As long as you need me I'll never leave you alone, and Sam's hold on Bucky tightens even as some of the tension he's holding drains out of him. It's a stupid promise, and at any other time Sam would temper it, would add something like 'as long as we got a say in it.' But now?

Maybe he should have more of a reason than ever not to be soothed by a promise like that, when he'd just saw the outcome of that kind of thinking, but fuck that. Right now he's gonna cling to it, like Bucky was answering his thoughts.

It's only then that it hits him that he'd actually said that he was thinking, that Bucky isn't just spontaneously promising him things. Shit.

"Buck..." he starts, then swallows and looks away, shaking his head. "This is a shitty time to be doing this." But he's talking to himself more than anything else, suddenly annoyed with himself that for all the times he'd thought about having this conversation with Bucky, he never had. And now it's gonna be here, when he's already in way too deep, when he'd just lost his sister and damn near lost his brother because of that.

"I told you about Riley, about not being able to find a good enough reason to keep going after he was gone. The thing is - you're part of my reason, a real damn big part. Without you, I..."