Title: Halfway To Calm
Fandom: Captain America (Movieverse)
Pairing: Sam/Bucky/Steve
Rating: G
Length: 497 words
Content Notes: Set after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Threesome.
Summary: A light to ward off the ghosts of nightmares.


There are good nights and bad. Sometimes the good nights are simply an absence of bad. Unremarkable nights, resoundingly meh nights, but that’s routine, that’s normality, and that’s its own kind of good. And the good nights, they outnumber the bad these days.

But the bad ones still happen.

Some nights Sam wakes up to the sound of Bucky screaming. Some nights Sam wakes up to the even more glaring sound of silence. Some nights Bucky’s already gone, some nights Bucky’s on the floor because his bed feels too high, too exposed. Some nights he lashes out, some nights he’s so quiet and withdrawn it aches to look at him.

On this night, Steve’s already there when Sam steps into the room. Curled around Bucky protectively, face pressed to his hair, murmuring softly. Some nights, Sam just leaves them like that, because he can tell when that’s what they need, a little privacy, a chance to slip into happier memories.

Some nights the way Steve looks at Bucky is just too raw, too open and honest and desperate, and it makes Bucky worse. On those nights, it’s Steve who gives them space, and it’s Sam alone who talks Bucky down.

But tonight it’s gonna be both of them, he can tell before his foot’s even all the way through the doorway.

Bucky’s already lucid, just shaken. He comes out of the dreams a little easier now, gets his bearings a little quicker. His room feels like home now, Sam guesses, and that’s enough to settle him, to get him halfway to calm. And Steve and Sam, they’re there to get him the rest of the way.

Sam sits at Bucky’s side, slides an arm around his waist. Takes the weight when Bucky leans back against him, and the soft noise Bucky makes isn’t distressed, just tired.

He watches as Bucky pulls Steve in by the collar of his t-shirt, sighing for the worry on Steve’s face. Bucky kisses him slow, almost chaste, and the tension starts to leave Steve’s shoulders. Because Steve always wants to help Bucky, but Bucky wants to help Steve just as bad, and maybe they could be unhealthy for each other if left to their own devices. Maybe they could concentrate so much on each other that they never heal their own wounds, but that won’t happen, because Sam’s in their life, and he won’t let it.

When Bucky turns his head for a kiss, Sam makes it deeper than the one shared between him and Steve. A little dirtier, a little more playful, and Bucky smiles against his lips, the heat of it melting the chill of the nightmare.

Steve presses his mouth to the place where skin joins metal at Bucky’s shoulder, his hand tight on Bucky’s hip, and Sam rubs his thumb over Steve’s knuckles.

Some nights this is just what Bucky needs, sandwiched between them. They’re both always there, happy to turn a bad night into a good one.