(no subject)

[bottledblond]

Not every universe in the far and wide cosmos is as lucky (however unlucky itself that seems) to encounter Thanos during a time where people live who can do something about it. Steve Rogers, a particular version of Steve Rogers who had only just suffered through his first night of basic training in New Jersey as part of the Army’s Project Rebirth and thus had not yet become Captain America, bent to untie his shoes and saw his hands begin to disintegrate. He doesn’t panic, panicking is for people who do not live like every breath is their last. Instead, he blinks in surprise as the barracks fill with shouting. He has time to contemplate two things. One, he wishes he’d done more with his life. And two, he hopes Bucky will do all right.

He’s still thinking about that last issue when he exhales his last in a universe where Captain America never existed and finishes it bent over in the ruins of the barracks, roof half open to the sky and walls a burnt and ashy gray.

It takes him an hour to get to the road and by then, his asthma is already getting the best of him. He blacks out for the second time ‘that day’ and wakes up staring at the ceiling of what is obviously a hospital.

It just doesn’t sound or smell like a hospital. Sure. People are running around and yelling, but it smells painfully clean, artificially so, and there are machines he’s never seen before connected by wires to his body. He does the thing people should never do and yanks them loose. The machines squawk strangely and frantically and Steve is almost out of bed when two large men in green pajamas force him back.

Nothing makes sense to him for days. People come to talk to him, to find out who he is and who his family is. Evidently Steve Rogers is a popular name, because they bring in more people to talk to him, to ask him questions about his life, but no one has any answers.

He explodes, as he’s wont to do when frustrated, demands answers, but nothing they say makes sense.

By then, the war is over. Not World War II, which has evidently been over for over half a century, but this new war. And Bucky Barnes had been told of his presence. Steve is in bed, arms crossed, looking dour and getting an infusion of something that honestly is helping him breathe better when Bucky bursts into his now private room. It’s been two months

Comments

[woundedwinter]

Barnes.

Goddamnit answer me.

Every text is ignored. Not that he doesn't want to, but he simply doesn't know what to say. Bucky opens his phone, looks at it and starts to reply before he closes it again.

He's alone.

Steve fell in Wakanda five years ago and the only reason he stayed with the Avengers was out of some stupid sense of obligation. Five exhausting years before they finally put things right again. Five years of stuffing down his grief and his loneliness.

Only Bucky didn't get his happy ending. Like Clint and Wanda, his loved one didn't come back after the Blip. Tony, Steve, Natasha, Vision were dead. They weren't coming back. Governments of the world would only discuss a pardon for the former Winter Soldier when they learned about his role in reversing the Blip. Bastards.

He went back to Brooklyn. He suffered through therapy and ignored Sam's texts until he told him Steve was involved.

Then he broke every record racing to the hospital in Jersey.

Steve Steve Steve. Steve is alive.

He breaks into his room angrily and the sight hits him like a blow to the chest. "Holy shit."

"S-stevie?"

[bottledblond]

Steve is wearing clothes the fit for the first time in his life, which is nothing at all to be grumpy about, but he’s tired of being at the hospital. They’ve given him books, contact lenses that make it possible to read the small print, and art supplies but he’s a prisoner here. They’re running tests, which he doesn’t like, and talking nonsense which he really doesn’t like.

He’s not the only person in this oddball situation though. He’s heard a few nurses and orderlies talking about ‘people out of time’ and he’s come to realize that they’re not talking about the dying. He also once had this guy who was speaking, he’s pretty sure, Latin of all things barge into his room. He looked afraid of everything, especially the machines.

No explanations of that either.

Seeing Bucky, though, good old Bucky Barnes, makes him smile. He’s annoyed but Bucky usually gets things sorted out for him. “Heard you made Sergeant,” he grins, right up until he notices the look on Bucky’s face. “I know it’s been awhile, but geez, pal, there are ladies around here so watch your language. Still, wow. Is it ever great to see a friendly face.”

[woundedwinter]

Is he hallucinating?
He's not sure. Years of nightmares and two months on his own have left him a little unraveled and shaky and he is still ignoring his phone as it blows up about more people showing up from outside of time.

Nothing else matters when he takes in that familiar face. Steve. He staggers forward, cupping his face in his hands. He feels real. This isn't a dream.

"Christ pal. It's been.. I never thought I'd see you again."

[bottledblond]

Steve’s blue eyes narrow, their color off slightly because of the lenses in them. They’re visible from as close as Bucky is. Steve wrinkles his nose, hot breath rolling across his lips and cheeks. His eyelashes flutter slightly and his face reddens.

“Buck...” Steve reaches up to place his hands on Bucky’s wrists, though there’s barely any strength there. “You don’t mean that. You were always coming back. And I was trying to come to you anyway.”

Steve doesn’t look away. His eyes narrow slightly, as if he’s daring the other to do it first.

“No one’s telling me anything,” Steve says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Loop #1

[woundedwinter]

Bucky orders double what Steve did before turning his attention back to him. He laughs, reaching for his hand.

"When it's not a rough night we could always do what we did before? Throw the cushions down on the floor and top it with a few blankets?"

Steve slept in a hospital bed so he'd be okay in his room for now. Bucky wishes he could curl up with him and sleep, but he can't trust his disaster of a head, especially not after therapy.

[bottledblond]

In all honesty, Steve doesn’t understand the hand holding or why Bucky wants to do it so often. No one seems to really care and if they get the impression that they’re... Well, Steve doesn’t think it’s a problem.

If he’d lost Bucky for five years or had been through torture without him, he’d wanted to constantly touch someone too. So Steve will indulge him.

“You used to do that because you thought I’d stop breathing if you didn’t,” Steve points out. He’s back to absently stroking his thumb along Bucky’s forefinger. “Or because if we slept out in your living room, Becca would overhead all of our plans and tell your mom.”

He wants Bucky to keep smiling. Reminding him of their childhood seems to do that.

[woundedwinter]

The touch helps keep him centered and as long as Steve doesn't object he'll likely keep doing it.

Steve's plan works and he laughs at the reminder. "Yeah well, I always knew you were too stubborn to quit at just about anything." Even breathing.

His smile goes soft at mention of his sister. "She always was a little rat and wanted to get me in trouble."

[bottledblond]

Steve’s smile grows somber and his eyes loose a little bit of their luster. “I didn’t make it to your send off party. I said I’d be there, but I was already on my way to Camp Lehigh. I called Becca that night and she said she couldn’t even see you in the sea of uniforms heading to the buses.”

The waitress interrupts again with their plates and Steve is distracted by the amount of food in front of him.

He’s not even sure how to tackle the burger.

“Uh— sorry. Wow this is huge. And sorry for not finding you the night before. I’m sure you were occupied with your lady friend. And that poor girl you got to go out with me was doubly relieved.”

Loop #2

[woundedwinter]

Bucky sets down his own plate loaded with triple what he'd given Steve. "Eating out all the time gets expensive, I kinda had to learn how to cook before I burned through too much money." Dr. Raynor had been delighted that he started teaching himself how to cook and it had been a good distraction for at least a session or so before she started honing back in on his nightmares.

"Yeah, it's pretty impressive how far things have come. Two fellas can walk hand in hand and not hide who they are or who they care about."

"So what do you want to do today? I don't have to go back to therapy until the end of the week." And his schedule is more than a little empty.

[bottledblond]

"What do you normally do?" Steve immediately follows up by the question by altering it. He has a feeling that Bucky's normal day to day isn't really as wholesome and amusing as their childhoods together had been. The guy is depressed, something Steve doesn't know how to deal with, but he's pretty sure that just being there might help.

A little.

"Err-- What do people our age do?" Steve, after all, is still twenty-two years old. Bucky, though, seems somewhat older. Perhaps as much as a decade or so. Not that it matters to Steve. Bucky is Bucky, no matter his age or his trauma or his hairstyle or his cooking skill.

[woundedwinter]

That stops him cold for a second and he frowns, thinking as he finishes his bite. "I have no idea what they do." Probably something involving phones and selfies and other things that are still something of a mystery to him.

"I walk a lot, sometimes I spend time in Central Park and write. We could go to the museums? Take a drive outside of the city?" It's pretty sad that he doesn't do more than walk all of New York City, but he can't spend all of his time inside watching baseball or soccer.

[bottledblond]

"Let's go to the museums," Steve says immediately. It's time spent with Bucky and learning more about what's going on with this world so that he can hopefully take that knowledge back with him. He's still sure that's what the talk tonight is going to be, and let it not be said that Steve doesn't try to game the system where he can.

Learning about history is easier than trying to figure out how contact lenses are made or what medicines they have. He's not a doctor and he won't have access to the equipment back in 1941 for that to make a difference.

This is the only way he can change things for the better.

After getting changed into yesterday's clothes, something that is very common for a person who doesn't own many clothes nor the mean to clean them on a constant basis, they had first to the Museum of the City of New York. Learning about the city's activism over the years is astonishing. Especially the Stonewall Riots.

Steve keeps making these little delighted gasps. He can't help it.

Loop #3

[woundedwinter]

They stop off on the way for a refuel and some additional food. No real time for shopping yet, but Bucky will make sure they do when things are all said and done. He pulls up behind the van, watching with a small grin as Steve gets out to see what they're up to.

Darcy is just as friendly as she was before and greets Steve with a bright smile and gives him a few things to pull out of the van to start setting up. Her explanations are still hell and gone over Bucky's head and he settles on greeting Sam with a vague nod.

"Circus theme, huh?"

Re: Loop #3

[bottledblond]

“Yeah,” Darcy says, looking a little dejected. “Not my favorite. I thought I might start to enjoy them a little more but it just added another layer of phobia on top of what was already there.” She doesn’t go into any further explanation on the subject, though at Sam’s prompting, she does give them a run down on their scavenger hunt. “So Wanda’s spell basically ended when she pulled it back, but while she was really mindful of making sure everyone who had been touched by the hex was restored, a few little things got overlooked. Westview went back to being a cute little town without a dedicated television show, sad, but the artifacts were scattered all over.”

She doesn’t leave time to ask questions about any of the backstory at all, maddening as it is.

“So Monica is off with Jimmy trying to track down a knife that makes people cut themselves. You’re going to be trying to get back a coil of rope from the tightrope. We think it might be around here. People keep doing pretty dangerous things, like they don’t have a fear of heights anymore. It doesn’t really help their balancing though, if you catch my drift. Two teenage boys fell from the roof of their school. They’re not dead but still pretty beat up from it. And their statement said that they found a length of rope in with their baseball gear.”

[woundedwinter]

Coil of rope. A second team. It's a pretty basic mission and he nods after taking the the parameters. This much is familiar and he considers before handing the data over to Steve. It's frighteningly easy, like he's passing information to a handler and it might show in the blank expression.

"Coil of rope. We can find it. How do we contain it once we've located it?"

He's not the Asset and Bucky looks long at everyone to make sure he doesn't lose himself in his head. Parameters. He can operate within those.

[bottledblond]

“Basically,” Darcy says, eying up Barnes from behind her glasses, “just carry it out and try not to feel the urge to do any aerial acts?” She shrugs and Steve can’t help but grin too.

“The Flying Brooklinos,” he says, obviously getting a little too into the mission. Bucky should be all right sticking with the twenty-two year old version of his friend. Steve is more enthusiasm than Captain America was ever able to be. He hasn’t gone through basic training, the Army and the war haven’t hardened him.

He might be blond and blue eyed like all of Barnes’ handlers, but they never smiled so much at him.

“Sounds too simple,” Sam says. “That never means anything good.”

Loop #4

[woundedwinter]

Bucky's chest closes in as he understands the implication and it fucking upsets him, the idea that Sam can't trust him with this. Steve meant the most to both of them before.

Sometimes it was so much easier as the Asset when he didn't have to feel.

"What do you want me to say?" he fires back. "Because I don't fucking know. I don't. And I'm not going to press him into anything with a half broken hundred year old friend. I can't do that to him."

He loves him. God help him but he's always loved Steve Rogers and self doubt is keeping him from saying anything.

[bottledblond]

Sam actually can accept that. He isn’t sure what he’d feel if Bucky and Steve were actually together. Would he be jealous? Hell yes he god damned would.

Steve’s special. This isn’t his Steve, not the man that was tested in fire same as him, not the man that lost his partner, same as him. They don’t have that connection.

But it would still be messed up to see him with Bucky like that.

“Good. Remember that,” Sam says, brows furrowing. “We can’t afford to get sloppy. The guy you want us to visit? He thrives on that shit.”

[woundedwinter]

There's something he's missing here. A piece he can't quite put into place. Still. Bucky doesn't want to be angry at Sam, even if Sam is being a dick about Steve like he's got some kind of claim on him.

Like anyone could claim a man like Steve.

"I know what's at stake Sam." And he walks away because there's too much to think about and to process and all of that on top of new super soldiers on the loose.

He sits down next to Steve, nudging him. "Hey pal."

[woundedwinter]

"That's not true," for all of it. "People would follow you, if you asked them to because of what you inspire in them." He tugs his shirt the rest of the way off so Steve can finish cleaning at his side and washing off the last of the blood. Bucky rolls his shoulder, trying to refresh the connections there. What he needs to do is take the thing off for a couple of hours.

"Let's talk to Stark in the morning. He can give you a rundown of what might happen and I'll be there with you pal. Every step of the way."

Relief. The last thing he wants to do is keep fighting, even if it is for a good cause. There are other Avengers who can protect the world. "And if you want out, then we get out when this is over. Take a vacation for starters." Anything as long as Steve is with him.

[bottledblond]

“Vacation is for rich people,” Steve laughs. He doesn’t feel like he’s rich. He has an inkling that Bucky is now but there’s no reason to live like it. It’s not in Steve’s nature and Bucky’s small space shows that it’s not in his either. “But I’d love to travel.”

He finishes bandages Bucky up and the. Kicks off his shoes and drops the bag he packed for them on the bed.

“Bunking with me tonight or do you want me to set up a place by the door?” No judgement. And no pressure. Steve is happy with slow and steady.

[woundedwinter]

"Both." His smile is brittle as he sits on the edge of the bed to take off his boots. Hidden knives are pulled out and accounted for before he can look back at Steve. "It was a lot, the fight to get out."

"I didn't want to kill those people, Steve."

[woundedwinter]

Bucky can't speak for any other possible versions of himself out there. He only knows that Steve Rogers has always been the guy he's loved best, the guy he'd follow to hell and back. The one he'd do anything for.

He shifts a little again so Steve can lay fully over him, still exchanging breathless kisses now peppered with soft sounds of want.

"I love you Stevie," he pants, grinning up at him. "But if we don't get outta these clothes were gonna have to see about laundry service before we leave."

[bottledblond]

It’s lucky that buttons and zippers have come a long way, that night clothes aren’t knotted into place. Getting into Bucky’s pants happens to be incredibly simple, once Steve puts his mind to it, but trying to tug them further than his ass while still laying over him is far more complicated.

Not that it matters. He’s exposed the man to the air, and the scent and heat coming off of his cock is dangerously arousing to the blond. He can see very well in the dark now, taking in the outline of the shadow his member causes as it bends towards his navel. Steve doesn’t hesitate, his small, now nimble fingers covering up the underside ridge.

“This all right?” There’d been no real meaning to consent, but it’s in Steve’s nature to ask for it anyway. “Because... Buck no matter what we’re gonna need that laundry service.”

[woundedwinter]

The air is punched out of him as Steve wraps his hand around him, firm and certain. A shaky laugh as he clutches him closer. "Yeah, yeah more than okay."

He arches up, shoving his jeans down the rest of the way. "Good thing you packed a bag for us huh?" No way is he stopping, not with Steve finally touching him the way he's always wanted him to.

"Can I? Will you let me touch you?"