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“Because I love you, you dumbass.” Sam rolled his eyes, then froze. The words hung in the air between them, as tangible as the rain that was hammering against the windscreen.
“I mean, I fail to see the connection between that and the fact you think I need sleep, but whatever.” Bucky cleared his throat, trying not to think too hard about what Sam had just said.
Sam sighed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and not meeting Bucky’s eyes.
“Okay, look, we can deal with the fall out from my motor mouth later, but how about we get inside and see if there’s anything like heating in there before we both freeze to death and they find our corpses in a rictus, mid-argument?”
The snort of laughter escaped before Bucky could censor it, and Sam looked slightly mollified.
“Sure thing.” He reached into the back and grabbed his pack. “Even if chances are that shack is going to collapse on our heads if this storm doesn’t die down.”
They ran from the car to the small wooden house that sat nestled in a dense stand of pine trees. He’d spotted it by chance as they’d made their way down from the mountain top in their stolen (“Borrowed, Barnes, it’s borrowed because we’re going to leave it somewhere easy for the owner to find”) car, and the combination of rain and exhaustion and the fact it was closer to dawn than dusk had made him point the place out to Sam.
Who, of course, had decided that they were going to break in whether it was occupied or not, and assuming the roof wasn’t leaking from a dozen places, they were getting some sleep for the first time in thirty six hours.
The door wasn’t locked, and Bucky very nearly twisted the handle almost all the way off in surprise. It opened into a dark space that at least didn’t smell damp. A moment later, a small pendant light came on above Bucky’s head.
“What?” He turned and found Sam grinning at him.
“Electric light, bro, all mod cons around here.”
A quick recce later, and Bucky decided it wasn’t exactly what he’d call modern, and he’d grown up in the 1940s. There was electric, sure, but it only lit two lightbulbs and he suspected there were a couple of batteries tucked away somewhere rather than a power line. There was one main room, with a wood fired stove in the corner that served as a kitchen and an arched fireplace on the wall to the right of the door. Beyond that was a double bed, pushed up against into the far corner, and what Bucky assumed was the door to a small washroom on the opposite side of the room. Compact and bijou, he thought.
“At least the roof doesn’t leak.” Sam looked around from where he stood by the cold fireplace. “Don’t suppose you have a box of matches to hand?”
“I know these kinds of places,” Bucky said. “They’ll have what we need.”
He was right. There were several boxes of matches on the mantle shelf, including one that was half open with a couple of matches sticking out of one end.
“Why’d it get left like that?” Sam asked, watching Bucky kneel next to the grate.
“In case someone comes in with frost bitten fingers and can’t manage to open the box. You leave matches sticking out so they’re easier to grab and light. That’s why this is already here too.”
“Huh.” Sam nodded, watching intently as Bucky put the match to the ready prepared pyramid of sticks and kindling that sat in the fire place. “So, when we leave, we need to make sure it’s ready to light too?”
“Yup.” The dry sticks and paper caught rapidly, and Bucky added some wood from the haphazard stack of rough cut logs that leaned against the wall by the hearth. “Hikers’ cabin.”
Whatever Sam had been about to say was drowned out by a deafening crash of thunder even as the lightning illuminated the whole room for a split second.
The wan golden light from the small bulb over their heads seemed very dim after that brilliant flash of light, and Sam blinked.
“Guess we should be glad we’re not on that narrow track still, huh?”
“Yeah. Suppose we ought to sleep too.” He cast a sideways glance at Sam who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Let me make sure this isn’t going to spit embers everywhere and we can crash.”
“I’ll take the sofa,” Sam said immediately.
“Tупица,” Bucky muttered under his breath. He stood, brushed his hands off on the front of his jeans and before Sam could move, caught hold of him by the shoulders. “You ain’t taking the sofa. We ain’t ignoring what you said in the car. But you were right about one thing. We need some sleep, yeah?”
Sam looked over at the bed, then back at Bucky.
“You want to share a bed?”
Bucky smirked.
“Probably one of the few places we haven’t actually done it.”
“It?” Sam’s eyebrows went up. “What have I told you about teenaged euphemisms?”
“Shut up,” Bucky told him affectionately, and kissed him.
They were cold and wet, exhausted and bruised, but kissing Sam would never get boring, no matter how tired or sore Bucky was.
Neither would the way Sam always responded, warm and wholeheartedly, kissing Bucky back like he’d been waiting all day for that very moment.
“You,” Bucky told him softly, breaking the kiss for a moment. “Need to learn to use your words more.”
“What the fuck, dude?” Sam spluttered, then huffed a laugh when Bucky grinned at him. “Yeah, right, that’s rich coming from you.”
“How about we sleep? Then maybe talk it over in the morning.”
“Ugh, no. Talking with you is like pulling teeth.”
“Maybe my actions can speak louder than words?”
Sam’s smirk morphed into a smile that was at once soft and fond.
“So maybe I have a bad habit of blurting things out on occasion,” he said. “But, I tend to mean it when I do.”
“I know.” Bucky kissed him again, unable to resist those soft lips. “Go check for bedbugs, I’ll bank the fire.”
“You sure as hell know how to woo a guy, Barnes,” Sam grumbled, but Bucky was gratified to see him heading towards the bed. “Sweet talk, my ass.”
“If you want me to,” Bucky called over his shoulder as he knelt in front of the fire, and heard Sam laugh.
In the morning, he did a lot more than just that. As the rain continued to fall, the dawn turning the black sky to leaden grey, he pressed Sam back into the pillows, leaving trail of biting, sucking kisses over his broad, muscular chest, and decided that he quite liked doing this in a bed for a change.
That wasn’t the reason they stayed there all day, of course, curled up together beneath heavy blankets, the sound of skin on skin, soft curses and breathless moans muffled into pillows all masked by the rain on cedar shingles. It was because they had sleep to catch up on, and the track down the mountain in the torrential rain was just going to be a mud slide.
And it definitely had nothing to do with the words that Bucky found himself murmuring into the soft skin of Sam’s neck, or the way Sam’s hands tightened on his hips in response. Nothing at all.