[ In all the excitement of running away from the Watchdogs last night, he'd forgotten.
Flat-out completely forgotten about their original plans for Coney Island. Normally he really is a morning bird, but last night's sleep had been even more restless than usual, tossing and turning and going over the events of the night: that heady mixture of something he thinks might've been a good date for his first time in the better part of a century; fretting over whether she really thought it was a disaster; considering this new threat he'd heard of for the first time; wondering if he ought to mention it to Sam; preemptively girding himself for the eventual ribbing he'll probably get from Sam if he brings it up—
All of which means Daisy's text message wakes him up, Bucky jolting awake and pawing for his phone where it's sitting on the floor plugged into the wall beside his head. He stares at the message, blinking, his mouth muzzy. Thank god it's a text and not a call. He feels like death warmed over. (He always feels like death warmed over.) ]
i'm gonna need coffee to feel human again but yes, please a jog will probably wake me up you get home safe last night?
[ Of course she did, Buck, otherwise she wouldn't be texting you. He kicks himself a moment after he's already pressed send. ]
[And while his sleep had been restless, Daisy hasnβt actually gotten to sleep yet. That combined with adrenaline and alcohol, and Daisy sends the text without thinking it through until afterwards.
Maybe he wonβt even answer.
Sheβs about to pocket her phone when it buzzes. Her stomach does another flip as she reads his response.]
Yeah, I got home okay.
[About four hours after she left, and with a black eye forming. Jemma of course fussed over her, and she may or may not be sneaking out of the bus to go see him.]
[ The steady proliferation of Starbucks over the years has been annoying, unseating so many local coffeeshops, but at least it'll get him his fix. Bucky gets dressed quickly enough, waffling over his clothes for a moment, before finally just going for functional exercise-wear: joggers and a long-sleeved shirt, with a frayed hoodie tugged on over it. Gloves, as always. When he gets on the subway to Brooklyn, he's yawning, but the early-morning sunlight starts to scour away that tiredness. He's lost in thought when the train goes over the bridge; he stares out through the windows, automatically looking for the Statue of Liberty out in the water. It's a clear enough day that he can catch a glimpse of it, a distant washed-out green.
It's cheesy as hell, but he always looks for it. These fleeting glimpses over the bridge. Like a steady lodestone in his surroundings; something familiar to anchor the rest of this strange world by, to remind himself that some parts of New York just don't change. He hasn't irrevocably lost the city he grew up in.
When the subway's swallowed back up underground, Bucky lets himself drift a little: head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed and half-dozing while he waits for the last stop. Eventually, the train spits him back out at Coney Island, and he moves through the station — sunlight glittering through the murals, the rush of morning commuters, he's feeling almost dizzy and disconnected again, but maybe that's the sleep deprivation talking — and he beelines straight for the Starbucks. When he spots Daisy already in line, he moves up to join her. Flashes her a smile, approaching: ]
[Daisy quickly changed clothes into something more appropriate, especially if they're going on that jug. She wore an oversized hoodie with the hood up, partially covering her face, leggings, and very worn in sneakers. She kept her head down the entire time she was on the train, and really only looked up once she got close to their meeting spot. The line for coffee is out the door, so she just gets in and is about to text Bucky to let him know she's in line when he appears behind her.
Turning to look at him, a smile spreads across her face.]
Hey.
[She's at least attempted to cover the bruise, but when she had it wasn't nearly as bad as it was now so it's a shoddy job at best.]
Is it technically morning if you haven't slept yet?
[Daisy teases, and judging by the tired look on his face he hasn't gotten much sleep over.]
[ As Bucky draws close enough and she turns and he can now see her face unobscured by the hoodie, his expression changes. The cautious optimism swept away in favour of immediate concern, his brows furrowing, face carved back into a frown. ]
What the hell, Daisy.
[ Said, perhaps, with more familiarity than he should— more abject fondness for her than he should— but yesterday had been a long night by the time they'd parted ways. She already knew far more about him than he'd intended to let slip on a first, blind date, and he knew more about her than she was likely prepared to give away either. It was a shortcut to suddenly caring more.
It was a shortcut leading from his head to his shoulder to his arm, his right hand reaching unthinkingly out to graze his gloved fingers gently (it's odd, how his touch can still be so gentle) across the bruised hollow of Daisy's cheek, the swollen skin of her black eye. Haphazard makeup can only do so much. He traces the evidence of an evening gone ugly, not putting pressure on the skin lest he press too hard and make it hurt. She looks like hell, and that's on top of learning she hasn't even slept yet. ]
You said you got home okay. What the fuck happened last night?
[Daisy can see by the look on his face that clearly she hadn't done a good enough job in hiding the black eye, but there's no point in trying to hide it now. She nearly pulls away when he reaches up to touch her cheek, but she does wince when he touches her skin because it does hurt.]
I did, eventually.
[They're in a line, so she keeps her voice low.]
That guy's friends found me.
[AKA the Watchdogs.]
It's fine. I'm fine.
[And she is, she's dealt with far worse than this.]
[Despite the fact that they havenβt seen each other since Coney Island, Daisy and Bucky have been talking every day. Itβs later in the day and after a long day of work, she has plans to watch a movie over FaceTime with him.
Heβs walking home from the bodega, and Daisy is teasing him over his choice of snacks when she hears shouting followed by gunfire. Her stomach instantly drops.]
Whatβs going on? Bucky? Bucky?!
Shit.
[Sheβs out of her small room in seconds, running to the cockpit where May is to tell her to turn the plane around. She just hopes they arenβt too late.
By the time they arrive, Daisy is in her suit and running down the ramp as soon as it lowers. May and Mack behind her, she holds her hand out ready to use her powers. It doesnβt take her long to spot Bucky fighting someone off and she uses her powers to send them flying across the road and into someone else that was clearly with them.]
Bucky!
[She shouts as she runs towards him, making sure that no one is coming at her.]
[ She's one of such a minuscule handful of numbers on his phone — and he's keen on not driving her away, so when Daisy texts him, Bucky actually replies. He also turns out to be fond of actual phonecalls, much to her horror, but he's old-fashioned that way; it turns out he likes having the voice in his ear while he's out running errands or puttering around at home, having the companionability without the physical presence.
Tonight, though, is already turning into a mess. His bag of bodega snacks is ripped and scattered across the pavement, the sixpack of beer (he can't even get drunk off it but it was for the sake of the thing) shattered and spilling into the gutter, while he faces down a set of heavily-armed men. When Daisy goes haring into his neighbourhood, she can see the debris of the fight: a broken newspaper dispenser. An unconscious man slammed into a car, the imprint of his body having caved in the door. Bullets embedded in trashcans. A trail of chaos leading to one (1) Bucky Barnes.
And even in the middle of a fight, he can't stop thinking about how messy it is. If he's unlucky, it's gonna be all over the news and it's gonna give the Avengers a bad name, Steve would be disappointed—
(Steve isn't around anymore, and neither are the Avengers—)
He's superpowered, he can handle himself, but they've also come equipped. These men know exactly who they were coming for, the asset they're trying to reclaim, and so they've used some kind of specialised taser on him: it's temporarily shut down his arm and it hangs from his shoulder, so much dead weight. There's blood seeping through his shirt. There's a kind of fleeting panic in his blue eyes when he looks over and sees her pelting towards him.
... Because of course. The gunshots over the phone. She knows where he lives. ]
Daisy—
[ The HYDRA agents (because what else could they be?) are circling like a pack of wolves, now sizing up this new addition to the party. Someone mutters something in Russian to someone else, and Bucky's head snaps toward the sound, his gaze narrowing into a glower. ]
[Hearing Bucky say her name like that is like a punch to the gut, and just by his tone she can tell heβs injured. As she gets closer she can see that heβs hurt and it sends her into a a panic.
Raising her hand, Daisy doesnβt hesitate to start sending the HYDRA agents flying through the air.
From back at the bus, Simmons is warning everyone through comms that more company is showing up. Itβs becoming more apparent whatβs going on here, theyβre here to try and get Bucky back. Her stomach sinks, and just for a second she loses focus long enough for one of the HYDRA goons is able to knock her in the back of the head hard.
She crumples to the ground, not knocked out, but temporarily stunned at least.]
[ It's probably not the greatest move on his enemy's part. Because that fear on Bucky's face is less for himself; it's more for her, barreling into a dangerous situation that he's brought on her head, their heads, this entire neighbourhood's head, when nobody else deserves to suffer for his baggage. And so when Daisy falls to the ground, some fraying string in James Barnes just— snaps, a little. Like a thread that's been unraveling and unraveling for years now, no matter how good he's been at keeping that vise-like grip on his self-control, and it finally comes loose.
He turns around and uses his metal arm as a bludgeon. It might be temporarily paralysed but it's still forty pounds of metal, and forty pounds of metal driven repeatedly into someone's face puts them down for the count. His hand still isn't responding and he can't move it, but it'll do for now: there's another gunshot and he spins, letting it ricochet off his metal shoulder. Even if it's motionless, he can still use it as a shield, too.
(God. Seriously. What he wouldn't give to have Steve and his shield here today.)
And then he's running towards Daisy. There's other agents back at the plane, he realises with a pang of contrition. Ah, jeez. He's probably going to get a talking-to from his government liaison after this. ]
Daisy. Hey. Hey, are you okay?
[ He lands on a knee beside her, his free hand at her pulse. The soldiers are getting closer, and he can feel that stinging hitch in his side of the bullet probably grinding against his kidney or something, and he needs backup. ]
[Daisy hears shouting in her ear from multiple different voices, and it's difficult for her to understand what they're saying. Groaning in response when Bucky starts talking to her, Daisy's nose scrunches up. Not because of the pain, but because he's calling her Quake.]
Don't call me that.
[Because, really, that's more important than anything else going on right now.
She's fine.
Opening her eyes, Daisy blinks twice to get her vision to stop swimming. That's when she notices the soldiers closing the distance. She raises her hand to send them flying again, but May is already on top of it. Kneeing one of them hard enough that they crumple to the floor in a heap.
Pushing herself up off the ground, Daisy notices the blood on Bucky and her face gives away her concern. Hands held out as if expecting him to collapse.]
[ Adrenaline is churning through him, dimming his awareness of the pain. It's just buying him time, so the full awareness of it will hit him afterwards and he'll probably need some help then, but for now he's running on anger and instinct and determination. He watches as May dispatches a couple of the men — the woman is surprisingly imposing despite her fairly diminutive height — and then as another man is still trying to get back up to his feet where Daisy sent him flying. ]
Useful powers you got there.
[ Daisy's reached out to Bucky as if he's delicate spun-glass and on the verge of breaking, but he catches her hand instead. Tugs her back up to her feet as they stand together, and he shoots a closer look at her arm, and the finely-fitted compressed microfibers beneath his hand. Bucky gives an arch of his eyebrow, a rueful smile as his gaze shifts between it and his own metal arm visible through a rip in his sleeve: ]
"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."
Well, that had been a damn lie, hadn't it. It seemed that the instant Bucky had left her for good, the second he shipped off for real, Steph went and did something monumentally stupid: she signed up to be a test subject for a military project so secret that she didn't even understand what it was supposed to be when she signed her name on the dotted line.
Look. She's not stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary. Without Bucky around to help her cover rent, with her ill health preventing her from getting factory work, without generous family members around who might bail her out in an emergency, the best she could hope to scrounge up to survive on would be a single bed in a boarding house full of other women, someplace probably damp and crowded, with no heat in the winter and no shade in the summer, somewhere that would only make her already numerous health problems even worse.
What did she have to lose?
Nothing. Which is why she let herself be assessed by a parade of scientists, why she hardened her expression and didn't react when she could hear them talking about "wasting the serum on someone like her," why she didn't let herself think about the possibility that maybe Bucky would come home after all, and what if something happened to her instead? He'd be furious with her for getting herself offed somehow when his back was turned, but she couldn't focus on that thought at the time. Besides, he was doing exactly that to her, wasn't he?
Stepping into that iron coffin had felt like dying for real. Her overwhelming memories of that day are ones of excruciating pain, the kind that makes you think that Hell is real, the kind that tears you out of your own head in an effort to save your mind while your body gets ripped apart and re-made.
Colonel Phillips was pleased to see her stagger out of Stark's contraption. If that serum could turn a weak little runt like her into a movie star, then think of what it could do for an actual soldier. Think of what an asset it would be, to have an entire squadron of men that were taller, broader, stronger than the average soldier. Think of how quickly they could win the war!
It's hard to think back to that day, and not just because she had to watch Dr Erskine bleed out beneath her feet as her body buzzed with adrenaline and sweat cooled at the hollow of her throat. It feels like a million years ago, even though she knows it's only been a few months. It feels like it happened to a different person. She knows she's lucky that the army decided to make her useful instead of locking her in some lab somewhere to let people run tests on her to try and recreate Dr Erskine's work. She's grateful she's not spending her days strapped to a table under a bright light while her blood is stolen and bits of her are excised.
But does she really have to do high-kicks all the time?
At least the other girls are sweet to her. There's a little awkwardness, sometimes, since Steph isn't really very good at all the peripherals of womanhood — she can put on her own makeup, more or less, but she's hopeless at doing her own hair, and has to beg some of the other girls to help her set it every night — but they get along well enough, and she's never dropped a single dancer when she lifts them up over her head, not even once. It's kind of nice, having girlfriends. She still desperately misses Bucky, though.
Maybe after the show tonight she can ask around, see if anyone has any idea where the 107th is stationed. Even if they're not on part of her tour, she might be able to get someone to get a letter to him, wherever he is. She hopes he's being safe. He better be, or she's going to kill him.
The opening chords for her act start to play, deafeningly loud from the speakers set nearby, and she shakes herself out of her idle thoughts. Linking pinkies with the girls she'll be dancing with, she lets them complete the ritual she's grown so used to after all these shows, each of them leaning in to kiss the air above the other's cheek so no makeup is smudged, a quick good-luck before they dart on stage.
Taking a steadying breath, Stephanie tosses her hair over her shoulders, straightens her spine, and sweeps on stage. ]
yells i love it! mine also... spiraled out of control
[ The men of the 107th literally drew lots to see who got to be on leave tonight and go see the show.
Names were plucked out of a colonel's steel-pot helmet while soldiers shifted their weight restlessly from foot-to-foot, bumping shoulders in disorderly lines. Order has broken down overseas, lost somewhere in their damp clothes and soggy boots and brittle coughs and those haggard shadows under their eyes. Not enough sleep, not enough reinforcements: fresh troops keep being promised and promised and promised, and every time they finally do arrive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed from boot camp, they're ill-prepared and often just wind up being meat for the grinder. Most of them won't survive the next month.
War is hell, but for just one night, a few of them get to cluster together and listen to the tinny music and hoot and holler as the pretty women high-kick their way across the stage, led by their new supposedly-superpowered mascot.
James Barnes is one of the winners tonight, and like everybody else, of course he's seen the posters. (He doesn't recognise her in the pictures, behind the mask. This primped and preened and perfectly-coiffed creature doesn't resemble the Steph he remembers, and they don't put her name anywhere on the posters either. The symbol and the product matters more than the woman.)
He's tired, bone-deep tired, but knows that a few more hours of restless sleep back in his cot won't help, either. He's lucky to have gotten his name pulled. So he should enjoy this. The man beside him is laughing uproariously at the performers, Show a little more leg, darlin' — and once upon a time Bucky's sure he might have enjoyed this, he was a skirt-chaser, he always did like women, so isn't he supposed to enjoy this?
But it's when he finally sees her in the flesh, rather than grainy newspaper photographs or stylised illustrations, that Bucky suddenly leans forward on his bench, frowning at the sight. It can't be. Surely it's not.
It's like seeing Stephanie Rogers' taller sister up on that stage, all pin curls and smiles and glowing skin. Some of it is the blush; she had never bothered with makeup around him, not the boy she'd grown up with, the one who'd taken her under his wing like a brother (at least, they'd always both told themselves it was like a brother). She's taller, healthier, fit enough to keep up with all of the other athletic women on the stage. It doesn't make any sense, and neither does the way she's able to lift them without breaking a sweat, carrying a bench laden with other dancers.
He's leaning forward, hands against his knees, all of his attention riveted forward with an avid intensity. What, you never seen girls before, Barnes? someone else asks beside him, but he ignores them.
He drinks in this impossible sight, and he waits it out. After the show wraps (along with calls for encores), it does seem to have managed to revive the soldiers' spirits, at least a little. They disperse towards the mess tent, while Bucky goes and waits where the performers are. He sees some of them eventually file out, dressed in more normal clothes (there's fewer sequins, for one), but there's no Steph yet. He's fidgeting, worried about someone accusing him of being a peeping tom trying to sneak in on the dancers — but finally, he just goes ahead and asks an aide where Liberty Belle is kept. He's pointed in the direction of her own small tent being used as impromptu dressing room — and in lieu of having an actual door to knock on, he clears his throat and calls out instead. ]
Heard they were keeping a pain-in-the-ass named Rogers back here.
[ Is he about to accidentally walk in on her changing? Maybe. ]
[ It's different, performing for soldiers spread out on rickety folding chairs in a muddy field-turned-army camp. She's used to auditoriums, used to stage lights and an orchestra pit, used to not really being able to see the faces spread out in front of her because the light in her eyes is too bright and the rest of the room is too dark.
Doing the whole song and dance routine out in bright sunshine with dozens of weary faces looking up at her is like a punch to the gut.
She thought she was helping? She thought that The Liberty Belle was somehow assisting the war effort? No. These men were helping. These men, who fought, and who died, who gave up everything to defend the country they loved, they were the real heroes. She's just a chorus girl, pretty, and stupid, and ultimately useless.
She tries not to look at the soldiers' faces too closely. She doesn't want to see them either lusting after her or too dead-eyed to care. It unsettles her deeply.
Still, she's been doing this long enough that she can fake it pretty well now, and she's even memorized all her dialogue to such a degree that she can just shut herself down mentally and open her mouth to let the words fall out, ringing out across the assembled men hunched in front of her without the need of a microphone to assist.
Once the set is over, and after the multiple encores have been performed, she slips away as quickly as she can, trying to hide in the small knot of dancers so she won't have to keep up her public facade and smile and flirt with the soldiers milling around. It's not that she's unappreciative of their attention — this is the first time in her life any man other than Bucky has actually seemed interested in her, although most of the time men nowadays are more interested in her tits or her legs and not in what she has to say — but she's tired, and guilty for reasons she can't explain, and she wants to get back to her tent so she can write to Bucky.
Getting out of her costume is an easy enough thing after all this time, shucking the star-spangled skirt and her striped bustier, peeling her stockings off her legs and wiggling her toes now that they're released from their high-heeled prison, and then it's time to take off the rest of her get-up, starting with her war paint.
She's in the middle of applying cold cream to melt her makeup when she hears a man's voice call out near her door, a man's voice that asks for her by name, a man's voice that sounds like...
No. It can't be. ]
Hold on! [ she replies, taking a tissue and wiping at her face hastily to remove the cream and the makeup beneath, smearing mascara around her eyes until she looks like a raccoon. ] I'll be there in a second! [ Rubbing roughly at them with a fresh tissue, she gets the worst of the kohl removed and then hurries to adjust her civilian clothes so she looks presentable and won't give whatever soldier it is who's bold enough to loiter outside her tent a show he didn't sign up for before rushing to the 'door' and smiling as she pulls it aside. ]
Did you want an autogra—oh. Oh, Bucky. [ She stares at him for a moment, stunned despite the fact that she knew she recognized his voice, then takes a step forward, barefoot and uncaring about the mud, and flings her arms around him to hug him tightly while she tries not to tremble. ] It's really you.
[ She steps right out into the cold clammy mud and flings herself unthinking into his arms, where Bucky catches her with a small oof and a breath against the top of her head, his arms instinctively going around her and lifting her off that freezing ground— and the most disorienting thing, really, is how inexplicably taller Steph is. How much less distance there is for him to pick her up and spin her into a crushing hug. Her newfound height brings her closer to his face, buried in the crook of his neck rather than pressed low against his chest where she used to be, and so the center of balance is all off, unexpectedly different: her body is sturdy muscle beneath his hands rather than a mere slip of a thing, the skinny little mutt she'd been.
It looks like her, sounds like her, her blonde hair even smells like her, and yet. ]
And it's really you. What the hell. I thought you were smaller?
[ Bucky doesn't let go of her yet, where her arms are still wrapped around his neck and swept up in his embrace; he just frog-walks them both into the tent, and only then sets her back down once they're safely inside. He leans back and peers down as if she's somehow hiding invisible six-inch heels, but instead it's just her bare, muddy feet wiggling on the floor of the tent. Thankfully, the skirt and the bustier have been swapped out, so he's able to politely snap his gaze back to her face, his glacier-blue eyes poring over her features, mapping it to what he remembers of the friend he left behind in New York.
There's a little bit of kohl still smeared at the corner of Steph's eyes. His hand reaches up, absentmindedly wipes that small clump of it away— and then he realises how close they're standing and he takes a genteel step away, clears his throat. Bashful in a way he never had been, before. Hearing half a fieldful of men openly salivating over his best friend's calves had been a surreal experience. ]
I thought Liberty Belle was just a publicity thing. But you're really...
[ Healthy? Strong? Superpowered? He's not sure what word to fill in that blank. Marveling, he finally says: ]
You lifted that bench of girls like it was nothing.
[ If she's conscious that they're in the middle of an army camp and there are dozens of people going to-and-fro around them, people who might be witness to Miss Liberty Belle flinging herself at an enlisted man like she's his patiently-waiting bride reunited after a long separation — (wait, is that assumption really that far off?) — she doesn't seem to care at all; she lets Bucky sweep her up in his arms and whirl her around, lifting her feet and clinging to his shoulders probably a little too hard, but it's too difficult to remember to be careful when she's so goddamn relieved.
Basic packed on a bit more muscle on his frame than working at the docks was able to do, and even being in an active war zone living on Army rations hadn't been enough to erase all that breadth. He feels solid and real in her arms, and yet she's still half-convinced she's dreaming somehow. ]
You're here.
[ She laughs as he marches her back into her tent, his arms still snugly wrapped around her, and she obliges by clinging on a little bit longer and keeping her knees bent, her feet kicked up behind her like a careless child being hauled around.
She's put on a good six inches and seventy pounds of muscle since he's last seen her, her body still feeling alien to her, like a suit of armor she's shrugged into and not herself, but with Bucky here in front of her, she's felt the most like herself that she has in months. ]
I wasn't— I didn't know if— Where you'd be stationed. I hoped someone could tell me, but I didn't think that— You're alright. Oh, Bucky.
[ She lets him thumb at the corner of her eye, her lashes dipping as he strokes her cheek gently, her own hands settling on his chest because it just feels natural to let them land there. It's a much easier maneuver to pull now that she's almost as tall as he is.
Going a little bit pink when he steps away from her, she chews her lips, still faintly stained from her lipstick. ]
You're going to be cross as two sticks when I tell you...
The mail's been pretty unreliable for a while, like, they try to get messages through, but with everything the way it is—
[ The line slipping forward and back as they won and lost ground, temporary outposts being set up and then collapsing, taking refuge in little Italian towns and then moving onwards, mail carriers trying to get their deliveries through without losing them across hundreds of miles of mud and wire. There really wasn't much stability in their lives. Those little letters from home are a lifeline for these men, signed with a kiss or a photograph from sweethearts in hometowns. Bucky had gotten one from his sister in Indiana; had double-checked the envelope at the time, half-hoping but not expecting a second one from Stephanie. Having her inexplicably here in person, though, is a far better alternative.
Peering around the tent, he surveys the relative luxury that they've set her up in, better than what the other girls have had to share and make do with. There's the trove of makeup, tubes of lipstick scattered like bullets across the tabletop, stacks of signed Liberty Belle prints, some stockings draped over the back of the chair—
Blushing slightly, Bucky's gaze snaps back to hers. There's still open curiosity on his face, and a bit of confusion. Because now, standing so much closer to her than when he'd seen her on stage, there's really no hiding it. Out there, maybe he could've convinced himself that it was makeup and heels and wires, stagecraft like an elaborate magic trick. But. He'd felt Steph's body under his hands when she'd hugged him. You couldn't fake that. ]
so in terms of my second experience with aliens ever, i can't say this one was that great.
[ he and sam had been sent out in response to a baffling distress call. when SHIELD explained that they thought it was aliens, sam had sent bucky a Look which made bucky fling an empty paper cup of coffee at the other man. "androids, aliens, wizards," sam had said again with a waggle of his eyebrows. "every damn time."
which is how the pair of them wound up fighting off horrible screaming things that kept trying to attach themselves to people's faces. one had latched onto bucky's vibranium arm, its mouthparts digging uselessly at the metal. he'd thought maybe they were related to tiny chitauri leviathans, but apparently there were more things and other kinds of aliens in heaven, earth, and space— as evidenced by the RAC agents who had showed up, and shown them how to neutralise the beasts. helped bail their asses out of the fire. ]
just think, soldier boy these were only the babies
[ baby aliens of an invasive species that, as far as dutch can tell, is intent on conquering the universe, terraforming planets to their particular brand of hellhole, and wiping out all of humanity.
she's not a fan. hasn't been since before she started a war because of their mother, really. (well, and her own sister/mother, but that's a whole other story and she's not going to get into that, thank you.) ]
sincerely, then: what the fuck. what are the adults like, and how much would i not want to meet one?
[ her suggestion is casual and easy enough but it makes him hesitate for a second, wondering— he couldn't even say the last time he went and bought drinks for a pretty woman. but drinks for a battlefield compatriot? that, he knows how to do. ]
what kind of drinks do suave, heroic secret agents from space like to drink?
[ he does a double-take at that one. sarcastic and mildly horrified: ]
cool. very cool. earth already fought off one alien invasion in broad daylight, so i guess maybe it was our turn to field an invasion of the body snatchers one.
and you might regret being that open-minded, just so you know. i've had some horrible swill in my time. like, moonshine-in-the-trenches level swill.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
It's Daisy
You still up for that trip to Coney Island?
no subject
Flat-out completely forgotten about their original plans for Coney Island. Normally he really is a morning bird, but last night's sleep had been even more restless than usual, tossing and turning and going over the events of the night: that heady mixture of something he thinks might've been a good date for his first time in the better part of a century; fretting over whether she really thought it was a disaster; considering this new threat he'd heard of for the first time; wondering if he ought to mention it to Sam; preemptively girding himself for the eventual ribbing he'll probably get from Sam if he brings it up—
All of which means Daisy's text message wakes him up, Bucky jolting awake and pawing for his phone where it's sitting on the floor plugged into the wall beside his head. He stares at the message, blinking, his mouth muzzy. Thank god it's a text and not a call. He feels like death warmed over. (He always feels like death warmed over.) ]
i'm gonna need coffee to feel human again but yes, please
a jog will probably wake me up
you get home safe last night?
[ Of course she did, Buck, otherwise she wouldn't be texting you. He kicks himself a moment after he's already pressed send. ]
no subject
Maybe he wonβt even answer.
Sheβs about to pocket her phone when it buzzes. Her stomach does another flip as she reads his response.]
Yeah, I got home okay.
[About four hours after she left, and with a black eye forming. Jemma of course fussed over her, and she may or may not be sneaking out of the bus to go see him.]
Meet you outside the Starbucks near the subway??
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[ The steady proliferation of Starbucks over the years has been annoying, unseating so many local coffeeshops, but at least it'll get him his fix. Bucky gets dressed quickly enough, waffling over his clothes for a moment, before finally just going for functional exercise-wear: joggers and a long-sleeved shirt, with a frayed hoodie tugged on over it. Gloves, as always. When he gets on the subway to Brooklyn, he's yawning, but the early-morning sunlight starts to scour away that tiredness. He's lost in thought when the train goes over the bridge; he stares out through the windows, automatically looking for the Statue of Liberty out in the water. It's a clear enough day that he can catch a glimpse of it, a distant washed-out green.
It's cheesy as hell, but he always looks for it. These fleeting glimpses over the bridge. Like a steady lodestone in his surroundings; something familiar to anchor the rest of this strange world by, to remind himself that some parts of New York just don't change. He hasn't irrevocably lost the city he grew up in.
When the subway's swallowed back up underground, Bucky lets himself drift a little: head tipped back against the wall, eyes closed and half-dozing while he waits for the last stop. Eventually, the train spits him back out at Coney Island, and he moves through the station — sunlight glittering through the murals, the rush of morning commuters, he's feeling almost dizzy and disconnected again, but maybe that's the sleep deprivation talking — and he beelines straight for the Starbucks. When he spots Daisy already in line, he moves up to join her. Flashes her a smile, approaching: ]
Hey. Morning.
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Turning to look at him, a smile spreads across her face.]
Hey.
[She's at least attempted to cover the bruise, but when she had it wasn't nearly as bad as it was now so it's a shoddy job at best.]
Is it technically morning if you haven't slept yet?
[Daisy teases, and judging by the tired look on his face he hasn't gotten much sleep over.]
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What the hell, Daisy.
[ Said, perhaps, with more familiarity than he should— more abject fondness for her than he should— but yesterday had been a long night by the time they'd parted ways. She already knew far more about him than he'd intended to let slip on a first, blind date, and he knew more about her than she was likely prepared to give away either. It was a shortcut to suddenly caring more.
It was a shortcut leading from his head to his shoulder to his arm, his right hand reaching unthinkingly out to graze his gloved fingers gently (it's odd, how his touch can still be so gentle) across the bruised hollow of Daisy's cheek, the swollen skin of her black eye. Haphazard makeup can only do so much. He traces the evidence of an evening gone ugly, not putting pressure on the skin lest he press too hard and make it hurt. She looks like hell, and that's on top of learning she hasn't even slept yet. ]
You said you got home okay. What the fuck happened last night?
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I did, eventually.
[They're in a line, so she keeps her voice low.]
That guy's friends found me.
[AKA the Watchdogs.]
It's fine. I'm fine.
[And she is, she's dealt with far worse than this.]
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end
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Heβs walking home from the bodega, and Daisy is teasing him over his choice of snacks when she hears shouting followed by gunfire. Her stomach instantly drops.]
Whatβs going on? Bucky? Bucky?!
Shit.
[Sheβs out of her small room in seconds, running to the cockpit where May is to tell her to turn the plane around. She just hopes they arenβt too late.
By the time they arrive, Daisy is in her suit and running down the ramp as soon as it lowers. May and Mack behind her, she holds her hand out ready to use her powers. It doesnβt take her long to spot Bucky fighting someone off and she uses her powers to send them flying across the road and into someone else that was clearly with them.]
Bucky!
[She shouts as she runs towards him, making sure that no one is coming at her.]
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Tonight, though, is already turning into a mess. His bag of bodega snacks is ripped and scattered across the pavement, the sixpack of beer (he can't even get drunk off it but it was for the sake of the thing) shattered and spilling into the gutter, while he faces down a set of heavily-armed men. When Daisy goes haring into his neighbourhood, she can see the debris of the fight: a broken newspaper dispenser. An unconscious man slammed into a car, the imprint of his body having caved in the door. Bullets embedded in trashcans. A trail of chaos leading to one (1) Bucky Barnes.
And even in the middle of a fight, he can't stop thinking about how messy it is. If he's unlucky, it's gonna be all over the news and it's gonna give the Avengers a bad name, Steve would be disappointed—
(Steve isn't around anymore, and neither are the Avengers—)
He's superpowered, he can handle himself, but they've also come equipped. These men know exactly who they were coming for, the asset they're trying to reclaim, and so they've used some kind of specialised taser on him: it's temporarily shut down his arm and it hangs from his shoulder, so much dead weight. There's blood seeping through his shirt. There's a kind of fleeting panic in his blue eyes when he looks over and sees her pelting towards him.
... Because of course. The gunshots over the phone. She knows where he lives. ]
Daisy—
[ The HYDRA agents (because what else could they be?) are circling like a pack of wolves, now sizing up this new addition to the party. Someone mutters something in Russian to someone else, and Bucky's head snaps toward the sound, his gaze narrowing into a glower. ]
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Raising her hand, Daisy doesnβt hesitate to start sending the HYDRA agents flying through the air.
From back at the bus, Simmons is warning everyone through comms that more company is showing up. Itβs becoming more apparent whatβs going on here, theyβre here to try and get Bucky back. Her stomach sinks, and just for a second she loses focus long enough for one of the HYDRA goons is able to knock her in the back of the head hard.
She crumples to the ground, not knocked out, but temporarily stunned at least.]
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He turns around and uses his metal arm as a bludgeon. It might be temporarily paralysed but it's still forty pounds of metal, and forty pounds of metal driven repeatedly into someone's face puts them down for the count. His hand still isn't responding and he can't move it, but it'll do for now: there's another gunshot and he spins, letting it ricochet off his metal shoulder. Even if it's motionless, he can still use it as a shield, too.
(God. Seriously. What he wouldn't give to have Steve and his shield here today.)
And then he's running towards Daisy. There's other agents back at the plane, he realises with a pang of contrition. Ah, jeez. He's probably going to get a talking-to from his government liaison after this. ]
Daisy. Hey. Hey, are you okay?
[ He lands on a knee beside her, his free hand at her pulse. The soldiers are getting closer, and he can feel that stinging hitch in his side of the bullet probably grinding against his kidney or something, and he needs backup. ]
Quake. Get up.
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Don't call me that.
[Because, really, that's more important than anything else going on right now.
She's fine.
Opening her eyes, Daisy blinks twice to get her vision to stop swimming. That's when she notices the soldiers closing the distance. She raises her hand to send them flying again, but May is already on top of it. Kneeing one of them hard enough that they crumple to the floor in a heap.
Pushing herself up off the ground, Daisy notices the blood on Bucky and her face gives away her concern. Hands held out as if expecting him to collapse.]
Is that your blood?
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[ Adrenaline is churning through him, dimming his awareness of the pain. It's just buying him time, so the full awareness of it will hit him afterwards and he'll probably need some help then, but for now he's running on anger and instinct and determination. He watches as May dispatches a couple of the men — the woman is surprisingly imposing despite her fairly diminutive height — and then as another man is still trying to get back up to his feet where Daisy sent him flying. ]
Useful powers you got there.
[ Daisy's reached out to Bucky as if he's delicate spun-glass and on the verge of breaking, but he catches her hand instead. Tugs her back up to her feet as they stand together, and he shoots a closer look at her arm, and the finely-fitted compressed microfibers beneath his hand. Bucky gives an arch of his eyebrow, a rueful smile as his gaze shifts between it and his own metal arm visible through a rip in his sleeve: ]
I like the gauntlets.
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poss a wrap? β€οΈ
this got a little long... oops
"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."
Well, that had been a damn lie, hadn't it. It seemed that the instant Bucky had left her for good, the second he shipped off for real, Steph went and did something monumentally stupid: she signed up to be a test subject for a military project so secret that she didn't even understand what it was supposed to be when she signed her name on the dotted line.
Look. She's not stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary. Without Bucky around to help her cover rent, with her ill health preventing her from getting factory work, without generous family members around who might bail her out in an emergency, the best she could hope to scrounge up to survive on would be a single bed in a boarding house full of other women, someplace probably damp and crowded, with no heat in the winter and no shade in the summer, somewhere that would only make her already numerous health problems even worse.
What did she have to lose?
Nothing. Which is why she let herself be assessed by a parade of scientists, why she hardened her expression and didn't react when she could hear them talking about "wasting the serum on someone like her," why she didn't let herself think about the possibility that maybe Bucky would come home after all, and what if something happened to her instead? He'd be furious with her for getting herself offed somehow when his back was turned, but she couldn't focus on that thought at the time. Besides, he was doing exactly that to her, wasn't he?
Stepping into that iron coffin had felt like dying for real. Her overwhelming memories of that day are ones of excruciating pain, the kind that makes you think that Hell is real, the kind that tears you out of your own head in an effort to save your mind while your body gets ripped apart and re-made.
Colonel Phillips was pleased to see her stagger out of Stark's contraption. If that serum could turn a weak little runt like her into a movie star, then think of what it could do for an actual soldier. Think of what an asset it would be, to have an entire squadron of men that were taller, broader, stronger than the average soldier. Think of how quickly they could win the war!
It's hard to think back to that day, and not just because she had to watch Dr Erskine bleed out beneath her feet as her body buzzed with adrenaline and sweat cooled at the hollow of her throat. It feels like a million years ago, even though she knows it's only been a few months. It feels like it happened to a different person. She knows she's lucky that the army decided to make her useful instead of locking her in some lab somewhere to let people run tests on her to try and recreate Dr Erskine's work. She's grateful she's not spending her days strapped to a table under a bright light while her blood is stolen and bits of her are excised.
But does she really have to do high-kicks all the time?
At least the other girls are sweet to her. There's a little awkwardness, sometimes, since Steph isn't really very good at all the peripherals of womanhood — she can put on her own makeup, more or less, but she's hopeless at doing her own hair, and has to beg some of the other girls to help her set it every night — but they get along well enough, and she's never dropped a single dancer when she lifts them up over her head, not even once. It's kind of nice, having girlfriends. She still desperately misses Bucky, though.
Maybe after the show tonight she can ask around, see if anyone has any idea where the 107th is stationed. Even if they're not on part of her tour, she might be able to get someone to get a letter to him, wherever he is. She hopes he's being safe. He better be, or she's going to kill him.
The opening chords for her act start to play, deafeningly loud from the speakers set nearby, and she shakes herself out of her idle thoughts. Linking pinkies with the girls she'll be dancing with, she lets them complete the ritual she's grown so used to after all these shows, each of them leaning in to kiss the air above the other's cheek so no makeup is smudged, a quick good-luck before they dart on stage.
Taking a steadying breath, Stephanie tosses her hair over her shoulders, straightens her spine, and sweeps on stage. ]
yells i love it! mine also... spiraled out of control
Names were plucked out of a colonel's steel-pot helmet while soldiers shifted their weight restlessly from foot-to-foot, bumping shoulders in disorderly lines. Order has broken down overseas, lost somewhere in their damp clothes and soggy boots and brittle coughs and those haggard shadows under their eyes. Not enough sleep, not enough reinforcements: fresh troops keep being promised and promised and promised, and every time they finally do arrive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed from boot camp, they're ill-prepared and often just wind up being meat for the grinder. Most of them won't survive the next month.
War is hell, but for just one night, a few of them get to cluster together and listen to the tinny music and hoot and holler as the pretty women high-kick their way across the stage, led by their new supposedly-superpowered mascot.
James Barnes is one of the winners tonight, and like everybody else, of course he's seen the posters. (He doesn't recognise her in the pictures, behind the mask. This primped and preened and perfectly-coiffed creature doesn't resemble the Steph he remembers, and they don't put her name anywhere on the posters either. The symbol and the product matters more than the woman.)
He's tired, bone-deep tired, but knows that a few more hours of restless sleep back in his cot won't help, either. He's lucky to have gotten his name pulled. So he should enjoy this. The man beside him is laughing uproariously at the performers, Show a little more leg, darlin' — and once upon a time Bucky's sure he might have enjoyed this, he was a skirt-chaser, he always did like women, so isn't he supposed to enjoy this?
But it's when he finally sees her in the flesh, rather than grainy newspaper photographs or stylised illustrations, that Bucky suddenly leans forward on his bench, frowning at the sight. It can't be. Surely it's not.
It's like seeing Stephanie Rogers' taller sister up on that stage, all pin curls and smiles and glowing skin. Some of it is the blush; she had never bothered with makeup around him, not the boy she'd grown up with, the one who'd taken her under his wing like a brother (at least, they'd always both told themselves it was like a brother). She's taller, healthier, fit enough to keep up with all of the other athletic women on the stage. It doesn't make any sense, and neither does the way she's able to lift them without breaking a sweat, carrying a bench laden with other dancers.
He's leaning forward, hands against his knees, all of his attention riveted forward with an avid intensity. What, you never seen girls before, Barnes? someone else asks beside him, but he ignores them.
He drinks in this impossible sight, and he waits it out. After the show wraps (along with calls for encores), it does seem to have managed to revive the soldiers' spirits, at least a little. They disperse towards the mess tent, while Bucky goes and waits where the performers are. He sees some of them eventually file out, dressed in more normal clothes (there's fewer sequins, for one), but there's no Steph yet. He's fidgeting, worried about someone accusing him of being a peeping tom trying to sneak in on the dancers — but finally, he just goes ahead and asks an aide where Liberty Belle is kept. He's pointed in the direction of her own small tent being used as impromptu dressing room — and in lieu of having an actual door to knock on, he clears his throat and calls out instead. ]
Heard they were keeping a pain-in-the-ass named Rogers back here.
[ Is he about to accidentally walk in on her changing? Maybe. ]
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Doing the whole song and dance routine out in bright sunshine with dozens of weary faces looking up at her is like a punch to the gut.
She thought she was helping? She thought that The Liberty Belle was somehow assisting the war effort? No. These men were helping. These men, who fought, and who died, who gave up everything to defend the country they loved, they were the real heroes. She's just a chorus girl, pretty, and stupid, and ultimately useless.
She tries not to look at the soldiers' faces too closely. She doesn't want to see them either lusting after her or too dead-eyed to care. It unsettles her deeply.
Still, she's been doing this long enough that she can fake it pretty well now, and she's even memorized all her dialogue to such a degree that she can just shut herself down mentally and open her mouth to let the words fall out, ringing out across the assembled men hunched in front of her without the need of a microphone to assist.
Once the set is over, and after the multiple encores have been performed, she slips away as quickly as she can, trying to hide in the small knot of dancers so she won't have to keep up her public facade and smile and flirt with the soldiers milling around. It's not that she's unappreciative of their attention — this is the first time in her life any man other than Bucky has actually seemed interested in her, although most of the time men nowadays are more interested in her tits or her legs and not in what she has to say — but she's tired, and guilty for reasons she can't explain, and she wants to get back to her tent so she can write to Bucky.
Getting out of her costume is an easy enough thing after all this time, shucking the star-spangled skirt and her striped bustier, peeling her stockings off her legs and wiggling her toes now that they're released from their high-heeled prison, and then it's time to take off the rest of her get-up, starting with her war paint.
She's in the middle of applying cold cream to melt her makeup when she hears a man's voice call out near her door, a man's voice that asks for her by name, a man's voice that sounds like...
No. It can't be. ]
Hold on! [ she replies, taking a tissue and wiping at her face hastily to remove the cream and the makeup beneath, smearing mascara around her eyes until she looks like a raccoon. ] I'll be there in a second! [ Rubbing roughly at them with a fresh tissue, she gets the worst of the kohl removed and then hurries to adjust her civilian clothes so she looks presentable and won't give whatever soldier it is who's bold enough to loiter outside her tent a show he didn't sign up for before rushing to the 'door' and smiling as she pulls it aside. ]
Did you want an autogra—oh. Oh, Bucky. [ She stares at him for a moment, stunned despite the fact that she knew she recognized his voice, then takes a step forward, barefoot and uncaring about the mud, and flings her arms around him to hug him tightly while she tries not to tremble. ] It's really you.
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It looks like her, sounds like her, her blonde hair even smells like her, and yet. ]
And it's really you. What the hell. I thought you were smaller?
[ Bucky doesn't let go of her yet, where her arms are still wrapped around his neck and swept up in his embrace; he just frog-walks them both into the tent, and only then sets her back down once they're safely inside. He leans back and peers down as if she's somehow hiding invisible six-inch heels, but instead it's just her bare, muddy feet wiggling on the floor of the tent. Thankfully, the skirt and the bustier have been swapped out, so he's able to politely snap his gaze back to her face, his glacier-blue eyes poring over her features, mapping it to what he remembers of the friend he left behind in New York.
There's a little bit of kohl still smeared at the corner of Steph's eyes. His hand reaches up, absentmindedly wipes that small clump of it away— and then he realises how close they're standing and he takes a genteel step away, clears his throat. Bashful in a way he never had been, before. Hearing half a fieldful of men openly salivating over his best friend's calves had been a surreal experience. ]
I thought Liberty Belle was just a publicity thing. But you're really...
[ Healthy? Strong? Superpowered? He's not sure what word to fill in that blank. Marveling, he finally says: ]
You lifted that bench of girls like it was nothing.
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Basic packed on a bit more muscle on his frame than working at the docks was able to do, and even being in an active war zone living on Army rations hadn't been enough to erase all that breadth. He feels solid and real in her arms, and yet she's still half-convinced she's dreaming somehow. ]
You're here.
[ She laughs as he marches her back into her tent, his arms still snugly wrapped around her, and she obliges by clinging on a little bit longer and keeping her knees bent, her feet kicked up behind her like a careless child being hauled around.
She's put on a good six inches and seventy pounds of muscle since he's last seen her, her body still feeling alien to her, like a suit of armor she's shrugged into and not herself, but with Bucky here in front of her, she's felt the most like herself that she has in months. ]
I wasn't— I didn't know if— Where you'd be stationed. I hoped someone could tell me, but I didn't think that— You're alright. Oh, Bucky.
[ She lets him thumb at the corner of her eye, her lashes dipping as he strokes her cheek gently, her own hands settling on his chest because it just feels natural to let them land there. It's a much easier maneuver to pull now that she's almost as tall as he is.
Going a little bit pink when he steps away from her, she chews her lips, still faintly stained from her lipstick. ]
You're going to be cross as two sticks when I tell you...
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[ The line slipping forward and back as they won and lost ground, temporary outposts being set up and then collapsing, taking refuge in little Italian towns and then moving onwards, mail carriers trying to get their deliveries through without losing them across hundreds of miles of mud and wire. There really wasn't much stability in their lives. Those little letters from home are a lifeline for these men, signed with a kiss or a photograph from sweethearts in hometowns. Bucky had gotten one from his sister in Indiana; had double-checked the envelope at the time, half-hoping but not expecting a second one from Stephanie. Having her inexplicably here in person, though, is a far better alternative.
Peering around the tent, he surveys the relative luxury that they've set her up in, better than what the other girls have had to share and make do with. There's the trove of makeup, tubes of lipstick scattered like bullets across the tabletop, stacks of signed Liberty Belle prints, some stockings draped over the back of the chair—
Blushing slightly, Bucky's gaze snaps back to hers. There's still open curiosity on his face, and a bit of confusion. Because now, standing so much closer to her than when he'd seen her on stage, there's really no hiding it. Out there, maybe he could've convinced himself that it was makeup and heels and wires, stagecraft like an elaborate magic trick. But. He'd felt Steph's body under his hands when she'd hugged him. You couldn't fake that. ]
C'mon, Steph. Whatever it is, you can tell me.
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ugh sorry i fell back into being slow af
you're fine!!
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for ~motivation.
[ he and sam had been sent out in response to a baffling distress call. when SHIELD explained that they thought it was aliens, sam had sent bucky a Look which made bucky fling an empty paper cup of coffee at the other man. "androids, aliens, wizards," sam had said again with a waggle of his eyebrows. "every damn time."
which is how the pair of them wound up fighting off horrible screaming things that kept trying to attach themselves to people's faces. one had latched onto bucky's vibranium arm, its mouthparts digging uselessly at the metal. he'd thought maybe they were related to tiny chitauri leviathans, but apparently there were more things and other kinds of aliens in heaven, earth, and space— as evidenced by the RAC agents who had showed up, and shown them how to neutralise the beasts. helped bail their asses out of the fire. ]
still, though. think we owe you some thanks.
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these were only the babies
[ baby aliens of an invasive species that, as far as dutch can tell, is intent on conquering the universe, terraforming planets to their particular brand of hellhole, and wiping out all of humanity.
she's not a fan. hasn't been since before she started a war because of their mother, really. (well, and her own sister/mother, but that's a whole other story and she's not going to get into that, thank you.) ]
you can pay me back in drinks
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[ her suggestion is casual and easy enough but it makes him hesitate for a second, wondering— he couldn't even say the last time he went and bought drinks for a pretty woman. but drinks for a battlefield compatriot? that, he knows how to do. ]
what kind of drinks do suave, heroic secret agents from space like to drink?
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[ drinks for a battlefield compatriot. drinks with a goodlooking guy who knows how to fight. is there a difference?
(dutch has hang-ups, but this has never been one of them.) ]
the alcoholic kind
beyond that, i'm not all that picky
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cool. very cool. earth already fought off one alien invasion in broad daylight, so i guess maybe it was our turn to field an invasion of the body snatchers one.
and you might regret being that open-minded, just so you know. i've had some horrible swill in my time. like, moonshine-in-the-trenches level swill.
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all you need to know is that if someone bleeds, they're human. if there's green goo, you're fucked.
never heard of moonshine, but it can't be worse than some of the algae brew i've had before pree started stocking the good shit
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