WHERE: Vallo: Barnes-Ulric Homestead WHEN: October 13th, 2023 WHAT: Nyx and Bucky get pulled back to Vallo, with Lucy. But they don't remember their lives together because Vallo's a bitch. WARNINGS: N/A STATUS: Complete
Coming into awareness from sleep seemed to take a while for Nyx. Mostly because he was so damn comfortable. More comfortable than he remembered being in a long time. The bed and pillows and blankets were soft, and the feel of a warm body pressed along his back, an arm flung around his midsection. Which - he knew he should probably be questioning, but for a brief moment it seemed his subconscious wanted him to linger there. In a feeling of warmth and safety.
However it didn't last long as the more coherent part of his brain caught up and screamed that this was not where he had fallen asleep the night before. Not even close. And where he had fallen asleep he had most definitely done so alone.
It was second nature to call up one of his daggers as he quickly extracted himself from the other person in the bed, dagger held out in front of him. He gave a quick glance around the room, nothing looked familiar and all of it was a far cry from the very simple barrack style housing they'd had in the wake of, well, everything.
His gaze then landed on the other man in the bed. Their states of dress not leaving much to the imagination. Despite the wake up, there was a moment where Nyx easily pegged the other as the kind he'd wake up next to, just with an actual recollection of it. The thought lingered but was put aside by the more pressing.
"Who the fuck are you?" Alright, maybe a little crass, but this felt like a very fucked up situation and fucked up situations called for language.
If Bucky was going to be honest, he didn’t quite remember where he had ended up last night. He remembered teleporting throughout the world to party in each timezone as the clock struck midnight. New Years Eve over and over again, until all the drinking and fucking caught up with him. It had been his admittedly lame attempt at trying to get over the fact that it had been nearly a year and Steve wasn’t coming back into his life. Not his Steve anyway.
Yeah, he was a super soldier, but if you drink enough and if you drink it in a short amount of time, you could lose yourself for a bit. And that’s what he had done, to run away from the pain of his botched happily ever after.
Fucking Tumbleweed.
Except he wasn’t in Tumbleweed right now and he couldn’t remember where America had dropped him off last. Was it Brazil? Did it matter? Not really, when he groggily opened his eyes and looked at the very attractive, very naked man that was brandishing a dagger at him. He had only turned his head just slightly to look at the man through his messy bed hair, face still pretty much smushed into his pillow.
“What, you didn’t get my name last night? That’s a little rude,” Bucky groused, as he yawned and started to get himself situated. He frowned, when he didn’t find his pants. Or any clothes around the bed they were in. “Hey, you see my clothes anywhere?” Maybe they took them off on the way in. Should his priority be the man with the dagger and not his clothes? Probably. But there was very little that could hurt him physically, so he wasn’t going to worry about it right now.
That was not the reaction he expected, and he lowered the dagger a little in response. Still on guard, but clearly whoever this was wasn't immediately going to a fight. Nyx figured it might just be rude to act like he himself was. He did a quick rundown of what he remembered from the night before, which was all of it. He'd been working late with the Glaive on patrol plans during rebuilding a few sectors, had all of one drink with Lib and headed to bed.
"See...I remember last night," he started, giving Bucky another glance over. "It was pretty fucking boring and believe me - I'd remember you." Was there a shameless little smirk at that last bit? Of course.
Distantly, Nyx was aware of something else. A subtle tug in the back of his mind, that he felt in his bones so to say. Like a tether. Something he wasn't quite prepared to examine in that moment so he tried to force it from his mind, instead focusing on the situation at hand.
"So again - who are you?" With that though he pointed to a pile of clothes near the door. "Might be yours there." Might because he had absolutely no clue whose room this was.
Bucky’s brain being a little fuzzy hasn’t been newsworthy in years. Decades at this point. So he didn’t question it, when there was an insistent little tug at the back of his mind. Like he was supposed to know something, but couldn’t quite remember.
And whether it was the alcohol or the sex, he was feeling relatively good, so he wasn’t really in a hurry to unravel the mystery of how they got there quite yet. “Name’s James,” he said, deciding he didn’t want to deal with explaining ‘Bucky’ to some cute, but definitely more modern than him guy. He was absolutely shameless himself too, so he didn’t bother to be modest as he bent down to grab what looked like might be his clothes? Definitely his style, but not what he was wearing last night if he was remembering right.
Okay, so maybe this mystery needed to hurry up and get solved.
“Am I calling you Pretty Knife Guy or do you have a name?” He asked, as he slipped the boxers on and tugged the jeans on after. He didn’t put on the shirt yet, eyes focused on the stranger and not quite willing to obscure his vision for the seconds it would take to put it on. And not just because he was hot, but he could hear breathing in the house that didn’t belong to either of them.
Trap? Maybe.
It felt very much to Nyx like he was missing several things and he didn't much like it. He was no stranger to waking up with someone he had only vague recollections of, but it hadn't been a recent thing. It had been hard enough to catch up to waking up after dying, dealing with keeping the world from ending and then the aftermath of a world in chaos to add getting black out drunk or taking home a stranger. Sure he'd gotten damn tipsy in celebration with Lib and the other Glaives after the light came back, but he hadn't indulged in other ways since before everything had fallen apart. Years now if he wanted to count the decade he'd been dead. Months still if he wasn't.
The name didn't do anything to jog his memory, and Nyx was pretty sure there was no memory to jog. Which was a whole other Thing to deal with.
"Nyx," he offered. "Mind throwing me the rest of that?" he asked, meaning the other pair of pants on the ground. He'd get it himself but with the situation as it was he didn't mind keeping the distance. Just in case.
"This your place?"
Up until now, Bucky had been running under the assumption that this was Pretty Boy’s place. Nyx’s place. But the question had him pausing and wondering if his universe was going to be rocked again.
Or whether this was his universe at all.
“No. Not my place,” he said slowly, processing what this could all potentially mean. The lightheartedness from earlier was gone, as he heard a shift in the breathing that was not either of theirs. But one thing he did know was that he would feel a lot better if Nyx didn’t have that dagger in his hand.
Just because he was hard to kill, didn’t mean he enjoyed getting stabbed. So he went to pick up the rest of the clothes and before he could think too much about what he was going to do, he said, “Catch” and tossed them at Nyx’s face, before barreling straight at him, aiming to disarm him and figure out what the hell was going on.
Nyx had let the dagger dissipate back into nothingness as the clothes flew at him. Clothes that were very quickly followed by his partner in what the fuckery. It was enough to take Nyx by surprise and he found himself pushed back down onto the bed. "At least let me buy you dinner first," he said, cheekily, though he pushed a little against Bucky, trying to suss out if he could get out of this hold.
Whatever next move he might have made though was quickly dashed by the sound of a piercing cry from further in the house. The kind of cry Nyx had spent enough time around babies and kids to know belonged to the former.
His eyes went wide as he looked up at James above him. "Uhh...that yours?"
Either this guy wasn’t much of a fighter or he was just as confused about everything as he was claiming to be. His reaction had Bucky falling out of fight mode quickly, hastened even further by the cry that Nyx pointed out.
A baby? He hadn’t been around a baby in forever and he certainly hadn’t remembered acquiring one either.
“Not mine. Taking a wild guess that it’s not yours either?” He didn’t wait for the obvious confirmation, instead lifting himself off Nyx a little reluctantly because the man was very pretty and no longer gave any hints of threat out. Not when a baby was around. He didn’t wait to see what Nyx would do, instead leaving the room to follow the now obvious sounds of a baby crying out.
Despite the whole… Situation™ at hand, Nyx found himself a little disappointed when James got off of him. He was quick to follow though, only pausing to throw on the pants that had been thrown at him. Pants that fit, which was convenient if only adding to the weirdness of all of this.
He stepped across the hall into the nursery - taking in that it was very nicely decorated. Nyx moved to the crib and picked up the crying baby, easily cradling her into his arms. "Hey sweetheart," he said softly, like it was the most natural thing in the world and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why it felt like that either. "What's all the fuss for?" he continued as he rocked a little between his feet, hoping the motion would soothe the infant in his arms.
"Gonna say she's probably hungry," given that it was morning and all. "Want to see if we can find a kitchen and hopefully a bottle for her?"
Well, if that wasn’t a pretty picture, Bucky didn’t know what was. But it was quickly followed by the sudden reality that he would never have this with Steve. He stamped down the irrational surge of sadness he felt at the sight and moved to find the kitchen. “Yeah. Would be an asshole move not to. And maybe we can figure out what’s going on around here.”
Maybe there were other people in the house, though Bucky’s enhanced hearing was failing to pick up anything but their breathing. And…maybe a dog? It sounded like a dog.
Nyx kept the baby close as he followed after James, talking softly as he did. It'd been a while since he'd been around anyone really young, but it was easy to come back to him. Or maybe it was something to do with the sudden wash of protectiveness he felt over the baby in his arms. Or maybe, and he was leaning more towards this one, this was all just some really real but ultimately fucked up feeling dream and he'd wake up any moment now on a cot that his feet hung off the edge of and his roommates snoring.
Though as he watched James walking in front of him there was something in him that didn't really want to wake up.
"Check the fridge?" he suggested as they made their way into the kitchen. "Might be something already made up in there." If not they'd have to dig for some formula.
"Gotta be honest with you though, James, I don't have the first idea on how to start making all this make sense," he continued as he rocked the baby who was now less fussy but very much awake and content to stare up at him. "You got any ideas?" he couldn't help but ask with a smile at her.
Bucky was quiet for a minute. A minute too long, he realized, but that was because he was too busy staring at what was pinned on the fridge with various magnets. Because right when Nyx told him to check the fridge, his eyes caught the pictures that were plastered all over them.
Pictures of them. With various people. Some he recognized like James and Thalia, some that he didn’t. Them wearing tuxes. Them…wearing rings? Them with a baby. This baby.
“You ever had any problems with your memory before?” Bucky asked, soft and processing what he was seeing but not really processing at all. Because what did any of this mean? “Because I’m having a hard time right now figuring out what all this means here,” he explained, moving aside so that the stranger at his back with a baby could see what he was seeing.
"No, not really," he answered. Sure he'd forget a name here and there, forget the odd thing - everyone did. But nothing that would be on par with forgetting how and why he'd ended up where he did this morning.
He followed the other man's gaze though and moved in closer to the fridge. It was… A Lot. A whole life laid out in photos that Nyx had absolutely no recollection of. No way to place. There were familiar faces - his brother, Prompto, Ignis, and Gladio. It was one of him and Noct, big grins and bigger fish hanging from lines, that caught his eye. "That's - my brother," he filled in for James. It still felt weird to say somehow. It'd only been a few weeks since he'd told Noctis as such.
"So what - we just woke up in a life where we're… together? Have a kid? Have some family?" Honestly it didn't sound all bad really, but it was too messed up to let himself linger on that too long. "That's a hell of a lot of stuff to forget." A pause. "What's the last thing you remember?"
“Lucky you,” Bucky murmured to himself, as he looked away from the pictures and then at the man in front of him. His…husband? If the rings were to be believed. Because now that he was looking, he could see matching rings on their fingers. How did he miss that before?
Maybe it was because he was so used to wearing one with Steve, but this was definitely not that ring. That ring had been chucked into the South Pacific during his boozy world hopping last night. Or so he thought it was last night. What the hell was going on?
Whatever it was, he didn’t feel a sense of panic like a normal person would in this situation. Now whether that was because he was used to mindfuckery or not, he wasn’t sure, but something felt almost right about this? “I remember drinking my weight in liquor and then hitting the dance floor. But I wouldn’t trust my memory on anything, if I’m going to be honest.”
"That's a hell of a lot of liquor," Nyx answered, giving Bucky another glance over. But he got it. He'd had his own nights like that, more than a few. "Were you in Lestallum?" he asked, about the only place he knew had dancing these days. Insomnia was still a clusterfuck and the other outposts were filled with too many grumps.
He moved to hand the baby off to James and set about getting a bottle going. Movements coming with ease - maybe too much with ease, given how long it'd been since he'd done any of this.
"Not your strongest suit?" he asked lightly, leaving an opening for Bucky to either talk about it more or tell him to fuck off. Nyx wouldn't blame him for the latter, not with everything else.
“You’d be surprised at how much I could put away.” He would eventually have to explain his abilities and a bit of his history, if whatever was going on was on the more permanent side, but for now, he kept it vague.
Bucky wasn’t exactly sure what to do with the baby. He had been around babies, cared for them back in Blackpoint for others, but his kids had always come to him mostly grown. And yeah, there was the occasional instance when wild magic turned his kids little and he had to wrangle them, but they were still walking, talking brats that he loved more than anything.
This was new territory, a baby of his own.
Bucky took her carefully, trying not to show fear. This was fine. He could do this. But the second he had her in his arms, a switch seemed to flip for him, and he relaxed into holding her, somehow knowing how much strength to exert. “This is new…but it doesn’t feel new,” he explained, gently rocking her as she seemed to settle a little more. At least she wasn’t screeching her head off now. “Never heard of Lestallum though. That in Europe?” He asked, as he glanced away from the baby at the man that was now heating the milk for her.
He was halfway through shaking the bottle before he realized he hadn't checked the measurements, just did it on muscle memory. Muscle memory he really shouldn't have. "Yeah… I get that," he said to James as he went back though and double checked he'd done it right before setting the bottle into the warmer.
There was a pause as he leaned against the counter and took in the sight of the other man with the baby in his arms. It tugged at something in him, something that felt just out of reach somehow. But maybe it was just the pretty picture James made.
"Europe?" his nose wrinkled a little. "Never heard of that one." It was then his stomach decided to rumble, a little loudly, and Nyx couldn't help but laugh a little. "Uhh.. so all this is fucking weird as shit, but there's a coffee maker in the corner there and I saw some bacon in the fridge - how about I make us some breakfast before we really try to figure this out?"
Never heard of Europe? That was a little weird. This guy didn't look like an alien, but at this point in Bucky's very long and very weird life, he wasn't going to question it.
So maybe he married an alien and was raising a kid with him. At least he wasn't dead?
The frown that had started to deepen the lines around his mouth lessened into a small smile, as he heard Nyx's stomach and the mention of breakfast. Whatever was going on could probably wait for a little longer, especially if bacon was involved. This was probably the latest Tumbleweed thing anyway and things would reset soon enough.
"Know how to make pancakes?"
Nyx nodded at the question. "Damn right I do," he answered and set about finding the stuff to do just that. Whatever was going on was so beyond his comprehension right then, but nothing seemed to be life threatening at least. Might as well make some breakfast before trying to tackle figuring it all out.