Chapter Text
“So, did you and Bucky ever sleep together?”
Steve rubbed his eyes.
Their mission the night before had gone later than expected. They’d wound up near Clint’s apartment and he’d invited them in enthusiastically for a sleepover. Steve now regretted his decision to accept the offer.
“What do you think, Banner? Is Steve a virgin or a cock-slut?”
Bruce raised his hands.
“I already told you, I don’t want anything to do with this.” He removed himself and his bowl of cereal to a far corner of the room. Steve sighed.
“I did sleep with Bucky.”
Tony made a mock gasp of disgust.
“He’s impure!”
Steve rolled his eyes.
“Bucky Barnes?” Clint said. Steve could tell from his expression that something bad was coming. “More like Fucky Barnes.”
He snorted loudly at his own joke and Natasha groaned in a way that made it clear to everyone in the room that she was very long-suffering. Clint kept chuckling and muttering “Fucky” to himself until Nat flicked his spoon out of his cereal.
“Hey!” He looked despondently at the milk spilt on the floor. “Aw.”
“Did you sleep with anyone else, Rogers?”
Steve narrowed his eyes at Tony’s too-casual tone.
“I did, for a matter of fact.”
“How many?”
“C’mon, Cap, give us a headcount,” Clint called out.
“Two, altogether.”
“Damn.”
The Avengers collectively got out their wallets.
“What’s going on?” Steve asked.
“We laid wages on your love life,” Natasha said casually, as she held open her wallet for Clint to file his bills into.
“It’s really weird and invasive,” Bruce provided from his corner. He seemed to be uninvolved.
“What are we if not weird and invasive?” said Tony, giving money to Thor. “My money was on either 90-year-old virgin or absolute whore.”
“You assured me this was a common pastime on Midgard,” Thor said accusingly.
“Betting, yes.” Tony turned back to Steve. “C’mon. Not one USO showgirl caught your eye?”
Steve shook his head.
“Damn.” He wrote out a cheque for Natasha.
--
Nat offered Steve a lift home. She had ended up with most of the money.
“What’d you bet on?”
“I know I pretend like I think you’re a prudish dinosaur,” she said, “but I’m not stupid.”
“So, what was your bet?”
“I didn’t think you were a virgin, but I was more moderate about it than Clint.” She turned a corner. “We all gave numbers, too, and on the off chance one of us got it right, it was double the money. I got it right.”
“How’d you know?”
“It seemed logical.” She shrugged. “You seem like the kind of guy who would only sleep with someone you really cared about. No one night stands, no first date business. Someone you really loved. And there are only two people I’ve heard you talk about that way.”
Steve looked out the window.
--
Steve still visited Peggy every week. He felt closure with her. He felt sad, but he felt closure.
He still dreamed about Bucky.
--
If the asset was let out of cryo for too long, it would remember things.
The world of green would suddenly become golden. A blond boy would take its hand and walk with it through a field. Its arm was made of flesh, not fashioned out of metal. It would lie down next to the boy on a hill, and they would laugh and point at clouds.
Sometimes, the boy was older. The boy was sometimes skinny, so skinny the asset thought he would be easy to snap and break, and sometimes big and muscular, a more difficult task. The asset knew they were the same person, somehow. It didn’t make any sense.
It made the asset’s body react in unexpected ways.
Its chest constricted, its stomach coiled. The first time it had felt it, the asset had thought it was dying. It had lain down on the operation table. The HYDRA doctors had seemed frightened and confused. That was how the asset felt.
Now, the asset found it optimal. It wouldn’t tell anyone what it was feeling. It would help the asset to continue operating. It would help the asset not to terminate.
The asset’s body started reacting in other ways, too, ways that felt both unfamiliar and completely natural.
Sometimes tears would fall from the asset’s eyes. Its handlers would immediately sedate it. The asset never struggled while the tears were falling.
It was when the asset smiled that its handlers had reason to worry.
Sometimes the boy would say a name to the asset, a name that fit, felt sad, felt right.
“Bucky,” he’d laugh. “Bucky.”
The asset would scream out another name as its handlers wrestled it into the chair, as it crushed their jaws and necks with the arm they created.
“Steve!”
--
“Bucky?”
The pain in the asset’s chest was sharp. The world was golden.
The mission was imperative.
“Who the hell is Bucky?”
--
“He knows me, Sam.”
“I really don’t think he does.”
Natasha looked at Steve so sadly that he knew she thought the same.
He set his jaw.
“He has to.”
--
For the first time in seventy years, Steve felt his life had a purpose.
--
The List
- Director Fury
- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists
- Peggy
- Tony
- Bruce
- Clint
- Natasha
- Thor
- Bucky (?)
--
The asset had been out of cryo for a long time.
He had followed the mission for a while. He stole some of his clothes. The mission never caught the asset sneaking around in his home. The asset didn’t know if this was because he was particularly good at his job, or if the mission was just an idiot.
“Punk,” his mind provided. The word was golden. The asset stored it away.
The punk apparently had an exhibit all to himself in the Smithsonian Museum. The asset thought this was dumb and rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why he did that.
The asset saw his own face in the punk’s exhibition. He inched closer to it, cautious. It could be a trap.
The information on him was confusing, and the asset knew, somehow, that most of it was incorrect.
There was a name there.
The asset was suddenly on a train.
“Bucky!” the punk shouted.
The asset was not on the train anymore.
--
The information that the asset knew was correct was that he was from Brooklyn. He watched the punk for a little while longer. He decided that, if the punk could not take care of himself, the winged man and the armed lady could do it for him.
He went to Brooklyn.
--
The asset became Bucky again on the footstep of Steve’s old apartment. He found himself crying. His head hurt and his mouth felt like cotton. He vomited into the bushes.
It started to rain. He huddled into Steve’s doorway and hoped that no one lived there now. The sun shower became hazy beyond his tears.
He shuddered.
“God, Steve, what have I done?”
--
“Do you know me?”
Steve tried not to let any emotion show on his face as Bucky scanned him for signs of recognition. Bucky wet his lips and looked cautiously at Sam, sizing up the situation. Steve sobbed inwardly, readjusting the set of his feet. He didn’t want to have to do this, but if Bucky tried to make a break for it, he would have no choice.
Bucky met his eyes, and suddenly it all melted away into 1939. There was Bucky, with a well-worn smirk and a glint in his eye. Steve could tell he was teasing before he opened his mouth.
“Guess I’m the one with the long hair now, huh, punk?”
--
The List
- Director Fury
- S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists
- Peggy
- Tony
- Bruce
- Clint
- Natasha
- Thor
- Bucky (?) (!!)