fossilised | It's AU time

It's AU time

Building 64 down in the East end of Brooklyn was not a fashionable place to live. The apartments were small, barely more than studio size, and the rent was pretty cheap. Not many people lived there permanently, most people only came and stayed a year or two to get enough money together to move onto somewhere better. But there were two residents who had been there a while.

Steven Grant Rogers, early twenties, who earned his rent doing tattoo designs part time to fund his college course, and occasionally dipped his toe into online art commissions. He'd moved in there when his mother had died four years previously, leaving him enough money to get by, but not enough that he could stop working. And right across the hall was Natalia Romanova, an aspiring ballerina from Russia. She was tough as hell, she had worked herself right through high school, paid her own way to America when she didn't even speak the language, and kept going through tenacity alone.

Somehow a friendship had struck up between them when Steve had been the first person not to look at her like she was an idiot or disgusting for not speaking the language. He'd helped her learn, and they'd been firm friends for the last three years. Everyone else was transient, coming and going, not really making an impact. Natalia had friends and a boyfriend outside of the apartment, but she sometimes worried that Steve never seemed to do anything but work and study.

Which was probably why he would be in his apartment when a loud crash sounded on the stairs outside. Said crash had come from a box of (now very broken) plates and bowls being dropped by the man just moving in to the apartment directly above Steve's, judging by the amount of cardboard boxes that were littering the hallway. He was tall, muscled, dressed in faded jeans and a hoodie with long slightly scruffy hair, leather gloves, and deep blue eyes.

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A part of Steve would always want to look down on this world and see how it could have been if Bucky hadn't become so broken, but that was unfair to the man that he had beside him now. It would play into all of his fears that he wasn't enough for Steve, or wasn't the man he really wanted to be with, and that wasn't true at all. It was just-- nice to see where it could be easier.

Bruce wrinkled his nose and shook his head, reaching down to cover Ola's ears from the conversation even though she rolled her eyes at his concern.

"No, that was not fun, and you are disturbing. Seriously gross. I hope you know that."

Bickering, but loving bickering, that could go on for years if they were left to their own devices. And down for Christmas Eve, Steve must think that he had got home from the tattoo parlour with no issue. No train breaking down, no horrible evening where he had to face what PTSD could do to a person... but no appointments at the VA either, no service animal, no admittance of a problem.

At least he would be woken up by a knock at his door, considering it was still just his apartment and not their apartment. Hell, they hadn't even had sex yet.

Just his apartment. Bucky didn’t know it was Christmas Eve. They hadn’t discussed what they were doing for Christmas. The alien invasion that would leave him shot would never happen the day after Christmas. It was just normal, a sort of flirting with Bucky since they’d barely made their feelings known. The fact that his other self insisted on putting everything back together again might have actually caused the most detriment to the man he wanted to help more than anything. He had no reason now to even look for a light at the end of his long and dark tunnel.

So Steve pulled himself off of the sofa and checked the time on his phone, rubbing sleep away from his eyes. He needed to talk to Natalia about the following day and he needed to see what Bucky was up to.

A thousand fuzzy thoughts swam around his head as he unlocked the various chains and bolts from the door without looking through the peephole. He felt like getting coffee, that was his only thought as he tugged the door open.

Bucky really liked Steve. Sure, they had just started dating, just kissed one another not that long back, but he had spent nearly two weeks on Steve's sofa helping him get over pneumonia and so it felt like maybe it was off to a good start. It had been weird to go back up to his own place, but obviously he knew he had only been down there to help out, nothing else.

He was leaning against the side of the doorway, prosthetic bearing the brunt of his weight, a cocky smile on his lips and his actual hand balancing a tray that held waffles, syrup, bacon, eggs, and a glass of fresh orange juice. He wished that he could say that he made it himself, but he didn't, he called down to a deli around the corner that delivered it to him.

But he put the tray together?

"Hey, good morning, thought you might want a sexy guy at your door making sure you hadn't had some kind of relapse in the night or something."

He'd just felt like he wanted to do something, his dreams had been weird and fuzzy and full of aliens and things, so it was good to do something nice and solid.

Bucky Barnes always made him smile, and twisted his gut around in the best ways. He’d never felt like this before, and yet it was as if he had always felt this way. Weird dreams aside, Steve wasn’t about to let need for coffee and grogginess ruin his afternoon. He looked at the spread, once more glanced at his watch since he was having trouble remembering what happened to him before these last few moments (just sleep-mind, his brain told him), and then looked over Bucky’s right side dramatically.

“Well yeah, sure. But where is he? Or was this a hypothetical?” he teased, crossing his arms over his chest as if he had no intention of inviting Bucky inside.

He’d gotten used to the man sleeping there. Natalia would strangle him to know that he was also helping out with the rent upstairs, but those were not conversations for best friends….and people that wanted to remain unstrangled.

Even Bucky might strangle Steve if he knew that his new-- could he call him a boyfriend yet?-- his new friend with kissing benefits was helping with his rent. He just had a call from his landlady to say that she had made a mistake in the initial contract, and his rent was less than expected. He had no idea that Steve, who knew her from the length of time he had been living there, had called and explained the situation and was helping out.

He huffed, mock hurt written all over his face.

"Wow. Wow, that's harsh and cruel, don't you know that one of my neighbours said I could be an actor? Maybe I'll go take him this breakfast instead, I bet he wouldn't mock me while the eggs went cold."

“Oh-- Oh. You meant you.” Steve mocked shock before he grinned and stepped aside. “Yeah okay. Come on in. I just want to reserve the right to trade up if anyone else hotter happens to come along.” Steve was constantly struck by how easy it was to get along with Bucky. They might have only shared a kiss, which had been as awkward as it was wonderful, and Bucky was more or less apartment bound at all times, but he didn’t care. Steve himself was more of a stay in guy during the winter too. Going to see the tree or ice skating at Rockefeller Center was for the tourists…not guys that got sick a little too easily.

He set up the table in the kitchen for two as Bucky dropped the tray in the center and then went back to the door to shut and lock it because you couldn’t be too careful.

They were just sitting down to sharing the food that Bucky brought him when Steve glanced over at his…friend.

“This is going to sound odd, but… Is it just me or does it feel weird? Not because you brought me breakfast closer to dinner…I love that! But I just woke up too. So breakfast works… But how did you know? I feel like I should be at work… It’s the busiest night of the year almost.”

"It's dinner time?"

Bucky looked pretty surprised. Usually he didn't sleep at all, and when he did then his internal body clock tended to wake him up around six in the morning, standard military time that had just never disappeared. But he didn't really own a watch and he hadn't looked at the beat up clock on the wall before getting breakfast ready, so he hadn't realised how late it was.

"Wow, I just woke up too, so I guess I thought it was morning. I don't really sleep through the day, it never occurred to me that I might've."

That was weird.

"So you missed work? Did your boss call you? Or do you need to get going?"

“I…should probably check my phone,” Steve said, yawning again before he headed back to his bedroom. There were no messages at all, likely because Mickey herself was just waking up and trying to decide why she was at her own apartment and not at the shop. Steve shrugged and plunked right back down next to Bucky and grinned. “Guess I’m free for today.”

It was actually a wonder that anyone was in the deli when Bucky went over and a good thing that the owner was just upstairs when he woke up and rushed down to open the shop and yell at his employees for not showing up all day. There was a lot of strangeness going on in the city today, but the human mind tended to just ignore the strange and set things into the right order for their minds to understand.

The feelings would pass. Likely. In time.

“So how do you want to spend Christmas Eve? I have to run out and get Nat something. She’s impossible to buy for and I always let it go to the last minute. She told me last year that while,” and he tried to mimic her accent here, “art is wonderful for mothers and girlfriends, I am neither and you will find me something appropriate, Steven.”

It was so strange. It would even appear on the news channels that night, that people in all areas of New York seemed to suffer from increased sleepiness during that day. It was attributed to a possible gas escape from one of the main pipelines which would be looked at after Christmas. This did, unfortunately, mean that some people got hysterically and swamped the ERs convinced they had gas poisoning, but nobody did.

Bucky hummed thoughtfully and wound his arm easily around Steve's shoulder while the smaller man ate his breakfast. It was nice, good. Being with Steve made him confident that he could push this stupid stuff from the army down and carry on with a normal life.

"Man, gifts, I don't have any gifts."

Not that he would. The phone call with his mother and the visit of his sister had been a bit overwhelming, but he hadn't graduated to sending gifts yet. Maybe he should get something for Steve? A sweater maybe, with a dumb bald eagle on it, if he could find some.

"Sure, I could go for gift shopping, that sounds good."

It definitely wouldn't go wrong, diving into the bustle of last minute gift shopping when everyone else was out trying to do the same. "And hey, maybe I'll spot some 'help wanted' notices out at the mall or something?"

Tony had had the ring in his pocket since before his accident. He’d been carrying it around since Thanksgiving actually, when he was sure that Loren would be inviting him over to meet the family. He would have proposed that night, but as always, Loren was silent about his family and his friends. They’d been dating for almost two years at this point and if Tony didn’t know better, he’d say that he was Loren’s bit on the side with how in the dark he was.

Loren had been the one to find him caught under that car lift a few weeks back, he’d waited with him until the ambulance came, and then he stopped answering his calls for the last two weeks. In an arm sling and with two black eyes, Tony took himself from the Uber to the small café and bookshop his boyfriend owned. There were two people there having scones and coffee, but Tony didn’t pay a lick of attention to them.

He thumbed the ring box in his pocket with his uninjured hand and strode right up to the counter before he paused. This felt familiar. This felt like he’d done it before. Maybe he’d been obsessing a little about it….?

“You haven’t answered the phone so I had to call a car to come and get me.”

Loki had spent much of the time since he had woken up talking to himself. It wasn't something he did often, but he couldn't stop speaking in both Norwegian and English as if to reassure himself that his tongue was still there and functioning. Foolish, for of course it was. But he also found himself doing more exercise than he needed to, and he had shunned his usual chair behind the counter to stand, again as if he were proving that his legs worked.

It was almost a relief when he got his first and only two customers, one he recognised and one he did not. He was even quite chatty with Steven for once, asking him about his studies and his work, when usually he just served up the coffee. He glanced around when Anthony arrived and found that the anger he had been harbouring for the past two weeks had gone, almost as if they had gone through something worse and Anthony had proven his love by sticking by him.

So he simply surged into Anthony's arms and kissed him fiercely, before drawing back to slap him across the face for his anger was never wholly gone.

"Do not do that again. You are mine, and I do not permit things that belong to me to become damaged. Do you hear me, Anthony? I love you, you cannot leave me for something as foolish as a winch failing."

Though he’d been expecting more cold shoulder and neither show of emotion, he readily accepted both. Each hurt him physically (his arm was mostly healed but he wasn’t good as new) and his brain probably didn’t need to sustain any more injury. But that was all right. He could take the smack and the possessiveness in stride, his unbound arm immediately around Loren even as he winced and tasted blood.

“I got it, I got it,” he promised, jaw out of whack. “No more use of equipment while I’m alone.” And wow. Had Loren just....? "I love you too, baby. Always have, I'm pretty sure."

Steve couldn’t help but stare at this little exchange. Eyes wide, he paused with the scone halfway to his mouth. He had no idea that Thor’s brother was even seeing anyone. Thor was very boisterous about talking about his brother and he’d been with Loki at the last holiday but wow. An older man in his life? That was sort of brilliant. They played off of each other perfectly. He finally broke out of his romantic little spell and glanced over at Buck, resuming his nibbling. This was a good way to start off Christmas Eve.

This didn't mean that Loren had magically forgiven Anthony completely, or that he would become the doting boyfriend that he probably deserved. He was too selfish, too absorbed with his own issues, but he did love his older man. Had done for many months now, since their passionate string of one-night stands had become something more meaningful for them both.

Bucky smiled over at Steve, voice low so as not to disturb the seemingly cute couple. There was nothing to laugh at this time, so the tides of history were already changing to become something else.

"Wow, you never told me that your coffee shop was the premier gay spot in town. Did you bring all your other men here too?"

Loren glanced over at his two customers, one hand still on Anthony's hip possessively.

"I am sorry, but you will have to leave, I can transfer your coffee to take-out containers, but the shop is closing immediately."

He felt the need to get Anthony's clothes off and prove to himself in new and interesting ways that his tongue still worked.

To go cups gotten and a little extra bag of scones thrown in shoved under Steve’s arm, the moment he and Bucky made it outside, the door shut behind them and the lights went out. There was a little crash from inside and Steve’s cheeks turned pink. Not just from the cold. “Well, we should probably get to shopping,” he said, clearing his throat.

Most of New York City also had the same idea. It was just starting to flurry but the forecast didn’t mention any accumulation and so everyone was out doing some last minute shopping, even if most of the stores seemed to be barely functioning or open. The Mall, however, was doing just fine with older teens and twenty somethings forced in to cover shifts that they had forgotten that they had.

Workers not at their jobs were jamming the streets, so the through ways for pedestrians were quite…difficult…to maneuver. Steve was doing his best to clear the way, but he was a shrimp, he was tiny, and was getting elbowed as much as he was elbowing back. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to take a Vet suffering from PTSD. Steve just didn’t know when to be protective and when it was starting to become insulting.

By the time they got to the entrance of the mall, Bucky was tense as hell. He felt as though he had a sniper scope pointed at the back of his neck, every sound was too loud in his ears, and every person had a concealed weapon on them. He could feel his breathing picking up, he could feel his heart racing and his palms sweating, but he fought it all down.

He had to be able to do this.

His relationship with Steve was too new, too fragile, for him to show off just how damaged he really was. Hell, he couldn't even admit it to himself, refusing all counselling and medication in the view that he could just get on with it if he stopped being weak. He only noticed Steve trying to shove a path through for him when the poor guy nearly got knocked over by a soccer mom carrying six bags and walking at top speed.

"Steve, stop it," he murmured, voice husky and only half present with how his eyes were darting around the upper levels as if looking for a sniper. "Just walk with me normally, I'm not-- I don't need nannying, I'm fine."

“I’m not-- I’m just staking our claim to be able to walk,” Steve said, as if he hadn’t just been found out. Ah, God, poor Bucky. He could almost see his hackles raised. That couldn’t be healthy. At all. Steve tossed his coffee and took Bucky away from him so he could hold his hand properly. They were in the corner between a potted plant and the Auntie Ann’s pretzel line, one little piece of quiet oasis in the jumble of the holiday.

He waited until Bucky actually looked at him before he smiled, comforting and sincere.

“I’m making a game plan, Buck. Like… a strategic operation. Nat likes those yoga pants from Victoria’s Secret with the words written across the butt. That store is on the third floor. There’s a back escalator that we can take to our left but we have to cut across the catwalk to the next one. And once we’re there, we have to make our way to the very back at the store and just pick up anything you see in an extra small. If it looks like it will fit me, it will fit her. Doesn’t matter the color, but she likes red if they’ve got any left. You with me on this?”

Perhaps if this was later down the line, or even if he got his head out of his butt long enough to admit that he actually did have some problems, then he would appreciate this. Steve was being sweet and genuinely understanding in a way that a lot of people would envy, thinking of him while respecting that he might still be able to do it, but all it did right now was bring his hackles up further.

"I told you, I don't need to be coddled," he growled, a bit rougher this time, though it was obvious the anger was a shield for how afraid he was. "I can handle a bit of shopping, and I might even work here shortly, I saw a lot of help wanted notices and I'm not exactly qualified for much else. I can handle it."

His fingers twitched inside of Steve's grip, but he didn't pull his hand away yet, even though it made him feel pretty vulnerable to have no hand free in case a fight happened.

"Let's just go to Victoria's Secret and get your yoga pants, okay? Is there anything else you need?"

Any other person would have gotten upset or worried or incensed by Bucky’s sudden behavior, but Steve just nodded. He wanted to be playful, like this whole ordeal really did need a game plan, but Bucky was too in the zone. So he tried a different tactic. “Actually… And this is going to sound bad… But um… Can you get me a pretzel? Or since I’m totally see through, can you wait here because I have to do something while you’re not with me…?”

Steve managed to make sheepishness look hot. He lifted his bright, big eyes up at Bucky, almost pleading.

“I’ll be no more than fifteen minutes. And I’ll meet you right back here.” He wasn’t sure what to get his…friend…that kissed him…but he should probably get him something. Even if fifteen minutes really wasn’t going to be enough at this point, but he didn’t want to drag Bucky into a crowd and he didn’t want to leave him for too long either. This was a fine line to walk. “but yeah, I really do want a pretzel. Extra cinnamon. And one of those little frosting buckets?”

He’d rush off to the store after that… Can get Bucky some fuzzy pink socks. Because that would be hilarious.

Steve was such a good guy, Bucky knew that underneath the anger and the fear. He asked in just the right way, making it seem like he needed to get Bucky a gift just like any couple might do, no other reason for leaving him behind here where it was a bit quieter, and that soothed Bucky's ire because it meant he was able to accept without losing any face over it.

God only knew how he would manage to split off and shop on his own for Steve, though.

Fifteen minutes wasn't a lot of time, and even if Steve ran to Victoria's Secret and bought the first pair of yoga pants in the right size (bright cherry red with the word 'Dangerous' written across the butt), he would still get back to the sort of murmured buzz of conversation that started after shock had worn off. There was no sign of Bucky, but a woman was scolding a teenager so hard that he looked like he might cry, and not bothering to keep her voice down.

"--would he say? Your father hasn't slaved in the army all these years to bring you up with that kind of disrespect to veterans, Billy, do you hear me?"

He shouldn't have left. Steve had a pair of yoga pants and some steel gray fuzzy socks with red stars across the toes, but his not exactly boyfriend was missing. He turned twice to see if he could spot any aftermath but it was no use.

Steve trotted over to the mother, not to ask what happened, but to see if she could tell him which way Bucky had gone. "Even just a general direction is helpful," Steve said, and she gestured apologetically towards the fountain. Or maybe the glass elevators.

Steve felt his stomach sink and he pulled out his phone to ask Bucky where he might have gotten to via text so the man didn't have to listen to the way his voice trembled... Or have his own voice tremble noticeably when he replied back.

There was a flash of a subway tunnel and blood, but Steve ignored it when it dissolved almost immediately away from him. Maybe he'd recall it later but his fear for Bucky outshone everything else.

Thankfully nobody seemed to be screaming or making a commotion, so maybe Bucky hadn't attacked anyone yet. That could happen with PTSD, if someone got too far into a flashback and only saw enemies, though Bucky had managed to get this far without really hurting anyone. Himself, his wall, and once some asshole outside the hospital, but never an innocent civilian.

Steve wouldn't get very far before the worker from Auntie Ann's, a skinny college age girl with pink tipped dark hair and a nose ring, darted out from behind the counter even though she wasn't supposed to.

"Mister?" She called out. "You're with the army guy, right? I saw what happened, and my manager had security take him in back to calm down. If you wait at the counter a minute, I'll radio up for them to come down and get you."

She tried to hustle him back to the counter. "It was that kid's fault. He had a nerf gun and he was just firing it at random people. I think he thought it was a real gun and, well, it was kind of sweet. He jumped right in front of me to take the nerf hit, then he ended up curled on the floor like he'd really been shot and not with a foam thing. I'm pretty sure that kid's Mom is gonna ground him for life."

Oh god.

Steve thanked the girl with a nodding head, thankful for all of her effort to help him and because she had been terribly sweet herself making Buck out to be a hero. It didn't stop Steve from worrying.

Security came for him a few minutes later and he craned his head up to look between the two tall woman in severe buns before they took him to the quiet, cool backstaging area of the mall. The gray painted cement led to a gray metal door where Bucky was relaxing.

One guard knocked lightly before she pushed the door completely open. "Sir? Your friend is here."

Steve dropped the bags and went immediately to Bucky. He felt so bad. So bad to have let this happen.

She made sure to give him a pretzel and a free coffee while he waited, she was touched that this random stranger had jumped in front of a nerf bullet for her, it was the sort of thing she'd be telling her classmates about when the Christmas vacation was over. The security were nice enough, if stern, and were content to let him go into the room alone when the door had been opened.

Bucky still felt odd. His head was pounding as a result of the adrenaline that had flooded his system, and he was shaking head to foot hard enough that his teeth were even chattering. But he no longer thought he was in Afghanistan, and the quiet of the security room had stopped him from making more of a spectacle of himself.

As soon as the door opened, Bucky wound his arm around Steve tightly and pulled him in close, trembling. "I think someone shot at me, Steve," he muttered, voice tight. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"

Jesus, people heard about mall shootings and things like that on the news, but never expected it to happen to them. He was just lucky that apparently he hadn't been injured, but what if other people had been? What if Steve had been?

"Someone did," Steve said kindly, letting Bucky hold him as close as he wanted because he wanted to be held just as close too. "But it was a toy gun, Buck. The cashier at Auntie Ann's says you stepped in the way of it though. You protected her ever if you thought it was real. That takes amazing guts. You're so... I don't know. Brave. So brave."

This whole trip to the mall bad been brave. Steve couldn't know that this was more severe than what would have happened the last time around at Loren's store, that time had a way of repairing itself to meddling in the initial time line. But it didn't matter when none of the players remembered their moves when they traveled this part of the board before.

"Do you want to stay for awhile? Or go home? I'll get a cab I think. It's pretty cold out there."

And Bucky shouldn't be subjected any more to the crowds.

Bucky exhaled heavily feeling like a goddamn idiot, because of course it had been a toy gun. He felt like a moron now, and there was Steve being a sweetheart and making out like he was a hero for overreacting and getting in the way of a big fat nothing. No bullet, no danger.

Yet somehow he had the idea that Steve would do the same. You got a sense of that as a soldier, and Bucky knew that Steve might be skinny, but he was the sort of guy to jump on a grenade to save everyone else. He was a good guy, maybe one of the best, and he just made this shopping trip stressful for him. Good job.

"Uh-- I'll stay here, it's..."

Quiet. Peaceful. He couldn't quite face going out of this room again yet, and the security guards had been so kind in letting him sit there for this long already. Probably pitying the nut-job.

"But you should go, it's cold and you just got over pneumonia. I can head home on my own later. Maybe I'll even pick you up dinner on the way?"

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