LOG: Bucky Barnes (616) & MJ (MCU) WHO: Bucky Barnes (616), MJ (MCU) WHEN: Sunday, June 6th - middayish WHERE: Tony Stark's fancy-boy garage at the Avengers Compound WHAT: Two teenagers "borrow" one of Tony's cars. TRIGGERS: None
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The one nice thing about this compound -- literally the one nice thing, as Bucky’s generally-agitated mind kept tally -- was that there was a certain freedom to what doors seemed to open. Meaning, that is, that there was sometimes a pleasant surprise to find one opened just by attempting it. That low risk approach had landed him in what looked like a garage, Bucky himself acting no more suspicious than any teenager might look like kicking around some restless energy and exploring.
His hands were shoved into the pockets of a jacket he’d been provided to replace his bloodied fatigues, and he casually sent his gaze down a row of slick automobiles that looked like some future visionary had wrought into being. His brow raised at them, but nah. Not his speed. A fast glance at the dashboard revealed nearly no instrumentation at all, which would’ve been more of a puzzle to dwell on if not for some glint of chrome catching his eye a further back.
Instinct moved him to something that resembled the kind of wheels that you’d see in the pages of Dick Tracy; it was a smooth, bold, black line of ink. Bucky moved towards it, one finger tracing the line of the hood as he craned to look in the driver’s window. His reflection peered back translucently on the surface of the glass, the most prominent thing being the bandaging over his recently-broken and still-healing nose. That was going to hinder his game a little, but he’d dealt with worse.
MJ had found the one place in the whole damn compound that no one else wandered into. She could sit, read her book, make a little noise if she wanted to listen to some music. The floor wasn't particularly comfortable, but a few pillows fixed that. Besides, MJ was used to a whole lot worse.
The cars were pretty interesting though. Most of them were kept in such order that MJ felt like she was in a museum. That suited her though; she liked museums. She liked museums almost as much as she liked being alone.
Which she discovered she now wasn't.
Unless it was Tony Stark himself, she was just going to ignore whoever it was. She was good at staying quiet, at making herself invisible. She wished she had that superpower. Especially now with Peter and his [....] relationship. Whatever that was. He'd never acted like that after they'd admitted they liked one another. Was there something wrong with her?
Then it was impossible to ignore the other person in the room. Was he staring inside the car or at himself? No, it was definitely at himself she decided after a few silent moments. She looked at her book as she spoke, as if she had never looked up at all. "What did you do to your nose?"
Bucky minimally tilted his head toward the voice. So someone else was here, and they had probably watched him casually scoping out the wares. No big. It wasn’t like he’d come in here announcing his plans or purpose... and what were those, anyway? In a room full of cars -- more cars than any human needed in a lifetime -- what was his plan here? His brain chimed in helpfully: take a car, drive that car, get out of here.
He then turned to sight the source of the voice, leaving the prospective getaway car alone for the moment. “What makes you think I did it to myself? You should see the other guy,” he replied, giving a general thumb-over-shoulder indication to some invisible assailant.
But even so, he was keenly observing his company. She was folded up on the floor with some pillows, book in hands. Book in hands? Okay, so it was one of those types of dames. “That punishment, or personal choice?” he asked, nodding towards the book.
MJ looked up as if she was more than eager to get back to her book but was deigning to bestow her gaze upon him. It was a trick she'd learned over the years so that people didn't think you were too interested in what they were doing, and it always worked. Most people wanted attention, and if you didn't give it to them, they usually found a way to get it.
Case in point: this guy definitely wanted attention. He had a swagger about him. Even still, there was something else underneath it all that she couldn't quite put her finger on.Give her time though.
"So you think reading is a punishment."
Bucky gave an easy shrug. “Could be. Not always, but nine times out of ten? Sure.”
He leaned back against the car chassis. It was hard to pin her style against anything he’d ever seen, but she gave the impression of someone who went for practical clothes, no frills to be seen here. Or maybe there was another reason… to keep people from noticing her? “Either someone put a bunch of cars in your library, or you thought you had this place to yourself. How close am I?”
He had gone right past the flashier cars, the ones most teenagers her age would get hyped about and went for the older models. The car he was currently leaning against was about as old school as they got without being a Model T. Some weird 1950s version of a family car, but with style. Like people with expensive SUVs these days.
MJ plopped a bookmark in her place and snapped the book (The Stonewall Reader) shut, set her book down, and stood up. "Clearly I'm not the only person looking to escape."
Bucky’s eyes focused on the book’s title, but it meant absolutely nothing to him unless she happened to be a fan of Stonewall Jackson. Something about that thought struck him as false, call it a hunch. He looked up with her movement, but didn’t budge from his spot. She was a lot taller than he would have guessed…
She also was evading his question, and in doing so seemed to be prying for his motive in wandering in here. Not the only person looking to escape. How about that? 50-50 chance this was a setup, but he was willing to take a risk. His fingers found the door handle behind him and gave it a test tug. The door opened -- probably because the owner thought this was a secure facility -- and swung outwards.
“Guess not. But the wind sure ain’t gonna carry you out of here, so you probably want a ride.”
"You're gonna steal one of Tony Stark's cars?"
MJ's brain was constantly turning over information: new, old, mixing the two, thinking about random things a little too hard. She was smart, but she was also an overthinker. After flexing that muscle for years, it worked fast. There were dozens of reasons not to jump in the passenger's seat. Don't get noticed. Finish her book. Get something to eat soon. Not get arrested for grand theft.
But none of those mattered at the moment because MJ just wanted to get away from this building for a short while. She reached for the door and climbed in. "I'm in."
Tony Stark? Guess that was the moneybags who owned this whole place. He could spare a car if he had a couple dozen on standby, Bucky decided. He watched the as-yet-unnamed passenger settle into her seat and then gave an amused exhale at the luck of it being that easy. Couldn’t everyone be that agreeable?
He slid into the driver’s seat and then reached for the wires under the steering wheel. Thank god this Tony Stark had something he could work with -- or, more accurately, that he could hotwire blindfolded. The engine turned over and roared to life. Bucky grinned.
“Way I hear it, New York City’s generally south. We find a road going that way, and we’re golden,” he told her as he shifted the car into gear and started it rolling from its display spot. There was a hint of daylight ahead that suggested an exit, and he steered towards it.
MJ laughed under her breath, mumbling, "Golden." Nobody talked like that anymore, so her suspicions that he wasn't from this century were pretty much cemented. His haircut wasn't exactly common either. Neither was someone who knew how to drive a manual shift car. There were memes made about that.
"I'm MJ, by the way. I figured if we're going to get arrested, you should know my name."
“Fair point,” Bucky replied. They were coming up on the ramp out, and he squinted against daylight while his eyes adjusted.
“Jimmy,” he told her, even though he couldn’t stop his expression from touching on a mild grimace. It was the name the other Bucky used, and it seemed like the most likely to hold together his flimsy alibi or at least not give away that he was some ‘junior’ version of someone else. He held out his left hand for her to shake, careful to time it between shifting gears.
It took MJ a second to realize he wanted to shake hands. She stuck hers out and gave his a shake before sitting back in her seat and pulling her seatbelt on. She shook her head. "Yeah, I'm not calling you Jimmy. James or J. Take your pick."
Well, that was a twist he hadn’t seen coming. James wasn’t much better in his mind, but at least he’d be less likely to zone out if someone called him that thanks to years of superiors leaning into either that or Barnes. “Guess it’s James. You strapped in? Because I’m about to see how much this thing can go.”
MJ was still baffled that he thought this car could break any kind of world records. She imagined that Tony Stark may have tinkered with it (unlikely if he wanted to resell it in pristine condition), but the odds were against it. This thing would probably get 60 miles per hour maximum. "If you wanted something with more pick up and go, you should have gone for something more modern."
She paused. "What year was it for you?"
He waved the remark about the car’s dated quality off. “Goes faster than my feet would, and it probably takes a turn like a tectonic plate. Y’know, slower but god help you if you get in the way. Driven worse, this is fine.”
And he could feign not hearing that other question, but clearly there was something giveaway about him. About as giveaway to him that she wasn’t from roundabouts 1945. “Forty-five. Heard we won a war since then. I’m catching up.”
"Lost a couple since then too."
MJ was a little excited that she'd guessed all those things and made a correct assumption. She always was. If they had a gambling version of Clue, she'd be a top player. But there wasn't, so she was stuck doing the school thing. She'd planned to speed up her courses this summer to graduate over the summer. She'd be 18 in September, there was no reason to stick around here.
"Why Manhattan?"
They were breaking away from the compound now, and heading down a tree-lined, windy road. It didn’t instantly placate Bucky’s twitchy nature at being in a new world and out of an era he knew, but it felt a little closer to home out here with just nature.
“Why not Manhattan?” He wasn’t ready to give everything away. “You lookin’ to cut out somewhere else?”
"I was kind of hoping to go to Queens." Her mom was there, and while they weren't really supposed to go see them, she just wanted to check that her mom was okay. That she wasn't freaking out. Which reminded her...
"Did they give you a communications device?"
“Right next door, then. Guess you’re in the right place,” Bucky answered. He wriggled a bit as he fished something out of his back pocket. He’d been told it was for talking to people, but as of the moment he hadn’t even bothered to… whatever you did with it. It had been accepted with skepticism and was merely on his person because he forgot it existed. “This expensive-looking roof shingle?”
MJ reached over and grabbed it. The easiest way to deal with both of them was to turn them off right now. Hers was in her back pocket. She retrieved it and turned it off as well. "They can track us with these, so I've turned them off. The last point they'll be able to bounce off is the cell towers right here."
But MJ knew that with a car this expensive, Tony probably had Lojack or his own tracking system on it. She probably should have thought of that before jumping into the car with him.
He had no idea what any of that meant, but she seemed to understand it, so he nodded. “If you say so.” There was a small glance spared in her direction, but Bucky reminded himself that getting to the City was enough of a drive that if he got on her wrong side now, then it was gonna be a rough trip.
“Think you can find some tunes on this thing, MJ?” He gestured to the radio. Probably a safe bet for now, just to fill the silence in a little.
"Someone's going to have to give you a crash course on current slang," she told him, before reaching for the radio. She doubted there'd be anything interesting on it, and he specifically said tunes so she assumed he wanted music. The oldies stations wouldn't be, well, old enough, but she tried to find one. "If you're trying to hide what year you're from anyway."
At that final remark, Bucky gave her a more pointed side glance. “Don’t think I said anything about hidin’, but if that’s you offering to give me some pointers…”
MJ smirked. "You're trying to escape first thing. I'm not even sure your name is really Jimmy, given that you cringed when you said it. So maybe it's something similar, but either way you don't like being called it. That's why I offered J or James. You're from 1945 with what looks to be a semi-regulation-style haircut, so you were obviously in the war."
“Ah, okay, so it’s gonna be like that.” He returned his eyes to the road. “My name is James. My sister is the only one that called me Jimmy, but someone else started on that line and I figured I’d keep it tidy around here answering to it. And whatever you wanna make of it, I guess I’m a civilian now.”
"This isn't the army, but it's not really civilian life either," she told him. She felt like she'd been conscripted into a war for these Infinity Stones after that whole thing with the Collector. They were here for a reason, blah blah blah. That reason was dumb because MJ had nothing to bring to the table for any kind of battle.
"I guess you get used to it." Unless your boyfriend in the future was with someone else in the past. Then you hop in a car with a total stranger. "My name's actually Michelle, but I go by MJ. So you could go by something other than Jimmy if you don't like it."
Bucky huffed a small laugh at the suggestion on a name, but he kept his face from giving away why it was amusing. “I could,” he told her, his boyish grin in full view. And he didn’t offer much more than that for an answer.
“So, what’s a Stonewall Reader, and why’s it something you’d be reading alone in some rich guy’s garage?”