dappered | (no subject)

[ It's Tuesday in Avengers Tower.

A lot of the particulars of this arrangement had gone over his head, given that he'd been all but catatonic from shock and exhaustion through half of it (turns out using the Cube for a major temporal displacement actually took a lot of energy from the bearer, in this case him) but it seemed to include a lot of shouting and posturing while he'd suffered a fatal disconnect over which Steve he was supposed to back up, the tiny angry one or the big angry one. But the gist of it, explained by Howard Stark's son, is this: the Tesseract fucks with time, and sometimes deigns to answers wishes. Even those not spoken out loud. One flash of blue light later it had dumped all four of them here in the future in some kind of 'temporal bubble,' whatever the fuck that was, and it's keeping them here indefinitely.

Stark promises he's working on fixing it, but the future has things like inhalers and endless amounts of hot water, so there's that. Bucky's not in any big freaking hurry to head back to the war front in any case, even if being stuck here means staring at the frankly terrifying person who is supposedly future-him, or one possible version of future-him.

They're all under what's effectively house arrest in Stark's future robot building, given leave to go wherever they want in the Tower. They've all got their own bedrooms, their own kitchens, even their own floors if they want them, but Bucky had shown up at younger Steve's door at first opportunity and hadn't left him since.

(Part of him thought that maybe, maybe he should be throwing in with the other one, the older one with shadows under his eyes and a look on his face like someone had just kicked him in the stomach, the one Bucky remembered from Europe, but stress had brought on one of Stevie's attacks and Bucky couldn't leave him alone for that.)

He'd been kicked out eventually, though, told to go do his worrying and hovering somewhere else and take his stupid glowing alien box with him, which meant that Steve wanted some space to be upset in peace and that was fine, that was all fine, Brooklyn Steve didn't really know him since he'd been taken off to the camp and. Yeah. He's different. He's killed a lot of people since then, has watched his best friend waffle between science experiment, propaganda darling and one man army with maybe 10% of the training he needs to do the jobs they've got him doing. He's got a glowing alien box that always comes back to him, no matter how he tries to get rid of it. It bothers Steve that he's different. Not a one of them really know each other right now.

He drifts into the kitchen out of lack of anything better to do, still dressed in yesterday's clothes because he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep while Steve rasped in the bed next to him, mechanically opening cabinets and going through drawers, staring in something like hopeless frustration at the array of supposed edibles. The packages are all brightly colored and there are three kinds of everything, all declared to be low-fat or pure organic or a good source of vitamin whatever, like it wasn't possible for a guy to just get milk anymore without having to make some kind of choice about it. The labels are in every kind of language possible, of which he can only read three with his fragmentary French, Italian, and German. There's butter, more than he knows what to do with, and real meat, impossibly fresh, and the house robot has told him that if there's anything he wants that isn't there, he just has to ask for it and it'll be delivered.

All he wants is a goddamn loaf of bread and some cheese to make a sandwich, jesus. ]

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No.

[ the sharp rejection comes immediate, without hesitation, without a single second to think on it. no, it shouldn't've been him, not a chance. he wouldn't wish this on the men that did it to him, 'cause there's a thousand deaths kinder than the hell he's seen, and he'd live it all a thousand times more to keep steve on that train. take him home and let him be safe, no, not a goddamn chance.

but more than that, more than just steve's stubborn adamance to gives his all and more for some utopian ideal of better, he rejects the notion that he can only save him when he's got the serum in his veins and a shield on his back.

his guy's always been made of steel, always been the unyielding pillar for lesser men to lean on. even with the gaps in his memory, he knows this, and the fact that steve doesn't still makes him angry like it did in the dark corners of brooklyn. they're the same goddamn people, him and the steve sleeping down the hall, and they're both fucking idiots. ]

The war didn't make you a hero. You always have been.

[ no, he thinks, you save me every single day. ]

[It's Steve's turn to be surprised at Buck, his voice sharper than he's ever heard it. But there's also a certainty, a clarity that he hasn't heard from this Bucky before, and that's a good sign.]

Sounds like it didn't stop you from being a great big sap, either.

[That's good. Steve wouldn't have it any other way. He shoves another bite of now cold lasagna in his mouth without thinking, and grimaces at the taste and texture.]

We're making ma's colcannon tomorrow. No microwave, I don't care if takes us all day.

[ he looks down, appetite lost ( distracted, rather; the hunger is always there ), and speaks absently, almost miserably. ]

I don't know what that is.

[ his face is gonna freeze like this. steve said so. ]

It was your favorite, or at least that's what you always told her. You'd smile and kiss her cheek too, and I expect the same treatment.

[Steve teases him, gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. He'll keep carrying the guilt no matter how much Bucky forgives him, and he knows that the other him does too.]

[ he doesn't snort in amusement the way he might've before guilt and anger flared up in both of them, but he doesn't remember this and he wants to very desperately, most especially when steve is caught up on things he hasn't even lived through yet. ]

Sure thing, Stevie.

[ he says, and the words aren't his, and the voice isn't his, even though bucky barnes said it with a lot more cheek and none of the deadpan. he won't reach across the table to knuckle steve's head or give a lecherous smirk like he knows how to treat a dame. those things belong to bucky, and he's sleepin' just down the hall.

he says it anyway, somewhere between tease and sincerity, and hopes he'll remember having this conversation tomorrow. ]