… wingfic where Zemo is fastidious about keeping them tidy and neat even on the Raft, but when he badly breaks his wrist on a parole mission it gradually becomes clear he can’t groom them now without his left arm: he’s no longer sleek and well-kept, there’s loose feathers sticking out everywhere when his coat slips, and it doesn’t look comfortable at ALL. But letting Sam and/or Bucky help? That’s a whole other Issue.
"Hey," Sam said, as Zemo tried to reach over his shoulder and stuff his wings back under his coat. "You're not supposed to be moving that wrist."
Zemo didn't actually answer in words, but his expression said I do what I want more clearly than words would have anyway. His expression also said Ow. Sam watched him struggle for another moment before he cracked.
"Do you want some help with that?"
That was, in general, his answer to everything.
"You dropped something," Bucky called brightly from the kitchen, pointing to a feather on the floor.
Zemo's answer to that was the sort of noise a wet cat might have made.
The care that Zemo took with his wings was meticulous. Although Sam's initial curiosity about his wings had never entirely worn off, over time both Sam and Bucky had gone from being curious and interested, to mainly just annoyed. Zemo would almost certainly have been a bathroom hog even without the wings, he was just that type of person, but the wings took it to the point of absolute absurdity. He spent hours meticulously combing, smoothing, and oiling them—at least Sam assumed that's what he was doing in there. His wing-care oils and combs and perfumes took up the entire bathroom cabinet wherever they went and left no room for anyone else's toothbrush. And all of this just to tuck his wings under his coat most of the time.
Having one wrist out of commission had also put his daily wing-care regiment out of whack. This was funny at first, but increasingly less so as he got snappier about it, and his wings got scruffier. Sam was beginning to realize that the all-day wing care was as much necessity as vanity. Okay, vanity was definitely part of it. But it was obvious that without being constantly taken care of, his wings started to develop scruffy patches and out-of-place feathers.
"Going somewhere?" Bucky asked. Zemo—sitting on the couch with his coat on—glared at him.
Zemo had very nearly stopped taking his coat off indoors, which Sam suspected was partly embarrassment about the state of his wings and partly just that he had a lot of trouble getting the wings tucked into their usual positions if he took it off.
There were times to be cautious and circumspect, and times to bull ahead straight through.
Sam had never been accused of not being stubborn enough.
Zemo gave him a look of wary unease when Sam sat beside him on the couch with a towel, a couple of bottles, and one of Zemo's oversized wing combs, all of them swiped from Zemo's prodigious bathroom stash.
"Have you been in my things?" Zemo said.
"Yes," Sam said. Bucky, in the kitchen, was clearly listening in fascination; if he could have sprouted a giant ear like a cartoon character, he would have done so.
"I don't need help," Zemo said tightly.
"Look, man, you're getting feathers everywhere, and it's annoying. Bucky can't spend all day sweeping up after you."
There was a scoffing sound from the kitchen.
"Think of it as a necessary household chore that you can't do one-handed," Sam added. "So one of us can step in for a bit."
Zemo regarded him with one of his weird hard-to-read expressions. Then, abruptly, he shoved back the tail of his coat and began to struggle out of it. "For necessary household reasons," he said.
"Of course," Sam said, firmly resisting helping him with the coat.
When Zemo got the coat off, Sam saw that the condition of his wings was even worse than he'd realized. Keeping them cooped up under the coat all the time probably wasn't a big help. They were dull and scruffy, and some of the feathers actually looked broken or out of kilter.
Sam carefully settled a hand on his wing. Zemo jerked a little.
"No," Zemo said, his voice abrupt.
His feathers were softer than Sam had realized. Actually, the only thing Sam had to compare it to—a comparison he definitely did not plan to share with Zemo—was that it made him think of a neighbor of theirs who'd had chickens when he was a kid. The chickens were soft like this, a kind of cloudlike feathery softness, warm and alive.
He was never, ever telling Zemo that.
"I don't know exactly what to do," Sam admitted. "You might have to guide me a little."
Zemo still looked extremely off balance, but this at least got him back in his favorite mode: being a smug know-it-all. And it seemed to work. He relaxed a little as he showed Sam, as best he could one-handed, how to use the comb to separate the feathers and work in the oil.
It was steady, meticulous work, weirdly soothing, but what really caught Sam off guard was how much it seemed to relax Zemo to have his wings worked on. He seemed to be slowly melting into the couch, and didn't even do more than stir a little when Bucky wandered in, curiosity having become too much for him.
"Grab a comb and a wing," Sam said.
Zemo half opened his eyes at that, as if to object—but he didn't.
