Welcome to my Masterlist! You'll find stories for Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark, other MCU characters, and some non-MCU characters. You'll find many more stories on my AO3.
MCU Masterlist
Steve Rogers Series and Oneshots
Bucky Barnes Series and Oneshots
Tony Stark Series and Oneshots
Non-MCU below!
This elder millennial/xennial posts mostly female reader/canon romantic stories, primarily with Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Tony Stark. My writing is often smutty, always full of feelings and character moments, and the resulting stories vary from humorous, angsty, sexy, adventurous, or some combo therein.
"Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so."
+
Rebecca Solnit
Read this. The link to the paper discussed is here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922
Promotional Photo of Jake Stormoen and Ryann Bailey who play Adam Boyce and Persephone Lancaster in Seeking Persephone. You can buy the movie on Amazon Prime and Fandango.
Surcease 1/3 | Professor!Steve/f!Reader, Steve & Bucky friendship
MCU MASTERLIST | STEVE MASTERLIST | BUCKY MASTERLIST
Summary: Professor Steve Rogers has one hell of a past, a comfortable present, and hopes for a future with you (he's a little stuck on 'step 1: ask you out'). Somehow all three converge with a date, a heist, and a national security threat in one treasure of a night.
Word Count/Warnings: 2,400/10k | Rated T
Written for @thezombieprostitute's Heist challenge, with a twist. Set in the vague 2000s in a version of the MCU where Steve and Bucky worked for Howard Stark's SHIELD around 1990. Romance, fluff, angst, action/adventure, No-Powers, MCU-adjacent.
Excerpt:
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Chapter One: Dramatic
“Oh my God, he’s doing it!”
Steve looks over to see you standing in a widening puddle of coffee, staring at your phone. Your left hand is in a frozen claw, the paper cup with its ‘thank you for being a Lion!’ university branding on it on its side at your feet. He sprints over to grab a roll of paper towels from the nearby cupboard, stripping a bunch of sheets off in a line and tossing it over to start soaking up the brew.
“Shoot, Steve, I’m sorry,” you choke out.
His heart clenches in his chest at the look on your face. “Bad news from home?” he asks, crouching down to clean more of the spill. “Don’t move,” he adds, internally chastising himself for nearly adding an endearment. He shouldn’t complicate the friendship at a time like this.
“Hilariously, yes and no,” you say with a shaky laugh, reaching down to feel for wetness along your pantlegs. “Someone’s just auctioning off The Blue Diamond of Alqualondë. My Holy Grail poem.”
“A poem? Is that possible?” Steve offers some paper towels, colliding with you as you start to crouch. You fall against him with a sound of amused embarrassment. With great care, he ends up lifting you up as he shifts to a stand so you don’t end up covered in floor coffee.
Time stops for a few seconds as the two of you look at each other. He lifts his eyebrows in a silent ‘are you okay’ that’s answered by a sheepish nod. Steve’s heart is pounding so loudly he’s certain you can hear it. To cover for that, he clears his throat and takes one large step, clearing the mess.
“I’ll set you down. Ready?”
“If you insist,” you joke, and he follows through with a wry smile of his own. As usual, you’ve used the unexpected to put him at ease.
“I smell a coffee cup throwing fight, Professor Caesura!” Professor Sunen sings from the doorway. “Someone remind me where the surveillance cameras are as I prepare my weapon!”
“Sorry to disappoint, Kingo,” you tell him as you sop up the last of the spilled liquid. “Good old-fashioned shocked cup drop.”
“Well that isn’t much of a narrative,” the acting professor frowns.
“Gotta jet, office hours,” Steve says, catching a threatening look from you not to mention the poem. He does a ‘zipped lip’ motion behind Professor Sunen’s back and jogs off toward his office.
When Steve surfaces for air 90 minutes and six students later, there’s a sticky note on his door.
Thx babe. Tell you the rest at lunch?
Professor ‘Says’
He knows you don’t mean anything when you use ‘babe,’ but his tender heart enjoys seeing it all the same. Coach Wilson likes to tease him about the friend zone, asking Steve how long before he’ll attempt to score.
Neither of you get to take a lunch. A Freshman in ‘Intro to Adulting’ ends up stopping by in tears, and when Steve sends you his apologies, you respond back that you’ve had to step in for one of your fellow English Department profs.
It’s his habit on evening class nights to walk students to their cars. You sometimes join him and break off when you get close to your own vehicle, but tonight you stick around, inexpertly hiding multiple yawns.
“Give me your keys, I’m driving you home,” Steve decides.
“And what? Walk back here at midnight?” you splutter.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re safe to drive.”
Defeated, you hand over your keys. “This means I get to bore you with news about the poem, then.” When he holds the door open for you, you add, “I’m also going to feed you spaghetti leftovers.”
“Okay, not to complain about the way you clearly love my cooking, but did you listen to any of that?” you laugh.
Steve doesn’t reply that he always listens to you. “Pablo Neruda is your favorite poet,” he recites. “After Howard Stark was murdered, his son went through his things and found a poem Neruda gave him when Stark spoke at the UN in the 70s—”
“—an unreleased poem,” you interrupt. “Folded up in his wallet. And the jerk didn’t let anyone see it!”
“It has his father’s blood on it, Caes!”
“He could have taken a picture and kept the original!” You stand up, gathering the dishes roughly. “Now that SHIELD’s making news again, Stark’s auctioning off all of his dad’s stuff from that night, including the poem. With a secrecy stipulation! I’m so mad I could—” you break off, fuming.
Steve had gotten up to help, but now he reaches over and takes the stack of dishes, striding into the kitchen so you don’t see his face. The mention of SHIELD makes his stomach twist as always, but this time, his memories aren’t as full of regret and self-recrimination as they once were.
Before he can stop himself, he says, “What if we could figure out a way to force Stark to release it?”
The next few days are too hectic to focus on anything but work, with Steve helping out with Homecoming activities and you attending a conference away from NYC. News articles about the SHIELD/HYDRA scandal are hard to ignore, given his insider knowledge about the agency’s mistakes. SHIELD had spent more time hiding a gravely injured James Barnes than keeping him safe in the first place.
Steve had been told to sit down, shut up, and accept the casualty.
He’d quit instead.
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Every mineral in his body had solidified reading the first line, a thousand tiny cuts healed by the sentiment in the second. It was their code, his best friend’s way of ordering him to love himself the way Steve’s mother always had. No one else could have known.
Five years later he took the whole day off and spent all afternoon sitting in the darkest corner of the diner. At five PM, a lean, leather-clad man had slid into the booth across from him and set both hands flat on the table. One flesh, one metal.
His hug hadn’t changed.
Bucky leads an international mercenary team, but they’ve stayed in touch. As a result he’s the one who reaches out first, and the longer between visits, the more Steve worries. They’re at five months now, so he’s strangely relieved when footage of Barnes appears in a news report about SHIELD.
It’s a ‘chase down’ interview, and Bucky glares down the camera, lips moving as the voiceover covers his profanity. Steve reaches for the phone before the segment is over.
They meet ninety minutes later at the diner, both tense thanks to the news coverage. Bucky’s team is injured and off for a while; he only relaxes once the waitress practically forces them to take a couple of pieces of pie. It’s obvious that the woman thinks Bucky can do no wrong.
That’s not true anymore. The team used to call Steve their conscience, and it’s that long-dormant role that has him asking something he’d long avoided.
“Tell me how bad it got. After you— After I left.”
“You really want me to answer that?” Bucky says, voice muffled by chewing.
Steve takes in a deep breath and holds it. “HYDRA?”
Bucky swallows. “Not willingly.”
Pain takes root in Steve’s chest, and it isn’t until Barnes bops him on the side of his head that he starts breathing again.
“Stop mentally tying up my enemies,” he says, tipping back the last of his milkshake and grinning at Steve with a whipped cream mustache. “How’ve you been, Professor?”
Steve obliges, and as ever, his best friend knows his weak spots.
“You’re in love with her. Ask her out.”
“She’s my friend, Buck.”
“Good. Those relationships last longer.”
“What do I have to do to get you to drop this? I don’t think you should eat anything else,” Steve sighs.
“Find me something to do,” Bucky says, smug and comfortable. It has an incredible healing effect on Steve’s insides, enough that he blurts out the stupid, crazy idea he’d been stewing over for days.
Steve’s heart is full. Five years ago he was lost and lonely in the middle of Bucky’s multi-year exile, and now he’s watching you and his best friend huddle over blueprints to the Starks’ New York mansion.
“I can’t believe you even have those,” he tells Bucky as he dries his hands with a dishtowel.
“Steven Grant Rogers, did you do the dishes?” you fret.
“It’s my house, and his prosthetic can’t get wet!”
“Not true,” Bucky mumbles, distracted. He points at the foyer floorplan, saying, “There are multiple chandelier anchor points. Didn’t the article say he was ‘hanging’ the items?”
“Some pretentious BS about an art exhibit/auction that ‘visually breaks the chain of generational guilt,’” you scoff. “He said 'The Diamond of Alqualondë is the jewel in the setting.'”
“And you’re sure it’s not a real gem?”
You step away from the table and slump onto Steve’s couch. “Yeah. The minimum bid is way less than a blue diamond.”
“That and he said it’s stained with his father’s blood,” Steve reminds you, settling a discreet few inches away.
“Blood washes off easy. Unless he’s lying, it’s a poem,” Barnes says.
You shoot Steve a startled look. “So when you said your friend here works as a ‘soldier of fortune…’”
Bucky’s chuckle makes you turn and bury your embarrassed face against Steve’s shoulder, sending his pulse jumping. He studiously ignores Barnes's knowing look.
“I can’t pay him either way,” you say in a sad, muffled voice.
“Stark’s empire benefited from his father’s work with SHIELD,” Bucky says harshly. “Getting to ruin his plans for Howard’s loot will be a privilege. Speaking of which—” He strides over to his leather jacket and pulls out an envelope. “Did you get one of these, Steve?”
Steve shifts his weight, and the two of you share a shy smile as you straighten so he can stand up. That little burst of euphoria lasts him as long as it takes to recognize the handwriting on Bucky’s letter.
“I don’t think I got one, but why is Alexander Pierce signing an invitation to Tony Stark’s gala?”
“The Secretary of State?” you say, coming over.
“It’s PR,” Bucky suggests. “You’ve got Stark cleaning out his dad’s old stuff, the Justice department cleaning out SHIELD’s bad apples, and there’s the guy who put it all in motion standing next to a bunch of respectable soldiers in suits.”
“Cleaning up his image,” you finish for him.
“And they sent you the invitation?” Steve teases Bucky, but you're already scheming.
“No, no, no, that's a million more reasons for cameras! Do the winners get their items right away, or can we wait till the next day to—” you make some vaguely furtive gestures that Steve has to dodge.
Barnes shakes his head. “I wouldn’t risk it, but, do you have a fancy dress?” There’s an impish little twist in his lip as he snatches back the invitation.
“A— what?”
“We’ve got a month, and we’re only after one of the items,” Steve says, pushing back the need to look for his own version of Ross’s invitation. “No one needs to be James Bond, here”
“Indiana Jones,” Bucky corrects, leaning past Steve to make eye contact with you. “You want to write a replacement for us to swap out?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” you whisper, staggering back to stare at the blueprints.
“I’ll get you some water, Caes,” Steve says, glare-chasing Barnes into the kitchen. Once there, he hisses, “I expected you to play along before telling us it’s impossible!”
“You’re the one implying she’s a Bond girl,” Bucky grins. “No judgement, but you could try not calling her ‘Sis.’”
Steve’s so disconcerted he overfills the glass onto the counter. In an even voice he says, “Caesura. Say-sura. It’s her nickname, means a pause in a poem, like rests in a song.”
“Is it still a pause if you never pick up again?”
“I would never have stopped looking for you.” The dishtowel’s still in the other room, so the spilled water starts dripping onto the floor. It’s the only sound for a long moment.
“I know, but this? This feels like an ending, Steve,” Bucky says, soft words spoken almost in cadence with the drips. “Howard Stark’s accident… what do you know about it?”
“I was still searching. I barely remember.” He catches something awful in his friend’s expression before Bucky turns away.
“Tony Stark’s going to open that famously impenetrable vault of his and auction everything from the car. Clothes, watches, half-invented gadgets, and a hard drive he’s never looked at.”
“How can you know he never—”
“It’s full of evidence proving the infiltration goes back a lot farther than current news reports. I only know because I was sent to steal it.” Bucky’s expression is strangely blank.
Three words echo in Steve’s mind. ‘HYDRA?’ ’Not willingly.’
“So Howard was murdered?” he whispers.
“Crash looked real to me. When I got to the wreck he was already dead. I smashed the decoy I was meant to swap out, turned it in, and waited for someone to make news with the real data.” His tone turns hard. “I’m still waiting.”
Steve’s still reeling, but he forces himself to ask, “You sure Tony isn’t HYDRA?”
“I plan to ask him that myself.”
“And the poem?”
“One hell of a benign reason to be there.” Barnes clasps Steve on his upper arms with both hands, equal pressure. “Look, I’m already involved. That fucking reporter made sure of that. You aren’t. Tell me no and I’ll pretend you never said anything—but there are HYDRA operatives left in government, and the proof is on that hard drive.”
🎵 Last song I listened to: History of Man by Maisie Peters
📺 Last series: Heated Rivalry for like the 5th time lol
🎬 Last movie: Project Hail Mary for like the 5th time LOL
🏅 Best thing about the last month: middle kiddo is thriving!
📚 Currently reading: The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev
🎮 Currently playing: Diablo IV & Diablo 2 Resurrected
👾 Currently working on: Surcease, Old-Fashioned Statecraft, untitled Seeking Persephone smut oneshot, & a Tony Stark ask
🌶️ Sweet/spicy/savoury?: spicy!!
🎨 Favourite colour: Teal forever, along with its component parts
🤩 Current obsession: super complicated knitting pattern that does this amazing ripple around splotches of color (it's called 'Gardens of Giverny' and there's a pic of the rectangular version on Pinterest if you can't search it up on Ravelry. Mine is Easter colors and I ADORE it. I'll have to post!)
☕️ Tea or coffee? Tea but I'm coffee-adjacent! fave is citrus black
🌐 Last internet search: 'Loki wind machine' and you're welcome Zombie 💚 Hit me up for knitting stuff!
Surcease 1/3 | Professor!Steve/f!Reader, Steve & Bucky friendship
MCU MASTERLIST | STEVE MASTERLIST | BUCKY MASTERLIST
Summary: Professor Steve Rogers has one hell of a past, a comfortable present, and hopes for a future with you (he's a little stuck on 'step 1: ask you out'). Somehow all three converge with a date, a heist, and a national security threat in one treasure of a night.
Word Count/Warnings: 2,400/10k | Rated T
Written for @thezombieprostitute's Heist challenge, with a twist. Set in the vague 2000s in a version of the MCU where Steve and Bucky worked for Howard Stark's SHIELD around 1990. Romance, fluff, angst, action/adventure, No-Powers, MCU-adjacent.
Excerpt:
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Chapter One: Dramatic
“Oh my God, he’s doing it!”
Steve looks over to see you standing in a widening puddle of coffee, staring at your phone. Your left hand is in a frozen claw, the paper cup with its ‘thank you for being a Lion!’ university branding on it on its side at your feet. He sprints over to grab a roll of paper towels from the nearby cupboard, stripping a bunch of sheets off in a line and tossing it over to start soaking up the brew.
“Shoot, Steve, I’m sorry,” you choke out.
His heart clenches in his chest at the look on your face. “Bad news from home?” he asks, crouching down to clean more of the spill. “Don’t move,” he adds, internally chastising himself for nearly adding an endearment. He shouldn’t complicate the friendship at a time like this.
“Hilariously, yes and no,” you say with a shaky laugh, reaching down to feel for wetness along your pantlegs. “Someone’s just auctioning off The Blue Diamond of Alqualondë. My Holy Grail poem.”
“A poem? Is that possible?” Steve offers some paper towels, colliding with you as you start to crouch. You fall against him with a sound of amused embarrassment. With great care, he ends up lifting you up as he shifts to a stand so you don’t end up covered in floor coffee.
Time stops for a few seconds as the two of you look at each other. He lifts his eyebrows in a silent ‘are you okay’ that’s answered by a sheepish nod. Steve’s heart is pounding so loudly he’s certain you can hear it. To cover for that, he clears his throat and takes one large step, clearing the mess.
“I’ll set you down. Ready?”
“If you insist,” you joke, and he follows through with a wry smile of his own. As usual, you’ve used the unexpected to put him at ease.
“I smell a coffee cup throwing fight, Professor Caesura!” Professor Sunen sings from the doorway. “Someone remind me where the surveillance cameras are as I prepare my weapon!”
“Sorry to disappoint, Kingo,” you tell him as you sop up the last of the spilled liquid. “Good old-fashioned shocked cup drop.”
“Well that isn’t much of a narrative,” the acting professor frowns.
“Gotta jet, office hours,” Steve says, catching a threatening look from you not to mention the poem. He does a ‘zipped lip’ motion behind Professor Sunen’s back and jogs off toward his office.
When Steve surfaces for air 90 minutes and six students later, there’s a sticky note on his door.
Thx babe. Tell you the rest at lunch?
Professor ‘Says’
He knows you don’t mean anything when you use ‘babe,’ but his tender heart enjoys seeing it all the same. Coach Wilson likes to tease him about the friend zone, asking Steve how long before he’ll attempt to score.
Neither of you get to take a lunch. A Freshman in ‘Intro to Adulting’ ends up stopping by in tears, and when Steve sends you his apologies, you respond back that you’ve had to step in for one of your fellow English Department profs.
It’s his habit on evening class nights to walk students to their cars. You sometimes join him and break off when you get close to your own vehicle, but tonight you stick around, inexpertly hiding multiple yawns.
“Give me your keys, I’m driving you home,” Steve decides.
“And what? Walk back here at midnight?” you splutter.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re safe to drive.”
Defeated, you hand over your keys. “This means I get to bore you with news about the poem, then.” When he holds the door open for you, you add, “I’m also going to feed you spaghetti leftovers.”
“Okay, not to complain about the way you clearly love my cooking, but did you listen to any of that?” you laugh.
Steve doesn’t reply that he always listens to you. “Pablo Neruda is your favorite poet,” he recites. “After Howard Stark was murdered, his son went through his things and found a poem Neruda gave him when Stark spoke at the UN in the 70s—”
“—an unreleased poem,” you interrupt. “Folded up in his wallet. And the jerk didn’t let anyone see it!”
“It has his father’s blood on it, Caes!”
“He could have taken a picture and kept the original!” You stand up, gathering the dishes roughly. “Now that SHIELD’s making news again, Stark’s auctioning off all of his dad’s stuff from that night, including the poem. With a secrecy stipulation! I’m so mad I could—” you break off, fuming.
Steve had gotten up to help, but now he reaches over and takes the stack of dishes, striding into the kitchen so you don’t see his face. The mention of SHIELD makes his stomach twist as always, but this time, his memories aren’t as full of regret and self-recrimination as they once were.
Before he can stop himself, he says, “What if we could figure out a way to force Stark to release it?”
The next few days are too hectic to focus on anything but work, with Steve helping out with Homecoming activities and you attending a conference away from NYC. News articles about the SHIELD/HYDRA scandal are hard to ignore, given his insider knowledge about the agency’s mistakes. SHIELD had spent more time hiding a gravely injured James Barnes than keeping him safe in the first place.
Steve had been told to sit down, shut up, and accept the casualty.
He’d quit instead.
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Every mineral in his body had solidified reading the first line, a thousand tiny cuts healed by the sentiment in the second. It was their code, his best friend’s way of ordering him to love himself the way Steve’s mother always had. No one else could have known.
Five years later he took the whole day off and spent all afternoon sitting in the darkest corner of the diner. At five PM, a lean, leather-clad man had slid into the booth across from him and set both hands flat on the table. One flesh, one metal.
His hug hadn’t changed.
Bucky leads an international mercenary team, but they’ve stayed in touch. As a result he’s the one who reaches out first, and the longer between visits, the more Steve worries. They’re at five months now, so he’s strangely relieved when footage of Barnes appears in a news report about SHIELD.
It’s a ‘chase down’ interview, and Bucky glares down the camera, lips moving as the voiceover covers his profanity. Steve reaches for the phone before the segment is over.
They meet ninety minutes later at the diner, both tense thanks to the news coverage. Bucky’s team is injured and off for a while; he only relaxes once the waitress practically forces them to take a couple of pieces of pie. It’s obvious that the woman thinks Bucky can do no wrong.
That’s not true anymore. The team used to call Steve their conscience, and it’s that long-dormant role that has him asking something he’d long avoided.
“Tell me how bad it got. After you— After I left.”
“You really want me to answer that?” Bucky says, voice muffled by chewing.
Steve takes in a deep breath and holds it. “HYDRA?”
Bucky swallows. “Not willingly.”
Pain takes root in Steve’s chest, and it isn’t until Barnes bops him on the side of his head that he starts breathing again.
“Stop mentally tying up my enemies,” he says, tipping back the last of his milkshake and grinning at Steve with a whipped cream mustache. “How’ve you been, Professor?”
Steve obliges, and as ever, his best friend knows his weak spots.
“You’re in love with her. Ask her out.”
“She’s my friend, Buck.”
“Good. Those relationships last longer.”
“What do I have to do to get you to drop this? I don’t think you should eat anything else,” Steve sighs.
“Find me something to do,” Bucky says, smug and comfortable. It has an incredible healing effect on Steve’s insides, enough that he blurts out the stupid, crazy idea he’d been stewing over for days.
Steve’s heart is full. Five years ago he was lost and lonely in the middle of Bucky’s multi-year exile, and now he’s watching you and his best friend huddle over blueprints to the Starks’ New York mansion.
“I can’t believe you even have those,” he tells Bucky as he dries his hands with a dishtowel.
“Steven Grant Rogers, did you do the dishes?” you fret.
“It’s my house, and his prosthetic can’t get wet!”
“Not true,” Bucky mumbles, distracted. He points at the foyer floorplan, saying, “There are multiple chandelier anchor points. Didn’t the article say he was ‘hanging’ the items?”
“Some pretentious BS about an art exhibit/auction that ‘visually breaks the chain of generational guilt,’” you scoff. “He said 'The Diamond of Alqualondë is the jewel in the setting.'”
“And you’re sure it’s not a real gem?”
You step away from the table and slump onto Steve’s couch. “Yeah. The minimum bid is way less than a blue diamond.”
“That and he said it’s stained with his father’s blood,” Steve reminds you, settling a discreet few inches away.
“Blood washes off easy. Unless he’s lying, it’s a poem,” Barnes says.
You shoot Steve a startled look. “So when you said your friend here works as a ‘soldier of fortune…’”
Bucky’s chuckle makes you turn and bury your embarrassed face against Steve’s shoulder, sending his pulse jumping. He studiously ignores Barnes's knowing look.
“I can’t pay him either way,” you say in a sad, muffled voice.
“Stark’s empire benefited from his father’s work with SHIELD,” Bucky says harshly. “Getting to ruin his plans for Howard’s loot will be a privilege. Speaking of which—” He strides over to his leather jacket and pulls out an envelope. “Did you get one of these, Steve?”
Steve shifts his weight, and the two of you share a shy smile as you straighten so he can stand up. That little burst of euphoria lasts him as long as it takes to recognize the handwriting on Bucky’s letter.
“I don’t think I got one, but why is Alexander Pierce signing an invitation to Tony Stark’s gala?”
“The Secretary of State?” you say, coming over.
“It’s PR,” Bucky suggests. “You’ve got Stark cleaning out his dad’s old stuff, the Justice department cleaning out SHIELD’s bad apples, and there’s the guy who put it all in motion standing next to a bunch of respectable soldiers in suits.”
“Cleaning up his image,” you finish for him.
“And they sent you the invitation?” Steve teases Bucky, but you're already scheming.
“No, no, no, that's a million more reasons for cameras! Do the winners get their items right away, or can we wait till the next day to—” you make some vaguely furtive gestures that Steve has to dodge.
Barnes shakes his head. “I wouldn’t risk it, but, do you have a fancy dress?” There’s an impish little twist in his lip as he snatches back the invitation.
“A— what?”
“We’ve got a month, and we’re only after one of the items,” Steve says, pushing back the need to look for his own version of Ross’s invitation. “No one needs to be James Bond, here”
“Indiana Jones,” Bucky corrects, leaning past Steve to make eye contact with you. “You want to write a replacement for us to swap out?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” you whisper, staggering back to stare at the blueprints.
“I’ll get you some water, Caes,” Steve says, glare-chasing Barnes into the kitchen. Once there, he hisses, “I expected you to play along before telling us it’s impossible!”
“You’re the one implying she’s a Bond girl,” Bucky grins. “No judgement, but you could try not calling her ‘Sis.’”
Steve’s so disconcerted he overfills the glass onto the counter. In an even voice he says, “Caesura. Say-sura. It’s her nickname, means a pause in a poem, like rests in a song.”
“Is it still a pause if you never pick up again?”
“I would never have stopped looking for you.” The dishtowel’s still in the other room, so the spilled water starts dripping onto the floor. It’s the only sound for a long moment.
“I know, but this? This feels like an ending, Steve,” Bucky says, soft words spoken almost in cadence with the drips. “Howard Stark’s accident… what do you know about it?”
“I was still searching. I barely remember.” He catches something awful in his friend’s expression before Bucky turns away.
“Tony Stark’s going to open that famously impenetrable vault of his and auction everything from the car. Clothes, watches, half-invented gadgets, and a hard drive he’s never looked at.”
“How can you know he never—”
“It’s full of evidence proving the infiltration goes back a lot farther than current news reports. I only know because I was sent to steal it.” Bucky’s expression is strangely blank.
Three words echo in Steve’s mind. ‘HYDRA?’ ’Not willingly.’
“So Howard was murdered?” he whispers.
“Crash looked real to me. When I got to the wreck he was already dead. I smashed the decoy I was meant to swap out, turned it in, and waited for someone to make news with the real data.” His tone turns hard. “I’m still waiting.”
Steve’s still reeling, but he forces himself to ask, “You sure Tony isn’t HYDRA?”
“I plan to ask him that myself.”
“And the poem?”
“One hell of a benign reason to be there.” Barnes clasps Steve on his upper arms with both hands, equal pressure. “Look, I’m already involved. That fucking reporter made sure of that. You aren’t. Tell me no and I’ll pretend you never said anything—but there are HYDRA operatives left in government, and the proof is on that hard drive.”
EEeeeeee I am so glad! When I started this I really wanted to heighten the bond ASAP cause there's so much that will be going on and I'm wordy AF. This has been a great exercise in that regard, to be sure. I made sure to work in the glasses for the next chapter!
Surcease 1/3 | Professor!Steve/f!Reader, Steve & Bucky friendship
MCU MASTERLIST | STEVE MASTERLIST | BUCKY MASTERLIST
Summary: Professor Steve Rogers has one hell of a past, a comfortable present, and hopes for a future with you (he's a little stuck on 'step 1: ask you out'). Somehow all three converge with a date, a heist, and a national security threat in one treasure of a night.
Word Count/Warnings: 2,400/10k | Rated T
Written for @thezombieprostitute's Heist challenge, with a twist. Set in the vague 2000s in a version of the MCU where Steve and Bucky worked for Howard Stark's SHIELD around 1990. Romance, fluff, angst, action/adventure, No-Powers, MCU-adjacent.
Excerpt:
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Chapter One: Dramatic
“Oh my God, he’s doing it!”
Steve looks over to see you standing in a widening puddle of coffee, staring at your phone. Your left hand is in a frozen claw, the paper cup with its ‘thank you for being a Lion!’ university branding on it on its side at your feet. He sprints over to grab a roll of paper towels from the nearby cupboard, stripping a bunch of sheets off in a line and tossing it over to start soaking up the brew.
“Shoot, Steve, I’m sorry,” you choke out.
His heart clenches in his chest at the look on your face. “Bad news from home?” he asks, crouching down to clean more of the spill. “Don’t move,” he adds, internally chastising himself for nearly adding an endearment. He shouldn’t complicate the friendship at a time like this.
“Hilariously, yes and no,” you say with a shaky laugh, reaching down to feel for wetness along your pantlegs. “Someone’s just auctioning off The Blue Diamond of Alqualondë. My Holy Grail poem.”
“A poem? Is that possible?” Steve offers some paper towels, colliding with you as you start to crouch. You fall against him with a sound of amused embarrassment. With great care, he ends up lifting you up as he shifts to a stand so you don’t end up covered in floor coffee.
Time stops for a few seconds as the two of you look at each other. He lifts his eyebrows in a silent ‘are you okay’ that’s answered by a sheepish nod. Steve’s heart is pounding so loudly he’s certain you can hear it. To cover for that, he clears his throat and takes one large step, clearing the mess.
“I’ll set you down. Ready?”
“If you insist,” you joke, and he follows through with a wry smile of his own. As usual, you’ve used the unexpected to put him at ease.
“I smell a coffee cup throwing fight, Professor Caesura!” Professor Sunen sings from the doorway. “Someone remind me where the surveillance cameras are as I prepare my weapon!”
“Sorry to disappoint, Kingo,” you tell him as you sop up the last of the spilled liquid. “Good old-fashioned shocked cup drop.”
“Well that isn’t much of a narrative,” the acting professor frowns.
“Gotta jet, office hours,” Steve says, catching a threatening look from you not to mention the poem. He does a ‘zipped lip’ motion behind Professor Sunen’s back and jogs off toward his office.
When Steve surfaces for air 90 minutes and six students later, there’s a sticky note on his door.
Thx babe. Tell you the rest at lunch?
Professor ‘Says’
He knows you don’t mean anything when you use ‘babe,’ but his tender heart enjoys seeing it all the same. Coach Wilson likes to tease him about the friend zone, asking Steve how long before he’ll attempt to score.
Neither of you get to take a lunch. A Freshman in ‘Intro to Adulting’ ends up stopping by in tears, and when Steve sends you his apologies, you respond back that you’ve had to step in for one of your fellow English Department profs.
It’s his habit on evening class nights to walk students to their cars. You sometimes join him and break off when you get close to your own vehicle, but tonight you stick around, inexpertly hiding multiple yawns.
“Give me your keys, I’m driving you home,” Steve decides.
“And what? Walk back here at midnight?” you splutter.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re safe to drive.”
Defeated, you hand over your keys. “This means I get to bore you with news about the poem, then.” When he holds the door open for you, you add, “I’m also going to feed you spaghetti leftovers.”
“Okay, not to complain about the way you clearly love my cooking, but did you listen to any of that?” you laugh.
Steve doesn’t reply that he always listens to you. “Pablo Neruda is your favorite poet,” he recites. “After Howard Stark was murdered, his son went through his things and found a poem Neruda gave him when Stark spoke at the UN in the 70s—”
“—an unreleased poem,” you interrupt. “Folded up in his wallet. And the jerk didn’t let anyone see it!”
“It has his father’s blood on it, Caes!”
“He could have taken a picture and kept the original!” You stand up, gathering the dishes roughly. “Now that SHIELD’s making news again, Stark’s auctioning off all of his dad’s stuff from that night, including the poem. With a secrecy stipulation! I’m so mad I could—” you break off, fuming.
Steve had gotten up to help, but now he reaches over and takes the stack of dishes, striding into the kitchen so you don’t see his face. The mention of SHIELD makes his stomach twist as always, but this time, his memories aren’t as full of regret and self-recrimination as they once were.
Before he can stop himself, he says, “What if we could figure out a way to force Stark to release it?”
The next few days are too hectic to focus on anything but work, with Steve helping out with Homecoming activities and you attending a conference away from NYC. News articles about the SHIELD/HYDRA scandal are hard to ignore, given his insider knowledge about the agency’s mistakes. SHIELD had spent more time hiding a gravely injured James Barnes than keeping him safe in the first place.
Steve had been told to sit down, shut up, and accept the casualty.
He’d quit instead.
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Every mineral in his body had solidified reading the first line, a thousand tiny cuts healed by the sentiment in the second. It was their code, his best friend’s way of ordering him to love himself the way Steve’s mother always had. No one else could have known.
Five years later he took the whole day off and spent all afternoon sitting in the darkest corner of the diner. At five PM, a lean, leather-clad man had slid into the booth across from him and set both hands flat on the table. One flesh, one metal.
His hug hadn’t changed.
Bucky leads an international mercenary team, but they’ve stayed in touch. As a result he’s the one who reaches out first, and the longer between visits, the more Steve worries. They’re at five months now, so he’s strangely relieved when footage of Barnes appears in a news report about SHIELD.
It’s a ‘chase down’ interview, and Bucky glares down the camera, lips moving as the voiceover covers his profanity. Steve reaches for the phone before the segment is over.
They meet ninety minutes later at the diner, both tense thanks to the news coverage. Bucky’s team is injured and off for a while; he only relaxes once the waitress practically forces them to take a couple of pieces of pie. It’s obvious that the woman thinks Bucky can do no wrong.
That’s not true anymore. The team used to call Steve their conscience, and it’s that long-dormant role that has him asking something he’d long avoided.
“Tell me how bad it got. After you— After I left.”
“You really want me to answer that?” Bucky says, voice muffled by chewing.
Steve takes in a deep breath and holds it. “HYDRA?”
Bucky swallows. “Not willingly.”
Pain takes root in Steve’s chest, and it isn’t until Barnes bops him on the side of his head that he starts breathing again.
“Stop mentally tying up my enemies,” he says, tipping back the last of his milkshake and grinning at Steve with a whipped cream mustache. “How’ve you been, Professor?”
Steve obliges, and as ever, his best friend knows his weak spots.
“You’re in love with her. Ask her out.”
“She’s my friend, Buck.”
“Good. Those relationships last longer.”
“What do I have to do to get you to drop this? I don’t think you should eat anything else,” Steve sighs.
“Find me something to do,” Bucky says, smug and comfortable. It has an incredible healing effect on Steve’s insides, enough that he blurts out the stupid, crazy idea he’d been stewing over for days.
Steve’s heart is full. Five years ago he was lost and lonely in the middle of Bucky’s multi-year exile, and now he’s watching you and his best friend huddle over blueprints to the Starks’ New York mansion.
“I can’t believe you even have those,” he tells Bucky as he dries his hands with a dishtowel.
“Steven Grant Rogers, did you do the dishes?” you fret.
“It’s my house, and his prosthetic can’t get wet!”
“Not true,” Bucky mumbles, distracted. He points at the foyer floorplan, saying, “There are multiple chandelier anchor points. Didn’t the article say he was ‘hanging’ the items?”
“Some pretentious BS about an art exhibit/auction that ‘visually breaks the chain of generational guilt,’” you scoff. “He said 'The Diamond of Alqualondë is the jewel in the setting.'”
“And you’re sure it’s not a real gem?”
You step away from the table and slump onto Steve’s couch. “Yeah. The minimum bid is way less than a blue diamond.”
“That and he said it’s stained with his father’s blood,” Steve reminds you, settling a discreet few inches away.
“Blood washes off easy. Unless he’s lying, it’s a poem,” Barnes says.
You shoot Steve a startled look. “So when you said your friend here works as a ‘soldier of fortune…’”
Bucky’s chuckle makes you turn and bury your embarrassed face against Steve’s shoulder, sending his pulse jumping. He studiously ignores Barnes's knowing look.
“I can’t pay him either way,” you say in a sad, muffled voice.
“Stark’s empire benefited from his father’s work with SHIELD,” Bucky says harshly. “Getting to ruin his plans for Howard’s loot will be a privilege. Speaking of which—” He strides over to his leather jacket and pulls out an envelope. “Did you get one of these, Steve?”
Steve shifts his weight, and the two of you share a shy smile as you straighten so he can stand up. That little burst of euphoria lasts him as long as it takes to recognize the handwriting on Bucky’s letter.
“I don’t think I got one, but why is Alexander Pierce signing an invitation to Tony Stark’s gala?”
“The Secretary of State?” you say, coming over.
“It’s PR,” Bucky suggests. “You’ve got Stark cleaning out his dad’s old stuff, the Justice department cleaning out SHIELD’s bad apples, and there’s the guy who put it all in motion standing next to a bunch of respectable soldiers in suits.”
“Cleaning up his image,” you finish for him.
“And they sent you the invitation?” Steve teases Bucky, but you're already scheming.
“No, no, no, that's a million more reasons for cameras! Do the winners get their items right away, or can we wait till the next day to—” you make some vaguely furtive gestures that Steve has to dodge.
Barnes shakes his head. “I wouldn’t risk it, but, do you have a fancy dress?” There’s an impish little twist in his lip as he snatches back the invitation.
“A— what?”
“We’ve got a month, and we’re only after one of the items,” Steve says, pushing back the need to look for his own version of Ross’s invitation. “No one needs to be James Bond, here”
“Indiana Jones,” Bucky corrects, leaning past Steve to make eye contact with you. “You want to write a replacement for us to swap out?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” you whisper, staggering back to stare at the blueprints.
“I’ll get you some water, Caes,” Steve says, glare-chasing Barnes into the kitchen. Once there, he hisses, “I expected you to play along before telling us it’s impossible!”
“You’re the one implying she’s a Bond girl,” Bucky grins. “No judgement, but you could try not calling her ‘Sis.’”
Steve’s so disconcerted he overfills the glass onto the counter. In an even voice he says, “Caesura. Say-sura. It’s her nickname, means a pause in a poem, like rests in a song.”
“Is it still a pause if you never pick up again?”
“I would never have stopped looking for you.” The dishtowel’s still in the other room, so the spilled water starts dripping onto the floor. It’s the only sound for a long moment.
“I know, but this? This feels like an ending, Steve,” Bucky says, soft words spoken almost in cadence with the drips. “Howard Stark’s accident… what do you know about it?”
“I was still searching. I barely remember.” He catches something awful in his friend’s expression before Bucky turns away.
“Tony Stark’s going to open that famously impenetrable vault of his and auction everything from the car. Clothes, watches, half-invented gadgets, and a hard drive he’s never looked at.”
“How can you know he never—”
“It’s full of evidence proving the infiltration goes back a lot farther than current news reports. I only know because I was sent to steal it.” Bucky’s expression is strangely blank.
Three words echo in Steve’s mind. ‘HYDRA?’ ’Not willingly.’
“So Howard was murdered?” he whispers.
“Crash looked real to me. When I got to the wreck he was already dead. I smashed the decoy I was meant to swap out, turned it in, and waited for someone to make news with the real data.” His tone turns hard. “I’m still waiting.”
Steve’s still reeling, but he forces himself to ask, “You sure Tony isn’t HYDRA?”
“I plan to ask him that myself.”
“And the poem?”
“One hell of a benign reason to be there.” Barnes clasps Steve on his upper arms with both hands, equal pressure. “Look, I’m already involved. That fucking reporter made sure of that. You aren’t. Tell me no and I’ll pretend you never said anything—but there are HYDRA operatives left in government, and the proof is on that hard drive.”
Surcease 1/3 | Professor!Steve/f!Reader, Steve & Bucky friendship
MCU MASTERLIST | STEVE MASTERLIST | BUCKY MASTERLIST
Summary: Professor Steve Rogers has one hell of a past, a comfortable present, and hopes for a future with you (he's a little stuck on 'step 1: ask you out'). Somehow all three converge with a date, a heist, and a national security threat in one treasure of a night.
Word Count/Warnings: 2,400/10k | Rated T
Written for @thezombieprostitute's Heist challenge, with a twist. Set in the vague 2000s in a version of the MCU where Steve and Bucky worked for Howard Stark's SHIELD around 1990. Romance, fluff, angst, action/adventure, No-Powers, MCU-adjacent.
Excerpt:
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Chapter One: Dramatic
“Oh my God, he’s doing it!”
Steve looks over to see you standing in a widening puddle of coffee, staring at your phone. Your left hand is in a frozen claw, the paper cup with its ‘thank you for being a Lion!’ university branding on it on its side at your feet. He sprints over to grab a roll of paper towels from the nearby cupboard, stripping a bunch of sheets off in a line and tossing it over to start soaking up the brew.
“Shoot, Steve, I’m sorry,” you choke out.
His heart clenches in his chest at the look on your face. “Bad news from home?” he asks, crouching down to clean more of the spill. “Don’t move,” he adds, internally chastising himself for nearly adding an endearment. He shouldn’t complicate the friendship at a time like this.
“Hilariously, yes and no,” you say with a shaky laugh, reaching down to feel for wetness along your pantlegs. “Someone’s just auctioning off The Blue Diamond of Alqualondë. My Holy Grail poem.”
“A poem? Is that possible?” Steve offers some paper towels, colliding with you as you start to crouch. You fall against him with a sound of amused embarrassment. With great care, he ends up lifting you up as he shifts to a stand so you don’t end up covered in floor coffee.
Time stops for a few seconds as the two of you look at each other. He lifts his eyebrows in a silent ‘are you okay’ that’s answered by a sheepish nod. Steve’s heart is pounding so loudly he’s certain you can hear it. To cover for that, he clears his throat and takes one large step, clearing the mess.
“I’ll set you down. Ready?”
“If you insist,” you joke, and he follows through with a wry smile of his own. As usual, you’ve used the unexpected to put him at ease.
“I smell a coffee cup throwing fight, Professor Caesura!” Professor Sunen sings from the doorway. “Someone remind me where the surveillance cameras are as I prepare my weapon!”
“Sorry to disappoint, Kingo,” you tell him as you sop up the last of the spilled liquid. “Good old-fashioned shocked cup drop.”
“Well that isn’t much of a narrative,” the acting professor frowns.
“Gotta jet, office hours,” Steve says, catching a threatening look from you not to mention the poem. He does a ‘zipped lip’ motion behind Professor Sunen’s back and jogs off toward his office.
When Steve surfaces for air 90 minutes and six students later, there’s a sticky note on his door.
Thx babe. Tell you the rest at lunch?
Professor ‘Says’
He knows you don’t mean anything when you use ‘babe,’ but his tender heart enjoys seeing it all the same. Coach Wilson likes to tease him about the friend zone, asking Steve how long before he’ll attempt to score.
Neither of you get to take a lunch. A Freshman in ‘Intro to Adulting’ ends up stopping by in tears, and when Steve sends you his apologies, you respond back that you’ve had to step in for one of your fellow English Department profs.
It’s his habit on evening class nights to walk students to their cars. You sometimes join him and break off when you get close to your own vehicle, but tonight you stick around, inexpertly hiding multiple yawns.
“Give me your keys, I’m driving you home,” Steve decides.
“And what? Walk back here at midnight?” you splutter.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re safe to drive.”
Defeated, you hand over your keys. “This means I get to bore you with news about the poem, then.” When he holds the door open for you, you add, “I’m also going to feed you spaghetti leftovers.”
“Okay, not to complain about the way you clearly love my cooking, but did you listen to any of that?” you laugh.
Steve doesn’t reply that he always listens to you. “Pablo Neruda is your favorite poet,” he recites. “After Howard Stark was murdered, his son went through his things and found a poem Neruda gave him when Stark spoke at the UN in the 70s—”
“—an unreleased poem,” you interrupt. “Folded up in his wallet. And the jerk didn’t let anyone see it!”
“It has his father’s blood on it, Caes!”
“He could have taken a picture and kept the original!” You stand up, gathering the dishes roughly. “Now that SHIELD’s making news again, Stark’s auctioning off all of his dad’s stuff from that night, including the poem. With a secrecy stipulation! I’m so mad I could—” you break off, fuming.
Steve had gotten up to help, but now he reaches over and takes the stack of dishes, striding into the kitchen so you don’t see his face. The mention of SHIELD makes his stomach twist as always, but this time, his memories aren’t as full of regret and self-recrimination as they once were.
Before he can stop himself, he says, “What if we could figure out a way to force Stark to release it?”
The next few days are too hectic to focus on anything but work, with Steve helping out with Homecoming activities and you attending a conference away from NYC. News articles about the SHIELD/HYDRA scandal are hard to ignore, given his insider knowledge about the agency’s mistakes. SHIELD had spent more time hiding a gravely injured James Barnes than keeping him safe in the first place.
Steve had been told to sit down, shut up, and accept the casualty.
He’d quit instead.
The next year and a half was spent searching for Bucky. His ‘severance’ after quitting had been a full ride to college, an expense ‘well worth ridding the team of a goody two-shoes,’ according to one former colleague. He’d studied on airplanes, strained to read textbooks by streetlamp doing midnight surveillance, and ran up his phone bill with long distance calls. His grades and his mental health suffered, right up until he was given a note by the waitress at his favorite diner.
Five years.
Take care of Sarah
Every mineral in his body had solidified reading the first line, a thousand tiny cuts healed by the sentiment in the second. It was their code, his best friend’s way of ordering him to love himself the way Steve’s mother always had. No one else could have known.
Five years later he took the whole day off and spent all afternoon sitting in the darkest corner of the diner. At five PM, a lean, leather-clad man had slid into the booth across from him and set both hands flat on the table. One flesh, one metal.
His hug hadn’t changed.
Bucky leads an international mercenary team, but they’ve stayed in touch. As a result he’s the one who reaches out first, and the longer between visits, the more Steve worries. They’re at five months now, so he’s strangely relieved when footage of Barnes appears in a news report about SHIELD.
It’s a ‘chase down’ interview, and Bucky glares down the camera, lips moving as the voiceover covers his profanity. Steve reaches for the phone before the segment is over.
They meet ninety minutes later at the diner, both tense thanks to the news coverage. Bucky’s team is injured and off for a while; he only relaxes once the waitress practically forces them to take a couple of pieces of pie. It’s obvious that the woman thinks Bucky can do no wrong.
That’s not true anymore. The team used to call Steve their conscience, and it’s that long-dormant role that has him asking something he’d long avoided.
“Tell me how bad it got. After you— After I left.”
“You really want me to answer that?” Bucky says, voice muffled by chewing.
Steve takes in a deep breath and holds it. “HYDRA?”
Bucky swallows. “Not willingly.”
Pain takes root in Steve’s chest, and it isn’t until Barnes bops him on the side of his head that he starts breathing again.
“Stop mentally tying up my enemies,” he says, tipping back the last of his milkshake and grinning at Steve with a whipped cream mustache. “How’ve you been, Professor?”
Steve obliges, and as ever, his best friend knows his weak spots.
“You’re in love with her. Ask her out.”
“She’s my friend, Buck.”
“Good. Those relationships last longer.”
“What do I have to do to get you to drop this? I don’t think you should eat anything else,” Steve sighs.
“Find me something to do,” Bucky says, smug and comfortable. It has an incredible healing effect on Steve’s insides, enough that he blurts out the stupid, crazy idea he’d been stewing over for days.
Steve’s heart is full. Five years ago he was lost and lonely in the middle of Bucky’s multi-year exile, and now he’s watching you and his best friend huddle over blueprints to the Starks’ New York mansion.
“I can’t believe you even have those,” he tells Bucky as he dries his hands with a dishtowel.
“Steven Grant Rogers, did you do the dishes?” you fret.
“It’s my house, and his prosthetic can’t get wet!”
“Not true,” Bucky mumbles, distracted. He points at the foyer floorplan, saying, “There are multiple chandelier anchor points. Didn’t the article say he was ‘hanging’ the items?”
“Some pretentious BS about an art exhibit/auction that ‘visually breaks the chain of generational guilt,’” you scoff. “He said 'The Diamond of Alqualondë is the jewel in the setting.'”
“And you’re sure it’s not a real gem?”
You step away from the table and slump onto Steve’s couch. “Yeah. The minimum bid is way less than a blue diamond.”
“That and he said it’s stained with his father’s blood,” Steve reminds you, settling a discreet few inches away.
“Blood washes off easy. Unless he’s lying, it’s a poem,” Barnes says.
You shoot Steve a startled look. “So when you said your friend here works as a ‘soldier of fortune…’”
Bucky’s chuckle makes you turn and bury your embarrassed face against Steve’s shoulder, sending his pulse jumping. He studiously ignores Barnes's knowing look.
“I can’t pay him either way,” you say in a sad, muffled voice.
“Stark’s empire benefited from his father’s work with SHIELD,” Bucky says harshly. “Getting to ruin his plans for Howard’s loot will be a privilege. Speaking of which—” He strides over to his leather jacket and pulls out an envelope. “Did you get one of these, Steve?”
Steve shifts his weight, and the two of you share a shy smile as you straighten so he can stand up. That little burst of euphoria lasts him as long as it takes to recognize the handwriting on Bucky’s letter.
“I don’t think I got one, but why is Alexander Pierce signing an invitation to Tony Stark’s gala?”
“The Secretary of State?” you say, coming over.
“It’s PR,” Bucky suggests. “You’ve got Stark cleaning out his dad’s old stuff, the Justice department cleaning out SHIELD’s bad apples, and there’s the guy who put it all in motion standing next to a bunch of respectable soldiers in suits.”
“Cleaning up his image,” you finish for him.
“And they sent you the invitation?” Steve teases Bucky, but you're already scheming.
“No, no, no, that's a million more reasons for cameras! Do the winners get their items right away, or can we wait till the next day to—” you make some vaguely furtive gestures that Steve has to dodge.
Barnes shakes his head. “I wouldn’t risk it, but, do you have a fancy dress?” There’s an impish little twist in his lip as he snatches back the invitation.
“A— what?”
“We’ve got a month, and we’re only after one of the items,” Steve says, pushing back the need to look for his own version of Ross’s invitation. “No one needs to be James Bond, here”
“Indiana Jones,” Bucky corrects, leaning past Steve to make eye contact with you. “You want to write a replacement for us to swap out?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” you whisper, staggering back to stare at the blueprints.
“I’ll get you some water, Caes,” Steve says, glare-chasing Barnes into the kitchen. Once there, he hisses, “I expected you to play along before telling us it’s impossible!”
“You’re the one implying she’s a Bond girl,” Bucky grins. “No judgement, but you could try not calling her ‘Sis.’”
Steve’s so disconcerted he overfills the glass onto the counter. In an even voice he says, “Caesura. Say-sura. It’s her nickname, means a pause in a poem, like rests in a song.”
“Is it still a pause if you never pick up again?”
“I would never have stopped looking for you.” The dishtowel’s still in the other room, so the spilled water starts dripping onto the floor. It’s the only sound for a long moment.
“I know, but this? This feels like an ending, Steve,” Bucky says, soft words spoken almost in cadence with the drips. “Howard Stark’s accident… what do you know about it?”
“I was still searching. I barely remember.” He catches something awful in his friend’s expression before Bucky turns away.
“Tony Stark’s going to open that famously impenetrable vault of his and auction everything from the car. Clothes, watches, half-invented gadgets, and a hard drive he’s never looked at.”
“How can you know he never—”
“It’s full of evidence proving the infiltration goes back a lot farther than current news reports. I only know because I was sent to steal it.” Bucky’s expression is strangely blank.
Three words echo in Steve’s mind. ‘HYDRA?’ ’Not willingly.’
“So Howard was murdered?” he whispers.
“Crash looked real to me. When I got to the wreck he was already dead. I smashed the decoy I was meant to swap out, turned it in, and waited for someone to make news with the real data.” His tone turns hard. “I’m still waiting.”
Steve’s still reeling, but he forces himself to ask, “You sure Tony isn’t HYDRA?”
“I plan to ask him that myself.”
“And the poem?”
“One hell of a benign reason to be there.” Barnes clasps Steve on his upper arms with both hands, equal pressure. “Look, I’m already involved. That fucking reporter made sure of that. You aren’t. Tell me no and I’ll pretend you never said anything—but there are HYDRA operatives left in government, and the proof is on that hard drive.”
This is inspired. But they all are! THE HANDS in the last one, literally dying at the accuracy! Forcing myself to wait till tomorrow to go back and see part 1!
