Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dearest Arnie,

I hope my letter finds you well and not in too much trouble as you often find yourself in. I do hope my letter is able to reach you at all, and that I haven’t caught you in the midst of moving, where my words might go left unsaid. It brings me such joy to think of you with my voice in your head. Does it bring you the same amount of comfort? Do you hear the smile in my voice as I write? It makes me feel closer to you even when we are so far apart, and keeps my fingers warm, writing you these letters, stopping the cold from eating them alongside my toes as I scribble in the wet. 

Would you still find me handsome if I returned without them I wonder?

The war makes me so weary, my love, I feel so queasy with it when I think of home, and I now understand what they mean by being homesick because thinking of you makes all of me act up like I have a hungry, rotten fever that won’t budge. 

It gives me plenty of time to think however, even over the gunfire my head feels clear like smog clearing off the top of a tall hill. The men here are loud and rowdy and ask me if I got a dame waiting for me back home. And I don’t got your photograph hanging around my neck, but you’re still next to my heart with every hour I find myself somehow still alive.

I have made new friends since being here, and now as I write this I laugh to myself for I sound like a child at summer camp – but this is far from summer camp, I assure you. I want you to make me laugh when I return home, Lord knows I am in desperate need of one these days.

We can dance in the living room and you can trip over your own feet like you always do. I need a laugh, my darling, to stop me from going mad in this muddy shallow grave of a trench. I want to move after I come home, for home doesn’t feel like a city anymore. I wish for a farmhouse with chickens and a lazy old cat. I’ll take Ma back to Indiana and I want for you to come with me.

Maybe we can go south where I’ve heard the sun is hot all year long. Would you want that? I’d go wherever you are, doll.

I am so sick of war, darling Arnie. I am sick and tired of it. I am scared, and every passing day that ticks on by I hope that you were able to escape it. I hope you have ran to the furthest corner of the world where I will be waiting for you. I am unsure if these letters are reaching you where I left you, or if my sister is sending them onto you still, but know that when I come home, I am craving your kiss and a proper soldier’s welcome. 

I love you, sweetheart. I love you and I miss you. I close my eyes in the dark of night when I am too afraid to sleep and I see your face. I am so cold in this trench, I forget what warmth feels like until I remember your touch, your kiss, your embrace.

Darling, I miss you and wait longingly to return to you. Wherever you are, make a space for me, won’t you my love? Keep my side of the bed warm.

Yours always,

- J. B. Barnes.

***

“Uncle Bucky, who is Arnie?”

AJ’s voice is curious, floating up to Bucky unsuspectedly, unknowing as the name slams into him like a freight train, making him stop mid chop, knife hesitating in his grip to look at up the smaller boy, sitting at the kitchen table, legs swinging where they don’t quite reach the floor yet, his pencil twisting nonchalantly in his grip.

The half chopped strawberry bursts in his grip before he wipes it down on the chopping board, moving around the counter space to walk towards the table. It feels like he’s wading waist deep through mud just to make the short journey between here and there, and once he reaches him, he swears he’s drowning.

“What?” He manages to get out before he’s looking at the homework his nephew has been working on for the last half hour. If there’s any shakiness to his tone then AJ doesn’t notice.

“Arnie,” he says the name again, sounding it out slowly like it’s a foreign. “It’s in your letter, here.”

He points to one of the many worksheets sprawled out before him, blurry and sepia toned from where they’d clearly been photocopied over and over again, he drags his gaze over the scattered sheets towards his workbook where his own little handwriting is scratched in pencil against the lined paper.

“We’re doing a history project,” he starts to explain and he thumbs the edge of the page making it curl under his touch. “We have to write a letter to someone like we’re in the war. This one is yours, see?”

He uses his little hand to slide the paper towards him, and Bucky stares at it, mouth going dry, heart lodged somewhere between his throat and his mouth, his ears are ringing so loud as he peers down at his own familiar cursive writing that he doesn’t hear Sam come in.

He’s panting, sweating, using the back of his arm to wipe the moisture off his brow, patting AJ’s head as he passes him, too busy getting his breath back to notice the way Bucky’s world just opened up beneath him right there in Sarah’s kitchen, seconds away from free falling into the pit that was waiting for him down there.

“Hey, you makin’ a smoothie?” Sam calls from the other side of the counter, popping one of the squished strawberries in his mouth, chewing around it before his smile starts to slip away once Bucky looks up to face him.

Sam swallows thickly just as Bucky takes an unsteady step backwards, hip bumping into the table, rattling it a little before he takes a shuddery breath.

“I, uh. I need some air.”

He doesn’t wait around to see either reaction from both Wilson’s before the screen door is swinging open on the account of both his palms pushing it with some force and he’s hitting the cool outside air, desperately sucking it down as his head moves like a whirlwind inside of him. He stands there for a moment, genuinely wondering if he’s actually going to pass out, but when he realizes he isn’t, nausea takes its place and he’s sinking to the ground, sitting in the grass, looking out at the row of trees in the distance, counting his breaths just as Raynor had instructed him to do when it felt like his lungs were closing in on him.

He’s not entirely sure how long he sits out there, letting the breeze sit heavy beside him, focusing his bleary attention to the bird that’s hopping from twig to twig in of the trees in the distance, until there’s gentle footsteps coming up behind him, Sam settling in on the patch of grass with a sigh.

He says nothing, folding his legs beneath him. Bucky keeps his head down, plucks a blade of grass up out of the soil, dirt still clinging to its roots, he wraps the thin blade around his finger, until it snaps in half, floating back down to the ground softly.

“I should have told you,” Sam is the first one to speak, his voice low and gravely, how it often finds itself when the emotion is sitting heavy within him. “I should have told you about your letters.”

Bucky turns his head to face Sam, in time to watch him drag a hand over the bottom of his jaw, against the scruff there, huffing out a frustrated kind of sigh.

Despite how thick his tongue feels in his mouth, Bucky is able to manage a few words.

“What do you mean?” He asks, yanking another blade of grass up out of the ground to play with.

Sam’s hand falls lifeless into his lap. He chews on the inside of his cheek before he talks.

“Your stuff,” he says, turning his head to face Bucky, a little wince flashes across his features as their eyes meet. “Your stuff that’s in the Smithsonian, Buck, I didn’t even think about—”

Bucky sits up a little, feeling the tug in his back when he moves.

“What stuff?” He asks, curiously piqued. 

Sam blinks. “Your… your stuff that they have at the exhibit at the Smithsonian,” Sam tells him again. “It’s only a handful of things; your uniform, old military documents…” his brow furrows as he tries hard to think. “There’s some old photos I think, only a few of you and Steve…” he trails off.

Bucky swallows the lump that’s sitting in his throat.

“And… and the letters?” He asks gently, not entirely sure if he really wants an answer.

Sam pins him with a sympathetic look, the curve of his brows creating a few lines on his brow. 

“There’s a few ones in there addressed to your mother,” Sam speaks in a quiet voice. “And, well, uh Arnie obviously.”

Bucky hums, ducking his head down, blinking rapidly to stop the emotion welling up in him like a rising tidal wave.

“I can ask to get them back,” Sam’s voice is so quiet and gentle, it might as well be a whisper. “It’s your stuff, Buck, they’ll give it back if I tell them they should.”

And whilst that statement was true, those old belongings didn’t mean anything to him anymore. Whether they were donated by relatives of relatives that didn’t even know Bucky, or simply stolen at some point, sold off for a pretty penny with zero regard for another man’s privacy, it didn’t matter anymore.

The dog tags that were currently hanging around his neck weren’t even real, simply the placeholder for the ones that’d been lost long ago, given to him like the worlds flimsiest excuse for an apology like that was gonna take back all the years of hurt.

But still, he’d needed the pardon so he’d taken the fake dog tags and had his sister's name engraved on them, waking up with them pressed across his chest. Small mercies, he supposed.

And that life was over now. The book had been well and truly closed for good, and even if it turned out that his distant relatives had donated those things in good faith, that letter was out to the world now, in the open for everyone to see. Passed around in school textbooks like it were nothing more than just homework, an essay, something to be picked apart rather than words that he once ripped right out of his very chest, letting them bleed across a page that he never suspected would ever been seen than anyone else than the name at the top of the letter. 

He didn’t even know if it ever made it to the original receiver in the end, but what good would it do to worry about it now?

“It’s fine,” he brushes Sam off with an easy flick of his wrist, wishing that the problem would materialize out of thin air and he could just bat it away with such a simple maneuver. It doesn’t, however, and it just sits in the pit of his stomach. 

Sam doesn’t look convinced, and Bucky has every right mind to pinch himself to make sure he’s not really dead and gone and turned into a ghost from how often Sam can look right through him.

“It’s not though,” Sam protests. “Those were private. You can be mad, Bucky. You can be upset about it if you want.”

The nausea from earlier makes a reappearance, crawling up his throat, slick with the bile that keeps coming and going. He swallows it down with only a small grimace.

“I don’t need to go crying about a dead b–” he stops himself short. “A dead part of my life,” he says a little more sharply, the dreaded boyfriend word sitting in the back of his mouth like hot vomit. “I got enough of that baggage as it is.”

Sam remains quiet, stewing in his words.

“It doesn’t matter, Sam,” Bucky says, his tone softening around the edges as he ducks his head back down, digging his thumb into the soft give of the soil beneath him. “I think people have cottoned on to the fact I’m a little queer,” he pauses to look at Sam, offering him a thin, worn smile. “I mean, I did buy a house with Captain America after all.”

Sam’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, only a slight twitch of his lips.

So Bucky takes his hand in his, clamping around it, giving it a squeeze. “Really, Sammy. Nothing I can do and neither can you, so quit it, yeah? I don’t wanna talk about it no more.”

And Bucky knows he’s playing dirty here; rolling the pressure off his shoulders just to feel the easy relief it has on him rather than actually trying to figure it out. He knows that if he pulls that card Sam will back off. But Sam can also be equally parts persistent as he can willing.

“You know you can though, right?” Sam asks him. “You can talk about him to me, it’s okay?”

Bucky blinks, forces out a stuttered laugh because if he doesn’t, he’s sure he’ll just cry.

And he can’t have.

So he plasters on a wobbly smile, searches Sam face for any understanding that he’s got him fooled, and even though he’s not all that sure, he nods and swallows the lump that’s thick in his throat.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “Sure.”

***

The following weekend Bucky finds himself too busy to stew into his thoughts, throwing himself into the physical labor that is required of the fixer upper he and Sam have taken on; a little two up, two down that feels like a perfect fit for them together, just on the cusp of the main town of Delacroix and a short drive from the original Wilson household, it makes for perfect babysitting headquarters when Sarah is off being the whirlwind she usually is.

So of course Sam and Bucky take this into account, and one Saturday afternoon when the sun is heavy in the sky and Sarah is busying herself with her accounting team at Wilson Family Seafood, they have the boys repainting the summer house that was in need of a little tender, loving care.

Sam’s supervising since Cass is grumbling about being bored and AJ is making a pretty slapdash job of it, making Sam grow a little antsy as each uneven layer is painted on. Bucky’s sure that the boys are running rings around their poor uncle but Sam insists that a little manual labor didn’t ever kill anyone, even though Cass is making a point to very dramatically announce that it is.

They stop for lunch (“Outside, Cass, whilst the weather is nice, would be a shame to waste it all inside!”) when Sam comes across the backyard to see where Bucky has been busying himself for the better half of the afternoon.

“Got your green thumbs yet?” Sam asks him, bumping his shoulder with his as he comes up to admire the little beginners vegetable patch he’s been working on. Bucky blushes, just a little, but if Sam asks it's just the heat getting to him.

“Almost there,” Bucky says, looking out across the yard, it’s not as big and as vast as Sarah’s place, but standing here at the open, blank canvas that it was, he could certainly visualize some of the ideas that were popping up in his mind the more he spent out here. He sucks in a breath.

“I think this is the 1930s housewife coming out in me,” he jokes, making Sam chuckle. “I think I could get used to the whole planting, cooking and cleaning shtick.”

Sam smiles. “Yeah? You wanna be a farmer's wife? Get us some goats to milk every morning?” He prods him in the ribs with his elbow, making him squirm a little. “Some chickens? You know how I like my eggs in the morning, baby.”

Bucky laughs before it dies on his tongue, shriveling up and blowing away in the wind. A weird kind of silence falls between them. Sam shifts from foot to foot, his mouth moves wordlessly, and with a single glance Bucky can see the gears working overtime in that stupidly good head of his.

“It’s fine,” Bucky waves him off, the words coming with such ease now that they were his everyday vocabulary. “I’m gonna make some lemonade. You want some?”

He tries to ignore how tight and unnatural his voice sounds when he speaks. Sam’s brows flicker into a frown before he rearranges his face into something more natural.

He tries a small smile but it doesn’t feel all that genuine.

“Sure,” he croaks. “Thanks.”

And as Bucky heads back into the house, passing Cass and AJ who have now decided to cover each other in a nice shade of blue, laughing at themselves, Bucky tries to ignore how the mere mention of stupid, damn chickens is making it feel like his heart is about to explode right out his chest like there were a bomb strapped to it.

He makes the lemonade, gulps down a glass for himself and lets the bitter taste wash away the horrible feeling lingering in the back of his mouth.

He doesn’t think about chickens or Arnie for the rest of the day, burying his thoughts in the dirt of his vegetable patch. 

***

Bucky wakes with a suddery gasp, like there’d been freezing cold water poured over him, his skin erupts into a flurry of goosebumps, he shivers as he tries to keep the lilting of his chest even and steady as his breaths still are ripped from him, ragged and sharp, he squeezes his eyes closed, only realizing it to be a mistake as the headache that’s blossoming there bursts behind his skull like a firework, as well as the flashing images that had pulled him from his sleep in the first place, he doesn’t hesitate in swinging his legs off the side of the bed, carefully pulling himself up off the mattress as not to jostle the soundly sleeping Sam beside him.

Slipping out of the room is easy, passing the kitchen where his jacket had been slung across the back of the chair is also proven as a simple task as he fishes out the packet of cigarettes tucked away there alongside his lighter.

When he creeps out the back door to sit himself on the back step, pressing the stick between his lips, feeling the cool night time air on his skin as he fumbles for a light is when he realizes how very not easy it all feels.

He lights up, sucks in the hot smoke that rests heavy in his lungs before pressing it back out through his pursed lips.

He takes a few, long, slow drags before the door creaks back open and the cool feeling trickling down over his skin returns as Sam takes up the space between him.

He says nothing as Bucky twists the box in his palm, crushing it a little in his hold, bending the edges with uneven creases. He blows away from Sam’s face, the smoke disappearing into the night.

“I dreamt about the war,” Bucky speaks after a while, his voice is raspy, and he’s not sure if he’d actually called out in his sleep, but the raw feeling makes him feel like he perhaps did. “I never dream about the war.”

It was true: there was already a hell load of shit that Bucky had to unpack in his mind, suitcases of trauma that he’d been lugging around for an eternity, kicking them under the bed where he could pretend they didn’t exist. So his time before Hydra, right where the seed of fucked up tree of life began, the memories of war were fuzzy, but still found a way to embed their way into his life when they felt like it.

And a war was a war, there was nothing good about it.

Sam nods, and looks at the box in Bucky’s grasp. “Feeling nostalgic then, hm?”

His voice is sleepy and low. Bucky keeps his gaze focused downward.

“I know you hate it,” Bucky admits in a small voice. “But yeah. I guess so. Needed it to calm me.”

Sam nods again, wordlessly as he brings his arms around to hug at his knees. Bucky sniffs. The air feels fresh out here, and yet, he was chugging his lungs full of all kinds of crap. Still, it wasn't like it would do him any harm. He could smoke a pack of forty in a sitting and go take a lap around the outside of the bayou and not lose his breath.

Sam clears his throat, shifts in his seat like he has a habit of doing when he’s nervous. Bucky presses his shoulder into his, a silent little moment between them that he hopes is able to ease some of those unnecessary nerves.

“Is it… is it because of the letter?” Sam asks him, voice small.

Bucky takes another drag, holding it a little longer in the hopes it might just choke him out. He blows it out with ease.

“Yeah,” he admits, voice thin. “It was about him.”

And with just those four words the guilt burns over him, like his skin is peeling away, revealing the monster sitting here all along, he keeps his head hung low, the cigarette burning away between his fingers, he wouldn’t mind it catching him alight right now.

“There’s no shame in that,” Sam tells him in a steady voice. “You can talk to me about it, Bucky.”

But he shakes his head, like if he does it enough times the memories, both real and of the dream might just fall right out of his head and land into the grass below where he can stomp it out like a horrid, persistent cockroach that has been bothering him.

But he closes his eyes and he can see Arnie’s face there behind his eyelids like he were real all over again. He opens them, unsure if he’s happy or just a tad heartbroken that he’s only met with the empty space of his unfinished backyard staring back at him.

“You know that most of those history books are written by musty, old white men,” Sam tells him, his tone a touch more lighter than Bucky had anticipated. “They read a love letter between two men and to them it’s just guys being guys.” His voice catches onto a small laugh bubbling up out of him. “I read it in high school. My teacher gave us a lesson on the brotherships of men in the war… needless to say little closeted Sam knew what you were on about back then.”

Bucky snorts a short laugh. “I literally wrote I love you ,” he points out in a flat voice, furrowing his brows in confusion as well as a little frustration. The letter was out there in the world, his permission or not, the least people could have done is take it for what it was instead of picking it apart into something it wasn’t.

Sam hums, rocking into him a little. “You’d be surprised how dense some of them are. Well, dense or just blatantly homophobic.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, his lungs still feeling the burn from the cigarette. He looks down at the stick flickering away in between his fingers, little embers dripping off the end. He takes another short drag before he flicks it into the grass below where it dies out.

Sam watches the light burn away, going gray in the moonlight before he turns his head to look at the other man.

“Will you come upstairs?” Sam asks after a while. “Please?”

Bucky considers saying no: he feels rotten and restless, unsure that even if he clambers into bed with Sam, crawling into his loving, willing arms that he’ll be able to sleep. He doesn’t fancy another long night staring up at the ceiling with his thoughts turning over in his brain with every passing second. Staying out here on this step until his ass went numb sounded like a much more viable option. 

But Sam must sense his hesitation because he stands and holds a hand out for him to take.

“I just wanna show you something,” he speaks, voice small like a whisper. “C’mere.”

Bucky takes his hand and follows him back inside.

They reach the bedroom, Bucky left standing in the doorway where he watches as Sam sinks to his knees by the side of the bed, bending himself over to reach beneath it. There’s only a slight struggle as he wrestles for a box that’s  been shoved right beside the far wall, and he heaves it out, dragging it across the floor.

He pops the lid off as Bucky tentatively goes over to join him, folding his legs beneath him, he silently watches as Sam rifles through his stuff.

There’s the few old books, old photo albums that Bucky had seen before when they were hauling this stuff over from Sarah’s attic to here. He was now elbow deep in the box when he clasps his hand around something, making a small gleeful noise before he pulls it out.

Unraveling it his hand feels a bit underwhelming as Bucky stares down at the small, rusty looking flip phone in his palm.

He flickers his gaze up to Sam’s face, a frown pinching at his face.

“A phone?” He points out, looking back down at it like there’s some trick he’s missing.

Sam looks down at it before he turns it over, inspecting it, and when Bucky looks back up at him, he doesn’t miss the sad smile that ghosts over his lips.

“It was my phone when I joined the Air Force,” he tells him, voice small. He looks to Bucky, his eyes a little misty. “I had it when I was with Riley.”

There’s an uncomfortable clench in his stomach, like someone had pulled too tight on his belt, a notch too high, he shifts a little to relieve the unwanted pressure. Sam gazes back down at the phone.

“It’s old as hell,” he points out. “I should have thrown it out years ago but…” he stops, takes a breath. “It has all my texts from him,” he then tells him, voice going a little wobbly, losing the balance he’d kept up. “And I just never had the heart to get rid of it.”

Bucky stares at it, blinking furiously as does Sam. He swallows thickly.

“I haven’t looked at it for a while,” Sam admits. “Last time I looked was probably after I came back from the Blip,” he says with a shrug. “It’s just stupid stuff like him asking me what time to come see me, or what he was gonna get for dinner. There’s not a whole lot of the stupid mushy stuff that he said to me in person but…”

He sniffs and when Bucky looks up at him again his bottom lip is trembling.

“But when I read those stupid, dumb texts, I can hear his voice again,” he croaks, the emotion spilling over with each word. A tear rolls down his face before he flicks it away with a shaky laugh. “It’s him, y’know?”

Bucky nods, his vision blurs under the weight of the unfallen tears pooling in his eyes. He blinks but they fall this time.

“I loved before you, Bucky,” Sam tells him, his voice steady this time as he clasps over the tiny cell phone protectively. “So have you,” he then tells him with a nod. 

Bucky feels like all his insides have gone and twisted up inside him, shrieking away from the burning fire that licks away him in there, he frowns before scrubbing away at the fallen tears on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry the letter was published, Buck,” Sam whispers, using his free hand to reach out to him over the box that sits between them. “I really am. But please don’t push me away because of it”

Bucky feels his chest hiccup and his knees ache where they’re pressed into the floor. He avoids Sam’s gaze, looking down at where his hand is holding onto his, their fingers threaded together like they were made to fit.

His throat still feels raw when he speaks. There’s the bitter taste of ash lingering on his tongue before he swallows it down hastily.

“I love you, Sam,” he whispers, looking at him finally.

Sam smiles, chin trembling as more tears build up behind his eyes. “I know you do, Bucky,” he assures him. “I know you do.”

The silence is heavy between them again, but it feels like there’s more room for them to breathe this time; less suffocating than before.

Bucky takes a breath, and finds that his lungs don’t burn as harsly anymore.

“He was my first,” he whispers. “My first love, I think.”

Sam smiles, his eyes crinkling with it and the knot in Bucky’s gut goes a little loose.

“He didn’t wanna fight, he wanted to run away.” He pauses as he lets the foggy memory fade in, like smoke it whirls around his brain, remembering the conversation when Bucky had held his draft letter in shaking hands, how he’d stood from the kitchen chair and kissed the corner of his mouth, mumbled against his lips about packing a bag and going someplace they couldn’t find them. Wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him in tight even when Bucky protested against the idea, his heart feeling like it were being torn right down the middle.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until there’s the sweet, gentle touch of Sam’s thumb brushing it away as it rolls effortlessly down his cheek. He leans into his touch as he cups the side of his face.

“I guess he got what he wanted,” he sighs. “I hope he did.”

He can’t be sure, the mere idea of tapping Arnie’s name into a search engine makes him want to spew his guts up, knowing that whatever outcome came for that man whether it be good or bad or a mixture with something in between, it would never be the outcome a younger Bucky had envisioned for them both.

Let sleeping dogs lie, as his mother used to tell him. Arnie was long gone now, and there was nothing he could change about that. He couldn’t pull his corpse up out from the ground and shake his bones for answers. The Bucky he had loved was gone now too, a differently shaped man taking his place, right here in the shared bedroom of his current love. 

Sam’s fingers come around to thread through his hair at the nape of his neck, and Bucky has never felt like he’s in safer hands whilst feeling so vulnerable, like his chest had been zipped open for him to see.

“I told him I would come home,” he whimpers, a sound escaping out of him akin to something of a wounded animal. “And I didn’t.”

Sam’s breath comes heavy. “You’re home now though,” he whispers, scooting the box out of the way so he can shuffle in closer, bumping his forehead to his. “You’re home.”

Bucky hiccups a little cry, sniffs and nudges his head against his. “Yeah,” he croaks. “I am.”

They have a little cry together on the floor before they pull themselves back up, Sam putting the old cell phone back in the box, tucking it away carefully as he rubs a knuckle against his eye. 

And when Bucky goes to the bathroom to scrub the taste of ash out the crevices of his mouth, he stills as he catches his reflection in the mirror; he isn’t the same man that wrote that letter to his first love, but he can handle the same amount of heavy, loaded love and admiration into his now gentler hands, holding onto Sam’s heart for as long as he will allow him.

He brushes away the bitter taste in his mouth and spits it into the sink, splashing cool water over his face, looking back at himself again. This man here is the man that has fallen in love all over again. A little different this time, but still all the same.

He leaves the bathroom and pads back into the bedroom where Sam has already settled into the bed, resting there where his eyelids struggle against the tiredness that’s tugging him into an easy sleep. And when Bucky slips in beside him, crawling into his open, loving embrace, he notices something as he buries his face into his chest, listening to the steady lub, lub of his heart tapping away against his chest, evening out as they start to drift off:

Sam has kept his side of the bed warm.