The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2014-11-22 18:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | bucky barnes, maria hill, marvel, multi-parter, natasha romanov, novel, r-rated, sharon carter, steve rogers, tony stark, yuuo, yuuo: marvel |
[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: Yes, I picked on Miami's team. They actually did throw a punch in the 2014 season.
Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 10
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 3637
Summary: Bucky awoke to the smell of food and the sounds of a quiet conversation, and after a second to kickstart his brain, he realized that, one, people had gotten up without waking him, and two, Natasha almost had to have gone out to do some minor grocery shopping to have food to cook.
Bucky awoke to the smell of food and the sounds of a quiet conversation, and after a second to kickstart his brain, he realized that, one, people had gotten up without waking him, and two, Natasha almost had to have gone out to do some minor grocery shopping to have food to cook. Or picked some up from a restaurant somewhere.
The fact that this had all happened without waking him disturbed him, and worried him. He'd slept so deeply that a potential threat could've gotten by him. This was unacceptable.
"Does he usually sleep this hard?" Natasha's voice.
"Only after a mission," Steve answered. "Adrenaline crash."
Actually, it was a program in his brain to expect a deep cryo sleep after a mission, and his body had simply found a more mundane way of resetting in a similar manner. But he wasn't going to correct Steve. Maybe later, if it came up again, but not in front of Natasha. "I can hear you, you know," he said, still not opening his eyes.
"Good morning, James," Natasha said, sounding entirely too chipper for... well, whatever time it was.
He made a noise that was more appropriate to come from Frankenstein's monster than a human being.
"Translation, he hates being awake right now," Steve supplied helpfully.
Bucky finally opened his eyes, sitting up and glaring at Steve. "Kiss off, Rogers."
Natasha snorted, then coughed, covering up a laugh. "Your hair is a mess."
Bucky turned that glare on her. "Yours wasn't so great yesterday morning either, sweetheart," he grumbled, then ran his flesh hand through his hair. He knew that probably had minimal effect. "What're you cooking?"
"And the man thinks with his stomach," she said. "I ran to the Walgreens downtown and picked up some basics, like milk and fresh bread. What I had was getting kinda green. Nothing special, just scrambled eggs, pancakes, and toast. We'll have something more substantial for lunch. After grocery shopping."
Bucky made a noise of acknowledgment. "Do I have time to take a shower before food's ready?"
Natasha looked at the skillet on the stove. "If you can take a five minute shower, sure," she said.
"Doable," he said, crawling out of bed and grabbing his overnight bag. He had one change of clean clothes left. "There's a washing machine in this complex, right?"
"In the basement," she said. "We'll worry about it later, once we're safely hidden in here and away from game day crowds."
Another noise of acknowledgement. "Good." He looked at her. "Are game day crowds really that bad?"
She glanced at the food, then back at him. "Remember what I said about over ninety thousand people in one stadium? There'll be people tailgating and listening to the game outside. Restaurants will be crowded, so will bars. Everyone in Nebraska is here, and that's not counting Miami's fans." She frowned. "I think it's Miami." She looked at a magnet on the fridge. "Yeah, Miami. Which means we might get to hear them throw another punch. Sore losers."
Bucky decided he wasn't going to comment on how bad a team had to be that they felt the need to punch an opposing player in a game that didn't involve punching, and made his way to the bathroom.
The water in Natasha's building ran a bit hot, which Bucky didn't mind. It was so damn cold in that apartment, and he couldn't figure out why. The warmth leeched into his bones and threw out the creeping memories of coming out of cryo, when everything was cold and dark.
He didn't take time to shave, he wasn't sure he had time before the food was done and something more than scruff was an unusual look for him, which would make it harder to recognize him when they went out. He'd shave later, once they were, as Natasha put it, safely hidden away in the apartment for awhile.
Although a beard felt very weird and itchy. He'd never liked having one.
He emerged from the bathroom- which was not as steamed over as it had been after Natasha's shower last night -still combing his hair. He had a hair tie around his wrist to pull his hair up once it was free of snarls. He didn't normally pull his hair up, but once again with the whole not wanting to be recognized thing.
"You don't have lice, do you?" he asked Natasha, watching her serve up plates of food.
She looked offended. "Of course not, why?"
He showed her the hair tie. "Because I'm stealing this."
Natasha made a frustrated noise. "Didn't your mother teach you to ask before borrowing things?"
"Not borrowing," he corrected. "Stealing. And yes, she did, but that never stopped me."
She held a plate up for him. "Come get food. You must've been a ray of sunshine to deal with as a child."
Steve wasn't the one being spoken to, but that didn't stop him from beating Bucky to that plate of food. "You'd be surprised how often our mothers took a switch to him for things like that."
Bucky shot him a dirty look as he got his hair securely pulled back.
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be surprised at all, actually." She looked at Bucky. "He's got a smart mouth."
"Yeah, but I'm good with it," Bucky said, grabbing a different plate and a fork and wandering back to sit on the edge of the bed. There wasn't anywhere else to sit besides at Natasha's desk, and he had a feeling there might be an argument over it if he tried to take it.
"Do tell," she said, raising an eyebrow.
"You don't get to find out how," he told her, starting to pick at his food.
Other than Steve complimenting Natasha's cooking, the three were mostly focused on their food and not on conversation, so without having to use words between bites, breakfast went quickly. Natasha collected their plates, putting them in the sink before grabbing some paper and a pen from a desk drawer and starting to make what Bucky assumed was a shopping list.
"Will one of you two wash the dishes while I do this?" she asked, staring into her fridge.
"Bucky will," Steve said, like a complete jackass.
Bucky gave him a sidelong look. "James," he corrected. "And you know I hate doing dishes."
Steve gave him an entirely too innocent smile. "Why do you think I volunteered you?"
"You're a punk."
"And you're a jerk, so you deserve it."
Natasha chuckled. "This sounds like an old exchange."
Bucky looked over at her, then shot Steve a dirty look as he stood and headed to the kitchen to do the chore he'd been handed against his will. "You have no idea," he said.
"Pretty much since we first knew each other," Steve said. "So a hundred years, give or take."
Natasha turned her attention to the cupboards. "Cranky old men," she said, sounding more distracted than smartassed. "You two make me feel like a baby."
"How old are you?" Bucky asked, looking over at her and trying to get out of her way without moving from the sink as she looked in another cupboard almost right over his head.
She paused, lowering her notebook and pen. "You're not supposed to ask a lady that."
"When I see a lady, I'll be sure not to ask her," Bucky said, scrubbing at the skillet. What a shitty skillet, he thought. Natasha was getting paid by the government and she couldn't afford a proper no-stick that wouldn't require steel wool to clean it?
Natasha turned to look at Steve. "How much trouble would I get into if I hit him?"
Steve laughed. "A lot, but if you have to, get on his other side. Hitting his left arm will just leave your knuckles bruised."
"He still hasn't learned," Bucky said, stacking wet dishes on the counter to dry once he could get his hands out of the sink. "It's been a year and a half."
"Slow learner," Natasha said, checking her list. "I think I've covered enough variety to get us through a week." She looked away from her notebook and over at Bucky. "The only question left is quantity. I know Steve has an accelerated metabolism, what about you?"
Bucky drained the sink, grabbing the towel he'd dried dishes with the night before. "Not far behind his."
"So in other words, I'm going to have to triple the amount of food I get." She looked at her list again. "My cupboards can probably only handle a few days' food at that amount, then. So we'll be going out more often."
Bucky didn't normally mind the idea of going out, and even in a strange town, it didn't terribly bother him. Except that he didn't want to be recognized, so the less he was out, the better. He paused in drying the skillet, one metal finger tapping against it. "Why don't you two go?" he said. "I'll stay here."
"I'm not sure it'd be safe to split up right now," Natasha said. "If I get a notice from Carter again, we'll have to make a run for it."
"And come here first to pick up our things," Bucky said. "Even if we could just buy new clothes and such, we still have to get that bag in the corner." He motioned towards the corner the couch cushions were piled up in. "The last thing we want is for someone to get ahold of our uniforms or Steve's shield. It'd be better if someone was here and could grab that and rendezvous with you elsewhere."
"He makes a point," Steve said. "Maybe we should stay here. Stay out of the public eye."
Bucky hadn't entirely wanted Steve to stay with him. He'd planned on hijacking Natasha's computer to call Tony and face the music. Music that was warbling and off-key, and generally likely to make the ears bleed. But he knew Steve wasn't likely to leave him alone. Maybe Steve'd be able to talk Tony into not trying to reach through the computer to strangle Bucky.
Bucky would deserve it.
Natasha looked hesitant, but she was clearly considering their arguments. "You don't know your way around the city to meet me anywhere," she said.
Bucky wished there was still water in the sink to flick some at her. "Your computer has the internet, right? We know how to read a map, all we need is Google, fer chrissakes."
"And I didn't exactly want to give you unfettered access to my computer and the information stored there," she said. "Just because you two are a mission for me, doesn't mean you're my only mission, and I'm not letting you get your hands on Homeland's intel."
Bucky crossed his arms, feeling the cold of his metal arm through his shirt sleeves, how unyielding it was against his flesh arm. "It's not Steve you distrust with the computer," he said.
She drew in a deep breath, clearly caught in her untruth. "I can trust Steve to do anything but lie," Natasha said.
"And I thought we were trusting Steve's trust in each other since we can't trust one another directly," Bucky pointed out. He gave her a challenging look. "Do you trust Steve to keep us out of the areas on your computer you don't want us on? We'd need a basic browser and the telecomm program in case you call us for a rendezvous. That's it. Unless I feel like seeing how awful your taste in music is."
When Natasha looked at Steve, Steve simply shrugged. "He's right, you know. I wouldn't let him play around with anything but those three programs."
She frowned, looking back at Bucky. "At least I can assure you that there's no Nicki Minaj on my playlist."
"I have no idea who that is," Bucky said, "and the way you say that makes me glad you don't. Just don't say you have AC/DC in there and we're fine. I don't expect that garbage from anyone other than Tony," Bucky said. "And quite frankly, you're prettier."
She got that smile again. "Prettier than Stark. There's an underhanded compliment."
"At least it's a compliment," Bucky said, putting the last of the dishes away. "I'm staying here, it'll be smarter to have at least one person here to grab the stuff and meet up somewhere." He silently pleaded with her to just agree and go away.
Natasha sighed, looking down at her shopping list again. "I'll take Steve with me," she said. "I think we're more likely to get things done with minimal snarking at each other. Traffic's going to be enough of a headache, I don't need witty and annoying banter to make it worse." She looked at Steve. "I trust you to figure out how much we need. I've never had to cook for more than one person." She pointed a finger at Bucky without looking at him. "You get into anything forbidden on the computer and I will shoot you in places you don't want shot."
"Name one place someone would want to get shot," Bucky snapped.
"And there's the witty banter I want to avoid," she said. Then she finally looked at Bucky, studying him like a mannequin at a department store.
"What?" he demanded awkardly.
She didn't answer, looking over at Steve. "Do you know what size shirt he wears?" she asked Steve, jabbing her thumb out in Bucky's direction. "We'll stop somewhere and get you guys some Huskers shirts to wear so you blend in better."
Thus the mannequin-like studying. Steve looked at Bucky. "He's about a size smaller than I am, but he likes baggier shirts. Hides his shoulder port better."
"I'm standing right here," Bucky said. "I could've answered the question myself."
Natasha looked at him, pushing away from the counter. "You could've, but I wanted to make sure Steve did, so I didn't have to take you along to try on things. You don't look like the sort of person to enjoy the fitting rooms too much."
"Your logic still makes no sense," Bucky said. "Get out of here, get us food before I'm forced to get creative before you get back."
"You don't want him to get creative," Steve said. "Buck- James has an interesting sense of creativity."
"He's your friend, he'd have to," Natasha said, completely without irony.
Bucky made a point of waiting silently while Steve and Natasha got ready to go out, and barely gave more than a grumpy acknowledgement when he was told to behave himself. He watched the clock for five minutes, using the regular ticking of the second hand to calm his nerves, to dismiss his thoughts, to simply mark time. He could've gone all afternoon like that, lost in the sense of the passage of time, like counting down to a target arriving at the predetermined location, or the way he counted his heartbeats before a snipe.
But the five minutes passed, with no sign of Natasha or Steve coming back, and the waiting was over. It was time to engage the target.
The target, of course, being Tony, and the mission being to contact him, and then stand there and let Tony hurl whatever abuses he wanted at Bucky. The mission, ultimately, was to lose his friend.
Getting into Natasha's computer was easier than she probably would've liked, and it didn't take long for him to get the telecomm program open. He hesitated, staring at the input box for a number. One last chance to back out. To run and let whatever happened, happen.
But Tony deserved better than that.
So he typed in the number to contact JARVIS, and waited. It took a minute and three seconds- Bucky counted -for JARVIS to answer through the security protocols. He must've recognized the encryption as a military set up, because the first words out of his 'mouth' were "I'm sorry, but Mister Stark no longer consults for the armed forces."
"It's me, JARVIS," Bucky said. "I think Tony's been trying to get ahold of me."
There was a hesitation that made Bucky wonder- not for the first time -just how artificial that intelligence was. "He has, Mister Barnes. One moment and I'll connect you."
It was another twenty-four seconds before Tony's face appeared on the screen, and Bucky didn't bother trying to say anything, even if he had, Tony would've beaten him to it. "You've got a lot of damn nerve calling me," he snarled.
"You tried first," Bucky said, keeping his tone as flat as possible. "I haven't been home to answer your calls."
"Hiding?" 'Livid' couldn't even begin to describe the look on Tony's face, betrayal and anger and all other manner of negative emotions rolled into one ugly, wet-eyed scowl. "When were you going to tell me, huh? How long were you going to go on letting me be friends with my parents' murderer?"
Bucky winced, tried not to, tried to stay as still and steady as a stone, but this was too personal, this was a friend taking him to task for something he'd done. "I didn't-"
"Didn't what?" Tony interrupted. "Didn't know them? Didn't remember anything? Didn't question orders? How about when were you going to tell me?" He looked away from the camera, and before Bucky could even hope to begin to come up with a reply, Tony looked back at him. "So how'd you do it? It was an engineering failure, I thought your modus operandi was to shoot at people through brick walls."
Bucky made himself not look down at the table, to look Tony in the eye. He deserved as much. "The gas tank didn't explode from an engineering glitch. It was deliberately detonated."
Tony stared at him, then laughed, just one sharp bark of disbelief that sounded like it might be trying to stop a sob. "So what, you just let them burn to death in there? Hoped that they didn't walk away? Let them suffer?"
It was taking everything Bucky had to keep his voice from getting thick, from hesitating, from catching, his fists clenched on the desk in front of him. "They wouldn't have let me walk away without making sure the job was done." He was trying, hoping that indirectly pointing out that it was Hydra that made him do it, not something he'd chosen of his own volition, might bring Tony's temper down a bit, might give Bucky a chance to salvage a friendship.
"So what'd you do, huh?" Tony looked ready to reach through the computer and grab Bucky by the throat. "You stuck around and listened to them scream and die in pain?"
"No!" Bucky was quickly failing to be able to simply answer Tony's questions without his own emotions getting in the way. "Maria died in the initial explosion, she didn't suffer."
"And my father?" When Bucky couldn't answer right away, Tony banged his hand on the screen, like that might reach through and hurt Bucky. "Answer me!"
Bucky closed his eyes. "His neck was snapped." He couldn't bring himself to quite say it, couldn't bring himself to say 'I snapped his neck', didn't want to place himself back in that memory.
Tony's breathing rate had increased, had started to become unsteady, and Bucky didn't have to open his eyes to know that it was taking all of Tony's strength to not scream and cry and maybe try to throw things through the internet at Bucky. "So you walked into a burning vehicle and made the choice to grab him-"
"Yes, I did," Bucky interrupted, opening his eyes just in time to see Tony flinch as if struck. "Don't act like I had a choice at the time. You think I would've killed a friend if I'd known what I was doing?!" He could hear the servos in his fingers whining in protest at how tightly he was trying to clench them, and his fingernails on his other hand were digging into the palms of his hand. "Howard was my friend-"
"Don't you say his name, you don't get to say his name, you sonuvabitch," Tony snapped. "So when were you going to tell me? Huh? When?"
"Would it have done any good if you'd known?" Bucky asked, resignation in his voice, his fists unclenching, but his hands starting to shake.
Tony took in a deep breath, like he was trying to calm himself down enough to answer, before making a sound of disgust and cutting the connection.
Bucky stared at the Homeland sigil that replaced Tony's video feed, not really seeing it, trying- and failing -to control his breathing, his heart rate.
Out. He needed out. He needed air, needed a place to get away; if Tony called back, Bucky didn't care, didn't want to be there for it. He felt every muscle start to tremble, and his stomach to clench. He felt lightheaded, dizzy, unable to swallow. Not now, he thought, resting his head in his hands. Don't do this to me now. He didn't think he could handle another attack, not then.
He almost upended Natasha's chair, sending it sliding across the room as he headed for the door, grabbing his double-layered coat and pulling it on. He barely remembered to pull on his left glove before leaving the apartment, unable to even think about the valuables he was leaving unguarded, unsecured, behind him as he slammed the door shut and headed out. No roof to climb up onto, so he ran until he found a back alley in the part of town the street signs labeled as the 'historic Haymarket.'