They make it back to their apartment. Sam has left the tendrils of unawareness behind and is now fully awake, for better or for worse. He needs to be treated immediately, and while Bucky isn’t a doctor of any kind, their enemies are still everywhere, so they decide to lie low at their place and let Bucky do what he can.
Sam can’t move his arms without growling in pain and writhing away, so Bucky removes his shirt for him. Or, more accurately, peels away what’s left of it. His hands are steady, but when part of shirt is caught in one of Sam’s deeper wounds and only gives when Bucky really tugs in it, his metal fist rams back too quickly and hits Sam’s skin. The muscles in Sam’s back stiffen and he shoots forward slightly, leaning away from the man behind him. It really shouldn’t have hurt— the angle of Bucky’s hands on Sam’s shirt made the connection brief and glancing— but Bucky sees Sam’s jaw clench and he picks up a faint noise of pain slipping from his lips. It shows just how tender and sore Sam really is right now. How badly he had been hurt.
Bucky’s hands curl into fists, the remainder of Sam’s shirt tearing in his grip.
“Watch it,” Sam rasps, shooting the taller man a glare over his bruised shoulder.
Bucky stares at him for a moment. “You have other shirts.”
“I only have one body, dumbass,” Sam spits.
Bucky bristles and tosses the ripped rags away. “And I’m trying to salvage what I can from it. So turn around and watch your mouth, or I might let out find out how fragile it is.”
Sam grunts and faces away, leaning forward slowly to rest his forearms on the counter. “I think those soldiers already did that.”
Bucky regrets his harsh words. He usually does. Especially when Sam is put out and exhausted like this, when he can barely fight back. Their banter can often border on real insults, but Bucky feels that it’s usually his fault when the jokes turn mean. Steve would assure him that it’s not. That he’s just struggling to fit in again, or some bullshit like that.
Carmine blood dribbles a little faster from the wound, the weak scab that had been forming removed with the shirt. There’s a thousand things that ail Sam right now, but Bucky has to take it one step at a time, so he focuses on the most glaring problem in front of him. After a moment of hesitation, he leaves Sam’s side to wash his hands in their kitchenette sink, the citrus scent of lemon soap doing little to cover up the stench of blood and sweat in the room. The ex-assassin grabs a washcloth and holds it under the stream of lukewarm water before returning to Sam’s side and starting to wash his wound. There’s no disinfectant on the cloth (though there probably should be), but Sam hisses in pain all the same. Bucky clenches his teeth and scrapes away the grime from Sam’s torso, particularly where the skin is torn open. Every time he finds another cut or bruise he wishes he’d punched those soldiers that much harder. His strokes are rough and repetitive and it’s not long before Sam is jerking away once more.
“If you wanted me to suffer you could have left me with those soldiers!” Sam snaps, ripping the washcloth out of Bucky’s hands.
He’s being overly dramatic and they both know it, but Bucky glowers right back at him. “Quit being such a baby!” he growled.
“I’m sorry if I’m a bit sore after being tortured for three days!” Sam retorts, but once again, he’s lost his fire, and the words come out empty. Bucky hates it. He hates that he’s making Sam feel awful and he hates that ache in his gut when he looks at Sam’s handsome face marred by dried blood and black bruises and tear tracks that they’re both trying to ignore. Somehow, they’re all Bucky’s fault.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky says flatly.
Sam stiffens slightly again, this time in surprise. Bucky doesn’t elaborate, even though some part of him wants to. He wants to explain that he’s not just sorry for what he said, but that he’s sorry he can’t be better at stitching him up, that he’s sorry he didn’t rescue Sam sooner, that he’s sorry he let them take Sam in the first place. He’s sorry he’s not the man that Steve was, that he can’t be the handsome, agreeable, caring partner that Steve would’ve been. He’s sorry for making Sam’s life so damn hard all the time.
Bucky finds a needle and a spool of thread, but gives up on forceps after a few minutes of fruitless searching. He takes the needle in his flesh hand and the thread in his metal one. He wets the less frayed end of the thread with his tongue and, after several tries, pokes it through the eye of the needle. He takes his time, especially when he notices Sam glancing over his shoulder once more, eyeing the needle with thinly veiled apprehension.
“Quite the seamstress.” Sam comments as Bucky pulls the thread through the needle until it leaves an acceptable amount on both sides.
Bucky hums noncommittally. “Sometimes I’d have to alter Steve’s clothes. It seemed everything was always too big for him and he couldn’t afford to have it done professionally.” Usually, he would smile when recalling a memory from his past life. Somehow, though, with one hand carefully drawing two ends of Sam’s dark skin together and the other preparing to jab into it, it didn’t seem appropriate.
He hesitates for the briefest of moments, taking a skimming glance over Sam’s muscular, scarred back before beginning the stitching process. Sam releases a choked whimper and Bucky does his best to ignore it and the swooping, awful feeling he gets when he hears it.
“Still,” Bucky continues quietly, forcing his voice to remain steady as he pulls the thread through Sam’s flesh, “I don’t think I ever did it right. In all the moments I can remember, he was always wearing clothes three sizes too big.”
He’s not sure Sam even heard him until the captain gasps “How comforting.” His voice is more than strained, but Bucky thinks he hears a smile in the words.
Bucky reinserts the needle and Sam bucks unexpectedly, his body ramming back into Bucky’s as an agonized yell rips from his throat. Bucky swears loudly and nearly drops the needle. Sam is hunched over the counter, his arms now rimrod straight and trembling as he digs his fingernails into his palms.
“Shit,” Sam pants when he can form real words again. “Sorry, I-- shit, sorry.”
His torso is shimmering with sweat. Bucky approaches him cautiously. “Did I--”
“No.” Sam is shaking his head before Bucky even gets all his words out. “It just-- It was just really tender there. It’s okay. Keep going.”
Bucky nods but still can’t quite unhear Sam’s shriek or unfeel his body pressed against his. He presses his metal hand once again onto Sam’s back, but this time, he hopes to relay some feeling of reassurance to Sam. He wants him to be comforted or, at least, be as as comfortable as he possibly can be when be sewn up without any sort of anesthetic.
The process is nearly silent from then on. Sam sporadically exhales forcefully or makes some awful noise that Bucky wants to instantly forget but knows he never will. The thread slips silently through the flesh, and the needle only makes the occasional, muted puncturing noise is it pokes into Sam’s skin. The minutes drag by until finally, Bucky draws the string tight and wound puckers shut as he knots the thread. Every muscle in Sam’s body is tensed and his eyes are shut. He looks like every single fiber of his being is focused on not breaking down in front of Bucky.
He’s so exhausted, Bucky realizes as he moves on to another large wound. He wonders with barely simmering fury how much sleep Sam was allowed to get in captivity, if they had beat him to unconsciousness and allow him to get respite there, or if they had kept him on the edge, constantly teasing the relief of sleep but never letting him give into it… No matter which method they had used, it was no surprise that Sam seemed to be just barely keeping it together. Bucky thinks he was using the last of his strength just to keep a facade of stoicness and calm in front of Bucky.
Bucky wishes Sam would know he didn’t have to.
This wound requires much fewer stitches than the last one, and Bucky is finished in half the time. The other major wounds on Sam’s back are mostly bruises, and while Bucky will have to treat those, he decided to finish with needle and thread while he has them out. He holds the needle in his mouth and uses his hands to gently turn Sam around. His skin is warm beneath Bucky’s flesh hand, almost too warm, and Bucky doesn’t want to think about all of the awful things that could happen if his wounds are already infected. They’d have to go to a hospital, probably-- Bucky could try to treat it at home, but infections could turn nasty real quick and Bucky wouldn’t want to risk it. Going to a hospital meant the possibility of revealing themselves to their enemies, another risk that Bucky really wouldn’t like to take, especially when Sam had barely begun the road to recovery--
“Bucky?” Sam’s questioning voice halts Bucky’s intrusive train of thought. He realizes with a jolt his hands were still on Sam’s waist, holding him much longer than necessary. Bucky instantly draws back, warmth creeping onto his cheeks.
“Sorry. Got lost in thought.”
Sam’s chest is covered with crisscrossing lacerations. Most of them still trickle blood. Bucky wonders what they did to him. Had they whipped him? Thrown him? Bucky can think of countless options. He’s done all of them himself.
“What is it?” Sam asks, not missing the way Bucky’s jaw clenches and his fists tighten.
Bucky hesitates, then slowly reaches out to brush his right hand next to one of the cuts on Sam’s chest.
“What did they do to you?” He says quietly.
Sam goes very still under Bucky’s hand.
“Nothing that I haven’t felt before,” he replies finally.
“Really?”
There’s a moment of silence. “No.”
Rage floods Bucky once more, strong enough that he thinks it could erupt out at any moment, through his throat in a howl, or through his hands in a swinging fist. He remembers, briefly, how he felt whenever some big bully would pick on Steve for no other reason other than he was too small to properly stand up to them. He remembers how he seethed and how restlessly angry he got.
This is worse.
Bucky had been steadily applying more and more pressure to Sam’s cut without noticing, and it suddenly became too much. Sam hisses and slaps Bucky’s hand away. In a flash, Bucky snaps forward and snatches Sam’s wrist, out of instinct and maybe something else.
For a moment, they both stand stock still, Bucky’s metal hand closed tight around Sam’s wrist, their bodies quite nearly flush against each other, their gazes meeting with an intensity Bucky has never seen before.
He doesn’t quite know if it’s been coming this whole time, from the moment Bucky dragged Sam from his prison, or if it’s been building for months now, or if it was just as soon as Bucky caught Sam’s wrist. But Bucky leans forward. Not quickly, but not slowly enough that Sam doesn’t tense with shock when their lips meet.
Bucky’s right hand, the one that isn’t holding Sam’s wrist in a now relaxed manner, goes to hold Sam’s face, skirting a bruise to tenderly cup his jaw. Sam is pressed against their kitchen counter as Bucky leans into him, gently pressing his lips against Sam’s. It’s an ache that is finally fading-- or perhaps it’s growing stronger. Some part of Bucky just wants to grab on and never let go and hold him tight, be the other part, the part is realizing that Sam is still very much injured, and also still not reciprocating Bucky’s kiss, tells him to pull away, to start stammering apologies and--
Sam moves finally, and, to Bucky’s shock, it’s not to back away. He leans back into Bucky and slowly drops a hand to rest on Bucky’s waist. They stand like that for a long time, just pressed against each other, only moving their lips to kiss slowly again and again and again. Bucky can’t get enough. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this.
Finally, though, Bucky does pull away, because Sam is trembling slightly and he can’t help but feel like he’s about to collapse. They don’t say anything, even though they probably should talk about it like adults. Instead, Bucky rests his nose in the crook of Sam’s neck for a moment before coming to a decision and stooping down to bundle Sam into his arms. Sam lets out a shaky gasp of surprise or pain (probably both) as Bucky picks him up, one arm in the crook of his knees and the other around his back. Bucky carries Sam over to his bed and helps him sit down, allowing him to lean against his arm. They sit in silence once more. Bucky really wants to kiss him again.
“So,” Sam says finally, his voice weak.
“Mmm,” Bucky replies. He slides his hand into the small of Sam’s back.
“Are we going to kiss again?”
Bucky doesn’t need to be asked twice. He leans down slightly, and in the moments before their lips meet again, he thinks he sees Sam smile softly. But then his eyes slide shut, and he doesn’t think about anything for a while.