fossilised | It's AU time

"Yeah that's real easy for you to say since it's like, your default mode," Steve teased, feeling better all ready. Bucky knew the perfect things to say, all the time. He smiled, and took a massive bite of a donut that was already half the size of his head. He looked like a child playing tea party with grown up things the way he was dwarfed by the pastry and the mug. Steve slumped back against the knotty chair and glanced over his shoulder. There was just the barista at the front playing on her phone and two teenagers in beanie caps by the door listening to one side of a single pair of earbuds passed between them. Everything was quiet. It was as if, for anyone outside of Manhattan, the world had returned to normal.

Even if they were all on the brink of war, political uphevel was underway and the military was making more of its presence known on home soil than ever before.

Here, the world was status quo. Good coffee, expensive pastry, dark rooms, music. Nothing else.

"I just have a bad feeling like... Something more is coming. Or this will trigger something else. Sorry. Worrying for nothing," he muttered, pressing a hand just under the wound in his shoulder to try to discreetly rub some of the itch away.

Bucky hated that Steve had that wound, he hated that Steve would ever be in pain ever, but he couldn't exactly wrap the man in cotton wool and keep him from harm his whole life. Not when most of the things that hurt Steve were internal, his body failing him more often than not.

"Maybe it will. We don't know, Steve, we can never know what the future is going to hold. We just have to do what we think is the right thing, and hope that it works out for the best."

He reached out and flicked some of the pastry crumbs from Steve's cheek, fond and warm and totally in love. Some people might say it was too fast or stupid or whatever, but he just felt as if they had known each other forever. They were meant to be, it's just like-- no matter what reality, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers always came as a pair.

"If you have any more of these dreams, see if you can remember to ask what the hell is gonna happen when we do show up there, and what we need to do."

He'd try to remember that too, but... well, he apparently wasn't getting the dreams.

And not everyone was either. Jarvis had no idea what his boss was going on about on the phone that afternoon. He knew Tony was running ragged, he knew it had something to do with the guy he was seeing, but otherwise, he was out of the loop. Tony pressed him for information about dreams but he said, softly and sternly, that once again, he hadn't had any dreams. His girlfriend, however, looked stricken, just from the way he'd been talking. And lo and behold, her story and Tony's, matched.

Tony spent the whole day and most of the next trying to get people to come to his home the night before the big Whatever was meant to happen. Despite what Loren said about him being better socially with others, Tony was a little abrasive and not everyone was willing to listen.

He finished sending off a text to Steve to help him out with Natalia and her ex boyfriend and then packed up his stuff to go to the hospital.

Hopefully, his dream Loren wouldn't be such a jerk in real life and keep his promise.

By the time that Tony made it to the hospital, Loren was already fast asleep thanks to the increased dosages of sedatives they had been giving him since Tony told Bruce that his fiance was a flight risk. He looked almost peaceful asleep, angry and bitter lines erased from his face in slumber.

There was someone waiting in the room who was definitely not a doctor, not the man who called himself Loki. He looked a little out of place, so muscled that he was practically a walking wet dream in those tight pants and tight white t-shirt, not even his jacket covering over the fact that his biceps were the size of someone's head. He looked like Steve, if Steve had been on steroids since birth and stood an extra couple of feet taller.

"Tony," he greeted, and his voice was Steve's, relieved smile lighting up his face. "Okay, hey. Loki said something about a human disrupting the flow of this reality less than a Jotun, so I'm the one who's come with the cure. Oh-- Steve, hi. I'm Steve Rogers."

Tony stared.

"Oh my god. I knew I should have washed my hands better after that bum bumped into me. Shit. He must have been carrying. How long does LSD last? Shit--" Tony pressed his finger and thumb into his eyes and then leaned in close to Steve and poked at his chest. And felt up his chest. And squeezed his biceps-- "You are not Steve Rogers. I know Steve Rogers. I could use Steve Rogers as kindling. What the--"

Maybe he should stop touching Steve but he couldn't help it. The man was delicious. Literally. Tony could roast him over an open fire and chow down on those gluts. Was that weird? Probably.

"Do you know a Tony Stark who's too big to get through a door too? Am I totally ripped?"

Thankfully Steve was used to Tony being... well... Tony. The man flirted with anything that moved, though it was a little odd to think of Tony actually knowing him as he had been before the serum, when the Tony he knew had been brought up on Captain America stories and so hadn't been surprised at the size of him.

"Tony, your future husband is right there," he said, sounding a little disapproving but mostly just that kind of weary that said how used to this sort of behaviour he was. "And no, the Tony that I know looks almost exactly like you. Older, quite a bit older, but same height and same sort of build."

He scrubbed the back of his head, it might be awkward if his other self wandered in, but hopefully that wouldn't happen.

"A lot of things are different in our worlds, it's probably best not to ask too many questions. Hopefully we'll be able to get this rip sealed up and you guys can all go back to living your lives uninterrupted."

"You're a beefcake and I'm old-- You know what? If rather stick to this reality," Tony said. He felt old now. He was pushing fifty. Loren was just under thirty-five. And the Steve he knew was in his early twenties. He didn't think he could imagine himself that much older and not feel sad. "Because you're right. That's the man I'm going to marry and the guy that looked like him in my dream said he was going to fix him. So where is he? Don't give me that Yo-chin or whatever thing you said. He promised. I kept my end of the deal."

Tony crossed his arms over his chest, Loren at his back. He could hear his breathing as he slept. He missed hearing it in his ear when the younger man draped over his chest.

"I don't want a lecture. If you're anything like the Rogers I know--". Sort of know... "You're going to lecture me. Or something. Your boyfriend says you're Carter about by eagles and can do no wrong."

"Yeah, that sounds like something that Buck would say."

Steve couldn't help the small wistful smile at his lips that said how much he loved that man he was with. It had to be Bucky, Steve couldn't imagine a world in which they weren't bound as tightly as two strings in a knot. His eyes were slightly sad, though, as if remembering trials and tribulations before getting to that point.

"And I'm not here to lecture you, I told you that Loki asked me to come instead of him. I've brought what we need, we just need to rub it on the wound at his back."

He shifted over to the bed and pulled a small pot full of a honey-like substance out of his jacket pocket.

"I'll hold him up and pull off the gauze, you rub the salve on, okay?"

((Carried not Carter. Damn.))

As Steve moved to pull back the sheets, Tony's hands full of condiment jar, the older of the two skirted the bed to put himself between the blond and his fiance. "Woah. Seriously. Cool your jets, Blondie. We are taking this thing carefully all right? He's the only thing in this world that matters to me."

That wasn't like the Tony that Steve knew, even if he hadn't been through nearly half of what his Tony had. This one was wild and without the sort of life that had eventually led the other to settle down or to see the big picture. His Tony would do a lot for his family but he'd never put the whole world behind them. This one? Not so much.

"Be gentle. Do you know how to be gentle? You're not supposed to bench press people with your giant ridiculous muscles. Do they not make shirts big enough to fit you? Id hate to see what your tailoring bill is."

"I know how to be gentle, Tony," said Steve in as patient a voice as he could muster. He liked Tony, he did, and years of putting up with him and inured him to a certain extent. But the man was still trying to his patience, which was why he was always surprised that someone with anger issues like Bruce would be the one to be with him.

Steve took hold of Loki-- Loren-- whatever his name was carefully by the shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position, which stretched the stitching and the gauze plastered down his spine. Loren groaned quietly in his sleep, and the machines spiked as the pain from behind manhandled in a direction his body did not want to go pulsed through him, though the sedatives kept him firmly under.

"Okay, now peel back the gauze and start spreading the salve. You need to massage it in as deep as you can, and Loki said to use the whole pot."

He still didn't always trust the trickster, with good reason, but he tried to be quiet about it now that the man was royal consort to Asgard and a mother in his own right (which was just weird to him), or Thor might take his head clean off with Mjolnir.

If Steve knew how to be gentle, why was Loren in such pain? Tony was momentarily angry before he realized how little good that anger would do either of them right now. He knew that he was afraid and that this situation was stressful. That was not important right now. He needed to be calm. Like he was trying to diagnose a difficult motor or figure out why the electronics in a luxury car shorted out.

Pulling two gloves from the box on the wall, he cradled the jar I his arms ubtil Loren was protected from whatever he might have lurking under his nails. He sat on the bed in the warm spot left by Loren's body and unscrewed the cap on the jar. "This is honey," he said, as if the entire thing was ridiculous. "You want me to pour honey on-- All right, all right," he groaned. Sometimes he needed to take things on a little more faith.

Working the sticky fluid into the wound was horrifying. Steve kept telling him to go as deep as possible and that required actually sticking his fingers into the wound. He had to keep from vomiting. He'd been fine in the triage situation with Banner, but it had been dark and he hadn't had his fingers this close to Loki's actual spine.

"Okay... Oh fuck... Please Loren... I'm sorry if I do something wrong," he murmured the entire time, tipping more honey onto his fiancé.

It was so strange to see Tony so squeamish about something like this. The Tony he knew had removed his own arc reactor to replace it more than once, had treated bullet wounds and stab wounds and all sorts of other wounds, and had been present at no less than three births of weird Asgardian/Jotun babies. He had seen his fair share of gore, and yet this Tony looked about ready to throw up or pass out.

"You're doing great, Tony, just a little bit longer."

Poor guy. Steve really hoped this worked and that Loki hadn't sent him here with a dud, for Tony's sake more for the unconscious Loren. He couldn't imagine that a human Loki would be any more tolerable to be around.

As the last of the honey got massaged deep into the wound, Tony would feel it harder to pull his fingers out as the skin began to literally knit closed in front of his eyes. The smell of sweetness grew stronger as the healing continued.

"Woah! Okay, all right, you guys are the real deal huh? Are you a god too?" Tony's voice had a nervous edge to it, not because he thought he was in the presence of a god so much as because he was watching Loren heal right in front of him, like the honey had stimulated the cells to work at a thousand times their natural pace. Or to remove whatever damage had occurred to them immediately, since there didn't seem to be any scar tissue.

He helped Steve lay Loren back and he carefully folded down the gauze taped over the front of his wound... The same thing was happening, the puss was bubbling away and the angry redness of the stitched up wound was fading back to a pale, snowy white.

He couldn't stop himself from laughing as he took Loren's hand in his. He felt like crying. He felt like he might tip over and pass out. He kind of wanted to kiss Steve Rogers too.

"Jesus Christ-- thank you." Another almost first from a Stark. They didn't thank anyone.

"What, me? No! No, I'm just a guy from Brooklyn, a normal human like you. And I don't care what Loki told you, he's not a god either, they're just-- not from earth. A different species, but they're not gods."

Steve still believed in the one true God, he would never accept that the Asgardians were anything more than aliens who happened to have come across an older Norse civilisation and been accepted as gods.

"And you're welcome. Really. The rip is our problem, the least we can do is help out where we've ruined things. That'll still take a bit to work, though, he should be all done healing tomorrow or the day after."

He stepped back finally and scrubbed his hands on his jeans.

"So-- I don't actually have a way home until they come for us in a week."

"You're kidding me..." They had just carefully laid Loren back and covered him up and hooked up anything that might have come loose. Tony removed his gloves to shake Steve's hand and instead, he discovered a roommate instead. The man groaned. "Well that's just--" The sarcasm suddenly switched over to genuine delight. "Great! Actually, you're proof to the hard sells-- okay, we're going to head over to see a Russian ballerina and-- and are you sure I'm not a god? Because I think I'd make a good one. Like Hephestus. The one that makes the armor and stuff for the other gods."

Just a thought.

They would make it out of the hospital pretty easily. No one stopped them. Banner wasn't on duty. Thor was off being Thor and not hanging around. Loren would call when he woke up. Tony left a note with instructions to do just that, and not to overdo it if he felt better.

Because he knew Loren. And he didn't want to come back to another issue.

Steve smiled at the idea of Tony being the god that made all the armour, but he didn't explain why that would be such a fitting comparison. He wasn't about to start talking about the minutia of his world, it didn't seem like a good idea, it was better to keep these things separate.

"So, you know the other me, and-- Bucky?"

He couldn't help the small note of hope there.

This world, as far as they could tell, was completely mundane. Surely that meant no Winter Soldier, maybe Steve was actually getting to live out the life he always should have done with Bucky at his side. Unbroken, not hurt in ways that Steve could never heal no matter how much he wanted.

"Only met them twice. Once On Christmas and once the day after and oh. At the VA yesterday. They were there when I freaked out Sam Wilson." They were headed down the elevator and Tony couldn't help but gawk at the clearance Steve left getting through the door. He nearly had to suck it in and stoop. That was insane. Ten of the Steves that Tony knew couldn't do the same! "They live across the hall from the ballerina that's dating Loren's brother. She's the one that knows the Olympic athlete. Did you want to spy on what you'd be like if you were only a leg?"

They got off the elevator at the second garage level and Tony stopped in front of a souped up Harley. It wasn't his baby, that had been lost weeks ago, but she would do.

"Oh. Shit. You're huge. Do you ride? Because you'd be better off actually doing the driving. There are military check points but I have all the passes. We need to head to Brooklyn."

Steve would know where. It was where his old tenament used to be.

There wasn't a lot of point explaining that he knew what it was like to be small and skinny, not right now when apparently he was being taken to meet all of the others and would probably be asked questions that meant he had to explain all over again. Hopefully the other him wouldn't be too jealous, he doesn't think he would have been. Sure, he hated his body when he was younger sometimes, but he had never thought that a strong body would make him a better person, and it hadn't. Sometimes he worried that it had made him worse.

"Yeah, hop on behind, I can handle a motorcycle."

He straddled the seat, looking ridiculously like a wet dream pin up, and smiled a brilliant warm smile at Tony.

"Come on, I know exactly where we need to go. I used to live around there as a kid, and then I moved back a while ago. I'm Brooklyn born and bred."

"You're ridiculous." Tony was too flabbergasted to say anything else. "Jesus. Your Bucky must be happy, huh? Like every morning and before bed? Sometimes three times on the weekend?" He couldn't help himself. He wasn't coming into Steve, not even when he wrapped his arms around that muscular middle, because he always considered himself mostly straight until Loren came along, but he was human. And Loren showed him a thing or two when it came to two cocks in bed together.

He wondered, briefly, if Steve tasted like pizza and water ice when he came before they were off and heading down the heavily guarded singular entrance on and off the island.

It would take them an hour to get to Brooklyn, even with a bike, and twenty minutes to get close to the apartment building. They parked in the alley and then waited to be buzzed in.

Thankfully, the Steve that did the buzzing wasn't a jerk despite Tony crashing his session with Bucky's therapist. "Yeah. Yeah come up," he said through the intercom, weary and wanting to get back to bed with Bucky.

Steve couldn't help but feel guilt for the military checkpoints and the devastation they passed by; this was their fault, the rip through to this reality where they never should have had to deal with anything like the sorts of things that happened in their world. People were dead here, lives ruined, and he couldn't do anything to help them except make sure it never happened again.

It was weird to hear his own voice over the intercom, and he wondered briefly if he'd see Bucky. God, but his heart ached to see a happy and normal looking Bucky, even if he still loved Bucky as he was now. Not that he would get his wish, because Bucky was sleeping in the bedroom and didn't rouse when the buzzer went off, leaving Steve to greet his guests alone.

"Uh, hi," said Steve, smooth and not at all horribly awkward. "I'm-- well, you probably know who I am. I've come to help fix the rift. Do you mind if we come in, please?"

Steve's eyes lifted upward and he took a noticeable step back. "Chris Evans?" Wow, he looked really similar to him! He knew Bucky was a fan, he liked those Captain America movies, and he always said that Steve's eyes were even bluer than this guy's, but he wasn't sure anymore looking up at him. "Uh... Uh, yeah, absolutely..."

Tony glanced over his shoulder and laugh. "Huh. You do actually look like Chris Evans. More rom-com than Snow Piercer Chris Evans. So funny...but nah, Steve, this is you. The other you. From the world where Loren and Thor are gods."

That made Steve pale slightly. "Me?" That might have been a squeak. Or maybe a wheeze. Actually, yeah, it was a wheeze. It was cold outside, being January, and the long walks and car rides had a cough setting in.

Chris Evans? Steve had no idea who that was, but it wasn't really important and so he just waited until he was allowed into the apartment before stepping in and going to find a place to sit. Wow, this place was nice. Small, but homey, the sort of place that he might actually have liked to live in if SHIELD and Tony weren't so free with their money and insistent that he stay somewhere 'better'.

"I know this is going to be a lot to take in, and I'm really sorry. None of us were supposed to be actually coming through to your reality, but it turned out that Lok--Loren needed help, and I was chosen to come and bring that help."

He smiled, trying to put the other Steve at his ease.

"This is your place? It's great, real nice."

Though Steve didn't feel jealous exactly, he was still glad that Bucky was asleep. Their first conversation had more or less included Chris Evans as Captain America and Steve knew that he was Bucky's type of guy. They loved each other, they had each other's backs, but it was hard to think that Bucky wouldn't be attracted to this other version of him. He probably didn't need protection (probably? Steve, the guy's arms were the size of your waist!). He probably didn't need to be fretted over. And he was so tall-- He could probably satisfy Bucky in bed better too...

But that didn't make this other version of him any better in the long run. Still, it looked like he had no trouble breathing. That must be nice.

Steve ran a hand through his hair so that it laid perfectly across his skull and offered Tony a seat, which he took, before he shut the door and immediately went into guest mode. He plated some crackers and got everyone a bottle of water. "Thanks. Yeah, mom and I lived here...she left it to me. The neighborhood's getting steadily better but I own the apartment so that's been a really big help. Um...thanks for coming then. To help Loren. I heard he was in real bad shape."

Steve's smile flickered just a bit. He hadn't even thought of if Sarah might be alive in this reality, tuberculosis no longer being the killer that it had been in his time, but apparently life wasn't that kind. It hurt, it wasn't fair, she had been a good woman and deserved a longer and happier life. But at least Steve had Bucky to help him through, right?

His smile came back as he picked up a couple of crackers and began to nibble on them, always ready to help replenish what his ridiculously fast metabolism took away from him. The serum was amazing in some ways, but the amount he always had to eat each day was a little annoying.

"No, it's the least I could do-- we could do. I'm sorry that this now has to be awkward, I know it's weird to have to meet another version of yourself. I will be as unobtrusive as possible until the others arrive at the end of the week to help close the rip and then I'll be out of your hair."

His smile picked up at the corners, something so deep and fond in his eyes, unable to keep from asking any longer.

"So-- is Buck here? Uh-- Bucky, James Barnes."

Steve didn't exactly blush, though his cheeks and the tips of his ears did warm as he chuckled. "Yeah. Buck's here. He's just asleep." When he wasn't having nightmares, the other man could really sleep! Steve liked to think that was partially his fault, wearing him out like that. He clasped his hands between his knees and glanced to Tony briefly.

He had a lot of questions, though none of them really mattered. Learning about Steve's world wouldn't do them any good at the end of the week. He'd go back home, and they would stay here. Whatever knowledge he had wouldn't really help them.

He was also curious as to what was different about their worlds to allow Steve to bulk up like that, to be so tall. It was crazy. But he wasn't narcissistic enough to ask either.

So he focused, instead, on a topic that was vaguely in between. "You know Buck... And Tony and Nat where you're from?"

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