Bucky has known Sam his whole life, almost longer than Steve. The difference was that he remembered meeting Sam but he doesn’t have a memory of a time without Steve. Probably because he wasn’t annoying from the second they met. When he was a kid he preferred long hair and Sam, because he’s a total asshole, liked to sit behind Bucky in church and pull it. He sometimes glared over his shoulder at Sam but all he got in return was an annoying smirk. Steve noticed but he never said anything, just watched as Sam pulled at Bucky’s hair while Bucky tried to wave him off until their parents gave them dirty looks for disrupting the church service.
When he and Sam ended up in the same class the teachers must have noticed that they hated each other right away because they ended up sitting next to each other. That resulted in them terrorizing each other all through the fifth grade. Eventually Steve was stuck between the two to keep the peace and he and Sam resented Steve’s making them apologize to each other. Steve, the teachers argued, was a good boy and they should take note. They decided to gang up on Steve but they ended up getting in trouble when Steve got them back. According to the teachers if they made a good boy like Steve retaliate they must have deserved what they got. That was the first time Bucky learned that his best friend must be a Slytherin because that asshole totally got away screwing him and Sam over.
By the time he and Sam hit high school they were well known sworn enemies and he swore his teachers thought that torturing him was fun because he always had to do group projects with Sam fucking Wilson. Steve tries his best to insert himself between them whenever they got particularly nasty but the best he managed to do was end up with Sam’s chilli cheese fries in his face in place of Bucky, who now had to launch two food items to get Sam and to avenge his fallen friend. They end up starting a huge food fight and their teachers suspend them both but it was totally worth it to see the look on Sam’s face as Bucky slapped him with an extra greasy pizza slice. Steve had looked on in horror while all of this went down, chilli staining his blonde hair.
So they had sort of always been destined to hate each other even though Sam got along with Steve and all of Bucky’s other friends much to his dislike. Shit, even Tony liked him and Tony didn’t like anyone, even Steve and he was about as sweet as a person could get. Natasha claimed it was because there was so much sexual tension between the two but Bucky thought she was looking at some other Tony and Steve because there was only regular tension there. But then she thought Clint’s cooking was good and that Phil was not a stuck up ass so she wasn’t to be trusted.
It wasn’t until Bucky was eighteen and coming home from his first semester on college that anything changed between the two of them. Steve had been driving and talking about some party Tony dragged him to- God even knew why they hung out when all they did was argue with each other- and some woman that hit on him the whole time. He wasn’t really used to his total body transformation yet and it freaked him out that people went out of his way to talk to him now. Before people only really talked to him to get closer to Bucky, which they both found highly insulting. When the snow started to come down they didn’t think much of it, and when the snow got worse Steve slowed down some to compensate but that didn’t seem to matter when they hit the ice.
Steve did his best to correct the car but he ended up over correcting and the car flips. The last thing Bucky remembers before passing out is throwing his arm in from of Steve, an instinct he never had been able to drop even after he grew several inches and gained a freakish amount of muscle. The next time he wakes up he can see Tony looking down at him looking grim, which was weird because why was Tony there? When he finally wakes up for more than a few seconds Sam goddamn Wilson is there with some wilted flowers that he tells Bucky he found in the trash. Asshole.
*
Sam has known Bucky Barnes his whole damn life, ever since that time he tripped Sam walking into church. What kind of asshole trips someone going into a church? Bucky Barnes, that’s who. So Sam pulls on his hair a little, it was retaliation okay? Then Bucky keeps tripping him and he keeps pulling his stupid hair, it didn’t even look good on him. Then the asshole went and got his hair cut and he did it just to annoy Sam too, he smirked at Sam the first Sunday he seem it.
Then their teachers must have thought children terrorizing each other would be a fun thing to experience because they get paired together in the fifth grade seating arrangement and Bucky kept gluing all of Sam’s pencils to his desk so he stole all the ink out of Bucky’s pens. Then Bucky stole his mechanical pencils, leaving him to use the wood ones like some kind of fourth grade barbarian, so he stole every single eraser Bucky had. Even the ones in the ends of his pencils. This went on until the teachers got annoyed and stuck Steve between them, and that bastard ended up getting away with murder when he and Bucky built a tentative allegiance to retaliate against his making them apologize to each other. They stole his snow fort and refused to let him in for a solid three days even tough they hated each other more than Steve. He had a lesson to learn though so they remained tentative friends until Bucky trips Sam on his way into church again. Total jackass.
If he were to pinpoint a moment when things changed he wouldn't be able to. High school was more of the same, and that one time he chilli fried Steve was hilarious until Bucky started a food fight and slapped him with a pizza slice. He pelted Bucky with like twelve Oreos though, so it was worth it until a stray Oreo hit Fury, their one-eyed math teacher who hated all. Then they got suspended and his mother’s disappointment wasn’t very fun. But somewhere in between pelting Bucky with Oreos and graduation something changed. Objectively Bucky had always been pretty attractive, but sometime in Sam’s senior year he noticed. Boy had that been weird because before that he never really though much of guys minus the stray dream about Tony, which Rhodey informed him was totally normal. It wasn’t until he said something to Natasha years later that he learned that that was not normal. But then she preferred dreaming of Pepper so what did she know?
Then Bucky went off to college and Sam stuck around for a little while because he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life yet. Shit, he could barely decide which boxers he wanted to wear let alone a life-long career. That was when things changed for Bucky though, because he got into the accident with Steve and lost his arm. Funny thing was that he wouldn't have lost it if he didn’t reach out to protect Steve. He had a seatbelt for that but Bucky was hardly the smartest broccoli of the bunch. But he had a reputation to uphold so he went to visit Bucky with some flowers that looked nice when he got them, but they got a little weather shocked and wilted. He tells Bucky he got them out of the trash and promptly gets called an asshole. Sam can’t help but grin as he drops the flowers on Bucky’s chest, earning a dirty look as he does so.
*
After the accident it’s weird because everything changes. Bucky didn’t really anticipate anything changing, he only lost an arm and yeah that sucked but Tony was on making a new one anyways, but suddenly everything just sort of… stops for him. He was used to being social, active, but large crowds and noise start to make him panic to the point where it became difficult to get out of bed in the morning. School went down the shitter fast, his normally high sex drive took a dive, and even his friendship with Steve was strained but that was at least partially because Steve blamed himself for it all and it only stressed Bucky out more to know that. And boy, the stress everything caused him now. Even the smallest of things would seem so damn daunting to him, like making a phone call of all things. He liked phone calls before, he found them fun. It was Steve that hated them with a passion.
It doesn’t take long for him to move back home and it takes even less time for his mom to get tired of his shit. He knew that she was trying to help but if he could just get out of his slump like she expected him to he wouldn’t have even been in the damn slump. Steve does his best from afar but it was difficult for him to help when he spent more time beating himself up for causing this mess. Bucky doesn’t blame him for it really, he was the one driving, but he wasn’t the one that caused all of this. Bucky’s current condition wasn’t anyone’s fault, even his own though that took some convincing. Of all the people to help, to break through, it’s Sam that finally does it.
His mom had sent him over to drop off some dish that belonged to Bucky's mother and Bucky had answered the door because no one else was home to do it. Normally he would have left it but something drew him out of bed and now he was glad for it. Sam, he understood in ways Bucky didn’t even know anyone could. He got why he was so stressed over everything, he understood that Bucky couldn’t just get up in the morning no matter how much he wanted to or how much his mom yelled at him to. He even hated phone calls like Bucky did. That was the first time Bucky had ever even considered PTSD as the source of his problems. It wasn’t like he was a soldier who went to war, obviously he never would have thought of PTSD. But Sam informed him that that was only one way to get PTSD, that it could happen from anything traumatic- even if other people didn’t think the event was traumatic at all.
Things sort of changed after that, he got out of bed a lot more but really only if Sam was there to kick him out. Steve could do it too when he was home, but he was generally pretty busy with art school and that only seemed to make him feel more guilty. That made him hard to be around for more than a few hours at best, which only seemed to fuel Steve’s guilt, and then the cycle continued. It was Tony that eventually offered to talk to him, which was more than a little weird, but since taking over his father’s company he matured a little. He also nearly trashed the company, which Howard was pissed about, but it worked out in the end anyways so it didn’t matter.
“You’re going to talk to Steve?” Bucky asks, sceptical.
“What? I’ve been reliably informed that talking is one of my specialties,” Tony says, grinning.
“Ad you’ll say what huh? All it’s going to do is make it worse, everything makes his damn guilt worse,” Bucky mumbles. He tried exactly once to tell Steve how he felt and it went horribly.
“Maybe, maybe not. There’s some stuff Steve hasn’t been telling you, might help me out a little because honestly I’m sick of you and Steve moping around instead of dealing with your issues. Sam and I agree, this has got to go,” he says as if it was totally normal to conspire with Sam with anything.
“What the hell? You’ve been talking with Sam?” He asks.
“Yeah, sort of. I mean we keep dancing around what you and Steve are saying because we aren't total assholes, we do want you to trust us, but we’re both done with this whole you and Steve fighting but not really thing. It’s not right, like eating peanut butter with onions,” Tony says, wrinkling his nose.
“You’re a disgusting creature,” Bucky tells him because he damn well knew Stark tried it to know it wasn’t right.
“At least I’m adventurous, Steve is boring as hell,” Tony says, nose in the air.
“Or he has a general sense of whether or not your ideas are as stupid as they are deadly,” Bucky point out.
“Rhodey goes along with my ideas,” Tony says in his own defence.
“Rhodey wants to make sure you don’t die doing something highly irresponsible,” Bucky says, “so he doesn’t count. Stop being mean to Steve because he rightly decides that your ideas are terrible. Like that time you decided it would be a good idea to spontaneously take up racing that one time,” he says. Shortly after Bucky’s accident because apparently Tony didn’t learn Steve’s lesson about careful driving let alone his own reckless driving and that wasn’t even on a racetrack.
“That was a bucket list item and I only almost died,” Tony says, again spouting a really terrible defence for himself.
*
“I get that you’re all guilty over Bucky and all that but you aren’t helping yourself. He doesn’t blame you, he never has,” Tony tells Steve.
Steve glares at him from the bed, looking unimpressed. “You did this purposely,” he accuses.
“So I did. Contrary to popular belief I do know exactly what I’m doing. Look, I get that you were driving but you hit black ice, it happens and this time things went really badly and yeah, it fucked Bucky up pretty good but you didn’t do that Steve. And he knows it, so now whenever you’re around him and you blame yourself it only makes him feel worse because he blames himself for fucking you up. So now we’re in a cycle of who fucked who up and feeling guilty about it when none of this was anyone’s fault. Shit just happens and it sucks, but that’s that,” he says. He knew more than anyone that things happened by chance, if shit really went around to those that deserved it he’d have way worse luck. His luck was awesome, so obviously fate was fake.
“You don’t get it, Tony, you weren’t there,” Steve says.
“I know, and I know that I don’t really understand. How could I? It doesn’t matter how recklessly I drive, I’m fine. It’s always been like that no matter how stupid I get. But here’s the thing, you’re screwing yourself over with your guilt Steve. I know you’ve noticed Bucky has a hard time around you and it isn’t because he secretly blames you for the accident, it’s because you constantly blame yourself and even when you don’t he anticipates it at some point. He just wants his best friend back the same way you do,” Tony tells him. And he wanted his boyfriend back. Bucky… he and Bucky got along alright he supposed, but it was always Steve he liked better even if they argued all the time about stupid shit. It was oddly endearing when it didn’t get too heated, though they’ve both learned when to back down. No sense in ruining their relationship over where the towels should go.
Steve reaches out to Tony and he crawls back into bed, curling up in Steve’s side. “Did he tell you any of this?” he asks.
“Some of it, some of it I got from Sam, and some of it I gathered on my own. He doesn’t blame you; no one blames you but you. It was a really shitty accident and that’s it Steve, and Bucky knows that. He doesn’t need you to take the blame for all the ways his life has gone wrong since then, he needs his best friend to help him figure a way out of this mess.” Something else he learned from experience, though Rhodey and Pepper had a thing or two to learn about mental health. It was Steve that ended up being helpful there actually. They bickered a lot before, sort of like Bucky and Sam but with less sexual tension, and yeah they slept together a few times, but it wasn’t until Steve noticed his crappy mental health that they realized they worked in ways that didn’t involve arguing or hate sex. He missed it now with this whole Bucky thing so he was trying to get it solved, if only for selfish reasons.
Steve presses his face into Tony’s hair, “thank you,” he murmurs. For a long few moments they’re quiet before Steve speaks again. “I love you,” he says.
“Yeah, I love you too, even if you don’t put the towels away right,” he says.
“Oh fuck off with that, they’re towels, does is matter where they go?”
*
Bucky wakes up to something hitting his window so he gets up, looking out to find Sam outside the window grinning at him in the dead of night. Okay, so technically it was the early morning light but still. Bucky remained dead to the world until one p.m at least. When he opens the window Sam tosses another rock, a small one right into his room to be an asshole. “I hope you wake my mother up so she kicks your ass,” Bucky hisses at him.
“She would not kick my ass, I got you out of bed before mid afternoon. She’d probably buy me breakfast. Now get your ass out here, I have plans,” he says. Bucky considers blowing Sam off but he knows that that will only encourage Sam to climb the wall into his room and play video games until he got up so it was either go now and suffer or suffer for hours then go and suffer more. Sam cheers excitedly when he mumbles something about getting dressed as he disappears back into his closet.
By the time he gets out of his window and on to the ground Sam has a thermos waiting for him, “hot chocolate, that nasty mint kind that you like,” he says. Bucky takes the thermos and smiles down at it for a moment before he takes a drink. Despite all the complaining he did he actually liked Sam, not that he would ever tell Sam that.
“Screw you, it isn’t my fault you lack taste buds,” Bucky says, pushing Sam away. He takes another drink and Sam smacks the thermos, sending hot chocolate all down his favourite sweater. “I’m going to fart on Fancy Bear,” Bucky threatens.
“You wouldn’t dare! That wasn’t even hot!” Sam says, outraged.
“Fancy Bear better prepare to be stunk out,” Bucky says and he takes off, Sam running screaming behind him about some stupid bear he got for Christmas one year.
*
Sam doesn’t catch Bucky before he gets into his room, but he does tackle Bucky to the ground before he gets to Fancy Bear. The bear is perched on Sam’s bed looking regal as ever and Bucky’s ass was going nowhere near it. “If you so much as look at that bear you will regret it forever,” Sam says, not moving from where he had Bucky pinned t the ground.
Bucky struggles to get out from under Sam but instead he ends up flipping them over in an attempt to get the upper hand. Except he only had one arm now and that was hindering his movements, not that he wasn’t putting up one hell of a fight. “Stop… struggling… and leave… Fancy Bear… alone,” Sam grunts out, trying to stave Bucky off and failing at it miserably. Damn, he needed to work out more because this two hundred pound sack of depression was kicking his ass.
The last thing he expects his for his door to burst open and his mom to find them… struggling. She makes a face, “are you two trying to make out? Because you aren’t doing it right, but it is about damn time. You’ve only been only had a crush on each other since you were nine,” she says. “Oh don’t look at me like that, you two have been pulling each other’s pigtails since you met.”
Sam pulls on Bucky’s long hair, which was actually in a bun rather than pigtails, but still. “Stop pulling my hair Wilson, what is it with you and my hair?”
“Its freakishly soft,” Sam says and wait what? That was not supposed to ever leave his mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bucky asks, frowning at him.
“What wrong with you?” Sam counters.
“Do you want an itemized list?” Bucky asks.
“I have an itemized list,” Sam shoots back.
“Oh for gods sakes would you two stop pretending that you hate each other and kiss already?” Sam’s mom says, totally ruining Sam’s reputation and dignity for life.
Bucky looks down at Sam and tilts his head to the side, considering. “If you try to kiss me I’ll head butt you,” he says even though he wouldn’t. He’s wanted to kiss Bucky since… well since they were kids if he was honest, he just didn’t know what the hell that feeling was until he was in his late teens.
*
Sam comes over often now, even though all Bucky does is insult him. He didn’t really want to but he also had no clue how to stop so here he was, calling Sam the Trash King of Shit Mountain instead of flirting like a normal human. But then it’s been well over a year since he’s done anything like a normal human so he guesses that’s to be expected.
“If you don’t shit up I’m going to make you watch the Star Ward prequels,” Sam threatens.
“Fuck you, you would not,” Bucky says, shoving Sam over so he could steal his spot on the couch. Sam basically throws himself in Bucky’s lap and oh shit okay he needed to keep calm because Sam was only being an asshole and why did his sex drive have to make a sudden comeback now?
“I would to because I’m a mean asshole, now pass me the remote,” Sam says, reaching across Bucky to the arm of the couch and when the shit did Sam get abs? Oh come on, he used to be a skinny little beanpole who was like seventy percent eyes for gods sakes! How come he got hot while Bucky started to resemble his sister more than himself? Even if Sam thought his hair was soft. They end up watching the Lord of The Rings and complaining about which parts were the best the whole time and Sam doesn’t move from Bucky’s lap, but he’s just being an ass.
*
Steve can see the difference right away, even if he’s certain that Bucky hasn’t showered in awhile. But he looked happier. He doesn’t know what to say when Bucky opens the door to his room though so he throws his arms around Bucky and hugs him tight, afraid of what would happen if he let go. Bucky hugs him back and for a long time they do nothing, but it’s exactly what they need.
*
“Barnes, get your shit together, we’re going on a date,” Sam says, showing up at Bucky’s door unexpectedly and looking pretty attractive in those aviators. Damn, why was he like this? When did Sam suddenly become attractive to Bucky? He remembers once when they were fourteen when they went swimming and he lingered on Sam’s body too long because he got made fun of for it by everyone but Steve, who told their friends at the time to shut up. Steve would have been the only one brave enough to admit he was queer anyways but he always did have a wild streak a mile wide, of course he’d be the first to come out just to spite people who assumed he was straight. Which was exactly what he did actually.
But that was one time, an isolated incident and Sam was still like fifty percent eyes then, he didn’t grow into those until he was like seventeen and how did Bucky even know that?
“Are you gunna get ready or are you gunna stare at me for the next twenty years?” Sam asks, breaking his thought process.
“Oh, um. I haven’t showered in three days,” he says in place of a normal, human sentence.
“You’re disgusting, go clean yourself and then we can go do something fun with ourselves,” Sam says, shooing him off in the direction of the shower.
“Like handjobs,” Bucky blurts out.
“Who the fuck likes handjobs? Go shower you god damn cretin.”
*
“When the hell did Tony and Steve start dating?” Bucky asks, frowning as the two chased each other around on the beach.
“They’ve fucking since they were fifteen man, where have you been?” Sam asks, frowning at him.
“Slapping you in the face with pizza,” Bucky counters.
“But I pelted Fury with an Oreo so who’s winning?” Sam says, nose in the air.
“Fucking no one, you two wasted so much perfectly good food that day and that still makes my blood boil,” Clint says.
“Speak for yourself Clint, I thought that food fight was hilarious, Oreo pelting Fury and all. But yeah Barnes, you’ve been too busy staring at Sam’s ass your whole damn life to notice that Steve and Tony have been in love just as long. Who would have thought Tony would figure out his feelings before you dumbasses. Seriously, an avocado has more emotional sense than Stark,” Natasha says, shaking her head.
“Screw you Nat, you still haven’t admitted that you’re in love with Wanda and you did that exchange years ago. Just call her up in Romania or wherever the hell she was from and marry her so we don’t have to hear about it anymore,” Bucky says. “Spontaneous dates and shit worked out for Sam and I.”
“That’s because you two have low enough standards to choose each other,” Clint says, dodging the sand Sam kicks at him.
“Hey, only Bucky and I can insult each other like that. It isn’t okay when you guys do it,” Sam says.
“And more importantly as if Phil is any better, he’s looked like a fucking middle aged man since he was five,” Bucky says. Natasha and Sam burst out laughing, drawing the attention of Steve and Tony, who also laugh when Bucky repeats himself.
“Screw you, he has not,” Clint mumbles.
“Oh let me prove you wrong,” Tony says, whipping out his phone with a flourish. It takes him a few moments to locate a picture but when he does Phil is standing next to the principal and their suits almost match, except Phil’s is made for a five year old. “Middle aged man since he was five,” Tony says, grinning. Clint sulks because it’s true and he can’t prove it wrong.