shortviolet:

okay okay okay but imagine during sam’s (numerous) visits to bucky in wakanda, one day bucky casually mentions the notebooks in kept in his backpack during civil war. or at least, he TRIES to be casual about it but sam can tell he’s really upset about losing them for potentially forever, but also he’s curious and he’s like “what’d you write in these notebooks ? russian soup recipes ?” 

bucky chuckles a little and he explains, tells sam about how sometimes he would jump up in the middle of the night and scribble down some scattered memory before it could fade away and be replaced by nightmares. he explains how the good memories, the ones with his family and steve before the war and the serum and everything else, were sometimes the ones that were harder to keep, how they would become blurry and static like a tv that doesn’t work so he decided to write them down, and then the bad ones got written down too because even though they were his own personal hell, he felt like he needed to remember. 

sam’s quiet for awhile and then he says, “after my dad died, i kept a journal and everytime me or my mom smiled, laughed, or made a joke, i’d write it down. i was just a kid and we were so sad for so long, the happy moments were few and far between, so i thought i needed to find a way to keep them forever. eventually i started to write about the days when we couldn’t laugh or smile, or the times i cried myself to sleep and didn’t immediatly run to my mom’s bedroom because she had a long day and needed the rest and i didn’t wanna upset her even more. i kept it until i was sixteen and when my mom found it she burst into tears.” 

they don’t speak much after that but the silence is meaningful, one more little piece of the puzzle that is their relationship slotting into place. 

sam is gone very early the next day (”ex-superhero, ex-captain america business, you civilians don’t quite get it” “i could still bench press you one-handed, wilson”) but when bucky wakes up he finds an expensive-looking, leather cover notebook and an equally expensive-looking pen on his bedside table and when he opens it he reads “for the memories” written on the front page. 

a few days later, sam receives a pic on his phone and it’s just a page of bucky’s new notebook that reads “thought about wilson’s stupid goggles and cackled so loud i scared the goats” with a drawing of a very ugly bird next to it, and that makes sam laugh out loud in the middle of a mission briefing, great timing barnes.