, shining its flashlight into the wound.

She scoffs. “Sam—”

“Sarah, please.” he says. “I’ve got it open; just take out the tweezers and grab it. Please.” He’s doing that face again, the one that makes him look all sad and young and desperate. Sarah cringes, scrubbing a hand over her forehead, and sighs.

“Fuck.” she says. “Fuck, okay.” She reaches into Sam’s bag again, this time pulling out a pair of tweezers, and sits up to lean beside Sam. The flashlight’s white glow paints the wound in gruesome detail, and she bites her lip.

“I don’t see it,” she says.

Sam nods. “That’s okay. You’ll feel it.”

“Sam…”

Somehow, he smiles at her, though it looks a little sad. “Remember how many times a fish swallowed your hook? You got it out then, didn’t you?”

She’s surprised when she laughs, sudden and soft. “Yeah.”

Sam nods. “Same thing,” he says. Carefully, so as not to disrupt the blade, he bumps her shoulder. “You got this.”

She swallows, takes in one measured breath, and then dips the tweezers into the hole. Sam’s cuts were deep, deep enough so she can easily move down into the flesh, and she gently probes the tissue.

Abruptly, Bucky cries out, a choked, wheezing sound, and she jumps back, withdrawing the tweezers completely. Sam drops the flashlight onto the floor, struggling to keep the blade steady, as he leans over Bucky’s face.

“Buck,” he says. “Buck, hey, it’s okay, we’ll be done soon.”

But the man beneath him is heaving, breaths fast and pained and panicked. A shaky hand reaches up blindly to fall over Sam’s wrist in a weak grip.

“It’s okay,” Sam says again. “Bucky, hey, breathe, alright? Everything’s okay. Breathe.” He rests his hand on Bucky’s face, a light, grounding touch on his cheekbone. “You’re alright.”

Slowly, the breaths decrease from hyperventilation to measured wheezes, interrupted every few moments by a painful hitch.

“There you go,” Sam encourages.

Sarah can see Bucky’s eyes, pained and hazy blue and focused entirely on her brother, his gaze frightened and disoriented but, somehow, trusting.

“There you go.” Sam pulls his hand away, and Bucky’s fingers fall from his wrist. He returns to Sarah’s side, picking up the flashlight, apologizing quietly when he readjusts the knife.

Hesitantly, Sarah inserts the tweezers back into the wound, cringing every time the man below her winces. Carefully she moves the instrument, waiting for the ting of metal against metal, but it doesn’t come.

She shakes her head. “Sam, I can’t find it.”

Sam glances apologetically to Bucky’s face, then back to the wound. “It’s deep,” he says.

Briefly, she closes her eyes. She can still see the sun behind her eyelids, streaming brightly into the living room from every window, but it seems unfitting now, in a room so full of misery.

Sam nods at her when she opens them, and she pushes the tweezers deeper. She feels the tool connect with flesh, torn and bloody, and Bucky jerks below her, but then she feels the very edge scrape against something hard and solid.

“I found it,” she gasps, wide-eyed, and adjusts her grip around the new sensation. She presses in, moving slowly until the tweezers grasp the bullet, and then pulls back slowly, avoiding as much contact as she can with the wound’s edge.

Finally, she pulls it clear of the wound, and holds it before them, a small, dark lump of metal coated in blood. Bucky, whose body had been brittle with tension, collapses back against the cushions, breathing raggedly.

“Nice job, man,” Sam tells her.

“Thanks,” she replies breathlessly, still holding the bloodied bullet in the tweezers like a dead rat. “Do you wanna keep this?”

Sam, looking exhausted, smirks. “Nah, I think we’re alright,” he says.

She smiles, then reaches up to squeeze his shoulder. “You good?” she asks.

He nods, hitting her lightly on the arm. “Yeah, Mom, I’m alright.” He grins when she rolls her eyes, then adds, genuinely: “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” she smirks, “whatever.”

She rinses off the bullet, then sets it on the counter. She’s not really sure what the proper bullet-disposal techniques are yet. She washes her hands, smudged with blood, thoroughly, then picks up a rag and dampens it.

From the counter she can see Sam hunkered over the couch, speaking lowly to Bucky, who’s watching him through bleary eyes. Sam’s hand has returned to Bucky’s scalp, and the other lies in Bucky’s palm, their fingers loosely intertwined.

Sarah feels lost, watching this unfamiliar show of affection. The last she’d heard, these two couldn’t stand each other, and now here they are, inseparable, in her living room.

Sam drops a kiss to Bucky’s forehead, light as snow but exceptionally warm.

Sarah feels almost guilty when she interrupts, but when she takes her place beside Sam and hands him the warm rag, he looks infinitely grateful.

“Thanks,” he says again, and she shrugs it off. Tenderly, he dabs at the wound, and Sarah watches as scarlet bleeds into the white fabric.

She looks at his other hand, still wrapped in Bucky’s. “Glad to see you two are getting along,” she says.

Sam shakes his head without looking up from his work, then blushes and pretends he didn’t.

She smiles.