summer's end

In the wake of the nightmare, there are a few seconds of fragile silence. Sarah drops the bloodied fabric of Bucky’s shirt, covering the angry gore beneath, and meets her brother’s eyes.

Sam, still holding Bucky tightly, shares her look of hollow panic. In his arms Bucky has gone still aside from persistent, fevered tremors that rattle his shallow breaths. Sam’s been stroking nervous fingers over his scalp and a warm hand down his back, but the shaking remains, and so does the tight coil of panic audible in each exhale.

Sarah remembers when Sam was like that, after he returned, after he lost Riley. She recalls his silhouette in the dark, sitting at the edge of his bed like a ghost, swatting her away as breaths left his throat like sandpaper. She remembers him telling her how, when you’re a child, dreams are simple, funny things: something to ponder, to laugh about or relay to friends and then forget. But when you’re grown, more cautious and permanently jaded, dreams become something else: something so chilling and painful, something you have to recover from each time you wake.

It’s been years since he’s spoken like that, and she wonders if he feels the same now. She doubts it—Sam has never been cynical—but she can’t fault him either way.

“Fuck,” he whispers now. His hands still smooth over Bucky’s short hair as he kneels before the couch. He’s holding him desperately, and Bucky is slumped completely against him, his forehead pressed to Sam’s collarbone.

“Is it infected?” Sam asks quietly, looking up to Sarah.

Sarah swallows. It’s not a difficult question. Bucky’s shaking and way too hot and the skin around his wound was flushed and inflamed when she lifted his shirt. But despite the reddened flesh and ruined bandages, she only shrugs, because Sam is watching her like the world is at stake and that despairing expression stuns her for a moment.

“It might be,” she says finally, easing as much cautious hope as she can into her words. “It doesn’t look… like it’s healing that good.”

Sam nods, his face still tense and pained. He bites his lip; brushes an absent-minded thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone as he carefully lifts his face. The man’s eyes are closed, his face gone still.

“Buck,” Sam says softly as he cups his cheeks and gently pushes him back to sit up. He supports him the whole way, moving an arm to wrap around his shoulders as he eases him into a sitting position on the couch. “Buck,” he repeats, his hands falling back to brush Bucky’s pale face. Then, again: “Buck.”

Sarah watches him worry and she feels it as well, watching Bucky, who’s totally pliant beneath her brother’s frantic hands. His face, damp and starkly pale against dark hair, is slack besides the tiny crease between his eyebrows, a small, persevering sign of pain.

“Buck,” Sam repeats, louder this time, the blade of worry in his voice growing sharper. Lightly, with almost no force behind it, he slaps Bucky’s cheek. “Buck, come on.”

Sarah holds her breath. She doesn’t want Sam to lose anyone else.

“Bucky, please,” Sam breathes, unsteady.

Finally, blurry eyes blink open. Sarah lets out an exhale; Sam chokes out a breath and surges forward, his fingers flitting over a disoriented face. Bucky’s gaze seems to wander in emptiness before it lands on Sam, and stops there.

“Hey,” Sam greets him, the concern on his face mingling with an overwhelming fondness. Quickly, but carefully, he brings his lips to Bucky’s forehead and presses a kiss there, then allows Bucky’s swaying head to fall into his chest. He cups his neck and the back of his scalp, gracing fevered skin with soft, soothing motions.

Sarah watches Sam close his eyes, something between relief and anxiety settling heavily over his features. When he opens his eyes, they meet hers, and she offers a small smile. He tries to reciprocate.

Two weak hands are weaving into the fabric of Sam’s shirt, one pale and shaking, one slow-moving, dimly-gleaming metal. Bucky squirms with a wince, his body caving in even further on itself.

Sam grimaces. “I know,” he says. “I know, Buck, I’m sorry.” But it seems he can’t move, his arms still tight around Bucky’s quietly writhing form.

“We should clean it again,” Sarah says, “if he can’t go to a hospital.”

Sam’s grip doesn’t loosen, but he nods, his face still a picture of distress.

It’s a slow process getting to the bathroom. Sam will barely allow Bucky to take any of his own weight, but still the man nearly collapses, his knees buckling as soon as he stands. Sam catches him, of course, and holds him steady while Sarah comes to support his other side. As soon as she takes his arm, the heat intensifies, dangerous warmth seeping into her own skin. She exchanges a glance with Sam, but he looks away, leading them in the direction of the bathroom.

Together, they make their way down the hall.

Sarah spreads a towel over the floor, and they lower Bucky carefully, propping him against the side of the cold bathtub. He shies away from the cool surface, but Sam murmurs something to him, and he leans back against it.

With a pair of slender scissors, Sam cuts away Bucky’s tee shirt, exposing the dark bandages and angry surrounding flesh. Bucky shivers in the bathroom air, and Sam soothes a warm hand over his shoulder. He leans into the touch, grimacing around the pain in his abdomen.

Carefully, Sarah peels away the bandage, fresh blood leaking through the gauze. She tosses it to the side and watches as Sam eases a warm washcloth against the stitches. Bucky sucks in an inhale, his hand flying to grab Sam’s wrist.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says, his free hand falling over Bucky’s. “I’m so sorry, but I gotta do this.”

Bucky clearly can’t understand. His eyes, clouded over with pain and confusion, plead silently for reprieve. Instead of answering, Sam kisses his temple and apologizes softly again.

It’s a pain-staking process. The washcloth seems to be agonizing, and it takes several minutes for Sam to clear away the blood and leaking fluid from the stitching. When the wound is finally clear, and the rag stained red, Sam sits back on his heels, dropping the cloth onto the tiled floor.

Bucky is breathing heavily, fuzzy eyes swimming in tears. As Sarah rifles through the medicine cabinet, she hears her brother behind her, whispering a hundred soft comforts, shushing and apologizing.

When she returns to his side, she hands him a tube of antibiotic ointment, the stuff she’s spread over the boys’ tiny scrapes from playing on the docks. It seems so useless now, with its bright colors and the little bumblebee illustration near the cap.

But Sam still takes it, unscrewing the lid and pushing a dollop onto his fingertips. Bucky watches him, tensing when Sam’s hand nears his wound and choking back a whimper when the cold cream touches flesh. Sam shushes him, gently rubbing the ointment across harsh skin and stained stitches. When he finally finishes, Bucky collapses against the edge of the tub with a choked-off gasp.

Sarah helps Sam secure the fresh bandage over Bucky’s sternum, taping it smoothly and wrapping a layer of gauze around his torso to hold it steady. Below them, his diaphragm heaves with tremors, and she feels a vague sensation of guilt.

“Should I get him an aspirin or something?” Sarah asks, feeling stupid for asking.

Sam regards Bucky, this manifestation of pain on their bathroom floor, and shrugs. “I don’t know if they’d work.” Then, with a soft brush against Bucky’s cheek, “I don’t know if he could even get ‘em down.”

Sarah nods, rubbing her hands down her jeans. “He can take the spare bedroom,” she tells him.

Sam snorts with as much humor as it seems he can muster. “You mean mine?”

She rolls her eyes. “Your old one.”

“Yeah, yeah, same thing.” Sam smiles, genuinely, but it melts as he turns back to Bucky and registers all the pain there, quiet and breathless. “You ready to lay down, Buck?” he asks.

Bucky blinks up sluggishly, exhausted breaths wheezing through chapped lips. “Sorry,” he says, for seemingly no reason.

There’s a mild sort of heartbreak in Sam’s expression before he shakes it off. “Nothin’ to be sorry for, Buck,” he says casually, then gently reaches for Bucky’s real arm. “Come on.”

He ends up carrying him into bed, lying him against the pillows and covering him with a light sheet, careful not to overheat him any more. He smooths a hand over his forehead, then kisses his cheek, and when he steps away Bucky’s eyes are already closed.

In the kitchen, Sam fills a glass for Bucky with water from the fridge, his gaze caught up in some invisible worry.

Sarah bites the bullet. “What are you gonna do about the shield?” she asks him.

He scoffs. “What are you gonna do about the boat?” he shoots back.

She quirks an eyebrow and sighs. Out the window, floating at the dock, the boat’s time-worn frame bobs in the afternoon sun.

“I think,” Sam says abruptly, dropping a couple ice cubes into the glass, “we both got left with things we don’t know what to do with.”

“No shit,” she says, and he rolls his eyes.

“My wisdom is lost on you,” he laments. She hits him, but then squeezes his shoulder. There’s something nostalgic about standing here with her brother in their childhood home, in this quiet, sunny kitchen their parents used to dance around.

Everything has changed, she knows, but not by much.

“We’ll be okay,” she says. She believes it, and when Sam smiles back with a dip of his head, she thinks he does, too.

Later, she walks by the spare bedroom and finds the door barely ajar, soft blue darkness spilling into the hallway.

Inside, a few stray strands of sunshine fall across the bed, where Sam lies, his arms wrapped loosely around Bucky, whose face is pressed into her brother’s chest. They’re both asleep, the room filled with silence and soft, measured breaths.

She shuts the door as quietly as she can.