(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

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[seven_phds]

With Tony sitting on the railing Bruce can rest his hand over one of his, taking comfort in the way he can feel his tapping against his palm. A trip to Wakanda, a chance to work with Shuri and watch this Tony explore her lab.

Us. It sounds really nice and his smile softens. "So a partial retirement? The two of us?" They don't have to get back into the fight full time but they can still help, they can still try and make the world a better place. "Yeah. I like that idea. I've been running the company quietly behind the scenes. Stepping back might be nice."

Bruce taps the tablet on the table near them and has FRIDAY make the arrangements.

[starkingenuity]

Tony is more surprised than ever about how little he cares that Bruce is running everything. Yes, this isn't exactly his company or his tech, but it's more than he trusts Bruce implicitly with everything. "So you're not really digging those board meetings?" Tony asks, deliberately running his finger up Bruce's palm before the other moves away.

In the house, he can hear Steve cooking something, obviously hungry after a full day of training, and Tony looks back up towards Bruce to wait for him to finish making arrangements on that tablet of his.

"Want to get dinner with me? Normally I'd have some reservations someplace nice lined up but I have been stock in a storage container lab for the last two months being forced to make super soldier serum. In my defense."

[seven_phds]

"They're not my favorite," he admits with a smile. But it had been Tony's legacy, his gift to him after his death so he threw himself into making sure that Stark Industries wasn't just successful but thriving.

Bruce can make out the distant sound of laughter and banging around in the kitchen. Guess they were done for the evening. Good.

"I think I can manage us some reservations," he promises with a smile. "Meet me out front in about twenty minutes? There's.. there's something I want to show you. Something that the other you and I worked on."

Twenty minutes later Tony will find Bruce outside of the villa, much shorter and far less green than he had been earlier. "Hi."

[starkingenuity]

Though he’s wearing shades, and a sports jacket pilfered from his doppelgänger’s unused closet, the way his eyebrows lift from behind the rim indicate that Tony is surprised. His mind blanks for a moment before he pulls himself back together again.

“Hey, look, sorry, I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, but I’m waiting for someone,” he teases. “Six foot thirteen or fourteen, Elphaba’a complexion? Seen him?”

Tony needs to dial himself back. He can feel his lower lip two thirds of the way to trembling. Bruce as part Hulk had been devastating enough, but to see his beautiful husband, unchanged after so long, with just a kind of annoyingly short haircut, is too much.

Behind his glasses, Tony squeezes his eyes shut a moment to force his inactive heart to beat twice. Just for self comfort.

[seven_phds]

He's wearing the jacket Bruce had given him for his birthday and it makes his smile go soft and warm. He holds up his arm, letting his sleeve fall back to show the faintly glowing silver band around his wrist. "Inhibitors we designed. It doesn't work for long, the best we ever managed was a few hours, but it inhibits the gamma radiation effects and brings me back to a more.. reasonable shape."

Tony isn't moving, which is okay, but the way he squeezes his eyes shut has Bruce wondering whether or not this was such a good idea.

"Tony," he says softly, reaching out to him, "if this is too much, I can take them off, I can go back to the way I was. I didn't mean to upset you."

[starkingenuity]

The shake to his head in response is adamant and vehement. No. No, Bruce is fine. He’s been wearing his dead husband’s face for hours now, hasn’t he? He just needs a moment to recalibrate.

“I’m just jealous,” he says. “Did you get smarter than me?” He lets Bruce in, let’s the man touch him, and lifts his hand to touch Bruce too. It’s true, that he’s jealous. He’s jealous of the human Tony Stark that enjoyed having Bruce with him for as long as he had. He’s jealous that he’d missed out on giving these things to his own husband.

And most of all, Tony is just perpetually angry at himself for killing the most important thing in his life. He closes his eyes behind the glasses and sets his forehead to Bruce’s.

“You’re incredible,” he whispers.

[seven_phds]

He curls his fingers lightly around his wrist and steps in close enough for Tony to touch, to feel his warmth. "Smarter than you? No. We worked on it together." An anniversary present, but this Tony doesn't need to hear that. They had very different lives and while neither had gotten around to discussing loss, it didn't exactly take a genius to see how much it had devastated Tony.

Bruce smiles, moving his hand up to the back of his neck to hold him there for a moment. "This is incredible. For the first time in more than a year, I don't feel so alone."

"You're here and it feels like a miracle."

[starkingenuity]

Ever since Bruce found out about the notebooks, and really, about Tony’s involvement in his entire life, the vampire has never once kept things secret from him. He’d even told him that he would be scanning his hand for ring sizing a few weeks before he proposed because he didn’t want to keep anything from the man.

This isn’t his husband, but he still is. Tony is tried of blurring the lines when Bruce’s personality and his affection and his understanding mirror the man he’d loved. He’s not stupid enough to think that he doesn’t feel love towards this man anyway. It doesn’t matter if their circumstances before they’d come together a day and a half ago happened to be different.

Tony’s forehead bunches up as he gently traces his thumb over Bruce’s jawline.

“Forty-eight years for me,” he says. “But I’m not a miracle. You are. This is. I don’t know why you don’t hate me. I’m only here because your husband died to bring us all here. How crazy is that? You got a pretty shitty version in his place. I’m sorry, Bruce.”

[seven_phds]

"No," he corrects softly. "Don't be sorry. I could never hate you Tony. My husband died to save the universe and I am so proud of him for what he did. He was a hero. I don't know," he reaches up to hold his wrist, to keep his hand on his face for another long moment, "maybe this was his final gift to all of us. Bringing back those that were lost, the ones beyond reach."

Even if it's wishful thinking, it's nice to believe.
Tony Stark always had an incredible capacity for love.

"But right now? I would very much like to get to know this you a lot better. We have all the time in the world and I sure would like to share it with you." The differences between this eternal vampire and his husband are there, but they're so small anymore that Bruce can't find it in himself to care.

He can only find it in himself to love him.

[starkingenuity]

“You’d have me sobbing like a baby if I had tear ducts,” Tony replies, voice soft and eyes closed. He could kiss Bruce right now, but they haven’t even gone on their first date just yet and Tony is in many ways just a little old fashioned. So he steps back and offers the other man his arm. “Shall we, Doctor Banner?”

From inside the house, standing at the window, Steve watches the two go off down the long driveway towards a waiting car. He actually feels himself tingling from head to toe. He knows it’s silly, maybe even ridiculous, but they look so good together, so happy.

Like they’ve just picked up where love left off. Or like it’d never left at all.

“They’re not joining us for dinner,” Steve says as he sits down at the table with the other two, steak and potatoes high in a dish in the middle of the table. “I think they’re stepping out.”

A date. Steve almost wants to ask Bucky to do the same... but maybe not in front of Sam.

[woundedwinter]

Bucky can't help but watch Steve as he moves. There are no grimaces, no winces of discomfort. He's healthy and at ease in his own skin.

It's a good look on him.

He glances over his shoulder out the window and smiles a little himself. "Good. They've probably got a lot of catching up to do." And Bruce deserves to have some happiness again after what he'd lost.

Bucky sits down with the others. "We can talk to them before we leave tomorrow." They still have a lot of work to do.

If Bruce and Tony want to wait on the sidelines or even sit it out completely he's more than okay with that. They've fought their battles and lost plenty.

[bottledblond]

Sam is going to keep all comments to himself on this one. It doesn’t matter what he says anyway. He’s the fifth wheel. He can see it between these two. Bucky said something. Steve was receptive. Or maybe it was Tony Lestat Stark that caused the two to finally do more than glance each other’s ways.

He’s not mad. This isn’t his Steve. Not by a long shot.

He eats his steak as Steve starts to spread out paper on the table, lifting plates and cups as he goes. “We need to decide what the next move is. And I think I know how. Buck, how much of that serum do you have? We need to advertise it. Have them to us.”

[woundedwinter]

"We've got seventeen doses. Too many to risk getting out." They can advertise but he's going to have Stark destroy the serum before they move out.

Beers are pulled and he sits back down, "Okay Steve, what's the plan?" He nudges Sam's leg under the table because see, Sam? A plan. Plans are useful.

[bottledblond]

“Man with a plan,” Sam agrees, grateful for the beer. Bucky is really making an effort here, something he feels strangely about. He’s not sure he trusts it.

Steve can’t help but roll his eyes. He’s really still just a kid. Sure, he’d grown up quick, grown up rough, but to Sam, twenty-two is still pretty damned young to be doing this sort of thing.

And to be so damned good at it.

“Yeah yeah,” Steve says, marking the places that the Flag Smashers have been, and where there have been sightings of them. He sits back when he’s done and turns blue eyes towards Bucky first, and then Sam. “Uh... aren’t these are refugee camps? For those displaced by the uh... what are you calling it? The reverse blip? Do you see what’s going on here? I.... I think we’re not exactly dealing with terrorists.”

[woundedwinter]

Bucky's trying hard to make this work and it's effort he's not used to making. It's harder than he thought it would be, but Sam is his friend as much as Steve is.

Not that he's ever going to tell him as much.

"Yeah, camps for the displaced. People who lost their new homes and lives when things were set back to the way they had been." He taps at a location. "Not exactly terrorists? What are you thinking Steve?"

[bottledblond]

“Sam? You were telling me about the theft—“ Steve gestures for the other man to fill in the gaps, but also to give the information he’d been the first to mention. Still making them all a team, despite having never led troops into battle or having had to inspire morale.

Sam wants to curse. He really is still his Steve. He might be wrapped up in a small package and never experienced war or battle, but he’s damned inspiring. And wasn’t that what he loved about him in the first place?

“Sam—?”

“Yeah, sorry. Sorry. He’s rights. They’ve been stealing food and medicine. Not to disrupt, but to help people, is that what you’re saying?”

Steve nods deeply. “The supply isn’t being destroyed. Or sold. Look at the lines they’re crossing. Here. Here. All leading back to Latvia.”

[woundedwinter]

The very petty part of Bucky wants to give Sam the 'I told you so' look, but for the sake of maintaining peace, he doesn't. They have work to do and he can focus on that instead of watching Steve simply be himself. Smart, quick to work out solutions and bring the right people into the fold.

"Ok so they're stealing supplies and there's a pretty big GRC camp in Latvia for a lot of the displaced." He taps the map. "If we're looking for Karli and her followers, that'll be the best place to start." He considers the map for a moment.

"If Banner can fly us in here," he points at a small town nearby, "there's an old HYDRA safehouse there we can use until we track her and the others down."

[starkingenuity]

"HYDRA?" Steve doesn't look convinced, not even after Sam says that HYDRA has been eradicated. "I know a lot about infestations. And they're never really gone," Steve replies, uncomfortably, "but I guess we don't have a choice. They're not going to want outsiders just showing up."

He knows that for a fact, too. People have a lot of hatred for those they fear might take what they have. It's one thing Steve wishes he could change about the world, but that's naïve. There really are people that will take whatever they can.

A few miles away, Tony settles in to watch Bruce enjoy his meal and a cocktail. He knows the rituals, and while he'd never had to pretend to move food around before, he does it now, clinking forks and knives even if he doesn't eat. Bruce's Tony wasn't a vampire, afterall. Which makes him wonder.

"I've been alive... For a long time. How can there be a version of me that was born human fifty years ago? I wasn't turned into a vampire in the 1970s. I wasn't even born with the name Anthony. It's too weird, isn't it? Let's take you, for example. First name Robert. Your mother died when you were young. You worked for the military-- Your story isn't that different, is it?"

[woundedwinter]

"They're not operating in Latvia anymore." Bucky's eyes drop to the table. "I made sure of that a few years ago." While he'd been running from Sam and Steve, it hadn't all been about trying to remember who he was. He had taken his skills and turned them against HYDRA cells across the middle of Europe. "It's a safe place to operate from."

Maybe Steve and Sam can find a way to dial down the pressure, to get the Flag Smashers to back down and help the people who needed it most. It was what they were best at.

At the restaurant Bruce smiles and keeps up the charade that Tony is also eating and drinking. It's also a private enough place that no one will remark on it. He sets down his drink, fingers toying with it for a moment. Talking about his past, in particular his family, is never something he likes to do.

"It doesn't sound that different."

Answering how Tony wound up an ancient (he's assuming) vampire and his husband was human is a little trickier. "It could be anything. One small change in a timeline has a ripple effect that spreads outwards." His smile is warm. It doesn't matter to him that Tony is vampire any more than he thinks it matters to Tony that most of the time he's substantially larger and green.

[starkingenuity]

Tony's glossed over Bruce's past specifically because he knows the man hates it. He's gone by his middle name for so long simply to get away from the man he'd been named for all together while keeping his last name because it had been his mother's. Bruce is stronger than he thinks, but Tony isn't going to bring up more than he has to.

"A small change, fine, but there's a ten trillion to one chance, conservatively, that a man named Tony Stark who looks like me and has lived a life somewhat parallel to mine while I assumed an identity with his name is just... It's possible in an infinite universe scenario, but it's so unlikely that it's hard for even me to wrap my head around it." He's back to moving around some steak, which smells fairly decent to him, the way a fresh sprig of lavender might in a sock drawer. It doesn't make him in any way hungry, though. "And there are vampires in this timeline. Which... I've never met another."

Which makes him smirk a little.

"Not that I want to. I like being unique." e sets the fork down and leans both elbows on the table. "To a point. What were your cake flavors at the wedding?" Sure. There's other things to talk about, but their marriages had both been happy from what Tony can tell and he's trying to capitalize on that. "You're still bananas over red velvet, right?"

[seven_phds]

The odds were unlikely. Astronomical, if he wanted to sit down and figure it out, but so far Bruce hasn't been inclined to do so. Steve and Tony had been returned to them. Different, but still returned. "I don't know if it has something to do with odds or if something happened when the human Tony Stark used the gauntlet to destroy Thanos and his armies. Maybe he tried to do more, to set more things right in the process."

Bruce welcomes the change of subject, his smile shifting from something small and mournful to a warmer one. "Red velvet and a lemon blueberry cake. Of course to keep everyone fed, we wound up with a table of cakes." Super soldiers and Asgardians and their legendary appetites left the caterers with their hands more than full.

"We got married at the cabin by the lake." The one Tony had built for them to fish and relax and enjoy a semi-retirement before Thanos blasted his way to Earth in search of the Time Stone.

[starkingenuity]

It makes Tony laugh, thrilled. “Same! Jeez, that cabin....” it had blown up when their experiment to do what Bruce had managed backfired. Tony’s eyes lose some of their warmth. “You know what that idiot did when the radiation overwhelmed him? He made me promise not to sit where our cabin used to be until the morning. I didn’t. Almost, but I didn’t. I was waiting for the Hulk to resuscitate and bring them both back to me but that didn’t happen. Both Rogers made red velvet for the funeral too. It was the first and last time I ate any cake.”

The memory is more like a scar now. It aches but it doesn’t really hurt anymore. Tony sighs through his nose.

“We were only married for six months but...” There’s still a ring in his finger. One that matches the ring that Bruce had on a chain around his neck. “But now I’ve made everyone sad and there aren’t any real answers so... maybe you can answer this one for me. I don’t know how I got here. Thanos never came to Earth. He didn’t gather infinity stones. Didn’t snap. There wasn’t a war. One moment I was in my workshop in Madripoor putting the final touches on the Mars habitat and the next... boom. Sunlight torture, blood withdraw and super soldiers until you came to get me. Thanks by the way.”

[seven_phds]

Bruce can't help it, reaching out to hold Tony's hand in his as he recounts how he lost his husband. Naturally he'd make him promise to keep going, to not give in and let the sunlight take him. His thumb moves in small circles along the side of his hand. "Sam fired up the grill and made cheeseburgers for everyone. That was kind of his go-to food when he was stressed."

The scientist in him wants answers too.
The grieving widower however only wants to keep this second chance he's been given.

"I can put in a call to Strange," he reluctantly offers. "He's probably the only one around who understands the stones enough to figure out what happened to you and Steve." Bruce sighs. "But Tony, I don't want him to try and reverse this. I don't want him to send you back."

[starkingenuity]

“Let’s not call Mister Wizard then,” Tony agrees holding onto Bruce’s hand. “He’s creepy. And knows too much. And he makes really terrible jokes. Horrible,” Tony snorts.

Besides, what’s back there for him?

Both of the Rogerses are old now, and the werewolf can’t even shift properly anymore. Parker is dead. There are a few other Avengers he’s mentored here and there over the years but he’s never been as happy as he had been in the years he and Bruce were together.

Like hell is he giving up his second chance.

Tony brings Bruce’s hand to his lips. “You know... Someone needs to be here to shame you into growing your hair back out, Doctor,” Tony muses and lays his cheek against Bruce’s hand.

They’re out much too late. Bruce hasn’t slept in... Tony doesn’t know how long. Since before they met. “Let’s go back. The kids might be trying to storm the castle without us.”

[seven_phds]

Bruce blushes at the way Tony kisses his hand, pressing his cool cheek to him and it feels right. Good. He's also exhausted and while the meal had helped, he hasn't slept in a long time. "I think I can be persuaded to grow it back out for you." Anything for Tony.

He wants to go back and watch over the others. It makes Bruce smile and he stops him before they go inside.

"Well the villa is still standing, so that's a good thing." His hand lingers on Tony's elbow. "We can check on them, but will you stay with me? While I sleep?" Vampires don't sleep, but he wants to sleep with Tony close. He hates sleeping alone.