#guuhhhhh

“Did you see that?!”

“My eyes never left the field– of course I saw that!!”

Sam had all the Howlie trading cards when he was a kid, and the Sergeant James Barnes one was always a little more dog-eared than the rest. Sometimes he even took it to school in his little vinyl wallet, kept it hidden behind baseball cards and movie stubs.

When he’d play Howling Commandoes with his friends, he’d never, ever choose to be Bucky, even though his picture – his handsome face and broad shoulders and the agonizingly pretty softness at his jaw – made Sam’s stomach lurch. Sam would play it cool, though, and when his cousin got to be Bucky instead, he’d always tell her no one else wanted to be him, anyway. Stupid jerk fell off a train.

Sam loves Steve, and he will never, ever confess to him that his first thought upon meeting him that first morning was “OMG BUCKY’s BEST FRIEND.”

Sam dates a lot of sturdy boys in uniform in college and his early twenties. An Air Force pilot, two Marines, a dude from the Navy. This definitely doesn’t have anything to do with Bucky Barnes. That would be crazy.

When it turns out Bucky is alive and unwell and smashing things with his terrifying(ly sexy) robot arm, Sam is so fucked.