break me down and watch me burn (use your love as gasoline) [ sambucky ]

it's in the way it grows (and we simply watch it do)

It's not fine. It's anything but fine.

The outpost is an underground bunker built under a farm. Not just the farmhouses, no, the entire eleven square miles plot of functioning farming land. It's all a cover-up, with the farmers apparently being undercover HYDRA agents and the herding dogs trained to track, attack and kill on command. No wonder Bucky remembers it as a maze; according to landmass and the scans Sam's goggles can do, this place is the biggest outpost in all of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia combined.

Because Sam is always prepared for a stupid amount of things, no matter how unlikely they are, he procured them earpieces and a Stark Tech commlink running through Avengers-owned satellites and radiotowers. Which means the several feet thick concrete doesn't kill the connection, though it does worsen it.

Which means Sam gets the joy of experiencing Bucky's fights second-hand purely through sound.

Could they have opted to have the commlink set to push-to-talk? Yes. That way Sam wouldn't have to listen to Bucky crawling through vents, cracking codes, speaking German, sneaking down corridors, breathe, getting shot at, taking three separate elevators, running into a wall, getting punched by a door, stealing files and tech parts, and absolutely destroying the labs and the archives and the workshops. But then he wouldn't be able to tell when Bucky's breath staggers from barely contained fear, or he gets sloppy because of creeping dissociation, which ways he gets hurt and how, or if he passes out.

"I'm not gonna fucking faint, Sam," he'd hissed, metal hand tightly clenched and jaw visibly working his teeth into his gums. And, look, Sam gets it; he was the number one assassin in the entire world, so invisible he was believed to be a ghost story and feared just like one. The Winter Soldier doesn't faint, period.

But.

Sam sighed. "I know this is probably uncomfortable to hear, and I'm sorry. But their whole shtick is electrocution, right?" Bucky's clenched hand had twitched at this. "Tasers, any cable in the walls, the various servers they most likely have, all the lab equipment, vent security-- hell, with a high enough electrical current they could electrify the floor. And not to mention electromagnetism. That shit can and will disable your arm."

As if trying to glare Sam into silence - which, to be fair, he has done before - Bucky unflinchingly stared into Sam's soul. Sam had stared right back and continued speaking: "Point is, if you're actually serious about the 'no risks' thing and not just trying to keep me out of the heat, which, rude, then we're keeping the commlink open so I don't have to rely on you not being incapaciated to know what the fuck is going and if I have to wait for the pick-up sign or barge in and drag your ass out myself."

That had been the end of the argument. Bucky had been, and still is, immensely pissed about it, but rather a frustrated super soldier than an unconscious one in the hands of the people that fucked him up in the first place.

Not that that stops Bucky from being a fucking moron about the whole thing. Sam pipes up quite a lot, either to provide a distraction from something he sees or hears, or to ground him. Or just to fill the silence because, really, flying in circles over the same spot of flat land - no, seriously. Had Sam not been in Dutchland, he'd be offended at how flat literally all of Denmark is. It's gross - becomes boring pretty quickly.

But that's not the point. The point is that Bucky's an idiot, and either he or Steve is gonna be the death of Sam, Jesus Christ. Because Bucky gets into forty-seven separate fights, not including the nineteen take-downs where the opponents are immediately knocked out.

As Bucky clambers up the inside of an elevator shaft, odd device in hand - not literally. It doesn't fit in his pockets and he doesn't have a bag with him, so he's holding onto it with his mouth. Which is definitely, totally safe to do with a potentially ekstraterestrial, highly radioactive, and world-ending level dangerous device - Sam swears he's going to throttle him. He doesn't know what the fuck he managed to do down there, but three separate explosions-bad-enough-to-cause-an-earthquak have gone off in the last five minutes so it's bad. So much for not attracting any attention.