armeyets | for viuva.

[ Normally Bucky’s pretty punctual, since he doesn’t have much else going on, but he gets caught up in some subway delays and so he shows up last this time, coming at a brisk pace from the station. He sees the young woman’s silhouette down the street, her head tipped back, blue denim and long blonde hair. His heart instinctively catches and rises when he sees her, in a way he hasn’t felt in so very long for anyone; another time, another life, another version of him.

Maybe someday he’ll have the balls to do something about it.

In the meantime: Bucky paces up, hands buried in the pockets of his leather jacket, and bumps his shoulder companionably against Yelena’s by way of hello. ]

Hey. Nice denim. [ A beat, and, ] Is this a good time to say I’ve only ever seen a couple episodes of Seinfeld?

[ yelena is till taking a few aesthetic shots of the diner when she feels a familiar shoulder bump, tucking her phone into one of her many pockets. she has crossed paths with him enough to know that this is just the bucky way to say hi. that, or suddenly turning up at her side and greeting her with a quip.

(she can't really fault him for it; she's the same way.) ]

Hello, James. You like my jacket? I thrifted it.

[ she turns to face him with the scrunch of her nose, quickly giving him a once-over. his hair looks nice, but he looks tired. she wonders if she looks just as tired. ]

And you know, you're really not missing much. Elaine is the only funny thing about Seinfeld— Come on. [ yelena waves a nonchalant hand for him to follow her and and she's holding the door open for him because she is such a gentlewoman. ] I am starving.

And you’re not even a super-soldier, how d’you think me or your dad feel —

[ Bucky’s half-joking but he is, genuinely, hungry pretty much all the time even as he doesn’t tire. So he follows her through the door, ducking into the busy diner. It’s thrumming with activity, but they’ve managed to land at an inconvenient in-between hour where there’s still a booth available for them; the walls are covered in kitschy souvenirs and Seinfeld artifacts and signed cast pictures, but it’s a real diner with genuinely good food, not just loaded up for tourism. It’s been around for decades. ]

How’s Alexei doing?

[ he asks as they slide into the booth. They’re all technically teammates now. When Bucky looks in the mirror, New Avenger doesn’t really sit right; the title weighs awkwardly like an ill-fitting suit. In the wake of that chaotic, disastrous press conference, they’ve been reeling and trying to find their footing. It was probably about time they met up to discuss the situation; but in the immediate, Yelena’s the first Thunderbolt* he wants to talk to.

^*goddammit ]

You know, [ she sucks her teeth in the most non-patronizing way possible ] I am pretty sure they say that the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach.

[ or is that the way to a man's heart? either way, she doesn't care because her phone is coming right back out of the pocket she snuck it into. she loves nostalgic shit more than the average person — yes, she knows it's because her brain is clinging to A Very Specific Time in her childhood — so she is rather ecstatic to be sliding into one of the most iconic booths of all time. she is, without an ounce of shame or embarrassment, snapping pictures of the interior before putting her phone away. again.

(she remembers sitting on the floor of their living room, hunched over a colouring book on the coffee table while melina folded clothes into a hamper. alexei was maybe helping natasha with her homework.)

anyway, bucky brings her back by bringing up her dad. also again. is he just as obsessed with alexei as alexei is with him?? god. she blows a raspberry. ]

Are you kidding me? Alexei is having the time of his life. Almost more insufferable than usual, but— this is the happiest I have seen him since I was a kid.

[ she casually flips through the menu, her attention darting between him and some of the the sweet and savoury items. ]

How are you doing?

[ The last time she’d asked, a quick check-in in front of the rest of the team, Bucky had given a pithy deflection. They’d been around strangers, around Walker, and so it was nothing but a joke and sidestepping the issue. You know me, I’m great,

I’m fine,
it’s fine,
everything’s fine,

but in the end, it feels like he owes Yelena some honesty. No amount of therapy would have made that swallowing darkness easy to handle, and his nightmares have gotten worse again since their little jaunt into another plane. He hasn’t been sleeping well; hence the texts to her to begin with. He gestures for coffee. ]

Been better. The Void shook us all up. And I was technically unemployed before this but gotta say, this isn’t the next job I expected. I was originally thinking maybe manning Sam’s family fishing boat.

[ And now: his phone’s been blowing up the last few days with a meticulous future itinerary curated by Val and Mel, a press gauntlet featuring magazine covers and interviews and sound bites and Good Morning America, and he doesn’t feel ready for any of it. Is it even possible to stop this train and get off it anymore? Hard to say. ]

So I guess we should talk about whether or not we’re coworkers now.

A retirement plan already? But you're so young, James. [ a beat, ] It felt a little too real for my taste. The Void.

[ even ava and john had been easier to get through to in the short amount she's gotten to know them. bucky barnes, on the other hand, had always been a tough cookie to crack or so she's heard. she's not really the type to press, and even if she was, she would never truly press former winter soldier-types. so one can only imagine the look of pleasant surprise on her face when he doesn't sugarcoat the truth with that exceptional dry humour of his.

a waitress pours them two cups of coffee and shuffles back to the kitchen, knowing better than to stick around. ]

Worse. [ she waggles her eyebrows in an effort to lighten the mood some, taking a sip from her mug. ] I think we're actually teammates now.

[ yelena belova did not do teamwork, ever. in the red room, it was every child, girl and woman for herself; she learned that at a young age. too young. it should come as no surprise as to why she is so deeply fucked up. the last time she'd been part of a team was... well, her little peewee soccer team. funny how things come full circle. ]

I'm not going to lie, I did ask Val to give me a more... public-facing job. But I didn't mean as an Avenger. Which brings me to my next questions: did they ask you to move in yet?

[ He grunts a frustrated little noise at the word teammates, drawing the coffee cup closer, holding the still-too-hot mug with his metal hand. A version of him, once upon a time, had operated smoothly as a single cog in a well-oiled, functioning team with the Howling Commandos; and he’d been getting back there with Sam, slowly, with so much bitching and kvetching along the way, but he’s mostly forgotten what that sort of collaboration felt like. Widows and Soldiers led solitary lives.

And now Val’s gone and torpedoed his goddamn working dynamic with Sam, anyway. The PR’s fraught if they were to show up at the same fight together. ]

Yep, [ Bucky confirms, mildly despairing. And bluntly: ] I feel weird about it. Like, what, do I take Steve’s old room and you take your sister’s? What the fuck.

Shit.

[ it comes out quicker than she would have liked it to. it's clear that yelena did not let that response stew; that his point hit a little too close to home.

it's hard to forget that she's gone. she wishes she could block that bit of information out, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind it, but she can't do that to natasha's memory. she misses her sister so much her chest aches to the point that she can't breathe. and now she has to fill her big ass shoes? jesus. ]

They did renovate the whole building, you know. It might just be the skeletons of their rooms.

[ hopefully. ]

You're not still flying back and forth between here and D.C., right? That's a loooot of fossil fuel being burnt, James. It's [ vague gesturing with her hands ] very bad for the environment. You might dethrone Taylor Swift in the top polluters department.

Taylor Swift pollutes? [ Bucky’s lost in Yelena’s usual barrage, and he almost reflexively reaches for the notebook in his jacket. Note to self: look up Taylor Swift + fossil fuels. He’s only heard a couple of her songs; they had been impossible to avoid. But he shakes his head. ]

Nah. I’ve still got a place downtown. Barely furnished, [ and that was probably a common point of contention with his therapist, the way he was still avoiding putting down roots, ] so it wouldn’t be hard to move. But.

[ But those skeletons of rooms: the awareness that they would be walking around inside the shell of something that had once meant something, not a slapdash group cobbled together under false pretenses, filling impossibly big shoes. Captain America’s plucky boy sidekick and a budget Widow. They didn’t even have the real current Cap; the real Cap was pissed off and rightfully so, considering the disgraced imposter Bucky would have to be rubbing elbows with in the tower —

He tries bravely for a pop culture reference, a vague stab in the dark, a joke he’d heard Mel say once: ]

Not sure if I wanna be on a team with Temu Captain America.

She does. [ she nods sagely, like it was the universe that told her this and not twitter. ] So much.

[ she could either a) psychoanalyze him right here right now where jerry and george and elaine sat, or b) make a passing snarky comment on his barely furnished apartment. except she's not one to talk, because she can relate a little too hard to that and that's opening another can of worms. she's just stays at fancy hotels (on valentina's dime, of course) to avoid staying at their new headquarters— that she spends a lot of time at anyway.

it's not so bad, really. except when she remembers that natasha spent a lot of her time in this very building while yelena was out carrying out hits under chemical subjugation.

she's not spiraling at this very moment because of his company, and... you know what? his joke gets an earnest laugh out of her. she even snorts. ]

Did Mel show you what Temu is? [ in between laughs, some coffee. ] Don't order from there. IKEA is better.

[ she shakes her head because she can't believe she's about to say what she's about to say: ] Walker isn't so bad when he isn't the one in charge, you know.

Really, [ Bucky says dryly, unimpressed, because he’s been carrying a hatchet about that other guy ever since he stole Steve’s valour,

except, also, a nagging thought keeps nipping at him like an intrusive memory. He remembers the fight with the Sentry, each of them flinging themselves helplessly at the (man, entity, whatever Bob had become by then) only to be batted away like gnats. Right when the Sentry had turned his bored, destructive attention to Bucky, then John Walker had been the one to leap out in front of him, shield up to take the blow instead, protecting James Buchanan Barnes and sending both of them crashing into the penthouse wall.

You could almost even say he jumped on the grenade.

So he tries to bury his bitterness behind another sip of equally-bitter black coffee. He’s doing a very good job of sulking on his side of the booth, but he usually can’t help but lighten up a little whenever Yelena’s around. Her attitude’s infectious. ]

Has everyone else moved in already? Am I the only straggler?

for viuva.

no subject

no subject

zaps this thread w the canon realignment laser

amen to that....also closes my eyes at my typos 😌

no subject

no subject

no subject

she talks so much omg

no subject

no subject

no subject