armeyets | for viuva.

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for viuva.

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[ 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?

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for viuva.

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she talks so much omg

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