The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2014-11-06 14:34:00 |
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[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: So military runs in the family and also there are far too many members of the Barnes family running around out there.
Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 4
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 3940
Summary: They'd taken the car to Annapolis.
They'd taken the car to Annapolis. It was way too cold to go at highway speeds across the states on the bike, and Bucky was just as glad. It was one thing to go around the streets of DC without helmets, but Steve and Bucky both knew better than to go on the highways without them, and Bucky hated the damn things. They were worse than hats, and as much as he knew he'd look different to Peter when he saw him, he didn't need to look ridiculous on top of it.
Steve pulled to a stop alongside the curb. Across the street from them was a tan, one-story house, nothing special. Two windows flanking a small front porch, a tiny front yard, and it didn't look like there was much more to the backyard, as crowded as the street was. On the front of the house, by the door, were the numbers for Peter's address.
Bucky stared out the window, not moving to get out. He was so close to seeing his brother, and he was afraid of actually doing it.
"Bucky?"
Steve did that a lot.
Bucky didn't look at Steve, just kept staring at the house. "I'm not sure I can face him," he said quietly.
If Steve hadn't been touching his shoulder just past where the metal met flesh, Bucky wouldn't even had known that Steve's hand was there. "He doesn't know," he said. "And even if he did, he wouldn't blame you for it."
"But I know," Bucky said. "I caused some of the worst things to happen last century. And now I have to look him in the eye."
"You didn't cause those, Bucky," Steve said, voice firm. "Hydra did." Bucky didn't argue, but as true as that logically was, it didn't change the fact that Bucky remembered being the one to pull that trigger, to hunt down those targets. When he didn't say anything in reply, Steve spoke up again. "We can go back, if you want."
Bucky finally tore his gaze away from the house to look down at his mismatched hands in his lap. "No," he said. "He said he wanted to see me." He grabbed his gloves off his lap and pulled them on.
"And you want to see him," Steve said. "Deny it."
Bucky couldn't help but smile, glancing over at Steve. "I deny everything, you know that."
"Get out of the car," Steve ordered, opening his door.
"Yes, Captain," Bucky said, unbuckling and getting out. He locked his door behind him, waiting by it for Steve to come around from his side of the car. "You know, it's going to suck if he's not home."
Steve joined him, hands in his coat pockets. "Guess there's only one way to find out," he said. "Come on." He started for the door.
Bucky took a second to follow, his feet not quite willing to cooperate at first, before catching up. He stayed just behind Steve, letting Steve approach the door first and ring the bell. Bucky's stomach tied itself into knots as they waited.
From the other side of the door came the sound of footsteps, then the door unlocked and opened. Peter, just as he'd looked in that picture on the CNN article, startled, staring at them. "Steve!"
Steve and Bucky were both forced to step back as Peter practically threw open the screen door. If Steve hadn't been so big by comparison to Peter- who was hardly little -Bucky half suspected that Peter would've practically lifted Steve up into a hug.
Steve laughed, returning the hug. "Sorry it took so long to visit," he said. "I didn't realize you were even still around."
Peter stepped back, hands still gripping Steve's arms. "Don't put me in my grave yet," he said sternly, then glanced at Bucky, the wide grin on his face softening to an affectionate smile. "Bucky."
As nervous as Bucky had been, and still was, that didn't stop him from smiling a bit. "Hi, Peter."
For a second, neither Barnes brother moved, time ticking backwards, until Peter stepped over to Bucky and hugged him tightly. "I missed you, big brother," he said quietly.
Despite the age, despite the size difference, despite everything wrong about everything, Bucky recognized his little brother, recognized his voice, had heard him say that so many times whenever Bucky would come home to visit after he'd moved out. He wrapped his arms around his brother, closing his eyes. "I thought you were dead."
Peter pulled back, holding onto Bucky's shoulders and giving him a wet-eyed glare. "You have room to talk!" he snapped. While Bucky gave him a somewhat contrite look, Peter's gaze went to Bucky's left shoulder.
Bucky looked over at Peter's hand, which had loosened its grip, and rolled his shoulder back away from his brother's hand. "Let it go, Peter," he said.
Peter dropped his arms, studying Bucky a moment. Then he shivered, looking around. "Come on, get in here," he said, holding open the screen door for them. "Too damn cold out here for us to be flapping our jaws."
Bucky followed Steve into the house, Peter pulling up the rear. While Peter closed and locked the door, Bucky studied the living room they'd stepped into. It was small, although bigger than his and Steve's. There was a couch, a coffee table, and an old recliner that looked like it'd seen better days. Bucky had a feeling it was Peter's usual spot, with how well-used it looked. There was a TV, modern-looking, but not very big, and a squat bookcase that had pictures on it, but other than that, the living room looked mostly empty.
Bucky pulled off his gloves, shoving them into his coat pockets, and wandered over to the pictures. There were more of them than there was furniture in the living room. A couple he recognized; some pictures from their childhood, pictures of their parents and siblings, a few of Mary and children he assumed were Mary's younger brothers. Nephews he'd never known. There was a picture of Rebecca with two young girls, girls he assumed must be her daughters. More family he'd never had a chance to know.
"Bucky, give me your coat," Steve said from behind him.
"Hm?" Bucky looked back at Steve. "Oh." He shucked off his coat, letting Steve take it as he looked back at the pictures. There was a few of Peter as a younger man, pictures that made it easier to draw the line between the kid he remembered and the retiree who was standing next to him. "Who's this?" he asked, picking up one of the pictures. There was an unfamiliar redheaded man, about as tall as Peter, with his arm wrapped around Peter's shoulders.
Peter took the picture from him, looking at it. "That's Frank," he said.
Bucky looked at him. "Who's Frank?"
Peter took a deep breath, setting the picture down. "My partner."
Bucky stared at him, trying to process that. "You don't mean business partner, do you?"
"No." Peter looked over at him with a defiant look in his eyes that Bucky knew all too well.
For another few seconds, Bucky could only stare at him more, trying to reconcile what he remembered with this news. Then he gave his brother a dirty look. "You had me teach you how to approach women, and you were homosexual the whole time? My wisdom was wasted on you, boy."
Peter laughed, and Bucky heard Steve snorting like he was trying not to himself. "Glad to hear you don't seem to mind."
"Why would I mind?" Bucky asked. "But seriously, why'd you ask me about girls when you weren't interested?"
"A few reasons," Peter said. "For one, I was trying to hide. You know how hard it was in those times. I seem to recall you had a gay roommate at college."
"Who, John?" Bucky said. "Yeah, he was. Didn't bother me any, but he was a bit paranoid about it. Constantly asked me if I was going to kill him after I found out." He glanced around for Steve, suddenly feeling a little rude that both he and Peter were ignoring him. Steve was sitting back on the couch, listening politely. He waved off Bucky's concern without Bucky even having to voice it. Taking the permission, he looked back at Peter. "How'd Mom and Dad react when they found out?"
Peter shrugged. "Mom cried. Said she'd never wanted such a hard life for me." Then he looked like he wanted to laugh. "Dad said 'good, means I won't have any more grandchildren.'"
Bucky rolled his eyes. "Because Dad hated a chance to spoil people."
"I think he got tired of it after the fourth one," Peter said. "Then Rebecca went and gave him number five."
"How thoughtful of her," Bucky said. "So how long were you and Frank together?"
"Fifty-three years," Peter said. "We met and got together in 1951. Met in the Navy."
Bucky gave him an incredulous look. "You enlisted? Didn't my death teach you anything?"
"Hell no," Peter said, giving him a smarmy smile. "I didn't enlist, I went to Annapolis. Retired a lieutenant. I outrank you."
Bucky looked over at Steve, motioning to Peter. "You hear this?" he demanded. Before Steve could do more than laugh, he looked back at Peter. "We're not military anymore, you don't outrank shit."
"According to the president, you're still in the service," Peter pointed out.
Bucky made a displeased face. "Only for a few more days," he said. "And you aren't, so you still don't outrank shit." Peter put on that too-innocent face that Bucky never bought. Peter was never innocent. "Did you meet at Annapolis?"
"No." Peter shook his head. "We met during the Korean War. He was a petty officer onboard the ship I was serving on."
"Fraternization in the ranks," Bucky said, then applauded his brother in a slow and completely sarcastic manner. "Good job, you make us all proud."
"I never did like following the rules," Peter said, looking distracted by Bucky's hands. Or rather, his metal hand.
Bucky sighed, dropping his arms. "You want to ask about it."
"I'm trying not to," Peter said in a roundabout confession.
Bucky looked at Steve, almost looking for help, but knowing he wouldn't get any. Steve was a terrible liar, he'd be even worse at fielding that question than Bucky would. At Steve's lost look, Bucky sighed in frustration, and motioned to Peter's chair. "Go sit down."
Peter's eyebrows raised. "That bad?"
"No," Bucky said. "I'm just tired of looking at you so close to eye-level. I don't remember giving you permission to grow up."
"You weren't around to give it," Peter said, and while Bucky doubted his brother had meant to, it caused a stab of guilt to settle in his gut.
"There's a lot of things I wasn't around for," Bucky said. "Wasn't exactly my intention."
Peter settled down in his chair. "I know. I didn't mean-" He cut himself off as Bucky took a seat on the edge of the coffee table, putting himself catty-corner to Steve and Peter. "You know, Mom used to take the switch to you for that."
Bucky laughed. "She took a switch to my ass for a lot of things," he said. "Never stopped me. Besides, she's not around to do that anymore. And I can guarantee that you wouldn't catch me to do it yourself if you tried."
"I'd try anyway," Peter grumbled. "That table was clean a minute ago."
"Oh god," Bucky said, holding his head in his hands. "What is it with you people getting weird about butt germs? You're as bad as Steve was about his candy."
Steve finally spoke up in the conversation. "You sat on my candy," he said with pointed annoyance.
"I did not sit on it," Bucky said. "We established this. It was behind my back."
Peter looked between them. "And we're back to the mystery talk only you two seem to understand. Glad to see not much has changed."
"Have you ever known things to change with us?" Steve asked. "He still sometimes treats me like I'm going to have an asthma attack going up the stairs."
"Twenty years of habits, Steve," Bucky said, a bit cross. "We keep having this discussion, and yet, you never get over it. We've been around each other precisely four years since a German doctor decided to give you a miracle cure to everything wrong with you, that's not enough to break twenty years of habits."
"I'll get over it when you break those habits," Steve said.
Bucky took a deep breath, looked at Peter and pointed at Steve, silently demanding his little brother side with him in that particular conflict.
Peter shook his head. "I don't get involved with your lovers' spats," he said. "You know that."
Bucky scowled. "You're the worst little brother," he said. "You're supposed to be on my side."
"I am in every way except when it comes to you two," Peter said. "Anyone with any brains knows to stay out of things when you and Steve start bellyaching at each other. Mom gave up on trying about the same time you managed to break her of calling you 'James,' according to Paul."
"You know, I wouldn't have even bothered with that, if she didn't have that tone problem," Bucky said. "I could never tell if she was yelling my name because I was in trouble, or because she just wasn't sure if I was close enough to hear her. When she called me Bucky, I knew she was just making herself heard. When she called me James, I started running."
"Is that why you did that?" Peter asked with a laugh. "I always did wonder. Mom just said it was because you were a strange child."
"You were all strange children," Steve said, completely unhelpfully.
Bucky pointed at him. "You have no room to speak, you're Irish. And of course we were strange kids, we were her kids. Insanity runs in the family."
"It practically gallops," Peter said, looking up at the ceiling with an entirely too amused smile.
Bucky raised an eyebrow, thinking that what Peter had said was familiar, but not quite able to place it. "And you got that from where?"
Peter stared at him. "Arsenic And Old Lace? Cary Grant? Peter Lorre? It came out in '44, you were still around."
It took a minute of racking his memory to figure out what Peter was talking about. "Oh, that. I think I saw that all of once and was half-asleep through it. We were on the front lines, Peter, we didn't get a lot of recreation time, and we saw more local films than films from back home."
"You need to rewatch it," Peter said. "The humor's your type. Weird."
Bucky looked at Steve. "We can make that date night."
Steve just rolled his eyes. "You're something special, Bucky."
"Only if I'm special to you."
Steve grabbed a couch pillow and smacked Bucky soundly in the face with it. While Bucky laughed, Steve put the pillow where it'd been before. "Sorry to abuse your furniture, Peter, but he requires a firm hand to keep him in line sometimes."
"He thinks I'm a dog," Bucky griped, giving Steve a side-long look.
"Then he doesn't take you to the groomers often enough," Peter said, earning a betrayed look from Bucky. "Honestly, why did you let your hair grow out? You look like a hippie."
"I do not," Bucky said, tucking his hair behind his ears, a bit self-conscious. The only person to comment on his hair was Steve, and Bucky understood that. Peter didn't understand, Peter only knew him from before the war. Being around his little brother took him back in time a bit, and pre-Hydra Bucky would've rather gone sewer swimming with New York's famous rats than let his hair get like that. Different time, different person.
"You didn't answer my question," Peter said. "And yes, you do."
"You're right, I didn't," Bucky said, still not answering. "Astute observation."
It became painfully apparent, then, that Peter had been brass; he had that look of a commanding officer about to run an enlisted man through the ringer for mouthing off. "Which means you know more than the president let on that you did."
"Not really," Bucky said. "When I ran into Steve two years ago, I had no idea who he was. I didn't even know who I was. Why do you think I'd know anything more than that?"
Peter looked conflicted, torn between two roles, that of a concerned brother and that of a soldier on a mission. Bucky hated seeing that on his brother's face, hated seeing that the military had given him that split personality that only people who'd gone through what Bucky had should have. "Because you're not giving me a straight answer," Peter finally said, the words that of a naval officer, but tone that of a scared younger brother watching something awful happen to his family.
"When have I ever?" Bucky said, trying one more time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Steve with his eyebrows raised, looking tense and like he wasn't sure if he wanted to intervene somehow to keep Bucky's secret just that, or if he wanted to get away before there was a nuclear blast from two Barnes brothers about to butt heads.
"Bucky." Peter's tone had gone back to full-on officer mode.
Bucky took about three seconds to figure out how to lie in a way that would let him live with himself. "I tore up my arm going down the mountain," he said. "I remember being found, I remember seeing doctors, and I remember having this arm. There's not a whole helluva lot else there for me to remember." Which was true, technically. He'd spent a lot of that time in cryo, there wasn't much there to have in his memories. Years-long sleep didn't give a lot of touching moments to file away in the mental photo album. "I looked like this when Steve found me. Like I said, I didn't remember anything."
When Peter looked over at Steve for confirmation, Steve shrugged. "He's right, he didn't recognize me, and he didn't know his name. He's told you about as much as he's told me." Not entirely true, but the 'about as much' qualifier made it a palatable enough lie for Steve to get away with it.
Tension visibly drained from Peter's face and shoulders, Lieutenant Barnes leaving behind a retired old man who only knew something horrible had happened to his long-dead brother. "It's too bad you don't remember," he said with a weary sort of smile. "If you did, I'd have to get back behind the helm to hunt down whoever did that to you. Whatever they did."
Bucky was just as happy to let him have that assumption. "Easy there, Captain Ahab," Bucky said. "Let the Navy keep their tug boats, you're retired."
"I don't have to be," Peter said. "But you're right." He looked over at the bookcase. "Would you like to meet your family?" he said, flipping topics.
Bucky looked over where Peter was looking, spotting what looked like albums on the shelves. A few of them, from the looks of it. "So how many generations are you going to dump on my head?"
"Only a couple today," Peter said, getting up and going to the bookcase. He flipped through a couple albums, finally selecting one and taking it back to his spot. Bucky moved off the table to sit on the floor and give the table space to Peter for the pictures.
The three of them spent the next few hours going over the pictures, Peter giving names and telling the stories that each picture had captured as if they'd happened yesterday. He had the Barnes memory, crystal clear, which was something Bucky was grateful for right then. The family had gotten big after he'd died, and there were a lot of names to remember. Bucky filed names and faces away for later, on the off-chance he got to meet any of these people.
Dinner time rolled around without them noticing, until Steve's stomach decided to loudly announce the time. Steve looked frozen, slowly glancing down at his watch, while Peter smothered a smile. Bucky gave him a bland look. "Dinner time?"
"Past," Steve said.
Peter glanced towards the next room, and Bucky could only guess that he was looking towards the kitchen with his next words. "I don't have anything that'd make a big enough meal for three of us," he said, sounding a bit desperate. "I could treat you two out?"
He didn't want Bucky to leave, Bucky could tell that much. Bucky didn't entirely want to leave himself, but at the same time, he needed a break from the past for awhile. "No, we should get back," Bucky said. "I'm technically AWOL. We never asked permission to leave DC."
Peter gave him an aggravated look. "And you made me party to this?"
Bucky flashed him an ornery grin, getting to his feet. "Like I wouldn't make sure to get you into trouble with me."
"You remain the asshole I remember," Peter said.
"That's what I say all the time," Steve said.
Peter pulled each of them into a hug in turn. "When you get that discharge and have more freedom, come visit more often. I don't want to get to see you just once before old age carries me off."
Bucky shoved the lump in stomach at that thought aside and gave his brother a smile. "What, and let you die peacefully? Screw that, I'm going to harass you until you're begging for death to give you a break."
"I'm holding you to that," Peter said, walking them to the door.
Steve and Bucky said goodbye, bundling back up in their coats, and headed back for DC. Neither really spoke, not until the last twenty minutes or so, when Steve commented on the size of Bucky's family. Bucky barely acknowledged him, watching out the window and trying to untie his brain from the knots it'd gotten snarled up into from the day.
He almost felt back to his new normal when they got back to their apartment. He waited patiently at the door for Steve to unlock it and let them in, then froze as the door opened. He grabbed Steve's arm, holding him still. He heard tapping from inside the apartment. He frowned, looking up at Steve.
Steve looked confused, then glanced into the apartment, and then tensed. He heard it too.
Bucky suddenly wished for one of his weapons, or even Steve's shield. It was probably just one of the appliances deciding to misbehave, but there was that chance that someone or something had gotten in, and Bucky didn't like facing unknowns without some measure of defense.
Without giving Steve a chance to argue, Bucky slipped in past Steve, moving with the silence of a well-trained assassin, mind completely submersed into the Winter Soldier, the best defense he could ever ask for. He crept just past the edge of the coat closet, able to see into the living room and dining area, although the kitchen remained obscured.
Natasha Romanov tilted her head back over the arm of the couch, where she was laying as if she belonged there. "Hi, guys."