6752/The Morning After.

The Morning After.
Date of Scene:	30 June 2021
Location:	04 James Barnes' Suite - Playground
Synopsis:	Sam and Bucky disagree on a few things, it ends about as bad as it could end between them.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Sam Wilson

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James Barnes has posed:
    There are varying degrees of 'angry Bucky'. There's level one anger - he's still talking even if all his words are snarky and actually have enough bite that a person can feel the teeth. Level two - Not many word, if any at all, lots of grunts and growls and snorts of disdain. Level three - nothing but BuckyGlower(TM). Then there is the very rare, much feared, not to be trifled with Level Four - It's like level three, but every muscle in his body is coiled like a snake, his hands spend more time curled into fists than not. Watching Level Four anger Bucky is like watching the timer on a bomb ticking down the seconds.

    Very few people have ever been successful at defusing Anger Level Four status. It's just something that has to wear off on its own.

    Tonight? Well, Level Four seems like it's about to morph into an, as of yet unseen in this world, level FIVE.

    He's been stewing in silence since the OP ended and he flew everyone where they needed to go and then back here. He's not said a single word to Sam that wasn't absolutely OP related and then limited those responses to non-verbal nods or shakes of his head when possible.

    Once back home and inside, he heads straight for the bathroom to shower off any slime he might still be wearing from that Alien Fish Head Asshat they brought back.

    It's a quick shower, in and out. He's only wearing a pair of olive green cargo shorts when he comes out. His hair's all wet, almost still dripping, when he heads directly to the bedroom to get the rest of the way dressed.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's up to his eyeballs in the typical post-mission procedural shit, which, usually? Not a big deal. But he's pissed off at Sharon, at Bucky, at having to herd a bunch of overexcited academics into a safehouse so they can get brain scans to make sure they aren't turning into a frog-fish-alien thing, and how is said frog-fish-alien thing the only person on the 'jet who isn't trying Sam's last nerve? Okay, Darcy's got enough pop culture-based humor to get a pass, too. Dr. Walters won't stop asking after analysis results, though.

    Even though it's probably easy enough for the civilians aboard the quinjet to connect the dots, she's the only one who actually knows that they're SHIELD, or can at least infer from her previous knowledge of Sam being a SHIELD agent as well as an Avenger. She was his mentor in grad school, after all, she knows his background. But she's not going to get anything out of him tonight.

    It's so late that it's early by the time they get back to the Playground, debrief and go their separate ways.

    Well, they split up from Darcy and Sharon; Sam has to go through the awkwardness of walking next to Bucky the entire way down to the personal quarters level, and he debates finding someone *else's* couch to crash on tonight. Because it's not like Sam hasn't noticed how angry Bucky is, and Sam is just... too fucking tired. It's all there in the tension around his eyes, the uncomfortable set in his shoulders like he's having to put real effort to keep himself up and going.

    Bucky can be a ticking time bomb all he likes. Sam's just not got it in him for defusal duty tonight. Today. Fuck.

    But all his stuff (what meager amount of personal belongings he's managed to snag before going underground, at least) is in his bag. Which is under the table in Bucky's room. He'd have to follow Bucky to go get it anyway, and by the time he's there, fuck it, he's too tired. Bucky can glare a hole in the side of his head for all he cares, because Sam's sprawled on the couch, very clearly in a half-doze with one arm slung over his eyes as he waits for his turn in the shower.

    He eventually does rouse, a few moments later, and gives himself a bit of a shake before he's up on his feet and into the bathroom.

James Barnes has posed:
    "You're screwing the entire fucking team," Bucky calls out through the bathroom door when he returns from his bedroom dressed for the day, and apparently to go out... "When you don't let us do what we're *trained* to do, you're screwing the whole fucking team." Well, at least he's talking.

    "I'm goin' out! Don't... wait up!" He crosses the room to the little closet near the door to the tiny living space and rummages through it looking for something.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Man, Sam hasn't even started the shower. And he gets that the necessity of sharing a tiny living space with another person (Sam was in the military! He gets it!) means that boundaries are going to get trampled on. But Sam started getting used to civilian life, and how nice it was to have his own space where no one would bother him.

    He sighs and pushes the heels of his palms against his eyes, tries to remember that Bucky is his friend and if Sam murdered him, Steve would be upset. Very upset.

    The door swings back open. Sam's still dressed in his BDUs and the t-shirt he was wearing under his tactical jacket, and all he really wants is to go to sleep, but okay, apparently they're doing this now. "What the fuck are you talking about?" he asks, with a flat affectation. Tomorrow (ugh, later today) he'll be properly angry about what Bucky's just said. Right now he's just done. D-O-N-E.

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky pulls a pair of gloves from a coat pocket, seems that's what he was looking for. They're new... thin, supple leather. They're the sort of gloves that allow for maximum amount of dexterity possible in a leather glove, expensive.

    "I could have made that window in a quarter of the time it took us to get up there," he shoots back. "And you know it. But you were /afraid/ to split the damned team. It was *Sharon* that found the objectives after I gave her the 'go' signal. Because you were *afraid* to separate the damned team, Sam."

    He jerks the glove onto his right hand, but it's always a little bit more time consuming to get one on his left. "Seriously, what the *fuck*?"

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The way Sam's eyes are narrowed comes across as tense, plain as day. He can feel the pressure building in his skull and rather than look down the barrel of what is definitely going to be a killer migraine, Sam trudges over to his bag to dig out a bottle of pills. He unscrews the lid and swallows two dry. "Just because you could have doesn't mean you needed to! What good would that have done except give Dr. Walters a heart attack?"

    At best it would have given her a fright, but that woman has the cardiac health of a prize-winning racehorse.

    He tosses the bottle back into his bag. "And Sharon jumped the gun! You're acting like we wouldn't have cleared the entire town after. I can run an op, Barnes." The use of Bucky's last name is pointed even as Sam throws himself into the chair with a frustrated exhale through his nose.

    "I know we're all friends but you're supposed to have my back out there, and instead you undermined my authority. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

James Barnes has posed:
    "I've always had your fucking back, WILSON," Bucky snaps back. "But you obviously don't trust the rest of us to do our jobs. Because only Sam Wilson can get it right."

    Once his gloves are in place, he reaches in and snags a jacket, leather... it's his armored one, the one that looks like any other riding leather, but is made of tougher stuff than that.

    "You didn't know who the fuck was in that room before hand," he points out. "Even now, in hindsight, me clearing it FASTER means we would have gotten her out FASTER if things went south. Same with Sharon and the other objectives. Her finding them while we were clearing the other place, that shaved valuable time off, less time for things to go to shit. Safety /and/ efficiency, Sam, that's the way it needs to be out there. There was absolutely nothing efficient about keeping the entire team in one spot last night and that's why I gave Sharon the signal. Because I *trust* her."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's resulting laugh is wheezy, and it sounds like it's physically hurting his lungs. "Is that really what you think I'm doing?" he asks as he wedges his left hand in-between the armrest of the chair and his thigh so it will stop clenching up. "My last mission before this had a fifty percent casualty rate. How's that for getting it right, huh?"

    He hasn't been deliberately avoiding looking at Bucky but he also hasn't really turned his head that way either. It's easier to stare down at the table top in front of him. "And there wasn't anything safe about Sharon going off on her own into a situation we had basically no intel on. What if those things had been more aggressive? You know how many of them there were, we would have found her body in--pieces." That thought seems to startle him, sitting uncomfortably in his gut in such a way that he absolutely can't stay still. Sure, he's still pissed as all hell at Sharon, but she's a good friend, one of his closest in SHIELD aside for Steve and the guy he's unfortunately roommates with right now.

    And Sam's not the type of guy to give big outward signs of his agitation, still isn't, so he gets up onto his feet and then sort of... stalls. He sighs. "Where the hell are you going?"

James Barnes has posed:
    "Yeah, so we take the entire team in, all moving in one big target of a fucking herd, and it's all our bodies, not just Sharon's," Bucky counters. "It's called recon, Sam. ...and it's not only for people with wings on their suits. You didn't *trust* her to get the job done, a job she's done a million times before."

    He shrugs on that jacket and zips it up before sticking a hand one pocket like he's making sure something's there. It must be because he seems satisfied when he puts his hand on the doorknob. "Out." But he does pause long enough to add, "The only way that island OP didn't go south was if we nuked the place from orbit without ever stepping foot on it."

    He pulls the door open and stops again, one foot out the door. "If you don't trust us? You'll get us all killed and it won't be a clusterfuck, unwinnable situation like that Island, no... it'll be something simple and straight forward. If you don't trust your team, there's no point in having a team."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "You and Sharon want to be on your lone wolf bullshit when it's one of you calling the shots, that's fine, I know. You're both great at it!" Sam throws his hands up in the air, frustrated enough that he can't help himself. It's probably a strange thing to see him do. "But that's not how I work! And I can't watch your backs if I don't know where you--" And this is the point where Sam realizes his voice has risen to the point where he's nearly (not quite, but on his way) to the point of yelling.

    Which, honestly, more than anything? Pisses him off. He's angry, and he's upset about being angry, and it's creating a feedback loop in his head that keeps tying itself tighter and tighter into a snarl of emotions. "If I don't know where you are," he finishes.

    His left hand clenches into a fist at his side. "I wouldn't have requested you or Sharon on that mission if I didn't trust you, so don't ever try to tell me how I feel or what I think. Just because you have trust issues doesn't mean I do."

    Even pissed, though, Sam's expression shutters into something tense and disappointed as soon as those words come out. Immediately, he adds, "That last part was uncalled for, I'm sorry. But I meant what I said for the rest of it."

James Barnes has posed:
    "Lone wolf bullshit?" he barks out a laugh, humorless though. "No, what she wanted to do was no more 'lone-wolf' than you flying off by yourself. She. Wanted. To. Do. Her. Job. Just like I did. But that didn't work for you either. So, you calling the shots means no compromise, it's your way or we're all wrong?" His left hand clenches so tightly around the doorknob that it's a wonder he doesn't crush it.

    "Sam, she told you where she was going, to see what was going on in that building. You told her no. We had open comms the whole way if she got in trouble, you told her no. That wasn't fair to her and that certainly was *not* trusting her." Just laying it out there like he sees it, but something's changed in his tone. His 'give a fuck' is gone from it. It left right after he visibly flinched over the 'uncalled for part'.

    "I'm staying in Manhattan tonight," he adds, voice flat. Other foot out the door and it shuts behind him.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "I was 100 meters up in the air, don't act like it's the same thing as Sharon running off while my back is turned to go do what she wanted instead of her job, which was *actually* to keep an eye on Dr. Lewis. If your friend from the FBI wasn't so reliable, Darcy could've gotten into a lot of trouble." All of the anger has drained out of Sam's voice at this point. Sam's done giving a fuck too, it appears; now he's just closed off. Disappointed, maybe. "I just wrote the report, you can't twist shit around to suit the narrative you've decided on to make me look incompetent," he says.

    Then Bucky's out the door and Sam breaths out a harsh, "Fucking typical."

    It might seem at first that, about ten seconds later when he's following Bucky out into the hall, he's doing his usual not-leaving-well-enough-alone thing. But he's got his bag slung over one shoulder and he's staring ahead without so much as a glance backwards while he makes for the upper levels, towards the hangar.

    It's not like he had to actually pack up anything; all he needs is to unplug his phone charger from the wall and then that's it, he might as well have never been crashing on Bucky's couch.

James Barnes has posed:
    He's only a few steps away from the door, well maybe ten steps. On his phone. Sam might have heard it ringing from inside even. "Wait, what?" ... .... "No, that's not the way it's supposed..." ...... "I /told/ you we should have just paid his debt and been done with it, fucking stupid idiot," he snarls into the phone. "Just fucking tell Piker he finally gets to add the Winter Soldier to his line up /if/ he cancels the kid's debt. Call me back with a time." Bucky barely manages to not throw that offending phone against the wall. In the end he pockets it again or ... well, he won't be able to receive that call back.

    He turns in time to see Sam. It's not like he didn't hear that little bit when he was leaving, he'd just chosen not to answer. Now he does. "Cael wasn't gonna let that girl get dead... She didn't let /me/ get dead, remember." His voice drops, his tone isn't exactly soft, it never is... "Just stop doubting us, Sam. We know what we're doing." ... but it isn't nasty, snarky or angry either.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    There was a point in time where Sam absolutely would have stuck his nose into Bucky's business, either because that sketchy shit Buck's talking about on the phone sounds really, *really* sketchy or because he's dropping the Winter Soldier's name way too casually.

    Not today, though. Sam's not the kind of person who would deliberately shoulder-check someone he's mad at, he's not petty like that, but man does he fucking think about it as he passes Bucky by in the hall. "Just don't," is all he says. Literally, like, that's it. He's not ignoring Bucky but he's walking at a steady clip, and he pulls his sunglasses out of a side pocket of his bag so he can put them on.

James Barnes has posed:
    "And you all always accuse me of running away from shit when it matters!" Bucky calls out after Sam. "Fine, fuck off!" He probably, maybe, most likely really doesn't mean that. He *definitely* waits until Sam is down the elevator and gone before he takes it himself, no way he's spending three awkward, Musack filled moments of glaring and silence on the way down. Normally that would be right up his alley and he'd win very single time, but not today.

    He'll patch the hole he makes in the wall in a little momentary fit of tantrum later. For now, Bucky has to get to the city and wait on a phone call.