(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

[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.

[starkingenuity]

"I would have asked if you didn't invite me," Tony replies with a mischievous smile. The villa is quiet, the lights mostly out. Tony can smell that Barnes and Rogers are together upstairs and he can hear that Sam Wilson is on the phone. It's a private conversation with his sister, so he doesn't pay much attention to it.

They pass the kitchen, a map spread out on the table, and a single glance gives Tony an idea of what had been going on that evening.

"Back when I was Howard Stark," he says, following Bruce with his hands in his pockets to behave himself, "this is basically all Steve Rogers did. Plan. Device. Maps everywhere. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was the same kid I had Erskine pluck out of Brooklyn for me."

[seven_phds]

He laughs and slips his hand into Tony's, both of them weaving their way through the villa back to the primary bedroom.

"From what I've heard from Barnes and Sam, that's about all he's been doing too." This time will be different though. Steve doesn't want the mantle of Captain America and he has Sam and Bucky in his life. They can keep him from losing himself and running from fight to fight. He can have a life as Steve Rogers.

In the quiet of the bedroom, he closes the curtains and looks down at the faintly glowing bands around his wrists. "I can keep these on until morning. But they'll have to come off after that."

[starkingenuity]

“I think you’re sexy with them off or on,” Tony says. “The Big Guy gave me a few hours with you in private.” He carefully unbuttons Bruce’s shirt, not wanting the greener, larger body to destroy it. “If you don’t take large chunks of time from him, maybe he’ll let me have a few more private moments later.”

Tony isn’t going to sleep with the man. Not tonight at least. He’d never slept with his husband during the entire time they’d been in love and he’s not in a huge rush to get right to it.

Slow burns are the best burns, and ye, he realizes that’s extremely unlike him to think that way.

He does enjoy undressing Bruce, though, right down to his noticeably stretchy underwear, before he puts his hand on the man’s inhibitor.

“Thank you for tonight. For the date. I had a better time then I could ever let you know.”

[seven_phds]

"He will." A smile as he stills and lets Tony undress him. "We sort of came to an agreement about certain parts of our relationship."

Bruce leans in and kisses him, soft and sweet before stepping back. They aren't going to rush into this, even if his heart already wants Tony completely in his life. "I had fun too. It was nice."

Then he thumbs off the inhibitors and slides them off his wrists. Returning to his normal size is a little uncomfortable, but he can shrug it off quickly anymore and Bruce offers Tony his hand. "Come on. I promise I won't squish you."

[starkingenuity]

“Seriously? Maybe that’s one of my kinks,” Tony teases, still reeling from the feel of Bruce’s lips against his. Maybe his toes curled, maybe not, but he’s all for jumping into bed with the guy to enjoy the heat of his body and to watch him sleep.

He’s always loved being with him while he slept. Even as a little boy.

In the other wing, Steve is feeling his own sort of way. The mission planned, at least as a preliminary reconnaissance, none of his bones aching, and with a genuine sense of purpose now firmly under his belt, he can’t help but watch Bucky as he does a sweep of the room.

He doesn’t interrupt, he just leans back against the door and watches him check every potential entry point, nook and cranny.

“Can I ask you a favor? You can say no, Buck. But it’s been a few days since I’ve gotten the chance to draw anything. Do you think you could sit still for an hour or two?”

[woundedwinter]

He doesn't need to sweep the wing or the rooms or any of it, but it soothes an itch at the back of his brain and helps him try and calm down enough to sleep. There are people that matter to him in the villa and he wants to be aware of every sound, every possible entry and exit to keep them safe.

The question stops him and he turns towards Steve, fingers at the hem of his shirt, caught before he headed to the shower to try and let the hot water help him relax. "Uh, yeah Stevie. I think I can sit still so you can work."

[bottledblond]

Steve can’t help but grin at that, eyebrow arching, as he shuffles towards his bag. There’s a bunch of supplies in there but he chooses pencil and paper. He just feels the most comfortable with them. As he’s flicking through the book to find some blank pages, back to Bucky, he hesitates just a moment before he says: “you can take the shirt off.”

Sure, drawing the folds of clothing can be satisfying, but he can openly gawk at the guy while he draws him, so why not take a slightly edgier step in that direction?

[woundedwinter]

"Oh." Now he understands. It's not like Steve hasn't drawn him before, but that was before their relationship had changed. With a huffed laugh he tugs his shirt off, dog tags jingling as they fall to rest on his chest.

"Okay pal, where do you want me?" He can move and sit however Steve wants him. Bucky has always liked watching Steve draw, the way his brows furrow and how quickly and sure his hands are on the paper. "I'm all yours."