Chapter Text
Saturday, October 6 th , 2012
“Welcome. Please...come in,” Bucky says, voice low and flat. He steps out of Steve’s path, sweeping the—is that a cape?—he’s wearing up over his shoulder as he gestures Steve into the Avengers’ darkened common room. He’s got more make-up on than any of the times Steve has seen him before, a thumb-thick streak of black shadow that goes across the bridge of his nose and out to both temples, making his blue, blue eyes seem pale and cold. And are those fake plastic fangs?
Once Steve is across the threshold, Bucky shuts the door behind him with a deliberate hard thud and intones: “This way.”
Steve’s eyebrows rise as he follows Bucky’s cape-swishing form inside and over to the bar, where Tony waits next to a huge bowl of red punch. When they reach him, he presses a cup of the stuff into Steve’s hand, saying, “I’m genuinely sorry, Cap. No one deserves this. Not even you. I tried to stop him.”
“What...is this?” Steve asks. “JARVIS told me to be here at ten and plan to stay for a while.” He’d assumed there was going to be an important meeting, maybe an update about the synthoids.
Instead, the windows have been covered with black-out panels, Tony’s looking embarrassed, and Bucky Barnes is dressed like a vampire.
“This,” Clint pokes his head up over the back of the couch, “is the Best Vampire Movies Ever Marathon, all in your honor, Cap. It’s gonna be epic! I’ve heard you’ve never even seen The Lost Boys? Dude, that’s sad.”
Other than Tony, Clint’s the only other member of the team present. He’s also wearing a set of fake fangs and has what looks like red lipstick smeared around his mouth. Steve stares at him, attempting to understand and failing.
Suddenly, Bucky lets out a maniacal laugh and drops his hands heavily onto Steve’s shoulders. The sudden noise, so close, the sudden touch, startles a genuine yelp out of him, riding on a surge of alarm. Somehow Bucky managed to sneak behind him and that is—that is not okay. Really not okay. How the fuck?
The pained look on Tony’s face brightens into a grin. “Ha! Haha, okay, maybe this’ll be fun after all.”
“Too long you’ve lived in ignorance,” Bucky whispers near Steve’s ear. “Too long you’ve suffered, bereft of the gift of glorious blood. The time has come now to show you the path of darkness, so much sweeter than the path of light.”
Bucky’s breath tickles. Steve shivers, fighting to deny dueling impulses: to either duck away and run or to spin around and grab.
“He planned this all out ahead of time, so don’t interrupt,” Tony warns him. “He wrote a whole script.”
Steve’s heart rate is up and doesn’t seem inclined to slow down again just yet. It’s doing a weird and uncomfortable bounce in his chest that reminds him of flashing lights and dancing girls…
Shit. Steve is nervous.
Okay. Okay, it’s not like it has to be difficult, spending time with Bucky after Steve’s fucked him in his fantasy. His past is full of people he lusted after but couldn’t have. Bucky’s far from the first person that Steve has imagined that way and gone on to smile at, nod to, chat with. And he’s seen Bucky around the Tower a few times over the past week, exchanging polite smiles and quick words as they went about their different business. Hello. How’s it going? See ya ‘round. Like on Tuesday, with the video game and—the bathing suit. Little moments, totally fine and good, totally nothing.
But now, Bucky’s...a lot closer than Steve ever expected him to get. And apparently he remembers more of their first meeting than Steve thought.
And Steve, he—he simply wasn’t expecting to be thought of this way. To be a person that other people remember minor, personal details about, that other people coordinate silly, special events for. That’s not something that’s happened often in his life, and not once since he woke from the ice. So he’s thrown, dumbfounded, as it really dawns on him that what’s about to happen has been organized for his benefit—though benefit might not be the correct word.
Bucky presses gently on Steve, urging him toward the couches. “Ignore my moronic servant,” he purrs. “He does not understand. What I’m about to share with you, I share with only a few. Only the most deserving may taste the nectar of this knowledge. What you are about to experience is a joy unlike any you’ve known before.”
It hits him right in the chest that Bucky, barely an acquaintance, whose hands radiate heat through Steve’s shirt, arranged this for him just for the fun of it.
Steve’s never been what the average person might describe as fun.
Helplessly, Steve goes where Bucky guides him. Lets himself be pushed into the armchair with the best view of the massive television and refuses to acknowledge the ache left behind after Bucky moves away. On the coffee table, a huge array of food has been provided. And it’s…themed. Steve blinks at it all. Little hand pies with fang marks on them, red syrup leaking out. Donuts with more plastic fangs in the center and frosting faces. Small hot dogs cut to look like fingers sticking out of a bowl of ketchup. There’s also chips and a fruit tray and cheese and crackers, which look safer to sample.
“Dude, you look like someone scrambled eggs in your brainpan,” Clint says, taking out his fangs. “Are you okay?”
“Iceman’s probably never participated in any marathon except the actual running kind.” Tony takes a seat in the very center of the couch. “This is out of his wheelhouse. Give him some time to let the ol’ processor catch up.”
“It’s not – Well - Yes, I guess,” Steve says haltingly, unable to express the jumble of his thoughts. “I’ve never - this is new for me. I wasn’t expecting - I’m just surprised.”
“Well, you don’t hafta stay, Cap. But you’d be missing out.” Clint picks up a pie and bites into it with relish. “Mmm, cherry.”
“Of course he has to stay!” Bucky booms as he appears next to the television seemingly out of thin air. Under his cape, he’s wearing all black: black jeans, black Henley, black socks. He blends into the darkness of the room scarily well. Or, he does when he’s not striking a dramatic pose, demanding attention. “Only with my permission does anyone leave these sacred grounds! Once begun, the process must be completed. Dire consequences will befall anyone who interrupts the change!”
“I love this guy,” Clint says to Tony.
“Can someone tell me what this all,” Steve gestures around him, “entails? I’d like to know what I’m getting into here.”
“Allow me.” Bucky bows gracefully before he begins. “On this momentous occasion, we have decided to relieve you of your abominable lack of experience in the manifold ways that my kind are portrayed in modern cinema. Of course, none of the following accounts are entirely true.” He smiles coyly. “Vampire-kind holds close its deadly secrets. Nevertheless, until I deem your ignorance dispelled, you will remain my captive and observe some of the best examples of vampiric story-telling.” He steps closer to Steve, leveling him with a dark and serious look. And Steve knows the captive thing was a joke, but it doesn’t exactly feel like one with that intense gaze on him.
“I cannot ensure your safety, my dear Captain,” Bucky goes on. “What you are about to witness will change you. Forever. But I can promise you this. It will be worth it.”
Tony and Clint are ruining the presentation a bit with their laughter, but Bucky ignores them and, trapped in Bucky’s eyes, Steve finds himself able to do the same. It’s actually easy to sink into this new role and play along.
He swallows. Nods. “I understand.” With a deep breath, he lowers his head to Bucky, exposing the back of neck. “I submit to this captivity willingly, that I may pierce the veil of darkness and see what lies beyond. I trust you to be my guide on this harrowing journey.”
Tony chokes. Clint, leaning on his shoulder, leaves a smear of red and tear-stains on his pale gray t-shirt.
Bucky’s the one who breaks character then, his mouth crooking into a wicked, delighted, wicked smirk. “Let there be blood,” he says.
So of course they watch The Lost Boys first.
“Sleep all day, party all night.” Steve finally sees the relevance.
Bucky follows that with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, From Dusk till Dawn, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, and What We Do in the Shadows.
At different points during the day, Natasha and then Bruce wander in and join them. The punch bowl gets emptied and refilled and emptied again until everyone just starts making their own drinks. Tony has to place a beer order with the downstairs kitchen to refill the fridge. The food dwindles and is refreshed with a new batch of themed goodies during one of the (many, necessary) bathroom breaks Bucky decrees. The chicken wings drenched in a spicy mole sauce and manipulated to look like bats are Steve’s favorite.
Steve stays in his assigned spot and Bruce claims his favorite armchair when he comes along, but the rest of the group move around throughout the marathon. They drape and sprawl and reconfigure themselves on the giant sectional in all sorts of ways. For a while, Tony tucks himself into a corner so Natasha can stretch out with her head on Clint’s lap and her feet in Bucky’s, where he massages them without being asked, expression thrilled. At one point, Clint ends up in the center with Natasha under one arm and Tony, oddly, under the other, while Bucky hides beneath a blanket on the floor because From Dusk till Dawn ‘freaks him out.’ Then when he emerges, he demands solace (despite being the one who picked the gore-fest) and Tony actually pulls him into his lap and cuddles with him, which is a sight Steve never could have imagined. Tony Stark, comfort-cuddler.
As the long Saturday evening wanes into midnight and changes into Sunday morning, Bruce falls asleep. Clint and Natasha draw together in their own, private bundle of limbs, dozing and murmuring and half-watching. And Bucky ends up at the end of the couch nearest to Steve with Tony bossily using his thigh as a pillow to drool onto.
Steve tracks it all, unable to prevent the thrum of age-old envy at all their easy, physical closeness. It doesn’t matter that he’s outside of it—he learns a great deal about his team by watching. His eidetic memory catalogs nuances only relaxed togetherness can reveal. There’s Bruce, always keeping himself away, holding everyone at a gentle, sad distance. There’s Clint and Natasha, the powerful bond between them showing in the way he guards her space meticulously and she pampers him with soft looks and secret confidences.
And also, the very interesting fact that Natasha avoids direct contact with Tony. Never once do they end up next to each other, though Tony belligerently takes up space whenever and however it pleases him, reminding them that it’s his couch whenever he feels crowded. He gets up the most, too, pacing back and forth between the seats and the kitchen, checking in with JARVIS about various things, unable to stay at rest for longer than an hour at a time until he literally collapses into an instant, catatonic sleep around 2 AM.
It’s painfully obvious that if Bucky weren’t here, he would have been in his lab all this time, manically fiddling away. But because Bucky is here, Tony’s not only stayed with the team all damn day, but he’s also allowed himself to fall asleep in front of them.
They all do. That’s big. Huge. In the three months since they all moved into the new Tower, the Avengers have never spent this much time together. Or put themselves in such vulnerable states. When the last film’s credits roll, it’s past 3 o’clock in the morning and Steve and Bucky are the only ones still awake.
Bucky sighs in satisfaction and looks at Steve. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Steve asks, amused by pretending not to understand.
Bucky sees right through him and huffs. “You know what. What do you think? Which was your favorite? Did you have fun? Do you feel enlightened?”
Fighting back a smirk, Steve shrugs. “Eh,” he says.
“Eh? Eh?! Are you kidding me?” Bucky grabs the large cushion behind his back and lobs it at Steve.
No one—no one else would’ve dared. Steve is stupidly pleased.
He catches the couch cushion and hurls it back, tired and light-hearted and momentarily incapable of caring that Captain America would never get into a pillow fight with a civilian. With anyone. Of course, it clobbers Tony in addition to Bucky, and he wakes with a groggy groan. Bucky twists out from under him, wriggles to his knees on the sectional and tries to hit Steve again from the new angle. Steve, grinning, just snatches the cushion from his hands and bonks him on the head with it, making sure to rub it around. Bucky flails out from underneath and looks at him in such static-haired indignance that Steve bursts out laughing.
“Hyaaaaaaaa!” is all he hears before Clint comes in from his blind spot and whacks him with another cushion. Tony has rolled into a ball on the floor and covered his head with his hands. Bruce, ever the thoughtful one, starts dragging the table full of leftovers out of the way, which gives Natasha enough space to do a flip. She pulls a cushion with her, uses it to absorb the impact where her back hits the ground and gets enough momentum going that when she hits Steve in the chest with it, his armchair topples over backwards. He shouts as he goes down with it. There was no time to defend against that with Clint and Bucky barraging him from either side.
“Oh, it’s on,” he says, hopping to his feet and putting his fists up playfully.
“Bring it, old man,” Natasha challenges, holding a cushion in each hand.
“Pillow fight!” Bucky hollers.
And then it really is on. A blur of bodies and pillows, taunts and thuds. Tony army-crawls over to the kitchen, chugs a beer, then casts himself into the fight with a vengeance. He focuses on Steve, walloping him as much as possible, but then so does everyone else. And every single one of them is trained and talented in hand-to-hand combat (well, except Bucky, who nevertheless manages to hold his own with a lot of quick dodging), so the barrage is stunning.
Natasha uses the couch as a springboard. Clint throws pillows like a machine gun, one after another after another as soon as they reach his fingers. Steve, of course, grabs one of the biggest cushions for a shield but it doesn’t avail him much. These are the best of the best. Even Bruce helps, throwing pillows back into the fray whenever they fly beyond the main ring of battle.
Ten minutes later Steve is the one curled up and covering his head, begging for mercy around his own powerless laughter.
“He’s down, the great, ungrateful, Captain America is down, folks!” Bucky announces triumphantly, pumping his fist in the air. “Drinks on—oooof!” He doubles over as Tony gets him right in the gut.
“You started this, don’t think I don’t know it,” says Tony. “Avengers! Avenge our lost nap! Get him!” He whacks his pillow right into Bucky’s face.
“For sleep!” Clint shouts.
“For sleep,” Natasha echoes grimly.
In less than thirty seconds Bucky is flat on his back on the floor with Steve. Steve reaches out and gets a hold on him, pulls them close amidst the onslaught, curving over Bucky like he’s an innocent civilian and this is another alien attack. But it’s not protection and it’s not mercy and it’s not forgiveness that motivates him, no.
As the others wail on his broad back, chortling like a pack of demons, Bucky grins up at him and says, “My hero.”
Somehow or another the long night turns into what can only be called morning, though the sun hasn’t yet risen. And somehow or another they’re all mostly still awake, lounging around the common room when 5 AM arrives, watching Twilight despite Bucky’s great protest. Natasha insisted it was an important piece of modern vampire cinema and when Natasha insists, things happen, so now Steve is being introduced to the sparkly-vampire phenomenon and the resulting pop culture, ‘ship wars and all.
He doesn’t get it. But at least the soundtrack is comparatively decent.
Steve’s honestly just waiting for the elaborate breakfast order that Tony placed to arrive—he’s hungry, and all that’s left of the snacks are crumbs and sauce smears—before he trudges back to his suite to ‘sleep for what’s left of the weekend’ like Bruce did an hour ago. That’s what he’s planning to say if anyone asks him why he’s hung around anyway.
It’s a lie. The truth is Steve doesn’t want to leave. Not even for sleep. Maybe not even for an alien attack.
After the pillow fight wound down, he found himself on the sectional with the others, to his surprise. In the pile, in the middle—and he hasn’t experienced this much enjoyable physical contact since he crashed a plane in the Arctic. His skin feels starved for it all of a sudden, his muscles yearning. Natasha has decreed him her personal space warmer and is dominating his entire left side, hugging his arm like a stuffy. On his right, Bucky is sulking over the final movie choice in the strangest way Steve’s ever witnessed: by sitting upside down on the couch, legs up over the back, head hanging off the edge of the seat. His hair poofs, tangled, toward the floor and his shirt has ridden up, revealing more than an inch of the skin of his side. Every once in a while, Steve has to shift to avoid getting kneed in the side of the head as Bucky scoffs at a particular line and kicks his feet around.
It’s nice. It’s more than nice.
“Hey, aren't you going on your run, Cap?” Clint asks suddenly, peering over from the other side of Natasha.
His run. Right. It’s that time, isn’t it?
“Nah,” Steve says. “Not today.”
“Whoa, what? What is happening?” Tony lifts his head from the couch armrest on Bucky’s far side, blinking like an obnoxious, over-tired owl. “Cap’s deviating from his programming? Do we need to check his software?”
“Haha, very funny, Tony.”
“He’s one of them! A synthoid!” Clint shouts, though he doesn’t move. It’s possible he’s sleep-talking.
“Shhh, he’s too warm to be a robot,” Natasha murmurs.
“Actually, no.” Bucky says from the general vicinity of Steve’s shins. “Robots run hot. Overheating is a big problem, what with the high-torque motors and engines needed to give them useful motion. We need fans just to cool down computers. Managing the temperature issue for the hardware of a functional, lifelike robot is really difficult, not to mention the whole system around the motherboard of the AI. Traditional metals at least dissipate heat pretty quickly. Soft robots like the Captain though...the synthetic materials needed to give the impression of a human body tend to hold onto heat. Must’ve been a hella of a design problem.”
“If I were a robot,” Steve says pointedly. “But I’m not.”
“There’s a variety of ways to solve that problem,” says Tony, probably not meaning the one wherein Steve isn’t a robot, a guess proven correct as he goes on, “All of which I believe are incorporated into the dear Captain’s design. Most importantly, you’ll notice that he sweats, so there’s obviously a system that circulates cooling fluid through him and has outlets for letting off heat energy. With observation, you’ll notice that his programming reduces movement to negligible levels when it’s not required, which I think allows for the longest possible periods of time between heat-generating motor function.”
“I’m not a—” Steve tries again.
Bucky picks his head up and pokes at Steve’s bicep thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, Tone. Do you think there’s some kind of nano—”
“—technic thermal monitoring system involved? Absolutely. And trackers built into all the torque points that communicate with the system holistically—”
“—sending messages to adjust motion in an organic way, shifting primary energy output to a new location whenever one nears its upper limit, thereby reducing strain in heavily utilized motors. And everything probably also receives a swell of coolant after hitting a certain temperature. But how does he regenerate the coolant?”
“I’m not a robot!” Steve insists, more entertained than annoyed, even considering the latest threat to global security. Bucky gives him a dubious once over. “Really,” Steve chuckles. “I swear. I swear!”
“Not that you know of, anyway.” Bucky lets his head drop back again. His neck is long, Adam’s Apple and jaw sharply defined by shadow and screen-light. It doesn’t look comfortable.
Steve can’t look away. “Well. I can’t argue with that.”
“You’re not a robot, Steve,” says Natasha. “I’d know.” The certainty in her voice is both reassuring and a little frightening. “Now, can you all please shut up? This is one of the best scenes.”
Bucky groans.
Tony uncurls from the corner of the sectional. “Maybe not a robot, but not human either,” he mutters. “Anyone else want a drink? I’m getting a drink. It’s Sunday morning, so I’m thinking mimosas.”
“Oh, come on!” Swinging his legs around, Bucky writhes upright. “Mimosas? During a vampire marathon? Where’s your head at, man? Bloody Marys!”
“Mmm, one Bloody Mary, no olives, if you please. Now hush or go somewhere else.” Natasha makes an irritated shooing gesture at them. On the screen, the vampires are playing baseball during a thunderstorm. Doesn’t seem fair to the human girl, in Steve’s unasked-for opinion.
“I’ll have her olives in mine,” says Clint. “Thanks, buddy.”
“Right.” Rolling his eyes, Tony points at Bucky. “This was your idea, come help me.”
“What about you?” Bucky asks Steve as he stands and stretches. Arms up like that, everything on Bucky’s body shifts and Steve gets a glimpse of the red imprints on his hip bones where his jeans have pressed into his skin for too long, like sleep lines, creases from sheets and pillowcases.
Steve hasn’t seen marks like that on a person since the close quarters he shared with his men on the war front. The intimacy is—disconcerting. “Nothing for me,” he answers, forcing his gaze up. “Not worth the trouble.”
Bucky tilts his head in question.
“Cap can’t get drunk,” Clint explains. “Because of the serum.”
The expression on Bucky’s turns horrified. “I’m so sorry.”
“Eh,” Steve shrugs. “I miss it sometimes, but not as much as you’d think. I wasn’t a fun drunk.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying you used to drink though? Get drunk? Once upon a time, in the ancient past, the righteous Steve Rogers got wasted? Captain America, blitzed before the blitz?” Tony grins at his own joke.
“Yes, Tony. I had a whole life before the serum.” Steve forces a tense smile. “Because—I’ll say it again in case you didn’t hear—I’m not a robot.”
“Were you a crier? I bet you were a crier. Oh my god, the images in my head!” Tony says gleefully.
With a heavy sigh, Natasha says, “JARVIS, please pause the movie.” The picture freezes on the main vampire’s face. Eddard? Edwin? Whatever. He’s good-looking, so it’s not the worst place to pause. Not as good-looking as some of the people in the room, but nothing to sneeze at, either.
“I bet he was a big mother hen,” says Clint. “Stumbling around while trying to make sure everyone else was getting water and had someone to walk them home, you know.”
“A brawler,” Natasha says. “First one to leap up and punch someone if they spouted garbage. A cause of bar fights all over Brooklyn.”
Steve shakes his head at the lot of them. The less said about how he behaved after too much alcohol, the better. It’s true he’d been in more than one fight after a couple shots, but mostly because he’d made it clear he wanted the wrong thing from the wrong fella. He’d been so small, so sickly, the good old giggle juice had lowered his inhibitions right down to the ground sooner rather than later, and that's where he usually ended up. When it was real bad, the loneliness dark and strong, he’d offered to fuck any pretty man nearby. If he hadn’t mostly hung around fairy-friendly dives, he probably would have gotten into much more dangerous situations than he's already ended up in.
“Guess you’ll never know,” is all he offers them.
“No fun,” Clint whines.
“Ugh, my poor friend. I can’t even imagine.” Bucky smiles wryly as he looks Steve up and down. “Guess it’s a fair enough tradeoff for a body like that, though.”
Steve opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Friend?
A body like that?
Thankfully, Tony is there to fill the silence. “Yeah, yeah. He’s a specimen, blah blah blah. Come on, let’s make those drinks.”
Ten minutes of clinking and soft bickering later, which Steve can still hear despite Natasha starting the movie up again, Bucky comes back with a tray. He doles out the round, each one tailored as requested, and despite the conversation just before, there’s one for Steve. Bucky places it into his hand with a shrug.
“It still tastes good,” he says.
And it does. It’s delicious. Rich and savory, olive-salty and spicy, with the smooth sting of heat from the vodka. Huh.
Maybe it’s impossible for Steve to get drunk, but that doesn’t have to mean he can’t enjoy a drink. Somehow that never occurred to him before.
Just as the movie ends, two of Tony’s staff arrive, rolling in trays of food. In the presence of outsiders, the huddle they’ve all formed turns awkward. Like a clutch of snakes, they disentwine and slither apart. Brushing imaginary crumbs from his rumpled shirt, Tony tells the staff to remove the blackout panels from the huge windows. The dawn light that is revealed momentarily blinds Steve.
And, wow. The common room is a disaster of dirty dishes, pillow feathers, and discarded socks. The team is a disaster too, of a different sort than usual; heavy eyes and stained clothes abound, but there’s no mud or blood this time.
They demolish the fancy breakfast spread in a tired but contented silence. To Steve’s dismay, there’s no pink porridge. When he explains, Tony promises he’ll have it made available more often, which might take the cake for the strangest thing to happen to Steve in the past twelve hours.
It had to end eventually. When it does—Tony and Bucky going one way, Natasha and Clint another—Steve feels strangely light. Almost buoyant as he returns to his suite. He’s alone again, but it seems a little less lonely this morning.
He allows himself to think it (though it’s truly terrible, the kind of thought only someone like Bucky would probably appreciate): he finally feels welcome.