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Early morning light sifts through the cracks between the curtains, barely beginning to cast the bedroom in a shimmering haze. Even for Sam, it’s too early to be awake.
The nightmare lingers under his skin, the terror shifting into a nervous energy. His heart hammers against his ribcage. Deep breaths normally help, but the frantic rhythm in his chest shows no sign of subsiding this time. The dream clings to his skin as a physical sensation, blood on his hands, the open air beneath him, the loss of gravity. Falling.
Watching someone fall.
It’s old hurt, but the pain is real during these quiet hours, when his dreams unexpectedly decide to recount all of his worst failures. It’s like his lungs are still filled with hot, dry air, his hands outstretched but forever not able to reach.
Sam’s breath hitches, and he muffles the sound by instinct. Right next to him, Bucky is snoring softly, hair a messy nest and face pressed into the little valley between their pillows, cast in the shadow by the faint light. He looks peaceful asleep, a sight that happens almost every night now. Pride rises in Sam’s chest, mixed with the warm fuzzy feeling that always overcomes him whenever he thinks back on the progress Bucky has made over the years, the work he’s put into himself and into the world around him to find this peace.
There’s no way Sam can love his husband more than this moment, safe and close and definitely ready to complain about the hair once he sees himself in the mirror, but that’s what he thought every day for the last ten years. Every day he’s proven wrong.
The nightmare lingers, shivers running down Sam’s body, he lets out another long, ragged breath, and finds his mind still seized by panic. He’s not falling back to sleep by himself, and he’s exhausted despite the hours of sleep he managed with the dreams.
In the early days of their relationship, Sam would have tried to deal with it himself, endure these bad days away from Bucky. He’d have shut off and tried to hide all of the hurt, only to end up hurting both of them anyway. The years have also changed Sam, the progress never one-sided. Besides, he made a promise to his husband.
With Bucky clutching his hands tightly, eyes wide with so, so much love in them, asking him for his trust, to make the promise of never going through anything alone.
But trust is a difficult thing for Sam. It shows too much of the vulnerability that he’s used to hiding. It never stopped being difficult, but maybe, it’s a little easier when it’s Bucky. He made the promise, and Sam is never one to break them.
He reaches under the cover to find Bucky’s hand. “Buck?” Sam calls out, voice still shaking enough to be lost in a whisper. Sam tries again, squeezing the metal fingers gently. “Buck, wake up.”
The snores turn into an incoherent mumble. Guilt floods Sam’s heart when the peaceful look on his husband’s face turns into a frown at Sam’s voice. Bucky no longer startles awake like the perfectly trained assassin he used to be, but alertness still comes quickly. Sam presses a kiss on Bucky’s hand in apology.
“Mmm… wha…” Bucky blinks. The instinctual displeasure of being woken up too early fades when his eyes actually land on Sam. Their bedroom is barely lit, and Sam doesn’t know how shaken he looks, but it must be bad enough for concern to immediately take over Bucky’s face. “Hey, you okay?”
Piercing blue eyes bore into him, seeing through him without judgment. And yeah, it’s easier to answer when it’s Bucky.
“No,” Sam answers through the lump in his throat. “Bad dream. Need you here.”
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Sam lets himself be pulled into a solid embrace, eyes stinging as a gentle hand tips his face up. A thumb wipes away the wetness at the corner of his eye, and he realizes the tears are falling. With whispered reassurance in his ear and gentle kisses on his cheek, Sam lets himself fall apart between the safest arms on earth. He breathes in, shuddering, and buries his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck. “Sorry I’m waking you up. Selfish of me.”
“Good. Be more selfish.” Bucky almost sounds offended. “I’ve been telling you for years.”
“It’s just… It shouldn’t be still happening.” Sam’s voice cracks, shame rising in his chest. “It’s stupid.”
“No, it’s not stupid. It just happens, okay? There’s nothing wrong with waking me up when you have a nightmare, and nothing wrong with having them in the first place. Your brain is just playing tricks on you.”
“Well, make it stop.”
Now Sam is really sounding stupid, and immature, and demanding. Knowing you’re loved does that to a person.
“Yeah? I can try. What do you need?” Small, soothing circles are rubbed into Sam’s back, right between his shoulder blades. Bucky doesn’t mind his stupidity, takes him as he is. “You want to talk about it?”
Sam shakes his head. “Can’t.”
“Okay.”
“Just… want to hear your voice. Tell me a story or something.”
“But you know all my stories, sweetheart. You know me inside and out.”
They really are an old married couple. There’s no denying it when Sarah teases them about it.
“Don’t care. Tell a story I know.”
Bucky pauses, shifts both of them up on the bed so he’s leaning against the pillows, with Sam resting on his chest. When Sam meets his gaze, his eyes light up with an idea. “Actually, I don’t think you know this one.”
“Oh?” Now Sam is intrigued, the panic and sadness in his chest taking a step back to make room for curiosity.
“You remember Northern Europe? The winter right after the—what went down in DC, back then. I was hopping between a few countries, and you must have caught my trail in Stockholm. Followed me all the way up north.”
A pang of nostalgia hits Sam with full force at the mention of his wild chase of the Winter Soldier around the world. If only he could see himself now. Who would have thought the most dangerous man in the world at the time would become his personal cuddle bear now?
He settles against Bucky’s chest with a hum, getting his cuddles properly. “Yeah, it was the first time I got close, now that I think about it. Steve had just left for home on Avenger business, and then you took a train straight into the arctic circle. I didn’t want you to just slip through my fingers, so I took the next train. The town you were headed towards was in the middle of nowhere, not a lot of eyes around. Narvik, was it? I thought maybe I could get to you there.”
“I kind of wanted you to.”
Sam lifts his head in surprise, only to find Bucky’s deadpan, serious face. “You’re not joking.”
“Course not, doll. When have I ever joked around with you?” Bucky’s lips curve up in that charming, lopsided way of his. “I was only on that train because of this brochure I found on the floor. Some tourists must have left it, and it’s about this small town where you go up to see the northern light. You’d need to go in the dead of winter when it’s night all day around, and you’d need some luck. I hadn’t seen it in years at that point.”
“Yeah? Where’d you see it last?”
The smile on Bucky’s face fades, just slightly.
“I saw it as the Soldier.” The hint of regret and heartbreak on his face makes Sam want to ignore all of his own problems and soothe that hurt immediately, but Bucky continues. “I don’t remember when, which decade or what country I was in. Only that I was going through a forest, and there was a mission. I looked up, and there it was in the sky. Green and shimmering and kind of faint. I stopped to let my eyes adjust, and it got brighter.”
Sam feels his breath catch. Their bedroom has fallen into silence apart from the soft rustle of the bedsheets when Bucky shifts to better support Sam’s weight.
“You remembered the light?” Sam says.
“I started to, when I saw that brochure. I wanted to see it again with my own eyes.”
A tear trails down again, and Sam’s eyes must be puffy by this point. He sniffs. “And you wanted me to follow you there?”
A soft huff leaves Bucky’s chest, and Sam can feel the small laugh when Bucky kisses the top of his head. “I did, at the time. I figured there’s no way you’d seen the northern lights, so it was as good a place as any for a first meeting.”
Sam feigns an offended huff, but his voice is too tearful for it to be convincing. “You don’t know that. I could have been more well-traveled for all you knew.”
“Na-ah, honey. I found out everything about you as soon as I could. There’s no way your Louisiana ass had come anywhere near the artic before then. You were even underdressed in Stockholm. I thought I would leave a trail for you, have you followed me all the way up to Narvik. We could meet under the stars and the sky, and I’d hear you out. That was the message you kept leaving everywhere, right? You just wanted me to hear you out. I thought I was ready.”
The trip ended up being a bust for Sam. After nearly a day on a train that pierced through the snowy countryside, he lost the last trace of Bucky at the final stop. There was no missing person to be found, no northern lights in the sky, and he was even more underdressed in the freezing cold.
“I’m sorry you weren’t.” A pang of regret hits Sam at full force.
“Don’t be. I didn’t even know what was happening in my brain, why I made the decisions I did. I waited until your train came in, watched you step off of it, looking like you were on the verge of hypothermia. I hid for a little longer, and then a lot longer, and I just … left. Guess I was a coward.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.” Sam nudges Bucky gently with an elbow to show displeasure. He’s made a habit of it when Bucky is unkind to himself. “We got here eventually. I just had to wait a little longer.”
“A little? It took nearly a decade for us to even see eye to eye.” Bucky winces, and adds. “Erased-from-existence time included.”
“Exactly,” Sam says proudly. “And you’re well worth the time, darling.”
Bucky has that look on his face, the one that’s full of wonder and amazement, like he can’t believe his luck. It’s also his overwhelmed look, all the emotions halting the gears turning in his head. After all this time, somehow, it’s getting easier and easier for Sam to have that effect on him.
He waits patiently for Bucky to take several deep breaths, no doubt holding back all the sappy thoughts with great effort.
“The story is not all doom and gloom,” he says eventually. “I did get to see something pretty in that little village, so that’s something.”
Sam frowns. “But there wasn’t any northern light that night.”
Before the cheeky grin takes over Bucky’s face, Sam realizes the trap he’s fallen into.
“No, baby.” A kiss lands on the tip of Sam’s nose. “Something much better. Even when you were cursing and shivering, you were still prettier than anything in the sky. And the way you made me feel…”
The cheekiness is getting to Sam. He feels a contented grin spreading on his own face in return. “Yeah? How did I make you feel?”
Another kiss, at the corner of his mouth. The hair falling down the side of Bucky’s face tickles Sam’s skin a little.
“Not too different from how I feel now,” Bucky answers. “Like hope. Peace. Warmth in the dark. Like it’s too good to be true.”
The same feeling settles deep in Sam’s stomach, and he closes his eyes. A hand is still running down the center of his back absently, and he can feel exhaustion pulling at him. The traces of the nightmare fade into the background of his mind, now replaced by the growing weight of sleep.
“It’s true. Has been for years,” Sam says, his consciousness slipping under slowly. “We should go again. See it together, finally, so you’ll know.”
“Yeah?” Bucky’s voice drops into a hushed whisper. “We’ll make plans, maybe for the anniversary. Oh, look at you, sweetheart. My old man story is working. How ‘bout a nap first, and we can plan? There’s plenty of time left in the day.”
It’s still early, the sun barely rising. Sam burrows into the warmth of their bed, letting his mind drift. Bucky deserves to see all the beautiful things in the world with his own eyes. He deserves to be safe and content, just like what he’s making Sam feel right now.
“Nap…” Sam mumbles. “And plan. We have time.”
A last kiss, falling gently on Sam’s eyelid like the wings of a butterfly as he drifts off.
“We have the rest of our lives, baby.”