falcon

He can almost accept it as the truth when Sam says it– because he makes it sound obvious, genuine.

     “Y’know, the more you talk about this whole flamingo situation, I’m startin’ to think you’re projecting your retirement fantasy onto me.”

Bucky eyes a car (black, fairly new, in-state license plate) as it turns down their street, tracking its path as it approaches, lights growing brighter only to fade as it passes them by. He lets out a sigh.

     “After the war, I uh…I wanted to be a forest ranger.” Bucky scoffs a little, because it seems like such a far away fantasy now, but there’s a humor there, distant and nostalgic. “Just always seemed appealing, all those national parks– the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone. I partially blame growing up on cheap Western pulp magazines, but my old man would talk about it sometimes…. I don’t even know if things would’ve played out that way…. Lotta guys ended up staying stationed in Europe.”

“Hey. I plan to retire extremely beloved in a neighborhood of my admirers. No tacky pink company necessary.”

Sam doesn’t say much as Bucky talks, just listens and watches his expression drift farther and farther away from the present. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Bucky and Steve are echoes from another time. Remembrance is a sharp, painful thing. For a moment, Sam wants nothing more than the power to turn back time, drop a couple Russians off a cliff, and get Bucky his gig at Yellowstone.

He wants to say it - you could still be a forest ranger. You could still do anything you want to. But doing what he does, living the life he has, he knows better than most that it doesn’t always work like that. 

     “Yeah…. Yeah, exactly.”

Bucky isn’t sure if it’s because it’s what Sam does for a living, because he knows from experience, or if he just possesses some innate ability– but he’s got a way of wording things in a way that makes sense, in a way his own thoughts can’t coordinate.

          ( and Christ, is he grateful for it )

However–

     “If you buy me a lawn flamingo I’ll have your access to the Tower revoked,” he laughs. “And Florida–? seriously? Hell no. How’re you supposed to celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah when it’s eighty degrees out? Won’t feel right.”

Bucky settles into the silence that follows– brief and natural, before adding–

     “I thought about it– retiring. Might not have much of a choice, depending on which way the coin falls. But I sorta…” he shrugs, not sure how to say it without sounding undeservedly selfish, because at the end of the day he wants the chance to right what’s been wronged. “I just feel like I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

Sam makes an offended face at the mention of tower access, but it’s all for show. If he had a dollar for every empty threat he and Bucky lobbed back and forth the past couple months, he’d be able to comfortably afford Manhattan rent.

“Listen, I just don’t want you to get lonely in your old age. You can name the flamingo, tell it good night, talk to it about the good old days when you used to wear a hat with little wings on it like that was a totally dignified thing to do...” Sam throws Bucky a grin. It’s nice to hear him laugh, even if Sam should definitely make it a goal to antagonize less assassins in the coming the year. “Though you may not actually be cool enough to pull off Hawaiian shirt Hanukkah.”

As the conversation turns to retirement, Sam can’t help but raise an eyebrow. When he’s right in the thick of it, really working with Steve and Bucky, it’s easy to forget just how many decades they’ve got on him in terms of work experience. Even though he feels new to the whole hero shctick, Bucky’s been around the block more than a couple times now.

     “Flex…on–? Y’know what, nevermind. Sure. Yeah, different hammer, different…god? Asgardian? It’s all a bit too Tolkein for my taste.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh at the idea that Sam might be using Bond films as a crutch for working mission parameters. And well, he supposes Sam’s not wrong. 

     “Yeah, and Bond always walks away a winner, right?” Bucky shakes his head. He hopes there’s a win to be had here. “Honestly–? it all sorta makes me miss the war– not, y’know, the war itself, because that was…well, terrible. But just knowing what the hell I was doing, what to expect. All this–” he gestures around them, absently indicating the surveillance work they’re currently doing “–isn’t anything new to me. I can do it, but long term?”

He’d rather fight his way out than sit and wait not knowing.

          ( he doesn’t think he needs to say that for Sam to know it either; at the end of the day, they were both soldiers, once )

     “But I, uh….” Appreciate you, he means to say. “Thanks, Avenger.” Bucky elbows him back. “But if you’ve really got nothing better to do, we need to find you new hobbies.”

“Nerd,” Sam said, because he couldn’t decide whether to focus on the invocation of Tolkien or the fact that Bucky was clearly not doing any better at picking up twenty-first century slang.

His amusement dimmed as Bucky went on and Sam couldn’t help but grimly commiserate with the assessment. “I know what you’re trying to say,” he nodded, drumming his fingers on the leg of his pants. “Things were simpler. Right was right and wrong was wrong and anything that fell between was too far above my pay-grade for me to worry about.”

That was the uncomfortable truth that underscored so many of the conversations Sam had with vets. Especially vets from Afghanistan, who’d come home and realize that so much of the work they were doing wasn’t quite as black and white as they’d first thought. 

Thanks, Avenger. Man, as screwed up as everything was, he’d never get tired of hearing that.

     “Well, she took some Asgardian weapon– a hammer or something.” Asgardians and their goddamn hammers. “Natasha’s working on it, but I don’t think she has any leads yet. S.H.I.E.L.D. is keeping her pretty busy…looking for me.”

What Sam describes screams cover-up to him– to both of them, judging from Sam’s tone. Maybe Bucky’s paranoid. Maybe Rumlow is actually dead and he’s sending Sam on a dead-end chase when he could be doing something - anything - else.

     “Maybe. Sure would be nice.” Bucky runs his thumb over the stitching on the steering wheel, picks at one of the loose strands. “I’m hoping he’s at least got something. I mean, he’s spent forty some-odd years of his life doing whatever the hell he’s doing.” A pause, then more firmly, as if saying it makes it true– “He has to know something.”

“Another hammer?” Sam asks, wrinkling his nose. “Like, a different hammer, from the famous one? Who’s trying to flex on Thor like that?”

Though Sam has always prided himself on his ability to read people, Bucky is admittedly a tough nut to crack. After spending so much time together, Sam had picked up on one or two tells, but he was still never quite sure he was making the right call. “Alright. So you know I’m not great at the whole cover operations thing, but, based on basically every James Bond movie I have ever seen, I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be like this. Chasing down ghosts and dead ends.”

     “I’m fine– I’m fine.” The words are dismissive but not harsh, layered with a begrudged appreciation as he lazily swats Sam’s hand aside. “She shot me with a blank. Still hurts like hell, not gonna lie….”

Bucky pops the lid off the snack box, grabbing a few caramel popcorn and tossing them into his mouth and– Christ, he’s missed indulgent foods. He savors it for a few moments before addressing Sam’s question.

     “For a few months now I’ve been working this guy– Terry, some ‘financier’ for a HYDRA cell running experiments on enhanced individuals. I got Robards name through him. Apparently Robards ran the operation– has been since the 80s…. But his name comes up in a fair amount of the S.H.I.E.L.D. files I’ve got on hand– as an agent. I wanna know which is true.”

Or if both are.

     “You ever find anything on Rumlow?”

Sam throws a sidelong glance at Bucky. The incident marked a call far too close for comfort. “Any guesses as to why she didn’t just take you out then and there?” he asks, mouth twisted in a frown. “Not that I’m not grateful, but I’m guessing she’s not keeping you around for your sparkling personality.”

At Bucky’s question, Sam rolls his shoulders back, eyes flitting back to the scene before them. “No. As in, there was absolutely nothing interesting in everything my clearance could get me, which in and of itself is a red flag. No mistakes, no dodgy assignments, and the autopsy report on his death was so routine they could stick it in a textbook.” Sam feels a prickle of frustration as he considers the facts, a slight sense of powerlessness creeping in at the magnitude of who they’re up against. “Someone’s gone through his whole dossier -- scrubbed it clean.”

But if it turned out Robards was affiliated with SHIELD, a double agent of some sort--

     “Hey, you’re the one who voluntarily does the cooking– I never ask you to.” Bucky takes the Tupperware box from him, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth at the masking tape which definitely took at least fifteen seconds of unnecessary time to put together. Uh huh. “Doubt they’d mind.”

Bucky fumbles catching the hand sanitizer, cupping it against his chest to stop it from falling to the floor mat. He flips it label up, glancing at ‘KILLS THE MOST GERMS’ and ‘refreshing aloe’. He shoots Sam a look, but the Avenger’s attention is on the house they’re watching (because of course it is). Reluctantly, Bucky smacks the tube against his palm (once, twice) to make sure the gel is near the cap before opening it to squeeze a small amount into his right hand. The smell is sharp, but doesn’t linger long.

     “Yelena Belova, yeah…. Someone Natasha knows, actually.” Bucky wipes the excess hand sanitizer from his left hand onto his pants’ leg. “I sorta know her, I guess. She works for HYDRA now, which is…something…but maybe shouldn’t be all that shocking, considering…. She shot me in the head.”

The bruises had partially faded by now, leaving him with only a lingering headache and a gnawing guilt over the theft of Skadi’s hammer.

     “Other than that, I’ve got a semi-helpful rat on the inside.” He nods towards Robards’ house. “Hoping he’s of more use, though.”

“Yeah, Steve mentioned.” Sam stalls for a second, takes a pensive bite of his food and chews slowly. 

Steve, Bucky, and Nat -- their lives were far more complicated than Sam’s, in the grand scheme of things, but that didn’t always matter. They were a team now, which meant that enemies and friends were more often communal than not. “Is that personal history or professional history?”

And god, did Bucky know how to bury a lead."Hold up a second. You recently got shot in the head? Man, what the hell?” He immediately turns to examine Bucky, scanning for signs of injury. He looked fine. --Well. He had some split ends but he looked physically fine. “There’s no residual damage?” he asked, slightly in awe. He waved a hand in front of Bucky’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up right now?”

@wingsonwilson

The car is his rented stolen– hot-wired from a junkyard upstate, and mercifully doesn’t smell like it’s been sitting rusting to waste for too long. 

He’s ditched his civilian clothes for black tac gear– the bottom half of a uniform that no longer feels like his, a plain black shirt concealing light body armor, and a well-worn leather jacket. He hasn’t donned the uniform in…too long, he thinks. Hasn’t had the right the chance since the Helicarrier crash; no one wants a ‘terrorist’ representing their country’s ideals. Maybe, once this is over, when he can walk away with a level conscience knowing it’d been worth it, he’d be free to make up for lost time– for the bloodying of his name in an effort to scrub it clean.

He glances at Sam.

          ( maybe )

In any case, now - parked outside a few houses down from Joe Robard’s home - is definitely not an occasion that calls for patriotic flash, no matter how suited to stealth his uniform may be compared to Steve’s standard.

Bucky’s gaze drops to the bag of assorted, homemade snack food resting in Sam’s lap that’s currently being rifled through (and not offered). He waits a few deadpan, pointed seconds before–

     “You gonna’ share or keep that to yourself the whole night?”

There wasn’t exactly a set recipe for Stakeout Snacks, so Sam just played it by ear. Homemade japaleño poppers, pigs in a blanket, and caramel popcorn. All in supersoldier proportions, despite the wry comments of his partner. Sidekick! Ha.

Sam turns and fixes Bucky with a look of utter disdain. “We need to stop getting into situations where I cook for you,” he intones, even as he pulls out a Tupperware box with Bucky’s name written on a strip of plain white masking tape. “It’s starting to become a little too domestic for my taste. And I don’t want Steve getting any ideas. Or Nat.” 

Day in and day out, his mother kept asking him when he was gonna have kids, when he was gonna get married. Little did she know. 

He pulls a tube of hand sanitizer out of his back pocket and wordlessly tosses it into Bucky’s lap, using the opportunity to stretch a little in his seat, get a better visual on Joe Robard’s house. Military stakeouts were a lot different from stuff like this, and even then, Sam had been on relatively few. The wings usually called for a heavier hand.