Title: Soulbreak
Fandom: MCU/Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Challenge: Reunion
Rating: teen
Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson
Author notes: Based on a Tumblr post/poem: Have you ever been in love? You have 90 mins to answer.
Summary: They have an appointment and a test to take to decide their future.



Bucky held the door open when they reached the building, the ten-pound door almost too much for him to open vibranium arm or not. Side-eyeing him, Sam slipped inside, a gulf between them in the six-inch distance Sam constantly kept. Their appointment was for ten a.m. sharp, and Bucky had drug his feet as hard as he could. They were still early.

“Do you want anything from the vending machine?” he asked, despite knowing the answer. Sam had been awake long before him, and the crumbs on the plate in the sink spoke of a breakfast made and eaten. Bucky didn’t mind cleaning up, but he left that plate where it was. They hadn’t really shared a bed the last month, why should he share the chores?

Sam didn’t answer, slumping in the chair furthest from the vending machines. The pull on Bucky’s soul was unavoidable. His half of the bond manifested as empathy. He knew what Sam felt, the doubt and the determination. He knew why they were there. He’d need some sugar to get through this.

If he got through this.

He ended up with apple juice, beef jerky, and a Kit-Kat, unable to decide once he’d inserted his card. Sam wrinkled his nose when Bucky sat down opposite of him, and Bucky couldn’t even blame him. His breath was going to smell so bad. Sam always wanted him to go brush his teeth before they started a make-out session. He’d changed brands when Sam had gagged over his baking soda.

It felt like he was always the one changing.

Sam’s eyes got tighter with every crinkle of the packages, and Bucky made a move to throw everything away when the door at the other end of the waiting room opened. The doctor didn’t look up from her clipboard as she called their names and gestured them to follow her.

The room she put them in could have been a room in any community college in America. The chairs had desks attached, a larger rectangular desk at the front, and motivational posters from the eighties hung unevenly spaced along one wall. The windows showed a view of the concrete parking garage and chain-link fence.

“There are five questions,” she said, handing them a packet of papers and two pencils each. “You will have ninety minutes to answer them as honestly and completely as you choose. When time ends should one of you still wish to dissolve your bond, we are here to assist you.”

The first questions asked if he’s ever been in love, and he rolls his eyes until he reads the answers and finds the blank space for him to write his own answer. He chews the eraser from the pencil until a sharp jab of irritation causes him to glance sideways and catch Sam glaring. He takes the pencil out of his mouth and starts writing.

His fingertips still burn my skin where I remember his touch. I’d let myself smolder to ash if he’d just stay with me.

Bucky wasn’t sure what the bond had given Sam, he’d never wanted to talk about it, but it wasn’t empathy. It couldn’t be if Sam was so dead set on ripping Bucky’s heart out. Bucky could stew as much as he wanted without an audience on the injustice of getting everything he ever wanted, only to have it yanked out from under him.

The second question asked if he knew what he’d done, and he quickly circled ‘no’. Then he crossed it out and started writing again, no sense in holding back.

From the second desk away from him, Sam ripped the eraser off his extra pencil and bounced it off Bucky’s papers to gain his attention. “Maybe we don’t have to do this,” Sam said, his tiny, cramped writing scrawled across the page too messy for Bucky to read. He chewed his lip and avoided looking Bucky in the eye.

“That’s not what you’ve said the last two weeks,” Bucky muttered, throwing the words that’d hurt him so badly back at Sam. He flipped the page and started on question three, a question about waiting at a bus stop in the rain.

It hadn’t been a fluke, not an impulse, they’d talked about it in the warm sunshine of brunch and whispered about it under the cover of moonlight while their sweat cooled. They’d both wanted it, a bond that if it took, meant they were supposed to be together. They’d been so happy, it had felt so right. At first. It obviously hadn’t worked out the way Sam wanted.

They wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Bucky shook himself from happier memories and tried to define the words in question four. At question five he threw his pencil across the room, barely getting an eye-roll from the woman still sitting in front. He turned, scraping the metal legs of the desk against the well waxed linoleum.

“Sam, let’s go,” he said. He begged. “You’re right, let’s go.”

“You know I can’t leave a thing half-done, Buck,” Sam said, eyes glued to the page where he was on pace to fill the entire white space. “Keep going.”

He didn’t regret it, he’d do it all over again, it was his fault, it was nobody’s fault, maybe they’d said too much or not enough.

“Five minutes left.”

Bucky put his pencil down and stared at a kitten hanging off a branch for the remaining time. The doctor took their tests and pencils, and didn’t even look at them.

“What was the point?” Bucky demanded as she slipped the pages into a yellow envelope. “What was the fucking point of that torture?”

“The point was to be sure,” she said, eyeballing him. “Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Bucky’s mouth smiled with no input from the rest of him. It hurt.

He followed Sam and the doctor down the hallway and into the cut room. He sat in the chair and held his right hand out, putting it in the machine as directed. He sat there as their bond severed, and didn’t move as Sam jerked to throw up in the trashcan by the door.

Bucky couldn’t feel it anymore. The connection between them gone.

“C’mon,” Sam said, rinsing his mouth at the sink. “Let’s get out of here.”

Like always, he followed where Sam led.

“So, I guess this is it?” he asked once they stopped outside. The noise of the city wasn’t enough to fill the corners of his mind. Whatever was going on in Sam’s head, Bucky had lost his window. Regret. Relief. Resentment. Bucky had left his go-bag in the garage for a worst-case scenario, and here it was.

“What is it?” Sam asked, shielding his eyes from the sun and turning back to Bucky as if he’d never doubted Bucky would be right beside him.

“The end,” Bucky shrugged, tugging his fingers through the hair he’d been growing out for Sam.

“The- what are you talking about? This is a new beginning,” Sam said, backing Bucky into the side wall of the bus stop with a hand on Bucky’d stomach.

Bucky had always enjoyed it when Sam touched him there, moving him this way or that, but he’d never said. “I dunno, Sam,” he said, flattening his hands on the window behind him. “Severing a soulbond seems pretty final.”

“I told you I couldn’t do it anymore,” Sam said, glaring up into Bucky’s eyes.

“Believe me, I’m aware,” Bucky said, the mixed signals driving him crazy for days until Sam finally sat him down and told him about the appointment. “Listen, just. Call me, okay? Call me when you need me and I’ll be there for you, Cap. That part shouldn’t suffer just because I fucked everything else up.”

“You didn’t- Is that what you wrote in there?” Sam demanded, boxing Bucky in so he couldn’t slip past. Six-inch barrier apparently gone now that it was inconvenient.

“It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” Bucky asked, trying to suck in his stomach as if that would get Sam’s hand off him. It wasn’t fair, he always wanted Sam’s hand on him.

“Of course it does. You matter, we both matter,” Sam answered, moving his hand to the window at Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s- I-.”

“You’re never at a loss for words, Sam, even when you’re keeping ‘em to yourself,” Bucky said, slumping a little now that the electricity from Sam’s touch wasn’t keeping his stable. Every time had always felt like the first time.

“I shared your dreams, okay?” Sam said, as if that made any sense when Sam wanted Bucky out of his life.

“Sure, the cat would have been nice, but it wasn’t going to fix the problems between us,” Bucky started, his hands came off the window wanting so badly to curl around Sam’s hips, but he crossed them across his belly instead. The cat, the shared mortgage, a shared life, they’d talked about all of that too. “It’s okay. We’re going to be fine. It’ll take some time.”

“No, I mean, that was my part of the bond. Every time we slept together I saw everything,” Sam said, coughing again to the side as he finally admitted what had bothered him.

No wonder Sam wanted to end it. Bucky had always had a good imagination, probably all those pulps he’d read back in the day. His nightmares weren’t just memories anymore, though that would have been bad enough, his fears had morphed since the blip. Being the reason Sam didn’t make it featured heavily, sometimes because of the Winter Soldier, but sometimes just because of Bucky.

That wasn’t even considering the other-

Bucky sucked in a breath and jerked his head to look at Sam. Sam who smiled a Cheshire Cat smile at him.

“Yeah, even those, you perv,” he teased, feathering his fingers across Bucky’s arms in front of his stomach. He licked his lips and cut his eyes sideways. “You think those panties just magically showed up in the hamper? I just happened to buy that toy? I enjoyed those dreams.”

“Fuck my life,” Bucky knew his face must have flamed red in a second as he squirmed in front of Sam. Maybe if he’d known before, they could have- Maybe he could have figured out some way to have fewer nightmares, slept less and just enjoyed Sam snoring beside him. “Sam, I’m so sorry.”

“No, that’s not. Listen, it’s not your fault, but I couldn’t handle it. I know I stopped doing the work and that’s on me, but Bucky, I love you,” Sam said, voice hoarse as he spoke faster. He wasn’t pretending, he wasn’t hiding, he wasn’t even doing his patented deflection when he didn’t want to talk about his feelings. “I want a life with you.”

The whiplash of the last two hours were going to leave a mark, but Bucky still felt his hope rise. “Sam, why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, finally giving in and tucking his hands around Sam’s back. “The last thing I’d ever want to saddle anyone with is my nightmares.”

Sam’s mouth ticked, the way it did when he was trying to do a hard thing. “It wasn’t the nightmares,” he said, shuffling his feet until Bucky adjusted his own to let Sam be between. “You, had a lot of dreams about me. Impossible dreams. Impossible standards. How was I supposed to live up to that? How was I supposed to be enough for you?”

“What are you talking about? It’s always been you. The way you are,” Bucky pulled Sam in, tightening his arms, holding Sam the way he’d ached to all day. “You don’t have to live up to anything.”

Laughing to cover up a hiccup, Sam kissed the underside of Bucky’s jaw where he constantly missed a spot shaving. “You dream about me being larger than life, saving the day and changing the world,” he said, holding Bucky just as tight. “I’m even fucking taller than you in your dreams.”

Bucky smiled and used his extra inch and a half to tip Sam’s head up for a kiss. “That’s easy to fix,” he said when he finally pulled himself away. He twisted them around until he could step off the curb and left his own chin for another kiss Sam controlled. “There. See?”

Someone honked at them, and Sam lifted a hand to wave before crossing his arms behind Bucky’s neck. “I’m sorry,” he said, hair on his chin scratching over Bucky’s skin as Sam spoke at his ear. “I’m so fucking sorry that you had to know everything I felt without getting to know the reason. I got twisted up in my head. I don’t need a soulbond to know you’re what I want.”

“I want you too,” Bucky answered, awed all over again. The last several weeks weren’t magically going to go away, the hurts were still there on both of them. But they could start over. A bus sped by without stopping, and Bucky laughed, lighter than air. “Well, at least it’s not raining.”

“That fucking test man,” Sam laughed, pulling Bucky behind him with a fist clenched in Bucky’s henley as he put the power in power walking them back to the truck. “What the fuck was that BS?”

“I dunno,” Bucky answered, tripping over his feet as he kept up. “I spent a lot of time writing about your ass in question number four.”

“My-,” Sam didn’t slow down as they approached his truck, carefully backed into the first space ready for a quick getaway. He pivoted at the last second, letting his back bounce off the door panel in a move that would have had him yelling if Bucky, AJ, or Cass had tried it. He pulled until Bucky crashed into him, their bodies tight together. “I wrote about how the sun glints off your arm at six in the morning and that’s the reason I wake up on time for my run.”

“How romantic,” Bucky said, trailing his metal thumb along Sam’s jaw and across his bottom lip. “I love you too, y’know.”

“I know,” Sam said, flicking his tongue over Bucky’s thumb. “Let’s go home.”

Bucky would take soulbreak for a love bond.