fossilised | It's AU time

"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."

"I know a great deal of focus. It has not been easy coming here to you in this manner," Thor said, flickering and voice choppy, but far better than he had been seen the last time that Loki had dreamed of this particular version of his brother. "Nor is it without danger. Will you listen and take care?"

Thor loomed in more closely, the ends of his hair brushing Loren's cheeks as he leaned over him.

"You must find friends from other Realms. Locate Stark, Rogers, Romanoff, Banner, Barnes, Barton, Maximoff--". Thor frowned and looked over his shoulder. "Surely The Vision has a differing name-- Ah." His attention returned to Loren in the darkness. "Jarvis, Wilson and Rhodes. All are important to set things right."

There was something much more intense about this version of his brother, one that looked as though he had lived through more trials and heartaches than Loren could ever imagine. He frowned, but he did not argue the instruction, merely questioned it.

"I know some of these people. Anthony and I are to be wed, you are dating Natalia Romanoff and she is friends with Steven and James. I do not know those others you have named."

Why was he humouring a dream?

"Why do I need to find these people? What has gone wrong that needs to be set right?"

“A bleed over. A rip, of sorts. It has been our fault and we wish to rectify this before there is bleed over too deeply into your Realm. Brother, once all of the warriors have gathered, we will be able to set it all right again. We will heal the breaches between your Realm and those that neighbour it so that you may exist without fear of such again.” Thor looked sincere behind all of that facial hair, even if it was very difficult to tell.

There was a rumble and again, like a poorly connected television to an old fashioned satellite, Thor flickered blue and grainy.

“I shall return to speak with you in one week’s time. Sam Wilson, James Rhodes, Clint Barton, Edwin Jarvis, Wanda Maximoff-- Find them. Quickly.”

Loren would wake to see a tired looking mechanic looking down at him in Thor’s place, dark bags under his eyes. “Lor-- You were talking in your sleep—“

Loren jerked away and stared up into Anthony's beautiful brown eyes for a moment, trying to dispel the dream as nonsense. It was a dream, after all. But then-- the events of what had led to him being here were so unknown, who was to say that it had not been some bizarre 'rip', whatever that was?

"I need you to note these names, Anthony. I do not know if they mean anything. Sam Wilson, James Rhodes, Clint Barton, Edwin Jarvis, and Wanda Maximoff."

If he could find even one of these people, let alone all of them, then he would know there was more to this than just being a dream. After all, his subconscious could not supply him with names of people that he had never heard of before, could it?

"I dreamed of my brother, he told me that I must find these people and it seemed so real."

Squinting, Tony jotted down notes to appease his fiancé. Loren wasn’t making any sense but Tony was trying to be accommodating because he knew the man. Any earlier in their relationship and it was very likely that Tony would have left by now because Loren was being insufferable. He just knew that if they could get away from this bad time, they could make it better again, they could be happy again. He wasn’t a man of faith so this wasn’t blind hope, nor was it belief exactly. He just knew it like it was part of his biology.

“Uh. So Rhodey and J work for me,” Tony said, frowning. It was possible that Loren had met both at one point or another, though Loren didn’t really come to the shop that often. Not sure who the other three are-- You might have better luck looking for their social media.”

He wasn’t trying to fuel a psychosis here. But if it kept Loren occupied, he was all for it.

Loren's eyes widened in surprise, he had expected Anthony to tell him that he could not trust his dreams. He had been gearing up for a retort, ready to fight it, but to have Anthony already know two of those men...

"I have not met those men, I have only spoken with Ms. Potts when I visited your work, I do not know what this means but I fear it may be related to the events in Manhattan."

He knew he was being insufferable, Loren could see his own behaviour and yet he couldn't seem to stop. He was just so afraid of being useless, and it was easier to be angry than it was to be scared.

"Perhaps I would do better looking for the remaining people if you would pass me my laptop. In case you had forgotten, I cannot move to fetch it myself."

There were no such thing as prophetic dreams. Loren was in a drug, pain and psychological induced psychosis. It was actually something that Banner had told him about, something he said to look out for because while it would not cause any long lasting harm, he was told that it would be all right to indulge little flights of fancy because it would actually help Loren’s brain repair itself from the blood loss by problem solving…so long as it didn’t become an obsession.

Tony wasn’t sure how long he could manage something like this, how far into the rabbithole that he could go. His mind worked logically. He wasn’t the creative type that his fiancé was. And yet…if this would help…

He didn’t want to fight.

And that was why, wisely, he didn’t even smirk when Loren mentioned the laptop or how it was impossible for him to reach. Tony swallowed a sigh and just fetched it, plugging the device into the landline from the phone so that Loren could work. “So… Okay. Say we find these people…?”

He glanced at the list he was given. Edwin Jarvis… Not Edward, as his employee’s name was. Slip of the tongue? Accent issue? Or was Loren losing it? Tony might mention the discrepancy later.

“I mean, are these the only names you remember?”

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