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It's a nothing town in Kansas, a tiny flyspeck on the map, with only a diner, a bar, a general store and a school with maybe a dozen farmers' children buzzing around the dusty playground. The bar doubles as the local hotel. The upper floor has half a dozen rooms with worn out mattresses cradled by groaning springs, and a shared bathroom that has fixtures Sam suspects were installed closer to Steve's time than the new millennium.
Sam looks around the gloomy little room with its yellowing lace curtain and the dust motes floating in the slice of yellow sunset light lying across the carpet.
“You sure this is the place?” he asks again, still dubious despite the veracity of the lead (Natasha).
“Sure enough,” Steve says.
“The last big technological advancement this place saw was the combine harvester,” Sam gripes. He's exaggerating, but only by a little. The cars parked here and there on the street outside are all big Ford trucks from thirty years ago or more, hay bales in the back and rusty chrome bumpers hanging at an angle not quite level. Their late model SUV looks like a spaceship by comparison.
“Don't be ridiculous,” Steve says, cracking a smile. “You've got cell phone coverage, right?”
“Yeah, like, two bars,” Sam groans, poking at his touch screen morosely.
Steve smirks a little more. “It's so funny, you look like Sam Wilson, but for a second I could've sworn Tony Stark was in the room,” he mocks.
“Don't even,” Sam says firmly, pointing a finger in Steve's direction. “If I was Tony Stark, I'd be staying at the Tangiers in Vegas, not sleeping on sheets older than me. I'd be drinking martinis and eating my own weight in seafood.”
“Well, we're a little far from the ocean, but I could eat,” Steve says, like it only just occurred to him. “Hey, that place across the street looks good.”
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You say that like you're not a human trash compactor. You've got the lowest standards for what tastes good of anyone I know.”
Steve shrugs. “Couldn't afford to be picky.”
*
For once, Steve is right. The décor is a little tired and the service is at a pace that redefines casual, but the coffee is hot and the plates, when they arrive, are heaving with portions that satisfy even Steve.
“You boys are new,” the waitress says. “Looking for work? John Gilman could always use a helping hand, with harvest coming up.”
“Just passing through, ma'am,” Steve says with a winning smile that Sam would suspect he practised in the mirror, if it didn't look so natural.
“Lotta people passing through this year,” she remarks. “Why, there was a whole road train drove right up the main street two weeks back, and we're fifty miles from the highway. Couldn't have crossed the ford, you'd think, but they never called for help or turned back. And just two days ago, Ann Louise at the general store caught a hobo going through her trash bins.”
Somehow both of them maintain polite, interested faces and only descend into giggles once she's wandered off to give another customer a refill.
“Road train, that could be HYDRA,” Steve says thoughtfully, once they've composed themselves.
“If the trucks really couldn't have crossed that ford, it gives us a search area, too,” Sam agrees.
“And something to search for,” Steve adds. “Can't be many buildings out here big enough to hide 'em.”
*
They leave the diner with full bellies and take-out containers with several slices of pie, for later, once they can think about food again. Well, once Sam can, anyhow. He's sure that without the manners Sarah Rogers obviously gave her boy, Steve would have blithely eaten his way through the lot without needing to shift his belt a single notch. Sam allows himself a small moment of petty jealousy as he's turning the big church key in the door to their room.
Then, well, then he is far too busy being startled by the assassin sitting on his bed to be thinking about food.
“Shit!” he shouts, stepping back a good two paces into the hallway.
Bucky Barnes doesn't look murderous, sheepish or smug. He just looks annoyed.
“Get in and shut the damn door,” he mutters.
Sam picks up his abused dessert from the floor and shuffles in behind Steve, who hadn't sworn or startled but had just gone instantly alert, like a dog on point.
“This town is like a police state, all twitching curtains and no cover,” Bucky continues.
“Don't worry, we won't tell anyone the world's greatest assassin got busted dumpster diving by Ann-Louise-from-the-general-store,” Sam says, because his heart's still racing.
Bucky's expression goes from annoyed to just bit into a lemon with a side of I know where you sleep.
“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, and his cautiously hopeful tone is enough to shift Bucky from plotting Sam's demise to something softer round the edges, if not actually warm.
“Hey, Steve,” he replies. “I ain't trying to steal your fight from you, but this one's different. If you'd brought all your New York buddies, I wouldn't be here. You'd be fine. But you can't take this one alone.”
“I'm glad you came,” Steve says earnestly.
“Well, you'd've just done something stupid if I hadn't,” Bucky says.
Steve smiles, and a tension unwinds from his shoulders that's been there since Sam first saw him jogging past him (again and again) at the Mall.
“You hungry?” Steve asks.
And that's how Sam winds up watching the Winter Soldier eat four slices of pie, one after the other, with his hands, like an animal.
“Dude, there's a plastic spork thing here if you want it,” Sam offers midway through the first slice.
“It's got a crust, don't it?” Bucky mumbles, mouth half-full and berry juices dripping down his wrist like fresh blood.
“Right,” Sam agrees, feeling as though he's witnessing an unforeseen carnage.
“There are presidential suites easier to get into than this place. Doesn't anyone in Kansas ever sleep?” Bucky grumbles after he's started on slice two, something apple-based by the looks of it. Sam can smell the cinnamon and vanilla from his awkward perch on the edge of Steve's bed. “The actual security is a joke, but when there's no acceptable collateral damage, you really have to work for it. At least in cities, people have enough to do that they keep their noses out of other people's business.”
Steve's expression at hearing 'no collateral damage' could have brought a tear to the eye of just about anyone. Sam might have even been moved, had he not digested his meal enough to be hankering for the pie Bucky is shoving in his face without any regard for Sam's personal sacrifice.
“So, what's so special about this place?” Sam asks, when Bucky is embarking on slice three (possibly peach) and seems to have slowed down enough to actually take the time to chew.
“It's a lab. Well, a bunch of them. It's a facility Hydra uses to play with anything they think might get them undue attention if they did it in a city,” Bucky says, gesturing a little with his food, getting pie crust crumbs and drips of syrup on his lap. Bucky wipes a couple of the drips up with his metal fingertip and sucks the sugar off it, unconcerned. “This is good pie,” he adds, taking another large bite.
“Looks it,” Sam says, trying not to sound resentful.
Bucky shoots him a sudden incandescent smile, smug and knowing. It's there and gone, but just for that second, Sam can see the guy from Steve's old photos, the cocky sergeant with his hat set just so, at a slightly rakish angle. From the catch in Steve's breath beside him, it shocks him just as much.
“So, weapons, then?” Steve asks a moment later, his voice a little tight with emotion.
Bucky shrugs. “Weapons, chemicals, animal experimentation, human experimentation, whatever,” he says casually, as though he's not giving them a million good reasons to reconsider even coming to Kansas in the first place.
“We should read Banner and Stark in on this,” Sam says, a grim expression settling on his features, and Steve nods.
“No,” Bucky says firmly, actually putting the piece of pie down. “Stark and Banner are exactly who we don't want here. They're loud, they make a mess, and the moment they appear on the horizon, Hydra will push a button and their facility goes from a rabbit warren to a tomb. They've got explosives built into the walls, all rigged to blow and bury all their dirty secrets. It'd take years to excavate it. We do this right, we can take the whole thing intact, minimum body count, maximum data retention.”
“We'll need Stark and Banner to make sense of it all,” Steve says slowly.
“Then we call them when we're done,” Bucky says. His tone implies he really couldn't care less what happens once they've won, but his eyes are sharp on Steve.
“You want subtle. You sure I'm your guy?” Steve asks.
“Don't try that shit with me,” Bucky says abruptly.
“What...? Steve begins.
“Or that,” Bucky growls, picking up the piece of pie and eating it in one mouthful. The fourth slice, some kind of deep brown caramel tart, thick and creamy and custardy, gets unboxed before Bucky elaborates. “You think I'm stupid, that I think you're just the guy from the newsreels, the one making speeches about taking a stand? Just because I was the one crawling under the wire with a knife in my teeth don't mean you didn't do just what I did. You've scaled a wall and cut a throat in your time. Not as many as I have, but you know how.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, his voice cracking a little. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't be sorry, just don't be stupid,” Bucky says, like Steve's already been stupid just for going there.
“I forgot,” Steve admits.
“Do it again and I'll sock you one,” Bucky promises calmly, then sinks his teeth into the caramel tart. His eyes widen, and once he starts to chew, he lets out an obscene moan. “Oh my God,” he says thickly, through crumbs of pie crust and gobs of filling. “This one's the best. It's like an angel just came in my mouth.”
Sam feels his face screw up in the same expression of distaste that he can see on Steve's.
Bucky chews and swallows hard, clearing his mouth of gluey, sugary obstruction.
“No, seriously,” he says earnestly, before shoving the slice of pie, bitten end first, directly under Steve's nose.
Steve rolls his eyes, then leans forward and bites off a mouthful. A chew or two and his jaw hesitates, his eyes flying wide.
“See?” Bucky says, and Steve rumbles out an appreciative sound.
“You guys are revolting,” Sam says feelingly.
“You don't want any, Wilson?” Bucky asks, making to move the adulterated pie in his direction. He's not smiling the way he did before, but there's a twitch to the corner of his mouth like he's thinking about it, and his eyes are shining.
“No, thank you,” Sam says, his nose crinkling and hands flying up. “I already ate.”
Bucky shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, taking a large bite before holding it out to Steve again.
“Ugh,” Sam says, and Steve actually giggles before biting off another chunk.
*
Steve somehow cajoles Bucky into sticking around, not disappearing out the window or however he got in in the first place. Bucky divests himself of a breathtaking array of weaponry before wedging himself next to Steve with his metal arm slung across Steve's ridiculous waist.
“I'll try not to kill you in my sleep,” Barnes rumbles amicably.
“I'll try not to snore,” Steve counters.
Bucky snorts something that might actually be a laugh, though a rusty one at that.
“Don't make promises you can't keep, punk,” he says, poking Steve between his ribs with one shiny finger.
Steve jerks away and makes an unhappy noise, before kicking back against Bucky's shins with one huge heel. The elderly bed groans in protest.
“Don't make me come over there,” Sam says in his best uncle-is-displeased-with-your-bullshit voice, the one he's been carefully culturing since his friends and family first started having kids and tapping him to babysit.
Both Bucky and Steve freeze and stay still and quiet for long enough for Sam to snap the light out and climb under the covers himself. If there's then a short flurry of hushed whispers and giggles, well, Sam knows enough to ignore that and focus on sleep.
*
Morning comes, and the Bucky who giggled in the dark and ate pie with his hands and snuggled up to Steve like he was his favourite teddy bear has vanished, replaced with a blank-eyed mercenary sitting on the carpet with his arsenal laid out in front of him, checking every piece, edge and moving part.
“Coming to breakfast?” Steve ventures.
Bucky doesn't even look up. “No,” he says, then doesn't say another word.
Steve brings him back another slice of the caramel pie anyway.
*
Steve and Sam linger long enough to have lunch, then make a show of packing up and leaving town like the travellers on the way to somewhere else that they're meant to be. About a mile out, heading toward the ford the waitress spoke of, Bucky appears out of nowhere, stepping directly into the path of the car. Sam confirms that the brakes work just fine.
“You don't stop doing that, imma find some way to hurt you,” Sam growls, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.
Bucky just glances at him coolly before looking out at the road ahead. He doesn't put on his seat belt. “About three miles further. We'll have to go on foot from there,” he says, then settles back into the seat as though Sam's his fucking chauffeur.
“We haven't been made?” Steve asks.
Bucky shrugs casually. “Doesn't seem like. No extra security, non-combatants moving about freely. If they have any informants working in the town, could be they know we're coming, but I think it's just more likely they generally come and go from the other side of the river. Not much out that way.”
“They only came through the town when they brought in something big, something they couldn't truck through the ford without risking getting stuck and a whole lot more attention getting paid them than driving through a tiny town without a reason to would warrant. They'd've had to unload the trucks if the got stuck, there'd be police, rescue, crawling all over. They would have had to burn the base,” Steve agrees, nodding. “Could still be a trap,” he adds, like it's no big deal if a huge, active Hydra base knows they're coming.
“That's why we bring the guns,” Bucky replies absently, staring out at the road ahead.
Steve twitches a little but settles and smiles when Sam raises an eyebrow.
“Here,” Bucky says at a nondescript patch of road. “Pull over here.”
Sam nudges the SUV off into the long grass of the verge. They're not hidden, but if Bucky's right, if all the traffic is coming from the other direction, it shouldn't be a problem. Shouldn't, but Sam isn't counting on anything going to plan.
Steve opens up the tool box in the back, the one that's just the right size for all their gear.
Sam shrugs on his armoured vest, snugs it up tight at the sides. He's got a helmet which he thinks makes him look like a damn fool, but it's better than nothing at stopping him from getting dead.
“No wings?” Bucky asks, his eyebrows raising.
“You broke them,” Sam says, allowing the implied dumbass to creep into his tone.
“Thought maybe Stark would have fixed them,” Bucky admits.
“Not all of us have Tony Stark on speed dial,” Sam gripes, checking his guns and shoving handfuls of spare clips into the pouch on his belt.
“It that going to be a problem?” Steve asks. He's stopped, half-dressed, his shirt gone but his trousers still in place and his uniform in the process of being revealed.
Bucky thinks for a moment. “Shouldn't. Just means we'll have to climb rather than fly to get up high.”
“Thought this place was underground,” Sam says.
“Sentries,” Bucky clarifies. “Spaced out around the perimeter. Thought I'd get you to drop us off, pick us up, but if we're climbing, we'll have to split up. We have to be quick,” Bucky stresses. “There are check-ins every seven minutes. Anyone misses a check, they assume attack and deploy countermeasures. We have to take them all out in that seven minute window, permanently, or we've blown it.”
Sam sheaths his two knives, then pats himself down, making sure everything's buckled up, where it should be and accessible. Then he looks to Steve, who's doing the same as he is, checking he's ready to go. Steve lifts the shield from where it's leaning against the bumper and swings it behind his back until the magnets catch.
Sam's rarely seen him go into a fight with more than his shield and his fists, but this time there's a pistol and a knife at his waist, too, a concession for a fight where his usual style might be more a hindrance than a help.
“Shouldn't be a problem,” Steve says.
*
They dispose of the sentries in the deep dusk, when there's just enough light left in the sky for the guards' vision to be patchy, but not so dark that they're using their night vision equipment yet. They regroup after and take the guard station just inside the gates. A tweak here and a USB drive jacked in there, and Bucky is broadcasting a file of radio transmissions he recorded a week ago. Anyone listening to the feed will think that the sentries and checks are still in place.
The next challenge is the actual surveillance hub in the centre of the complex. It's where all the big scary buttons for explosives are, and where the security team co-ordinates through in case of emergency.
“Leave it to me,” Bucky says, looking as menacing and robot-like as Sam's seen him since they were on opposite sides of a fight that led to a very messy pile-up. “Go round to the east. There's a door there, green, marked D7. Wait there. If I'm successful, the door lock should unlatch in ten minutes. Enter, and follow the yellow lines on the floor to Lab 9. I'll meet you there.”
“If you're successful?” Sam asks.
A rusty, self-mocking smile twitches at the corner of Bucky's mouth. “Gotta keep you on your toes,” he cracks, before melting into the shadows.
“That guy is such an...” Sam begins.
“I know,” Steve says fondly, leading the way with confidence in the darkness.
Sam doubts that Steve was thinking the same word that he was thinking, but then again, he might have been, so he lets it lie.
*
Ten and a half minutes after they reach the door, the red light above the handle turns green, and at Steve's attempt it swings open easily.
Rather than the cool white fluorescents that Sam had been expecting, everything's lit in a dim, sulphur yellow, power or protocols clearly switched to some kind of emergency backup system. Sam wonders if that was part of the plan or not.
The yellow lines are hard to see in the dim yellow light, but Steve pulls a pen torch from somewhere and after that it's simpler. They meet absolutely no one, and every door they pass is sealed up tight.
“'Bout time,” Bucky drawls when they turn the final corner. “Kill that light, before you screw up my night vision.”
Steve obediently does.
“Where is everybody?” Sam asks. There's a hush over the whole place, and certainly not the stink of blood and cordite that would suggest Bucky had dealt with everyone in the scant minutes he had allowed himself.
“Quarantine protocols,” Bucky says, that smug twist back on his lips. “Every single room in the base is isolated with its own air supply and no way of opening without one of these,” he flicks his flesh hand up and something black appears between his fingers, like magic, “security passes. Designed so that quarantine staff can access, assess the risk and treat survivors. Or, so that we can take our own sweet time, one room at a time, and leave whoever we don't want to let out locked up tight.”
There's a private expression on Steve's face as he's looking at Bucky that Sam is pretty certain is a prelude to something that they are really not in the place for. And don't have the time for, regardless of how casually Bucky seems to think they can stroll through this base, kicking ass and taking names.
“You're amazing,” Steve eventually says, and Bucky actually leans back further against the wall, tilting his hips in the most blatant invitation Sam's seen anywhere besides a street corner.
“So, why this lab first?” he asks, before it gets any weirder.
“Biggest threat,” Bucky says simply, still looking at Steve like he'd like to bite him, just a little.
“What, bioweapons?” Sam asks.
“Of a kind. Human experimentation. Volunteers or unwilling subjects who've been modified somehow or enhanced. They're the biggest threat because they're an unknown quantity. We don't know whose side they're on or what their abilities are.”
“If there's a chance there are prisoners in there, we're not going in guns blazing,” Steve says, his jaw firming and his Captain America face settling across his features, the one that always makes Sam want to stand a little taller. He tries not to think about what it might make Bucky want to do. He's putting that away in that steel box he has in his head, along with them sharing pie and apparently treating breaking into a top secret, heavily guarded base as some kind of weird-ass foreplay.
“We've not exactly got the manpower for a rescue,” Sam points out. “We've got no back-up to take them off our hands.”
“We can still identify and confirm one way or the other before engaging,” Steve says. “I'll go first, the shield is an identifier as well as protection. If whoever's in there sees it, maybe they'll think twice about attacking us.”
“Or they'll see it as the stupid big target it is,” Bucky sighs under his breath, and Steve ignores it as though Bucky never even opened his trap.
“Bucky, you cover me, but only shoot if the target is identified as hostile. I don't want us killing a civilian who's just defending themselves.”
Bucky nods, selects a firearm from his impressive range, and stands up at the ready, the access card in his hand.
“Sam, watch our six. Everyone should be locked in, but chances are one or two got stuck on the outside rather than in. Don't want anyone sneaking up behind us.”
“On it,” Sam says. The hallway stretches off into the gloom in one direction and line of sight terminates with a right angle corner in the other. It's not the easiest to guard on his own, but with the pin-drop quiet, Sam's hoping he'll hear someone coming and have time to get ready before they get the drop on him.
There's a beep and a click when Bucky swipes the card, and then a gentle hiss of air as the doors open. There's no immediate attack, so Steve slides in with Bucky a silent shadow behind him.
A somewhat nerve-wracking two minutes follows where nothing happens, where every little sound of his clothing or his shoes against the concrete makes Sam anticipate the world's nastiest jump-scare.
At some point, Steve, at least, abandons stealth. Sam can hear Steve's boots shuffle against the floor, hear Steve's voice at usual volume, hear what sounds like Bucky's indecipherable murmurs back. Still, he startles when Steve appears at his elbow.
“We need you,” he says, so serious that Sam thinks for a moment that he misheard and that something really bad just happened while he was standing guard and thinking wistfully about maybe driving back home via the town just so that he can buy his own uncontaminated pie that he will eat with a shitty plastic spork like a civilised person and not share with anyone.
He follows on Steve's heels and finds Bucky not bleeding out or choking but standing at full alert, like an angry cat, one of his many guns in his hand, arm fully extended, and finger unhesitatingly resting on the trigger.
The person he's pointing the gun at doesn't look anything special. He's dressed in plain cream surgical scrubs, tinted a sickly yellow by the lighting. He's white, male, maybe late forties, receding brown hair, and there's nothing aggressive whatsoever in his body language that seems to warrant Bucky's reaction, unless you count the utterly calm way he's staring down the barrel of the gun (which Sam has to concede takes brass ones). When Bucky takes a creeping step forward, there's a shimmer in the air near the muzzle that shows he's not even a free man. There's some kind of energy barrier trapping him in the little cubicle he's in; just eight feet of space with a bunk that he's sitting on and a toilet and sink all bolted to the floor hard enough that Sam thinks Steve'd struggle to rip them out.
“What's going on?” Sam asks cautiously, because the vibe is just too freaky to trust that one of the others is going to lay it all out for him without prompting.
“I thought you were dead,” Steve says to the man.
“I think I was,” the man says, and his voice is sad, gentle. It's the kind of voice Sam thinks would be good to have for giving people bad news.
“I told you, Steve, don't listen to it,” Bucky snarls, and suddenly Sam realises that Bucky isn't scared, he's furious. “I told you, they can do things, make robots that look like people, make people that can look like anyone. This isn't your friend.”
“I'm not a robot,” the man says. Then he winces. “Mostly.”
“Easy way to tell,” Sam says. “Scanner right over there. BP, heart rate, blood ox. Clip it on his finger, ain't no way a robot's gonna read like a human.”
“You might think so,” Bucky says, not unwinding a notch.
“And if he's just a shapeshifter, he wouldn't know things, would he? Not without some kind of mind link bullshit, and if your friend is dead...” Sam trails off, lets Steve absorb the implication. “All we gotta do is open that... force field thing-”
“Not a fucking chance,” Bucky says.
“Well, put it this way, I'm guessing you can't shoot him through it,” Sam rationalises.
“Sam,” Steve groans softly.
“So, one way or the other, you gotta open it up. You've got the card, man,” Sam says to Bucky.
Bucky's arm lowers a few degrees.
“If you're going to shoot me,” the man says, still calmly staring Bucky down, “I'd appreciate it if you aimed for the head. Pretty sure what they replaced my heart with is surgical steel or titanium or some other hard alloy. I'd rather go clean than bleed slow, and if you're who I think you are, you're got the skill to make it clean.”
“And who do you think I am, then?” Bucky asks, something mocking and almost cruel in the words.
The man stands for the first time, walking until he's a bare inch from the barrier, the barrel of the gun so close that could he shuffle any closer, it'd be pressed cruelly into his flesh.
“I think that we're living in the century of miracles, and you were one of the top ten marksmen on the Western Front once the US joined the war. I think your distance and accuracy records stood between forty and sixty years at the SSR and SHIELD, until I recruited a kid who'd only ever shot a bow in the circus and then in petty crime but who had the most shining raw potential I'd ever seen, and who blew every single one of those records out of the water within six months of first being handed a firearm. I think you were lost for a long, long time but that Steve Rogers still found you, which means more to me than you can ever even begin to understand. What all this means, Sergeant Barnes, is that I trust you to shoot straight.”
Bucky's lips curl up into a snarl, but a second later he swipes the card and the hum of the barrier vanishes.
“Someone needs to watch the hallway,” he spits, before he's gone in an angry rush.
“You, shirt off,” Sam says, poking at the med scanner to make sure it's plugged in and operational.
The man sheds his tunic, revealing a mass of scarring that seems to validate at least part of his story. A long, jagged scar bisects one pect, with other, more precise scars surrounding and crossing it. Surgeries, multiple, Sam decides.
“They messed you up, huh?” Sam asks, clipping the monitor on the man's finger and placing the scanner pads on his chest.
“You think that's bad, you should see my back,” he says with a shy smile. “That was the entry wound.”
Steve makes a hurt little noise, and they both turn to look at him. He shakes his head and stares at his feet rather than replying.
“Looking good, by the way,” Sam says, checking out the numbers. “If you're an evil robot, you're a convincing one. I can't speak for the shapeshifting thing. I left my shapeshifter scanner in my other pants.”
He's aiming for a joke, but it falls flat when Steve just sucks in a harsh breath.
“I can,” he says. “He's who he says he is. I need to check on Bucky.”
Steve's out the door before Sam can think of what to say, and then it's just him and the white dude with the metal heart and the kind of embarrassing nerd-boner for Bucky Barnes.
“So, who do you say you are?” Sam asks, because he can't just call him metal-heart nerd-guy forever.
“Phil Coulson,” he says, holding out a hand. Sam shakes it. “Agent of SHIELD.”
“I'm Sam Wilson. You been here a while, Phil?” Sam ventures.
Phil shrugs. “Long enough to wish I'd been sent to Tahiti instead of an experimental Hydra lab,” he says.
“You might have missed a few things,” Sam says.
*
Sam's detached all the sensors and Phil's as dressed as he's going to get without visiting a store. He's barely cleared aliens in Midtown when Steve comes striding back in.
“We're retreating,” Steve says. “There's too much ground to cover, too many variables. Bucky says he saw a whole 'nother level of floors below on a map in the surveillance hub that he didn't know about before he got there. It could take days to clear this place just by ourselves, and we don't have days before someone on the outside tries to contact someone here and realises what's up.”
Phil perks up a little, stands taller. “How do we know they're not on their way right now?” he asks.
Steve shrugs. “Bucky's installed something on their system that's made all of their communications go haywire, while connecting outside calls to some kind of on hold queue that never ends,” Steve says.
Sam snorts. “Nasty,” he says.
“He's doing a sweep, making sure no one got stuck outside of lockdown. He'll meet us back at the car if all goes well,” Steve adds. “Our job is to get you to safety.”
It's hard to tell, but Sam's pretty sure Phil blushes a little at the full force of Steve's mission face.
“I can defend myself, if I have a weapon,” Phil demurs, something like embarrassment colouring his tone.
“With all due respect, sir, you're underweight, your muscle tone has decreased, you've had major surgery since you were last on active duty, and you've been kept in an underground base for over two years. I'm sorry, we'll give you a weapon so you can protect yourself if you have to, but in this scenario, you are the package, not a team member. A civilian being evacuated, not a combatant,” Steve says, his firm words tempered with a kind of benevolent maturity you'd be forgiven for thinking meant he wasn't a little shit who jumped first, asked permission after the fact, snored like a buzz saw and flirted during active missions.
Phil looks almost bashful until what Steve's just said catches up with him. “Two years?” he asks faintly.
“Give or take,” Steve admits.
“Why isn't SHIELD doing this?” Phil suddenly asks, his face creasing in concern.
“Like I said, you missed some things,” Sam says. “It's a long walk back to the car; we'll catch you up.”
Phil bears the litany of awkward revelations and world-shifting events like a champ, especially once they get outside and realise his lack of footwear means their best bet is for Steve to carry him for miles, cross-country, bridal-style. The shield on Steve's back rules out piggy-back; not that that would have had any more dignity, in Sam's honest opinion.
Forty minutes after they get back to the car and Sam wraps Phil in a space blanket and gives him a protein bar to chew on, Bucky saunters up like a tomcat back from a prowl, covered in only a minor amount of blood spatter and looking incredibly satisfied with himself.
“Left a little lovenote for Stark on a bit of a time delay. Wish you were here, and all that. He's got an hour to get here before all of the alphabet agencies get theirs. If he hasn't shown up and pitched his tent by then, he doesn't deserve to have any breaks. I'm not running a charity,” Bucky sniffs.
“You mean planted his flag,” Sam corrects.
“Do I?” Bucky asks, a lazy smile on his face.
“Tell me this, how many rooms did you clear?” Steve asks, twisting in his seat to catch Bucky's eye. “Three? Four?”
“Or something,” Bucky says, smile still in place. It's creeping Sam out, that smile.
“Or something?” Steve asks.
“More than four, but more than that, I ain't telling,” Bucky says, smugly. “A girl's gotta keep some mystery about her.”
“Guess we're getting rooms at that hotel again,” Sam says, getting the car pointed back towards town and bumping down the uneven surface.
“Guess so,” Steve says, shifting a little in his seat.
Sam doesn't look in the rear view mirror. He doesn't need to, to imagine Bucky's casual slouch, the twist of his mouth. He'll be seeing that forever.
“Tell you what, why don't you two go and see about that,” Sam says. “Phil and me are gonna go and get dinner.”
“You are?” Steve says, blinking.
“Great!” Bucky says, and not enough brain bleach in the world to erase that tone from his aural memory.
“We are?” Phil asks, confused.
“Oh, we are,” Sam says mulishly. “We are going to get the plate special of the day and pie for dessert. You like pie?”
“I do, actually,” Phil says wistfully, like it's been forever since he had pie, which, let's face it, being stuck in a Hydra lab for over two years, that counts as forever.
“Great!” Sam says jovially, ignoring that Steve has very obviously tried to sneakily slide his hand back past his seat on the door side so that he can tangle his fingers with Bucky's while failing to be sneaky in any way. “We're going to each get a slice of pie, and we're going to eat them with cutlery like normal people without making it weird.”
“Sure,” Phil says, his voice a little strange, but Sam isn't sure if that's because of what he's said or because he just noticed the tsunami of sexual tension building in the other half of the car.
“Awesome,” Sam says, and plants his foot a little harder. He doesn't want to risk them being all out of caramel pie by the time he arrives, after all.