fossilised | It's AU time

"No, it is not stress. I know my dreams, Steven, and these are not the usual dreams. If I had the stress then I would see him dead, but I see him with beard and long hair speaking odd words to me."

She nudged his ribs with one foot, glad to have him here and real and mostly okay. She would have to make sure to thank Bucky when she saw him for protecting one of the most important people to him.

"He has gone back to the hospital. His brother was injured, I do not know how badly. But you will stay here with me tonight, yes?"

She didn't want to be alone. "I will make you the cookie dough and we can watch one of your chick flicks."

“How about we cook the cookie dough into cookies first so no one gets sick from potentially contaminated eggs?” Oh Steve, always thinking. Or always skirting danger by going by the package directions and not leaving his health or the health of those he loved up to chance? “And you can come over to my place. The couch is bigger and Bucky should get to experience one of my Chick Flicks.”

Steve just liked sappy romance stories, all right? He liked war films too but he figured that romance was a little better considering all he’d been through…and all Bucky had been through.

“I’m real sorry to hear about Loren, though,” Steve said, helping Natalia pack up some things from her gross refrigerator. He’d come back this weekend to help her clean it, if work let him. He didn’t want to look at that yogurt. It looked like it had sprouted previously unknown life inside of it. “Next time you see Thor…” Preferable the real one and not the dream one with the beard… “You tell him I wish his family the best. Now get changed. You smell like smoke.”

Nat rolled her eyes, how could Steve not eat raw cookie dough? That was the most American thing she could think of, and she loved it, but he wouldn't do it. It was endearing and ridiculous, and she wouldn't change him. But she would change this new need to be with Bucky all the time; he was a nice guy, and she wanted to see him in a relationship, but not be attached at the hip.

"You can leave him for one night, yes?"

She settled her legs a bit more firmly over his lap to keep him there, though she wouldn't actually argue that much if he insisted.

"I am wanting a girl's sleep over, just you and me, we can even paint your nails a nice colour, hm?"

“I’m all he has,” Steve said, not about to be bullied even if Nat was just being possessive at the moment and meant nothing by it. “And I want you to paint his nails too. He can be one of the girls.”

Nat gave him such a look for that, and then laughed. “All right. Price of admission to girls night is manicures.”

Steve might have checked with Bucky first on that but it was the best compromise he was going to get. Therefore, when Bucky was balancing two boxes in one arm down the stairs to put into the corner in the studio, Natalia greeted him with a shoe box of nail polish and demanded that he pick his color. Over her shoulder, Steve hummed, avoided eye contact, and shoved a tray of dough into the oven for the 8-10 minutes it would take to cook up.

He was not taking sides. Nat would win anyway.

Bucky raised an eyebrow, but Steve seemed to be very concentrated on avoiding looking at him, so this must be something he had got Bucky into with Natalia. But he wasn't that insecure in his masculinity, and so he immediately put the boxes down and came over to poke his finger through the shoe box in proper contemplation.

"What do you think? This blue is the same as my eyes, but you can't beat a classic emo punk black?"

"Not black."

"Alright, alright-- hey, this one. It's the same colour as Steve's eyes," he said and held up a bright periwinkle blue with a lopsided grin. "Do we get to pick for Steve too, since he doesn't seem interested?"

"Yes," Natalia grinned suddenly, looking dangerous. "Yes, I think that is so."

"Oh good. Uh... how about this orange and this pink? We could do them in stripes and then seal them on with clear?"

"Orange and pink?" Steve cringed as he checked the oven light on the cookies and decided to keep in his kitchen lest he be saddled with neon colors meant to mock a sunrise on his fingers. It wasn't as if nail polish couldn't be removed, but pink and orange stripes just seemed so cruel. He wrinkled his nose.

It was good that Natalia was being less possessive, but he didn't like the idea of these two ganging up on him. At all.

"I'm the keeper of the cookies, so don't piss me off," Steve offered, guarded, which made the redhead look back at him.

"I wished the have the dough only so that is no problem," she said. "Now you come here and sit. We will finish with you first while you cook out the point of the dough."

"You mean salmonella?"

"Steven, do not make me send him in after you."

"Sorry, Steve, but the pink and orange is your destiny, you can't fight it."

Bucky plucked out the most lurid shade of each with dexterous fingers and waggled them at Steve. "You said this was my place too, our place, so you can't hold anything hostage in our oven."

"You are moving in together?" Natalia didn't necessarily look happy about that, her expression impassive but her eyes threatening to talk sternly to Steve as soon as they got a moment. It was so soon, they hadn't known each other that long, surely moving in together was a terrible move.

"Yeah," replied Bucky, still advancing on Steve with the nail polish. "He offered and I accepted, turns out that I'm crazy about him and kind of addicted to his cock."

"You can't say stuff like that unless you're drunk and can't help yourself!" Steve said, the brightest shade of pink of them all. He held up his oven mitted hands as if they were boxing gloves and shook them at Bucky. "No one needs to hear how much you like-- Any of that!"

Flustered, he tried to push off the way he was feeling about this situation and how much he really wished Nat hadn't needed some Girls Night in right now. That made him feel guilty a moment later, of course. Natalia needed him right now. Sex would Bucky could wait until later. He'd live having his pants on in the apartment for a little while, right?

Nat was still half glaring needles in Steve's direction, arms crossed under her breasts in that sassy way she had when she wasn't pleased. She'd never have pegged him for the sort of guy that would just fall head over heels for the first guy that fucked him..but there he was, doing the most stupid thing ever.

"Really? Because I think that it's perfectly appropriate to talk about how much I love my boyfriend's cock and how much he satisfies me in the bedroom. Is that not right?"

Bucky was full on smug smirking now, eyes clear and present and twinkling with fun. Clearly coming to the tattoo parlour and spending time with Steve had done wonders for his mood, though he couldn't help but feel a small ember of dread for the fireworks bound to happen at midnight.

"We can do this the easy way, Steve, just take off the gloves. Nice and slow, nobody needs to get tickled here, Steve."

"Ah, we do not want to tickle him! He has great farting potential," Natalia said because evidently the only thing in the world that truly mattered was making Steve pay with blushing. The poor guy wasn't even sure what to say about it, he just stood with his jaw slack and blinked a few dozen times.

At least he did take off the gloves. "Can we be finished talking about my body and it's functions?" he asked, pouting just a little in a way that made Nat hop over to him and enfold him in an embrace. Steve didn't hold grudges and so he hugged her back, still pouting a little. "If that's a yes, fine. I submit to your terrible color choices."

The movie of choice for this evening was the classic Heath Ledger Ten Things I Hate About You because it was romantic and Steve loved the grand gestures of it all.

It felt like more than just a retelling of the Taming of the Shrew.. It was more like something from another time, when guys could be utterly stupid and sweet.

At least there were cookies to go with the sap and polish fumes as chasers.

Bucky had never seen that movie before, but by the time Heath Ledger was running along the bleachers singing I love you baby, he had utterly fallen in love with it. It was so cheesy but so charming for it, how could he fail to like it? Besides that, he had Steve next to him and he could watch the smile at his lips. He was determined this was going to be a turning point, things would be good from here on out.

After the movie, Nat cornered Steve in the bedroom as he was changing into more comfortable sweats in preparation for a long girly night and to see in the New Year with his boyfriend and best friend. She wasn't at all embarrassed to catch him in his underpants, just closing the door behind her to sit on the bed.

"I like James, he is nice, but he is too soon to be moving in. Steven, you have known him so little time, do not be so quick to give your heart away."

She didn't want to see him hurt. He might be tough in a lot of ways, but she didn't think that he'd deal with heartbreak at all well. And she was worried about him being taken advantage of, he was too eager to see the good in people.

Steve pursed his lips as he watched his well intentioned friend get her dander up. It wasn't her fault. She was trying to do right by him but Steve didn't see things the way she did. She knew all about taking advantage of people. It was how she had lived in Russia. You play weak and scared and you can get people to do things for you. She saw Bucky less as a threat and more of a guy without any income who had somehow gotten himself the best guy in the world that paid for him and now was letting him live in his place. Rent free.

She didn't dare say that to Strve. He had on his rose colored glasses so tightly that they might well be welded to his head.

"Yeah. I know it's really quick but wow, Nat. You just know sometimes. And I know. It's like we grew up together. Like he knows everything about me. I'm going to help him. I just want him to be here."

That probably sounded desperate but Steve knew it wasn't. He didn't expect anyone to understand but he didn't really need them to either.

"Listen to what your words are, Steven. You want to 'help him', that does not sound like an equal relationship, that sounds like you are allowing his issues to cloud your judgement until there is nothing but a desire to help. He may take advantage of you. Does he have money to assist with rent? Does he work? Does he expect you to support him? Steven, this is too fast."

She knew that he was stubborn and she would likely not get through to him, but it just felt wrong. She loved him dearly, with his prickly pride and generous heart, and she would not have someone take advantage for a free ride and meal ticket.

"There is no shame in continuing to date in separate apartment. Maybe in a year or two when you do know all there is to know, maybe then it is not so foolish an idea."

Though he was trying not to be angry here, as he did know that Natalia was trying to lead through example in her own life, he didn’t care to be told what to do and he absolutely didn’t care to be bullied into anything. His friend, unfortunately, had a lot of bully in her, forcing into shape her life the way she wanted it. She didn’t mean to be awful by it. She didn’t have anything but the very best of intentions, but Steve didn’t want to be shoehorned here either.

“He’s not like your other boyfriends. I’m not waiting a year or two. I don’t need your permission and I’m not asking for your permission. I don’t tell you what to do and I don’t appreciate it coming my way either. I’m noting your caution here, and I respect that, Nat, but I love him.”

And that was probably too soon too, but Steve lived every day like it might be his last. He was too stubborn to let life kick him down for long, he was even acting almost as if he didn’t even have a gunshot wound to his shoulder! But in reality, a bad cold could take him down. The next asthma attack could be his last.

Just walking down the street in this weather could be fatal.

He wasn’t going to live safely. He was going to live fully.

Natalia threw her hands up in despair. She thought about telling him not to come crying at her door when it all went wrong, but she wouldn't do that because he might take her at her word and she would be there for him when it did inevitably all go south. She just wished she could have saved him from the heartbreak.

"Very well, these are your mistakes to make. But I will be saying I told you so when this is proven to be too soon."

She span on her heel and stalked out of Steve's bedroom to go back to the couch, where Bucky was pretending he hadn't heard any of them, jaw clenched tight and staring intently down at his knees.

Well, fuck. He knew he wasn't good enough for Steve, but it majorly sucked that Steve's closest friends thought that too.

It didn't take a genius or a spy to read Bucky right now and Steve felt his stomach sink. He didn't want to choose between people he cared about but Nat wasn't giving him a choice. Loyalty was profoundly important to Steve but so was following his heart.

Steve paused for just a moment before he strode over to his boyfriend and half collapsed on his lap, arm around Bucky's neck.

"You gotta promise me something," Steve said, mumbled and low enough for only Bucky to hear. "You've got to trust the things I tell you and not the things you hear other people say. I want you here. It was my idea. I love you. This is right, Buck."

"I know that, you numbskull."

Bucky's voice was low and warm with affection, even if he still looked unhappy. His arm wound around Steve in return, feeling how right that weight was against him, like they had been created just to hold one another like this.

"I trust you, I know this is right, I just don't want to come between you and your friends. I kinda wanted them to like me, y'know, because they're so important to you."

He sighed and looked up to where Nat was stood a short distance away. "Listen, Nat, I get it. You're not happy about this, you want to protect Steve. I can get behind that, he's amazing enough to want to protect. So if I hurt him, I'll personally deliver myself to you for an ass kicking, deal?"

The redhead mulled this over for a moment, figure exaggerated by her hand on her hip and that hip jutting way out. Steve wanted to grab something to draw with. Her stand was incredibly superhero like! That wouldn't be appropriate for that conversation and what's more, he was happily in Bucky's lap, acting more five than twenty-three. He just liked the closeness. "Yes. You shall do that. And Thor will provide the backup for when I am tired of hurting you until I recover enough to hurt you again."

"Nat," Steve warned, because that was extreme and the look on her face? Well that told him that she was serious. It was worrying sometimes how brutal she could be and it made him wonder if the things she sometimes let slip about her life in Russia were true or if they were actually more exaggeration as he tried to maintain was the truth.

"It is my only real. He will either take it or he will leave it." And then she cracked her knuckles, which actually had Steve blanching because well-- Jesus!

Bucky wasn't intimidated. He had spent literal months being tortured in the worst ways that human beings could do to one another, by men who wanted him dead a lot more than Natalia Romanov, he could take a beating or two. Especially if he did something as unforgivable as hurt Steve.

"You've got it, deal. If I hurt him, you and Thor can beat on my ass as much as you want to. But you've got it all wrong, I'm no freeloader and if Steve never wanted me to live with him then I'd still love him. I'm gonna get a job and contribute, wait and see."

Nat considered for a moment, before spitting on her hand and holding it out seriously to shake. When Bucky did the same and they had sealed the deal, she flopped next to them as if everything was right with the world now.

"Is there not supposed to be things on the television now? Every year, there is a celebration and a countdown to the New Year beginning. There should be alcohol too, what kind of girl party is this with no cookie dough and no alcohol? You should be ashamed of yourself, Steven."

Steve tilted his head back, trying not to think of the spit all over the hands of the people next to him, and frowned. “Probably won’t do anything in New York,” he said, “but maybe they’re going to broadcast one of the other cities—“ Boston and Philadelphia both had New Years broadcasts and they flipped between one annoying music act after another until Steve was forced to vacate Bucky’s lap to get out some wine for a toast.

He didn’t have any champagne—he didn’t have that sort of money or the tastebuds for it – and was just about to pop open a nice pinot when there was a knock at the door. Well, it was more like a kick. “I request entry!” that would be Thor. “My hands are too full to open the door on my own!”

At least no one could ever misunderstand Thor. He was always a very literal person.

Steve stepped out of the kitchen to the front door to yank it open, the firefire standing in the doorway with a grin on his face and a bottle of bubbly. “Am I too late?”

Nat jumped off of the couch and opened the bottle immediately. “Three minutes, perfect timing!”

Thor grinned. “I have as well your cookie dough.” It was a good thing he’d been out of the dead zone of Manhattan when she texted!

"Thor, you understand the way to a girl's heart. Steven calls himself an American and he does not even eat his cookie dough as it should be eaten." She kissed him briefly on the lips and then stole the cookie dough to rip the lid off and immediately dig into the raw and gooey mixture. Perfect. Salmonella be damned. "How is Loren?"

Bucky took a glass of the wine rather than the champagne, but he did dig into the raw cookie dough as well when Nat left it unattended for a moment, giving Steve a slightly guilty and slightly challenging sort of smirk.

When the countdown began for the New Year, Bucky casually rose to his feet and stretched, heading for the bathroom. "Just gonna take a leak," he muttered. He knew fireworks were going to be an issue, so he planned to spend the few minutes right after midnight in the bathroom with his hands over his ears and the water running to try and avoid being triggered and spoiling the evening for everyone else. "Save me a New Year kiss, Steve, okay?"

Steve watched Bucky leave but didn’t stop him from going. The water would run for a long time and Steve would do his best to keep the volume low on the television. It wasn’t exactly quiet outside, though, for even if Manhattan was still partially dark and there were no festivities going on in the city, people in Brooklyn didn’t stop themselves from enjoying their holiday.

Shouts and cheers and firecrackers went off for half an hour, not that Nat and Thor were paying any attention, far too into each other now that Thor was able to gloss over his brother’s troubles. He did not want to give Loren away, though his brother was going to need to look for someone to help him in his bookshop.

If only to reach the high up places.

Steve eventually ushered the pair out of his apartment. Natalia didn’t have to be alone with Thor here now and Steve knew that Bucky was going to need some quiet to mellow back out again. Only after they had gone and the streets seemed dark again without the frequency of fireworks going off in the air did Steve lightly knock on the bathroom door.

“All right…?”

Bucky at least knew enough to know that the fireworks would have been a bad idea, and that was pretty much the first time that he had removed himself from a situation knowing it would trigger him rather than pretend that he didn't have any PTSD to contend with. It felt like a big step, even as he sat on the bathroom floor listening to the water through the muffled protection of his hands over his ears.

The knock on the door surprised him and he uncurled slowly, stiff and slightly pale, but still present and in the moment. He looked tired when he unlocked the door and opened it, but he had a small smile too, proud that he had got through it without ruining the night for any of them.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Just thought I'd wash up while I was in there, you know how it is. So... I guess I missed midnight, huh? Does that mean I don't get a midnight fuck?"

Because it's definitely a midnight fuck and not a midnight kiss that's traditional.

Steve wasn’t swayed by Bucky’s sudden need to not only change topics but also to move onto something pleasurable. It was closer to midnight in the central part of the country, but it was still New Years somewhere and Steve took advantage of that as he leaned in to Bucky. “Let’s start with a kiss, soldier, and see where that takes us?”

Of course, neither were surprised just where that took them.

Across town in a hospital room, with Tony Stark on a pull out cot beside Loren’s bed because the nurses had had enough of trying to explain to him that it was a terrible idea to sleep in the same bed with their patient no matter how much Stark hated to nap on the non-reclining chair, an hour or so after New Years’ well wishes amid a haze of half dosed painkillers, a dream of a brother that was so different from the Thor that Loren actually knew returned. It had been about a week of peace by that point, no fuzzing, out of focused voice with the wrong accent, no bright blue eyes waivering as if underwater.

“Loki, listen,” Thor implored, sounding more like a posh-bastardized Brit than a Norwegian. “You are not focusing as I know you are capable. Pull yourself deeper to sleep.”

Despite still being on heavy painkillers and knowing he would be in hospital for a long time, perhaps over a month before they could let him go with a wheelchair, Loren had rapidly regained his acerbic wit in the week past. He had grown more volatile, more liable to lash out at people trying to help him with hurtful words, but at least the people who knew him best had expected this.

He did not want to be helpless, useless, deformed. He did not want to have to hire help, or rely on Anthony for assistance at home. He did not want to be seen as pitiable or lesser by ignorant people in the street, and all of that made him angry.

Loren rolled his eyes as his dream morphed into his brother, somehow weirdly aware that this was a dream, why would he see him as this strange braided and bearded man, why would he change his voice.

"What do you know of focus, my brother?" He hissed back, irritable even in dreams. "You have never once been capable of focus beyond the surface, cease plaguing me."

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