Rating: Idk Teens? Cursing? Sam was shot; he’s fine but surly.

Summary: Sam hates being in the hospital and Bucky is a mother hen. 

Link to AO3. 

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“Would you sit your ass in that bed for five minutes, Sam?” 

Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, aka the man who broke his wings and kicked him off a helicarrier, aka the jackass who threw him across the room like a very sexy football… was a goddamn mother hen.

When Steve once told him, even when he had nothing, he had Bucky, did he mean this obnoxious man who used his vibranium hand for evil to physically keep him in bed? 

“Buck, if you don’t let me up, I swear I will give every candy bar in the house to Joaquin and say they were a gift from you.” Never mind Sam was bleeding from three different orifices he shouldn’t even have; he wanted out of his bed and no amount of staring would keep him there.

“You broke a rib and were shot three times,” Bucky explained slowly like Sam wasn’t there. Getting shot. Three times. And it would’ve been a fourth to the head if Sam didn’t actually know so much about barrel rolls. “Take your meds and I’ll help you up.”

Sam Wilson didn’t negotiate with terrorists. “Man, you know I don’t like that stuff.”

Things that made his head fuzzy and forgetful? No, thank you. Sam liked to be sharp, alert, ready. Morphine would make him anything but. Experience had taught him that calm hid menace around the corner. Was it petty to reach for his gauntlet when Bucky turned away to tempt him with hospital water that tasted somehow like old tires? Maybe. Was it even pettier to deploy Redwing to peck, peck, peck at his back until Bucky let up enough that Sam could feebly worm his way from his bed? Fuck if he cared, Sam’s head was blitzed with bright, shocking pain and if he wanted junk food from the vending machine, he was getting up to do it. A man had to have standards. 

His triumph lasted about three seconds before he was collapsing into regrettably strong arms. Tears he would not acknowledge pricked at his eyes as the pain stung heavy into his leg. He hated this. He hated everything about this.

Bucky settled him back down, didn’t say anything about it even with Redwing still hovering at his neck. Sam pecked him again just because he could, and Bucky was taking the gauntlet, putting Redwing to bed and just looking at him. “Was that fun for you?” 

Sam would cross his arms with his best seething glare if one arm wasn’t in a sling. “I got shot.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, a flash of guilt on his face, like he wasn’t engaged on the south side of the building. 

He clenched his jaw, blinking away the wet they weren’t talking about. He swallowed the lump in his throat, wondered how many news outlets would ask if he was up for the task. He tried to forget Sarah’s worried eyes on his screen. Tried to forget that death almost got him this time and it wouldn’t be the last. His leg throbbed steadily. “I’m not weak.”

“No, not weak,” Bucky agreed, planted a kiss on his sweaty forehead and pointed to the medication release button. “Just human, Sam. The best I know.”

He groaned like he didn’t need to hear every word of that. Like he could still pretend he never needed those kinds of assurances. Sulking, he dosed himself and felt the rush of medication hitting his blood stream. His leg throbbed less, the world was a little fuzzy. He knew he wasn’t getting up and tried not to feel the bite of anxiety at this helplessness. 

Bucky tossed him a bag of Fritos because that little shit knew the whole time how this would play out. He said, “Still my favorite pain in the ass.” 

Sam made him open the bag since he was flying without wings now. He crunched a chip, remembered he was alive with this overgrown hen clucking at him. Keeping him safe. “Yeah, yeah, love you, too.”