Bucky was walking again. Or rather, he was stumbling again, leaning fairly heavily on his husband while Sam steered him through large, too-bright hallways. Bucky knew there must be a reason they were moving so quickly, because Sam wouldn't be making him do this if there was another option.

"We're almost there," Sam muttered into his ear, a soothing mantra that meant very little to Bucky at this point. He was phasing out, each blink seeming to last somewhere between a handful of seconds to untold minutes at a time. He would open his eyes, and they would be somewhere completely different, or maybe that was just his mind playing tricks on him. Everything was starting to look the same, all the endless corridors and passing people blurring together into one massive whirlpool of overstimulation.

Bucky blinked again, sliding sideways through time. When he opened his eyes, Sam was shaking his arm and pointing excitedly ahead.

"It's our gate, Bucky, look, we made it-"

Bucky's eyes slipped closed, and then a new voice was talking to Sam, telling him that their gate had been moved, and they'd have to go back through the airport.

"You've got to be kidding me," Sam said flatly, and Bucky cracked his heavy eyelids open to find Sam's jaw clenched, the hand that wasn't holding Bucky trembling. He scrubbed his shaking fingers over his face, then reached into his jacket pocket. Bucky watched blankly as Sam cracked open another can of - whatever he'd been drinking before - and took a few large swallows.

"Bad idea, bad idea, Wilson," Sam muttered to himself, then finished off the can. Bucky blinked softly as Sam swung back towards him. "Okay, here we go again, Buck."

"W-what?" Bucky managed.

"The gate's moved again. I...I think. My Romanian isn't...this isn't the right place. We gotta go back."

Sam started towing Bucky back through the airport, and Bucky wished this wasn't happening. He was feeling trembly, like his legs would barely support his weight, and he was starting to get nauseous again. He was pretty sure he was supposed to have his eyes open, so he could see where he was going, but he kept forgetting. He didn't think this was going well at all.

But he kept putting one foot in front of the other, and tried to focus on nothing but his own breathing and the feeling of Sam's arm wrapped around his waist.

"There's an escalator, B - you need to open your eyes. Come on, you'll fall otherwise-"

Bucky opened his eyes. He saw a wavy, blurry escalator in front of him. But he hadn't realized how bright the world had gotten, and he had to immediately squeeze his eyes shut again. Otherwise, he would have been sick.

He started trying to explain that to Sam, but his brain seemed to have forgotten how to make words between one breath and the next. He felt a horrible panicky feeling start to build in his chest. There was nothing that made him feel quite so trapped as finding himself suddenly unable to communicate. "I-"

"Oh nevermind, it's broken," Sam said, sounding so defeated that Bucky had a sudden, insane wish that he was able to fix the escalator. "We'll have to walk. Do you think you can make it down stairs, B?"

"I-" Bucky wasn't sure he could. As if to illustrate his point, one of his legs suddenly gave out beneath him - he reeled into Sam.

"Shit," Sam said mildly.

"I-"

"Well, we're just going to have to...try our best…." Bucky thought he heard the sound of a can being opened, and he wondered vaguely how much Red Bull Sam had bought. Although he supposed there was a chance that he had hallucinated the sound.

They rested for a minute - time for Bucky to gather his strength and Sam to presumably drink his can of Red Bull. Then they struggled down the broken escalator, Bucky occasionally slitting his eyes open to watch the placement of his feet, and leaning heavily on both Sam and the bannister. The walk down the escalator seemed to take both a very long time and also no time at all. At the bottom, Bucky let his eyes slide shut, clinging onto Sam with the hand that had been holding the bannister. It would have to be Sam's job to make sure he didn't run into anything, and that he kept walking in the right direction.

Bucky thought that maybe he should feel bad about that, but at this point, that was simply what was going to happen. Thankfully, Sam seemed to know that, too, because they kept moving and Sam didn't say anything to him.

They continued on for what seemed like hours, although it could have only been a few minutes for all Bucky knew. Maybe it had been. Surely, the airport couldn't be that big.

"Almost there, B," Sam said, and Bucky stiffened at the forced calm in his voice, the tone that always meant stress was lurking right below the surface. "Almost there. If I can...if I can just get the gate figured out, find someone who can speak English…. Yeah. We're almost there. This...this is going fine."

Bucky managed a small, wordless murmur. He hoped that Sam would take it as agreement, even if Bucky wasn't quite sure of what Sam had said.

Above them, the loudspeaker crackled on, and Bucky flinched at the unexpected noise. Sam's arm tightened protectively around his waist, and Bucky turned his head into Sam's shoulder, hoping vaguely that it would make the sound less overwhelming. He almost didn't catch what the announcement was saying, not until he heard their flight number. Bucky did manage to catch the end of it - their gate had moved, like Sam said, and the new gate was...somewhere else.

Bucky peeled his eyes open, squinting through the too-bright fluorescent lights at the large terminal guides posted around the hallway. There was too much information for him to really understand, but he got enough to see that they were going the wrong way.

That...that seemed bad. Luckily, Sam would have heard the announcement too, and he could also read the arrows and find out which way to go, and then he would tell Bucky to go the right way and everything would work out.

"Fuck. Was that our flight number? Did you hear that announcement?" Sam sounded frazzled, and tired. Bucky didn't like it when he sounded like that.

"B, did you hear the announcement?" Sam asked again, sounding very sad now. "I...I couldn't…I don't speak Romanian. Do you know what they said?"

Bucky nodded, once, forcing his eyes to stay open. Sam turned to face him, eyes large and worried. Bucky frowned. He looked so tired….

"Can you tell me what they said?" Sam asked gently.

Right. He was supposed to...he was supposed to tell Sam what the announcement had been. Where they were supposed to go.

"Faceți dreapta," Bucky mumbled. "Pe hol."

Sam's face fell, and he looked down. "You can't say it in English, huh, Buck."

Fuck, had he not been speaking English? Bucky hadn't realized, his brain was too scrambled to be able to differentiate between all of the languages he knew, especially when he wasn't seeing or hearing English. Romanian, he'd probably been speaking Romanian, that was what made the most sense, but Sam didn't speak Romanian. That was the whole problem.

It should be so easy. Why wasn't it easy? What was wrong with him? Why was he like this? Why couldn't he do better?

Bucky shook his head slightly. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't say it in English. He couldn't seem to say anything at all.

"Îmi pare rău," he managed finally. He could feel what he was trying to make Sam understand - the shame that he couldn't communicate properly, the pain it was causing him to know he was making things harder on Sam. But the words to explain that were just out of his grasp.

Sam seemed to understand, somehow. He pulled Bucky a little closer, and wordlessly rubbed the spot where his shoulder connected to his neck. Bucky relaxed a little - Sam was having a hard time, but he wasn't mad. He just wanted to get this figured out too.

Bucky watched, blinking slowly, as Sam fished another Red Bull out of his pocket.


Sam was standing in front of the board with all the flight information on it, wondering if he had somehow transitioned from the Romanian airport into some kind of Hell. He had Google Translate open on his phone, but he wasn't sure how much it was helping. Romanian seemed to include a lot of accents and things, and he hadn't yet been able to figure out how to type those. He was holding Bucky securely against his side, absently rubbing his shoulder while they waited, which meant he had to type everything one-handed. Not easy normally, but now, his right hand was trembling so badly that he kept missing the letters.

Sam supposed it was possible that all those Red Bulls - Four? Five? - hadn't been a good idea. He was feeling shaky and hollow, and while he sure wasn't asleep, he was also finding it difficult to concentrate. His mouth felt sticky, but also somehow dry. He wondered if his eyeballs were vibrating.

The caffeine did seem to be helping with the post-mission soreness though, at least a little. Which was good, because Bucky was leaning pretty much his whole weight into Sam's side, keeping his head turned into Sam's shoulder, the rim of his baseball cap pressing into Sam's neck. Sam thought that if he were to step away, Bucky would fall.

Bucky mumbled something into Sam's arm.

"What was that?" Sam asked, praying that this time it would be English.

"Feel sick," Bucky whispered.

"Oh, B, no," Sam muttered. "Do you think you're gonna throw up again?"

Bucky made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat.

Sam sighed, and decided he was at least 80% certain this must be some sort of Hell. "Just...hold on another minute, okay? I'll take you to the bathroom, but I need to figure out where our Gate is first."

Sam finally managed to locate their flight number. It was next to some words he didn't understand, but he would just need to type those into Google Translate, and then he would know where their Gate was.

"Feel sick," Bucky murmured again. "Sam-"

Sam closed his eyes in frustration and despair. He didn't know where the bathroom was, and what if he came back, and the flight information had changed, and then he had to wait for it to cycle back, and he was pretty sure that they were running out of time.

"Sam-"

"Okay. Umm, can you hold onto this bag?" Sam pulled the plastic bag he'd saved for Bucky out of his pocket, unwrapping it with shaky fingers. He passed it to Bucky, who stared at it blankly.

"Here," Sam prompted him, grabbing onto Bucky's hand and guiding it over to the bag. Slowly, Bucky's fingers closed around it, and he blinked.

"Other hand too," Sam said, pulling Bucky's other arm from where it was wedged against Sam and closing it around the bag as well. Bucky frowned.

"If you have to puke," Sam said. He really, really hoped that Bucky wouldn't. The last time Bucky had told him he felt sick, Sam had a good ten minutes of warning, and they'd been sitting on a train and then walking around. Right now, all Bucky had to do was stand beside Sam and let Sam hold him up and cuddle him.

"Is that alright, B?" Sam asked desperately, hoping for any kind of acknowledgement. "I can try to find a bathroom, but we'll have to be walking, and I think we're gonna miss our flight if I don't figure this out. I'm sorry. Fuck, I should have got this sorted out by now. I'm sorry, baby."

Bucky looked a little taken aback, for a second. Then, he tightened his grip on the plastic bag and gave a tiny nod.

"Thank you," Sam said fervently, planting a kiss on the side of Bucky's face, which was a little cold, almost clammy. Probably from the Ambien, or the airport, or the people, or….

Sam forced himself to take a deep breath and focus on the stupid airport flight board. The words seemed to be swimming around a little, but he guessed that was due to the caffeine, and not some crazy programming defect. Although, in this airport….

Sam finally relocated their flight number and began carefully typing everything, accent marks and all, into Google Translate. Beside him, Bucky was quiet, still leaning most of his weight on Sam's shoulder.

"Oh," Sam said hopelessly, staring at his phone screen. "Look at that. Our flight was delayed another three hours."

Bucky stiffened beside him, then jerked forward with a small cough. "...Threw up," Bucky whispered, sounding utterly miserable.

Sam turned to his husband to find Bucky holding the no-longer-empty plastic bag, tears welling up in his eyes. He shut them tight, color starting to rise in his cheeks, and Sam saw a few tears track down his face.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," Sam told him, and by the end of the sentence he was pretty sure that he was crying too. This time, it was a lot harder to stop himself, despite the fact that if people saw Captain America crying in a foreign airport he would never live it down. It was just...Bucky shouldn't feel like he needed to cry out of shame for throwing up, and he shouldn't even be throwing up, and Sam shouldn't have to make his husband wait for three more hours for a plane.

He just wanted this to be over.


Bucky leaned over the bag as he gagged again. This time, nothing came up but a small mouthful of water and stomach acid. His stomach must be very nearly empty.

Bucky knew that sometimes, finally throwing up could help a person feel less sick, but that didn't seem to be the case here. Bucky was reminded of the constant, unabating feeling of motion sickness. That wasn't very encouraging - when he got motion sick, there was pretty much nothing that could help.

The second round of vomiting seemed to have stopped the crying, at least. That was something. Bucky couldn't remember if it was more embarrassing to be crying or throwing up in an airport. He was pretty sure it was especially bad to be doing both of them at the same time.

Sam's hand ghosted up and down his back. He couldn't tell if the touch was comforting or not. Sam was always comforting. Knowing Sam was there made things easier. But the repetitive motion was making him kind of dizzy. And his skin felt strange, wrong. Being trapped inside himself was a nightmare. Sam's hand felt like it was rubbing him raw. It also felt like it was blocking out the rest of the world, making everything else just a little easier to handle.

Some part of Bucky's brain recognized that he was going downhill. Had Sam said three more hours? Bucky wasn't sure if he could take that. When was this stupid pill supposed to wear off?

Bucky decided he was never going to take sleeping pills again. Since that would turn plane rides into hell, he decided he was never going to go on a plane again either.

"You done for now?" Sam asked softly. "Do you still want to go to the bathroom?"

Bucky shook his head vehemently. A bathroom sounded like it might kill him - the lights were even brighter in there, and there were too many smells, so many people…. He didn't think he was about to throw up again, at least not immediately. Granted, he didn't have the best sense of what was going on inside his body. But he was pretty sure he would be okay if he stayed out here with Sam, and would either throw up or die if he had to go into the bathroom.

"So you're not gonna puke anymore?" Sam asked hopefully. "Here, let me take this."

The bag was removed from Bucky's hands.

"Do you want a sip of water?"

Bucky shook his head. Swallowing sounded hard.

"Do you want to rinse your mouth? You can spit the water out."

Sam knew him so well. Bucky nodded. A bottle of water was pressed into his hand, and Bucky reached for the top of it, but he couldn't get enough purchase to open it. He almost started crying again, until Sam's fingers were pressing gently into his arm.

"It's uncapped, B."

Oh. That was nice, of course Sam had uncapped it for him, he was trying to make things easier for him. Bucky thought that he should probably be embarrassed that he hadn't realized the bottle was already open, but he was too busy feeling miserable.

Bucky took a miniscule sip of the water, then spat it back out. The bag was in front of him again, although he only noticed that after spitting out the water. If Sam hadn't been on top of it, Bucky probably would have just spit it on the floor. Maybe he should be embarrassed about that, too.

"Want another sip?"

Bucky shook his head.

"Are you sure you don't wanna drink any?"

Bucky shook his head again, this time more emphatically. If turning his head didn't sound like such an impossible feat, he would have glared at Sam. As it was, he settled for trying to push the bottle back towards the vague direction of Sam's hand.

Sam received the water bottle with a sigh. "Okay. Just...let me know if you change your mind, okay?"

Bucky was not about to change his mind. The mere thought of swallowing anything at all was making him nauseous again, and he halfway resented Sam for making him think of it.

He didn't, really. Sam's arm was around his shoulders, and Bucky was leaning most of his weight on Sam at this point, and he couldn't remember why he'd been upset with him in the first place.

It had probably been stupid. A lot of what was happening in Bucky's head right now seemed stupid.