Sam had been grumbling a lot lately. That fact rankled a bit because he wasn't a cranky person by nature. And he was self-aware enough to know exactly what was eating him. "Dangit, Steve," he muttered as his dark eyes scanned the area for danger as he walked, "I know he was your friend and all, but I really don't want to see this guy." He deftly avoided a pile of jangled rebar and concrete. "And who picks a warehouse for a meeting spot?" He wrinkled his nose. "You don't know any safe spots that don't smell like stinky feet..?"

A shadowed bulk appeared out of nowhere in his peripheral vision, and Sam nearly jumped a mile.The only coherent thought he had while his body screamed a warning of imminent murder was How are his eyes glowing like that? But then the black-armored figure moved a fraction, and the glow proved to be only a trick of the light, a shaft of sunlight that angled across Bucky's face through a jagged slat high on the wall. "You want to give a man a little warning?" Sam almost shouted.

Bucky's mane of brown hair gave him a dangerous, feral look. Those blue eyes, dead and distant and only slightly less weird now, ranged over Sam. "I did. You saw me."

"Maybe a warning that doesn't give a man a cardiac event?"

Bucky lifted one eyebrow. "On your left?"

Sam rolled his eyes and made a snorking noise halfway between an aborted curse and a laugh. "Oh, it's going to be like that?"

"I'm not sure it's going to be anything," Bucky said, with matter-of-fact emphasis on the last word. He gave a lopsided shrug with, Sam noted, his right shoulder. "Steve wanted me here. So I'm here."

"I hear you," Sam said. "I didn't want to come either."

"I almost didn't."

They glared at each other. Sam ran one hand over his hair in exasperation, trying to remember what Steve had told him about the former assassin being a fundamentally decent guy. Then he noticed the huge industrial press that squatted near the wall. He remembered Bucky struggling to consciousness with his metal arm pinned between its plates, and the agony etched into Steve's face as he'd hoped so hard that he would be speaking with his friend instead of the Winter Soldier. Bucky was looking at it too, his expression difficult to read. After a moment, Bucky broke the silence. "Steve trusted you."

"I like to think I'm trustworthy," Sam replied, feeling all of a sudden that it mattered to him whether this…jerk…trusted him, and he didn't like it at all. "Okay, look. You don't like me. I don't like you. But we are both Steve's friends. I don't know what he sees in you, but he trusts you. And I trust Steve."

Bucky looked away. "I don't know what he sees in me, either," he spat, almost angrily. But Sam's instinct and experience caught undertones in the words that sounded like guilt and sadness and a wariness that had never been natural, but had been hard-learned. Bucky's jaw tightened, and he let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He reached into a pocket at his waist and tossed Sam a round, dark object that gleamed as it tumbled toward him. It flashed briefly on contact with Sam's skin, then quieted back to its unassuming inky black. "It's bound to you, now. Use it to contact me, if you need my help."

Sam held it up. Its surface seemed to absorb light. "Do I say your name three times, or something?"

Annoyance crossed Bucky's face. "What?"

"Like Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice? Nothing, man? I see you need some cultural education. Did Steve ever show you that list of his?" Now Bucky just looked confused, which gave Sam some private amusement. "So, what if you need help? How do you call me?"

Bucky glanced at a spot above and behind Sam and tensed as if to dodge or to leap.

Sam pivoted and drew his weapon. There was nothing there. "Way to avoid answering a reasonable question," Sam said, as he holstered his pistol and turned back. Bucky was gone, as if he had never been standing there. Not even a disturbed air current had marked his departure.

"I hate you!" Sam bellowed into the empty warehouse. "You jerk!"

A few seconds later came a reply, soft-voiced and unsteady like a quivering leaf. "Punk."