#fruitcompote

"First of all," says Bucky, leaning down to kiss a scar on Sam's back, "you're not one of my constituents."

"Immaterial. You're dodging the question."

"Second of all, should I be concerned that you want me to be catering to my constituents' needs like this?"

"I wouldn't be the first person to ask you for it," Sam says darkly. "I saw those comments under the Barnes For Brooklyn Instagram posts."

Bucky shudders and feels a spike of gratitude for the fact that he doesn't manage his own social media. He doesn't know why 'spit in my mouth, daddy!' seemed to anyone like an acceptable answer to a question about pressing issues in his district, but given how frequently it showed up in the comments, a person might be forgiven for thinking it was a ballot measure.

"Well, that's too bad for them," says Bucky, trailing his fingers up Sam's spine and along the arcs of his shoulder blades. He skims his fingertips over another scar, this one at the nape of Sam's neck, and kisses him there, too. "There's only one person whose needs I'm interested in seeing to, and it's you."

Sam hums, deep and contented enough that Bucky feels it rumble through his chest. "Except my breakfast needs, apparently. Those, I'm on my own for."

"Shh," says Bucky, pushing himself into a sitting position. "I'm busy."

"Busy starving me," says Sam, but he doesn't do anything to move out of the way.

"I used to play piano, did you know that?" Bucky asks. He looks down at Sam's back, settling his fingertips over Sam's spine like the keys on a Steinway. If he squints, he can still picture them under his hands, the patience he'd forced into his movements to turn the notes into something clear and sweet instead of rushed and awkward.

"I thought you might," says Sam, and his voice is clearer now, his head resting on folded arms. "Anytime we see one, you hit a couple keys when you think I'm not looking."

Bucky's face goes warm, caught somewhere between embarrassment and pleasure. "You keep paying attention to me like this and I'll start to think you have a crush on me, Wilson."

"Maybe I do," says Sam. He's quiet for a moment, humming in approval as Bucky trips his fingers up and down Sam's back. "Do you want to get one for the house?"

"One what?" Bucky asks. He's a little preoccupied with the made up melody that he's playing along the notches of Sam's spine.

"A piano."

"For where?" he asks absently.

"For here, baby," says Sam. He rolls onto his back, putting a stop to Bucky's playing. There's a warmth in his eyes that makes Bucky's breath catch just a little. "We could fit it into the living room, probably. There's that corner by the window."

"We could, huh?" asks Bucky. He presses a hand flat against Sam's chest, right over his heart. "Who's 'we'? I seem to recall someone telling me last night that DC was too damn cold to live in full time."

Sam shrugs. "Might not be so bad, if you have someone to keep you warm."

He bites back a grin. "You have anyone in mind for that job yet? Any prospects who could throw a hat into the ring?"

"Just one," says Sam, "but we're about to open the floor to applications if he doesn't feed me breakfast soon."

"But the kitchen is so far away," whines Bucky. "And the hallway is so cold."

"This bed is about to be so cold, Congressman Barnes."

Bucky sighs. "Fine, but I'm coming back to hide in here while the coffee maker gets going."

"Fine," says Sam.

"Can I get a kiss before I go?"

"You can have two if you bring me back one of those pistachio croissants from yesterday."

"It's a hypothetical question, Barnes," Sam says, and although he frowns, he doesn't protest as Bucky takes the rest of the ingredients from him and sets them on the counter. "Of course there isn't a right answer."

"Then what's wrong with what I said? If you said that to me, I'd be thrilled."

There's the barest flicker of amusement in Sam's eyes before he frowns again. "You didn't even think about it, Bucky. You just answered without hesitation."

"What, now decisiveness is a problem?"

Sam throws open the cabinet, taking down some bowls. "That's not what I said! But not everything has to be a split second decision."

Bucky opens his mouth to reply, but he's cut off by the sound of sneakers skidding on the tiled floor. Both he and Sam turn to see Kate and Joaquín, peering at them from the common room.

"If you guys are fighting again, you have to tell us," says Kate. "You have to put money in the jar."

"We're not fighting," Sam and Bucky say immediately, and neither Kate nor Joaquín looks convinced.

"We're just discussing potential plans of action in crisis situations," Sam says. "It's a lively debate. It's good for the health of the team."

Joaquín turns to Bucky. "You remember that thing we talked about, right? Cause we can go over it again if you--"

Bucky scowls, cutting him off. "You remember who assigns your early morning training drills, right?"

Kate and Joaquín share a look, then shrug.

"Alright, fine," says Kate. "But if there's another breakup, we get to choose who we're going with."

"We're not going to-" Bucky starts to say, but they're already heading down the hallway again, leaving him and Sam on their own in the kitchen. He turns to Sam. "Well, I'm assuming this isn't going to end in a breakup, but I could be wrong, I guess."

"Shut up, you know I'm not breaking up with you," says Sam. He crosses his arms. "I just think maybe you could've put two more seconds of thought into that decision, given the stakes."

"Given the stakes of this hypothetical scenario?" asks Bucky. "Where for some reason the only way to save the day is for me to leave you and marry an alien monarch?"

"It could happen!" says Sam. "It kind of did happen to Carol. Or at least that's what Kamala said."

"Fine, maybe it could happen. It doesn't change my answer. I'm not dumping you for an alien monarch, Sam."

"You're not even going to consider it? To save the world?"

"You want me to consider ending our relationship so I can marry an alien?"

Sam waves a dismissive hand. "You probably wouldn't have to end it; everyone knows political marriages aren't always monogamous. Royals have lovers all the time; that's what all those secret passages in castles are for."

"Wait a second," says Bucky, narrowing his eyes. "Is that what this is about?"

"What? No," Sam says, glancing away too quickly. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

But Bucky is grinning now, certain that he's figured out what Sam was getting at. "It's the sneaking around, isn't it?" he says. "We spent a year sneaking around, and now that Val's handled, we don't have to do it anymore, and you miss it!"

"I never said that," Sam says primly. "I just posed a hypothetical question. It was a thought experiment, Buck."

"A thought experiment where the ideal result was you becoming my side-piece while I was some king's consort," Bucky says, all smug and smirky now. He closes the distance between the two of them, hands settling on Sam's hips to keep him from wiggling away. "Admit it."

"No."

"Sammy."

Sam frowns, even as his hands come up to settle on Bucky’s shoulders. "I have nothing to admit."

"Sam."

"You're barking up the wrong tree, Barnes. You remember how inconvenient it was when we were trying to keep this thing secret? How many times we almost got caught?”

"I do," says Bucky. He leans in just a little closer, his lips brushing Sam's ear as he adds, "I also remember how hot it was.”

This close, he can feel the heat rush to Sam’s cheeks as he mumbles, “Shut up.”

“What? You didn’t like that time on the jet?” he asks. “Or on the balcony in the tower? Oh, or in the broom closet before that joint press conference we were supposed to be-”

Sam claps a hand over his mouth. “If I say yes, will you let this go?”

Bucky gently lifts Sam’s hand away from his mouth, shifting his hold on it so he can brush a kiss across Sam’s knuckles. “If you want me to, yeah,” he says. “But we can revisit it, too, if you want.”

He watches Sam consider it for a long moment, that little furrow appearing between his eyebrows, and Bucky has a renewed appreciation for living in a world where he gets to lean in and kiss Sam’s forehead just because.

“Maybe, uh- maybe another time,” Sam finally says. “I was kind of excited for the date night we already had planned, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” says Bucky, letting him go with one last peck on the forehead. “Though we might start to have a problem if you steal my ice cream again.”

“Oh, what, you’re willing to stake the whole world on being faithful to me, but I can’t have a bite of your sundae?” asks Sam, rounding to the freezer. 

“Finishing half the sundae is more than just a bite, Samuel.”

Sam clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “So ungenerous,” he says. “That’s not very royal of you, you know. Maybe I should be the consort and you should be the sidepiece.”

He huffs a sigh. “Fine, but I’m kidnapping you from your castle the first chance I get.”

It's comfortable in a way that Bucky cherishes, so he's loath to break the spell. Still, when Sam changes lanes and takes an exit about an hour before he's supposed to, it feels worth mentioning.

"I know you're not from around here, Sammy, but Queens is definitely not upstate New York."

"I know," says Sam.

Bucky raises his eyebrows. "Did they move the Avengers Compound since I visited last month?"

"Not that I've heard," Sam says, too nonchalant for someone on the wrong expressway heading in the opposite direction to his destination.

He turns in his seat to look properly at Sam. "What are you doing, Wilson?"

"Nothing," says Sam. "We can't just enjoy this drive?"

"In Queens?" asks Bucky. "Who's looking at scenery in Queens?"

"You and the dozens of dates you took to Rockaway Beach, if Steve's a reliable source. What, you'll split an egg cream with every girl in the neighborhood but not with me?"

Bucky feels his face go hot. "It wasn't every girl in the neighborhood," he says. "And it wasn't like that. Becca just had a lot of friends, and they needed someone to look out for them when they got it into their heads to go somewhere fun. My ma would've had my hide if I'd spent those afternoons canoodling with someone; I had a job to do."

"And Steve?"

"Steve had a job to do, too, but his job was just to make my job more difficult."

Sam laughs and Bucky feels a little spark of pleasure at being the one to draw it out of him. "He never grew out of that, huh?"

"I'm not sure he ever could have," Bucky says. He watches as Sam pulls off the expressway and onto Queens Boulevard, brightly lit grocery stores and restaurants passing by before they pull onto a residential street. "Do you have any plans to tell me where you're taking me?"

"Not even a little bit," says Sam, and it would be annoying if he didn't shoot Bucky a cheeky little wink at the end that leaves him a little breathless.

Bucky turns back towards the window to hide the smile on his face, doing his best to remember that Sam is a natural flirt, and a few sly looks and cheeky smiles do not under any circumstances mean that he feels about Bucky the way that Bucky feels about him.

He's doing a pretty good job of remembering it, actually, and then, when Sam parks the car and gets out, he looks at a still-skeptical Bucky and says, "Come on, Buck. Don't you know it's bad manners to keep a date waiting?"

It's a goddamn miracle that Bucky doesn't accidentally rip off the door handle for the way he fumbles it.

They step out onto a residential street, mostly illuminated by the lights inside all of the houses. As Sam begins heading down the sidewalk and motions for Bucky to follow, it occurs to him that at no point has Sam used the map on his phone, which means that he planned this far enough in advance that he knew exactly how to get to wherever they're going. He doesn't know what to do about that except furiously push down the hope that it sparks up and pick up the pace to catch up with Sam.

"All of this mystery and now you're gonna make me walk blindly through the mean streets of Queens, huh?"

Sam pointedly looks at the bright pink tricycle left in someone's front yard, then looks back at Bucky. "Don't worry, I'll protect you from the preschool biker gang."

"If you say so," says Bucky, and feels his face get warm again when Sam bumps a shoulder against his right one.

"I do say so," he says. "You're going to be surprised. Captain's orders."

"Sir, yes, sir," Bucky intones, and is immediately distracted from further pestering when Sam trips and Bucky instantly reaches out to catch him by the arm before he can land on his face. "You good, Sam?"

"Fine," says Sam, in a voice strained enough that Bucky wonders if he wrenched his shoulder weirdly. Maybe he'll drive the rest of the way to the compound, just in case. "It's just dark out here. Must've tripped over something."

"Well, use those eagle eyes if you have to, birdie," Bucky says. "You won't tell me where we're going, so if you hit your head and end up with amnesia, we're never completing this mission."

Sam laughs a little. "I have faith in you. You'd figure it out."

Bucky is just about to let go of Sam's arm as they reach an intersection when Sam moves his forearm out of Bucky's grasp and then proceeds to take Bucky's hand in his.

"Come on," he says, tugging on their joined hands like this is a perfectly normal way for them to walk down the street. "It's this way."

If he notices Bucky gaping at him, he doesn't react. Sam's grip is loose enough that Bucky could slide his hand out if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He just lets Sam lead him down the block, halfway through a quip about wild goose chases when he sees a neon red sign, bright enough to light up the entire corner. 'SODA' it reads, over a set of glass-fronted double doors, and a hand-painted sign on the window advertises homemade ice cream.

There's a counter inside, and he can see stools, and wood paneling, and a hand-drawn sign, familiar in a way that so few things are these days. Bucky doesn't realize that he's stopped in his tracks until Sam gives his hand a squeeze. It takes a moment for Bucky to tear his eyes away from the shop, but when he manages to do it, he finds Sam looking unsure for the first time all evening.

"We don't have to go in," he says. "They've been around since the twenties, and I thought that you might like it, but if it's too much, we can just get back in the car and-"

"Sam," says Bucky, cutting him off, "it's perfect."

"Yeah?" asks Sam, and if Bucky isn't mistaken, that's hope in his voice.

"Yeah," Bucky says, giving his hand a squeeze. "Plus, it'll be a brand new experience for me."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "A soda fountain will be a new experience for you? This place's menu is a hundred years old; they even have egg creams. I checked."

"You checked?" Bucky repeats, mostly because if he doesn't tease Sam, he's going to do something stupid like kiss him. And who could blame him, really? Sam tracked this place down and he researched its history and he checked the menu and drove out of the way to get here and then, after all of that, he was willing to leave if Bucky didn't want to be there.

"Yeah, I checked," says Sam. "And I know this was the kind of place you took your dates, so I don't see how it could be brand new."

Bucky smiles and leans in a little closer to Sam like he's sharing a secret, gratified to hear the way Sam's breath hitches just a little bit as he does. "I took plenty of girls to soda fountains back in the day," he says, his voice just above a whisper, "but I never got to walk into one with a fella on my arm."

"Oh," says Sam, his eyes wide. "I see."

"So what do you say?" asks Bucky, releasing Sam's hand only to hold out his arm. "You gonna let me buy you an egg cream, Wilson?"

The look on Sam's face is somewhere between shock and amusement, and he even reaches out to take hold of Bucky's elbow, but after a second he pulls his hand away and gives Bucky a look.

"Wait a damn second," he says. "I planned this whole entire outing Barnes; you're not hijacking my date at the last second."

"Maybe if you want to stop people from hijacking your dates, you should make it clearer that they're dates to begin with."

"And tempt fate by making plans? Are you serious? The last three times we've even tried to grab coffee together, we got mission callouts at the last second."

Bucky crosses his arms. "So what, you're just going to keep springing surprise dates on me?"

"If that's what it takes!" says Sam. "Do you know how hard you are to pin down whenever you're not literally on my couch in Delacroix or DC? I'm starting to think you practice the ghost thing just for fun."

He shrugs. "I mean, I wouldn't if I knew you were looking to make time with me."

Sam sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Fine," he says. "Fine. Okay. I'll ask you on a real date tomorrow."

"Good," says Bucky, distantly marveling at whatever the hell just happened. "I'm still buying you an egg cream now, though."

"I have no idea what an egg cream actually is," says Sam, and this time he takes Bucky's elbow when it's offered. "You're buying me a sundae, and you're shelling out for extra hot fudge."

"Do your dates usually involve this much negotiating?" asks Bucky, as he pulls open the door and waves Sam inside.

Most of the neighbors are out to make the most of the day. Sam saw Mrs. Harper from across the street when he went out to get the paper, and she told him to expect a box of zucchini and tomatoes for him and his 'nice young man.' Sam had replied that his young man was anything but nice, but Mrs. Harper, who'd been charmed by Bucky ever since he'd fixed that loose board on her porch, would hear absolutely none of it. On the other side of the house, there's people running in and out of the Jones' place, filling up the car for what must be a beach day, given the striped umbrellas and ice-filled coolers.

His back is to the deck doors as he takes it all in, but Sam has a sixth sense for some things, and he smiles a little as he hears the sliding door open and the quiet grumbling that follows. Sam doesn't turn around, just waits a beat and then feels a strong arm wrap around his waist, the scrape of Bucky's stubble against the place where Sam's neck meets his shoulder.

"You left," Bucky says, and it would be muffled beyond recognition if Sam and Bucky didn't have some variation of this conversation every single time Sam woke up before him.

"Some of us happen to like mornings and don't want to miss them," says Sam. "You should try it sometime. We could make the most of it."

"Mornings are great. Mornings when I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn and spend eight hours corralling teenagers are even better," says Bucky, dropping a kiss at the base of Sam's neck, and then another just a little higher up. "I love mornings. I just prefer them from bed. With you."

"Here I thought people slept less as they got older."

"That's a myth," Bucky says, nosing his way up the side of Sam's neck and trailing kisses as he goes. "Those people just don't have anything good to stay in bed for."

"Are you saying you won't come on early morning fishing trips with me and the boys next week?" asks Sam.

"If I go with you, who'll you show your fish off to when you get home, huh?" asks Bucky, his mouth at the hinge of Sam's jaw. He kisses there twice, then adds, "Don't worry, no matter what you come back with, I'll be ready to post on Instagram about how my boyfriend caught the biggest fish I've ever seen. We'll photoshop it if we need to, do a little augmenting. There's no shame in needing a little help, you know."

"Keep talking about augmenting and we're gonna find out how much you like experiencing mornings from the couch."

Bucky laughs. "Maybe you should shut me up then, huh?"

Sam sets his coffee on the railing and turns. He tries to school his face into something serious, but he immediately grins at the sight of Bucky, all sleep-rumpled with his hair sticking up and pillow creases on his face. He means to joke around, but he can't do anything but lean in and kiss Bucky, sweet and unhurried.

"Morning, baby," he says, probably too soft as he pulls Bucky close.

"Morning, sweetheart," says Bucky, smiling back just as smitten as Sam feels. "You sleep okay? Your new roommates keep you up at all?"

"Well, one of them was a perfect angel even when she got locked out of the other bedroom," says Sam. "But the other one had some kind of vendetta against me being asleep."

Bucky hums, thoughtful. "He sounds like a problem."

"Oh, he is," Sam says, grinning as Bucky steals another kiss and pulls him closer. "But I think I'll keep him anyway."

"How generous of you," says Bucky. He opens his mouth to say something else and then closes it abruptly, his eyes going wide at something over Sam's shoulder.

"What?" Sam asks after waiting to see if it's a joke. He starts to turn. "What is it?"

But Bucky stops him where he is, hand digging into Sam's hip. "Don't look!" he hisses. "They'll see you!"

"Bucky, who's 'they'?"

"Them!" hisses Bucky, his eyes darting back to whatever's behind Sam. "The entire high school yearbook staff that's assembled in the neighbors' backyard right now!"

"Oh," says Sam in belated realization. That explains the two minivans in the Jones' driveway. "It's beach week."

"Beach week," Bucky repeats, his voice flat. "That's why a dozen recently-graduated students of ours are standing in the driveway and very pointedly staring everywhere but here?"

"Please, they're not actually doing that," says Sam, but Bucky stops him before he can turn to check.

"Do you really want to have the conversation you'll end up having if you turn around right now and one of them is looking at us?"

Sam doesn't have to imagine it for more than half a second before he cringes. "God, no."

"Great, me neither," says Bucky. "So we're just going to keep lovingly gazing at each other and move back towards the house, and we're never teaching these kids again, so once they leave, we never have to think about how they definitely saw us kissing just now."

"Michelle is literally my next door neighbor, Bucky. Yours, too, now."

"Yeah, and she's known about us for years and never told anyone. Michelle, I trust. Everyone else is an unknown quantity."

"An 'unknown quantity'?" repeats Sam. "Who are you, the Mission Impossible guy?"

"Only on my days off," says Bucky, and it's only as he reaches out to slide open the door that Sam realizes he maneuvered them across the deck without breaking eye contact or interrupting their conversation.

"Shit, I think you actually might be," says Sam, as they step back into the kitchen and slide the door shut. It's only when he turns to look back at the yard that he realizes what happened. "Dammit Barnes, I left my coffee outside."

"The squirrels can have it," says Bucky. "Forget coffee on the deck; we're sticking to my original plan and going back to bed."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "At nine AM?"

"We're getting an early start," says Bucky, already heading down the hallway, and Sam can hear the cheeky grin on his face. "You know, someone told me recently that I should be making the most of my mornings."

With a growl, Sam pushes off the wall and takes off after Bucky.

He clicks off his comm and strains his ears, listening for the direction of the footsteps as they crunch through the snow. It's not quite day or night amongst the trees, and thick gray fog doesn't do much to illuminate the surroundings. Still, years and years of partnership apparently do mean something to some people, and a few more moments of careful listening reveal to Sam that the footsteps are falling in the distinct pattern of what he once would've called a murder strut.

Sam doesn't know what to call it when some of the tension instantly falls away from his body at the sound of Bucky's footsteps, but he chooses to not think about it too hard--and anyway, most of the tension comes rushing back when Bucky appears out of the mist and actually shushes Sam, like he's some kind of knife-wielding librarian.

His patience for nonsense is already halved after being transported to some kind of murderous fairytale realm because Bucky's team shot first and decided the questions didn't matter, so Sam does not hold back on an ounce of the Wilson family gravitas when he raises both eyebrows at Bucky in the most scathing look of disbelief that he can manage. There's a tiny, petty part of him that's pleased when Bucky immediately holds up his hands in surrender.

"Sorry," he whispers, moving closer to Sam. "But I could hear you on your comms from half a mile away. We have to move; this whole place is an echo chamber and it's not an accident that that thing has been circling above you this whole time."

"What are we supposed to do, scale those cliff faces when they're covered with ice?"

"There's a path around," says Bucky. "I saw it when I was climbing down here. It's longer, but it's safer."

"Why did you climb down here, anyway, Bucky? Don't you have a team to lead?"

Bucky crosses his arms, his jaw ticking as he clenches it. "They're safe. You aren't."

Sam opens his mouth tell Bucky that he doesn't need rescuing, but his words are drowned out by a shriek from the creature above them, followed the rumbling sound that seems to precede the bolts of purple lighting that it's been flinging their way. Bucky whips a knife out of his belt, throws it at the ice-covered branches of a far-off tree, then grabs Sam's hand and bolts.

As they run, Sam hears icicles crashing to the ground, and then the creature shrieks again before they hear the crackle of lightning as it splits the trunk. Sam doesn't look back, concentrating on keeping up, and Bucky doesn't say anything as they run, just keeps Sam's hand in his own and weaves through the trees and around rock formations.

Sam's lungs are burning when they come to a stop, the cold air prickly against his flushed face. He notices belatedly that his hand is still gripped in Bucky's, but letting go seems like a secondary consideration right now.

"I told you that spot was an echo chamber," hisses Bucky, and if he were less annoying, Sam might appreciate that he has the good grace to be out of breath, too.

"Yeah, yeah, you can apply to be a park ranger in this creepy forest once it's not trying to kill us anymore," says Sam. "Let's just get on your secret path or whatever and get out of here. Where is it?"

Beside him, Bucky is silent. He's got a hand on his hip, brows furrowed as he scans the surrounding trees.

"Well?" prods Sam, after Bucky has said nothing for long enough that he begins to get suspicious. "Which way, smartass? How do we escape the echo chamber?"

"Uh..."

Sam narrows his eyes. "If you're about to say what I think you're about to say-"

"We might be lost," says Bucky, wincing.

"Of course we are," says Sam, scrubbing a hand down his face. "Of course we're lost in the-"

He freezes, snapping his mouth shut at the sound of a cracking twig not too far away--of several cracking twigs, now that he's listening for it. Whatever it is that's moving in the fog, it's not walking on two legs. It's not even walking on four.

A look at Bucky is enough for Sam to know that he sees it, too. When he jerks his head towards a nearby rock formation, Sam follows, keeping his footsteps as light as he can.

First, it looks like Bucky brought them to a dead end, but when Sam looks a little bit closer, he sees a grotto tucked into the rock face. There's something faintly glowing inside, throwing enough shadow that Sam knows it's a bigger space than it looks like.

If that wasn't enough to draw him in, the sound of the rapidly-approaching creature behind them would be. While Bucky stares out at the trees, scanning for danger, Sam pulls him along by their joined hands, squeezing through the crevasse, but stopping short when he reaches the grotto to find an enormous altar bearing a giant gilded book.

He turns back to point it out to Bucky, but as it turns out, the problem with stopping short when you have a supersoldier right behind you is that momentum is not on your side. The slippery floor is absolutely no help, and as Bucky crashes into Sam, it sends them both to the ground in an unceremonious heap.

As Sam lies there on the stone floor, his chest pressed to Bucky's, he squeezes his eyes shut and catalogues every choice that brought him here to this moment, then regrets them all.

He only opens his eyes when he feels Bucky's thumb stroke along the side of his head. He hadn't noticed Bucky's hand coming around to cushion his head from the impact when they fell. It makes his cheeks go hot.

"You okay, Sam?" Bucky asks, and he words feel so much more resonant in this close, quiet space.

Sam mumbles an affirmative answer. Then: "You? I didn't break you, did I?"

"Nah," says Bucky, and when Sam's eyes open, he can see a small smile on his face. "Hey, uh, the next time that we do this, do you think we could find a surface that isn't extremely uncomfortable to land on?"

Sam is tired and a little sore and more than a little done with this stupid forest and its fairy creatures, but he feels his mouth quirk up into a smile all the same.