Walked into Walmart and saw they still had the tiny posters promoting thunderbolts* being released on dvd and blue ray asked if I could have them and they said yes
John is dating a single mom with a fifteen year old son, Mason. John eventually wins the kid over, everything is cool. Then one Monday Mason goes back to school, talking to his friends and he’s just casual about his weekend. They went hiking outside the city, his mom’s boyfriend slept over and they played video games… it was alright. Then his friends look at him.
“Your mom’s dating that New Avengers guy, right?”
“My dad said he’s a murderer.”
“He’s so lame.”
And mason just shrugs. “He’s actually pretty cool.”
Then one of his friends laughs. “You know Captain Taco Shield is banging your mom, right?”
And Mason just melts cause dear lord did he not need to think about that.
I am just watching the thunderbolts for the first time now and dear god it's bringing back my marvel and bucky obsession tenfold. I am not even halfway through the movie yet. Wow.
summary: There are few things the Thunderbolts do badly. Road trips, it turns out, are most of them.
⤷ warnings/tags: general, team fic, crack fic, one original character (the witness), no one should allow them to be in a car together, no romance just deeply dysfunctional coworkers
word count: 4.1k (chaotic!)
⤷ author’s note: thank u @star-and-shield-monthly's july prompt - road trip (and i totally accept that this might be out of scope but please cut me some slack i got stuck and had to crack my way out)
+ more writing from me!
There were, Bucky Barnes had long believed, certain situations which could be improved by silence, discipline, and a loaded firearm.
A road trip with the Thunderbolts was not among them.
It had been eleven minutes since they left the compound, eight since Walker announced that he had 'a system' for highway driving, and four since Yelena began searching the glove compartment for anything with which she might humanely put him down.
The glove compartment contained a vehicle manual, three paper napkins, an expired insurance card, and a single peppermint fused to its wrapper by either heat or age. Yelena considered these resources with the cold ingenuity of a woman trained from childhood to turn household objects into murder weapons.
“No,” Bucky said.
“I did not say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
From behind him came the soft, thoughtful crackle of a plastic packet being opened.
Bucky turned.
Alexei had produced a boiled egg.
There were seven people inside the beige minivan. There were six functioning cupholders, five seat belts which did not require negotiation, four adults who had at some point been declared legally dead, three active grudges, two classified fugitives in pursuit of them, and one boiled egg whose appearance threatened to end the mission before the enemy had the chance.
“Absolutely not,” said Yelena.
Alexei paused with the egg halfway to his mouth.
“It is protein.”
“It is sulphuric.”
“It is breakfast.”
“It is terrorism.”
“Could everybody stop yelling?” Walker asked, one hand on the steering wheel and the other extended in a gesture of strained diplomacy. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”
This was plainly untrue. Walker had spent most of the drive rotating his head to address the passengers directly, like a man who had misunderstood both conversation and vertebral anatomy. Many a times, the minivan drifted toward the lane markers and had to be roughly jerked back into place.
Bucky reached forward and shoved the steering wheel two inches to the left.
Walker slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch the steering wheel.”
“You’re looking at Alexei.”
“I have peripheral vision.”
“You have a death wish.”
“Same thing, in his case,” Yelena said.
Alexei ate the egg whole.
The witness watched all of this from the second row with the grave attention of a man observing a complicated but not entirely unexpected audit.
Martin Cox was sixty-eight years old, five feet seven inches tall, and dressed as though he had been abducted halfway through a moderately important lunch. His navy trousers retained a crease. His grey cardigan was buttoned despite the heat. A leather satchel rested upright between his polished shoes, guarded with greater care than anyone had so far extended to Martin himself.
He had spent thirty-seven years investigating financial crimes and had recently discovered that a private defence contractor was laundering government funds through a string of shell companies connected to illegal human enhancement trials. This discovery had resulted in two assassination attempts, one exploded townhouse, and an urgent need to be transported from Maryland to a secure federal facility in Pennsylvania.
The drive, according to the map, would take four hours and twelve minutes.
It had been Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s considered opinion that the assignment was impossible to mishandle.
This was insulting in several directions.
Martin adjusted his glasses and looked at Walker. “Do you always drive this close to the vehicle in front?”
“I’m maintaining pressure.”
“You are tailgating a church van.”
“It keeps the traffic moving.”
“It appears to be full of children.”
“They’ll learn situational awareness.”
Martin absorbed this.
Then he turned to Bucky. “Does he have insurance?”
“No.”
“I have insurance,” Walker insisted.
“Not after today,” said Ava from the back row.
Until that moment, Bucky had forgotten she was there.
Ava had a talent for stillness which occasionally crossed the border into nonexistence. She occupied the rearmost corner beside Bob, knees angled away from Alexei, hood drawn up, expression arranged into the particular vacancy she used when wishing to communicate that everyone around her was beneath the effort of contempt.
Bob sat beside her, folded uncomfortably into the seat despite the van’s supposedly generous legroom. He had both hands wrapped around a paper cup of gas-station coffee, though he had not taken a sip. The lid trembled faintly whenever Walker swerved.
Bucky had noticed.
So had Yelena.
So, unfortunately, had Martin.
“Young man,” Martin said, turning around as far as his seat belt permitted, “do you drink coffee?”
Bob looked down at the cup. “Sometimes.”
“That one?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Good. It smells terrible.”
“It’s from the machine.”
“Yes, that is generally where bad coffee comes from.”
Bob blinked.
Martin opened his satchel and removed a folded newspaper. “Do you know a six-letter word for ‘needless commotion’?”
Bob glanced toward the front, where Walker and Yelena were now arguing about whether indicators were a legal requirement or an admission of weakness.
“Um, a ‘racket’?”
“Excellent.”
Martin unfolded the crossword across his knees and passed him a pencil.
The trembling in the coffee lid stopped.
Bucky turned back around before anybody could notice he had been watching.
The mission briefing had taken place at six that morning in a windowless room designed by someone who believed grey walls encouraged honesty.
“Low profile,” Valentina had said, sliding one of her manila folders across the table.
Yelena had looked at the folder, then at the five members of the team assembled around it.
“Impossible,” she declared.
“The witness is being targeted by a private security group. They have access to facial recognition, toll-road cameras, airport manifests and possibly federal databases.”
“So naturally,” Bucky had said, “you’re sending the six most recognisable people in the country.”
Valentina had smiled. “In a minivan.”
There had been a silence of great moral complexity.
Then Alexei had said, “Shotgun.”
This begun the first argument.
The second was about who would drive.
Walker claimed that advanced tactical vehicle training should count for something. Yelena pointed out that he had recently reversed through a loading dock. Walker maintained that this was deliberate. Bucky had offered to drive, which prompted Valentina to remind him that his licence was from 1943 and therefore invalid after eighty-three years.
Ava volunteered Bob.
Bob went pale.
And so, Walker won by default.
The seat allocation had taken another twenty minutes.
Yelena took the passenger seat on the grounds that she became carsick in the back, a claim nobody believed but everyone respected because she had made it while holding a knife.
Martin occupied the middle row behind Walker so that Bucky could sit behind Yelena and reach both front occupants in the event of crisis.
Alexei was assigned to the third row because no one trusted him near the dashboard. He had objected that he was a national hero and therefore entitled to legroom.
To that, Ava had simply said, “Which nation?”
Alexei had spent the first hour sulking and at 7:43 am, he produced the eggs.
At 8:12 am, Walker missed the first exit.
“I did not miss it,” he said.
The motorway continued decisively in the wrong direction.
“The road curved,” Walker added.
“Exits do not move,” said Bucky.
“The GPS recalculated.”
“The GPS gave up,” Ava accused.
The electronic voice had indeed fallen silent after three consecutive ignored instructions. Its blue route line now appeared less like navigation and more like an accusation.
Walker’s fingers tightened around the wheel.
“I know where I’m going.”
Martin looked out the window at a sign welcoming them to Delaware.
“Is the secure facility in Delaware?”
“No.”
“Then I must admire your confidence.”
Yelena leaned across and jabbed at the screen. “Turn around.”
“I can’t just turn around on the interstate.”
“Then reverse.”
“That is illegal.”
“Now you care?”
Walker took the next exit. It led them through a town whose primary economic activity appeared to be corn.
The GPS regained its courage.
PROCEED TWELVE MILES, it instructed, TO MERGE ONTO ROUTE FORTY.
Alexei leaned forward between the seats.
“I know better road.”
“No,” said five people.
“It is shortcut.”
“No,” insisted Bucky.
“I travelled this region extensively.”
“When?”
“During cultural exchange.”
Yelena closed her eyes. “He means he went to Atlantic City once.”
“I saw much of America.”
“You saw casinos and parking garages.”
“Both are pillars of national character.”
Walker glanced at the fuel gauge. “How much time does it save?”
Bucky looked at him. Really looked.
This was how democracies failed: not through invasion, nor corruption, but because one man asked another man how much time his imaginary shortcut saved.
Alexei beamed. “Forty minutes.”
It added ninety-three.
The road narrowed, the asphalt ended, and the minivan proceeded onto a gravel track between two vast fields inhabited by cows who regarded them with the tranquil superiority of creatures who would never had to meet Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Dust rose in their wake.
A stone struck the underside of the van.
Something began to rattle with a metallic tone.
Walker slowed. “Nobody say anything.”
“Something is broken,” Bob said.
“Thank you, Bob.”
“You said not to say anything.”
“I meant everybody else.”
The road forked.
There were no signs.
Walker stopped the van as silence descended. It was not a peaceful silence by any measure – it was the silence of a jury returning to the courtroom.
Bucky turned slowly toward Alexei.
Alexei pointed left.
“Definitely.”
Ava looked right. “There’s a dead deer that way.”
“Then left.”
“Dead deer means road access,” said Alexei. “Cars travel there.”
“Or bullets,” Yelena said.
Martin checked his watch. “I need to eat in twenty minutes.”
Walker stared at him in the mirror. “We’re a little off schedule.”
“Yes. I had observed the countryside.”
“He’s diabetic,” Bucky said.
“I know he’s diabetic.”
“You forgot.”
“I did not forget.”
“You forgot.”
“I was managing the route.”
“The route is a cow pasture.”
One of the cows approached the passenger window.
Yelena lowered it.
“Do not engage with livestock,” Walker warned.
Yelena held out her hand. The cow sniffed her fingers.
“You are more competent than our driver,” she told it.
The cow, having reached a similar conclusion, licked her sleeve.
Bucky rubbed a hand over his face.
“Martin,” he said, “what do you need?”
“Food. Preferably containing carbohydrates but not frosting.”
Alexei brightened. “I have egg.”
“No,” said everyone, including Martin.
They found a diner eleven miles later.
It stood beside a two-lane highway under a sign shaped like a smiling pig, though time and weather had removed one eye and most of its teeth. The car park contained three pickup trucks, a motorcycle and a faded school bus converted into something called LARRY’S MOBILE TAXIDERMY.
The diner itself was named THE HAPPY HOG. Nothing about it suggested that it was the happiness that had survived.
“We are not stopping here,” Walker said.
Martin opened the door, and Bucky caught it before he could step out.
“We clear the place first.”
“It’s a diner.”
“So was the last safe house.”
Martin considered this. “What happened there?”
“Not relevant.”
“Was there pie?”
“There was an explosion.”
“That really doesn’t answer the question.”
They entered in formation, insofar as six heavily armed operatives accompanying a retired accountant could enter a roadside diner without appearing either suspicious or profoundly lost.
The waitress looked up from behind the counter. She had silver hair, pink glasses and the unstartled expression of a woman who had been serving interstate traffic for forty years and had learned that curiosity delayed retirement.
“Seven?”
“Six,” Walker said.
Martin cleared his throat.
“Seven.”
“I was counting the team.”
“I had understood myself to be part of the relevant party.”
The waitress took seven menus from a stack.
“Booth’s in the back.”
The booth was designed for four ordinary people or perhaps six compact ones. They squeezed in with the grim determination of soldiers boarding a lifeboat.
Alexei sat at the end and immediately began narrating the menu.
“Biscuits and gravy. This is very good. American cuisine understands that food should look already defeated.”
Yelena took the menu from him.
“Why is every meal beige?”
“Freedom has no colour.”
“Freedom has cholesterol.”
Martin ordered toast, eggs and fruit.
Bob ordered nothing.
“You should eat,” Martin gently chided.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You were looking at the pancakes.”
Bob indeed had glanced at the stack of pancakes listed beneath a photograph whose syrup had the gloss of industrial varnish.
“They’re probably not very good.”
“Most things aren’t. That is no reason to surrender the field.”
Bob ordered pancakes, Yelena the fries and a black coffee. Walker ordered the grilled chicken and asked whether the vegetables could be steamed.
The waitress stared at him.
“They come from a bag,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
“They come pre-steamed.”
Walker paused. “Okay.”
Bucky ordered a slice of pie. He did not intend to; the word simply emerged from his mouth after eighty minutes of gravel roads and Walker repeating the phrase ‘traffic strategy’. It was blueberry and warm and came with ice cream, and for four uninterrupted minutes Bucky experienced something approaching peace.
Then Martin asked, “Do you have a will?”
Bucky lowered his fork. “Excuse me?”
“A legal will.”
“Yes.”
“Updated?”
Bucky looked at him.
Martin buttered his toast. “You have the demeanour of a man who believes paperwork is a personal insult.”
“I have a will.”
“Who drafted it?”
“A lawyer.”
“What kind?”
“The legal kind.”
Martin sighed. “That is not a kind.”
“Can we not discuss Barnes’s death plans over breakfast?” Walker asked.
“You have one too,” Martin said.
“Obviously.”
“Updated?”
Walker stabbed a vegetable.
Martin turned to Yelena. “You?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I own three knives, a leather jacket and no property.”
She vanished – there was no sound, no flash; the booth simply contained one fewer person. Martin looked at the empty seat.
“Does she do that often?”
“Yes,” said Bucky.
“Rude.”
“She can still hear you,” Bob said.
“I know.”
Ava reappeared two minutes later holding a key attached to a wooden block.
“The bathroom was locked.”
“You could have asked,” Walker said.
“I did.”
“No, you disappeared.”
“That was me asking.”
The waitress brought the cheque.
Walker reached for it.
Bucky reached faster. “I’m paying.”
“You paid last time.”
“You complained about the tip.”
“It was excessive.”
“It was eighteen percent.”
“The service was inconsistent.”
“The building was on fire.”
“That affected everybody.”
Martin removed his wallet.
Six heads turned.
“No,” Bucky said.
“I can pay for my own breakfast.”
“You’re in protective custody.”
“I am not a child.”
“No one said you were.”
“You took away my belt at the first safe house.”
“It had a metal buckle.”
“So does his arm.”
Bucky placed cash on the table.
Martin looked at it, then at him.
“You carry cash.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“None of your business.”
“Do you invest?”
Bucky stood. “We’re leaving.”
They were seventeen miles away when Bob asked, very softly, “Where’s Walker?”
The van went silent.
Yelena looked into the driver’s seat.
Bucky was driving.
He had taken the keys after breakfast on the grounds that another detour might result in murder (whose, it was not clear). Yelena was in the passenger seat. Martin and Bob sat in the middle. Alexei and Ava were in the back.
Walker was not in the vehicle.
Bucky checked the mirror again, as though Walker might have been concealed by a blind spot.
“Did anybody see him get in?”
“No,” said Ava.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I thought we had made a decision.”
Yelena turned toward the back. “You knew?”
“I noticed.”
“That is not same as knowing.”
“It often is.”
Martin folded his newspaper. “We should go back.”
Alexei looked wounded. “But journey is so peaceful.”
Bucky took the next exit.
They found Walker at the side of the highway seven minutes later, riding in the passenger seat of Larry’s Mobile Taxidermy.
The converted school bus pulled up alongside them at a traffic light and Walker leaned out the window. His expression was like the calm before a summer storm.
“Pull over.”
Bucky lowered his window. “You found us.”
“Pull. Over.”
Yelena waved. “Hello, John.”
Walker pinned her with a long, hard look.
“You left me.”
“Strong words.”
“You drove away.”
“You were in bathroom.”
“I was washing my hands.”
“Suspicious.”
Larry honked cheerfully. A mounted deer head stared through the windscreen.
Walker transferred vehicles without further incident, though the atmosphere afterward suggested incident had merely changed form.
He took the middle seat beside Martin and spent the next half hour radiating such concentrated offence that even Alexei stopped humming.
At 1:27 pm, the first black SUV appeared.
Bucky noticed it three cars back.
Ava noticed it at the same time.
Yelena noticed them noticing.
The shift through the van was instant and almost invisible. Shoulders changed angle. Hands moved. Bob set down the crossword.
Martin looked from one face to another. “What is it?”
“Vehicle behind us,” Bucky said.
“Same one from the diner,” Ava added.
Walker turned.
“Don’t look,” Bucky snapped.
“You just looked.”
“I used the mirror.”
“I was using the rear window.”
“That’s called looking.”
The SUV accelerated. A second appeared ahead, emerging from an access lane.
“Seat belts,” Bucky said.
Everyone obeyed except Alexei, who was already trying to open the side door.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing counter-assault.”
“At a hundred miles an hour?”
“Element of surprise.”
“The surprise will be your organs leaving your body.”
The lead SUV braked sharply.
Bucky swerved to avoid the collision. The minivan lurched onto the shoulder, scattering gravel. Martin gripped the handle above the door. Bob went rigid.
The world inside the van seemed to contract around him.
Bucky saw it happen in the mirror: Bob’s pupils widening, his breath catching too high, the awful inward turn of a man searching for the edge of himself and finding something else waiting there.
Martin saw it too. He did not recoil. Instead, he picked up the crossword from the floor.
“Seven letters,” he said.
Bob stared at him.
Martin held out the paper.
“‘To remain steady under pressure.’”
The SUV struck the rear bumper.
Metal screamed.
Bob flinched.
“Steady,” Martin repeated. “Seven letters.”
Bucky pulled the wheel hard, letting the impact carry them sideways before correcting. Yelena lowered her window and drew a pistol.
“Composure,” Bob whispered.
“Seven letters.”
“Balance?”
“We might park that for later.”
Another shot cracked against the van.
Ava vanished through the floor.
Walker twisted between the seats. “Where’d she go?”
“To work,” said Yelena.
The SUV behind them veered suddenly as Ava phased up through its bonnet. The vehicle swerved across two lanes, struck the barrier and spun.
Alexei cheered.
“Do not encourage her,” Bucky sighed.
The lead SUV had now come to a screeching stop, blocking the road ahead. Three armed men emerged, guns drawn.
Bucky braked and the minivan skidded to a stop sideways across the lane.
For one brief, absurd second, everything was still.
Then the doors opened.
There were many things the Thunderbolts did badly. They communicated through insults, interpreted boundaries as tactical challenges, and possessed a collective relationship with authority that ranged from contempt to attempted vehicular homicide. They could not select a restaurant in under forty minutes. They could not travel seventy miles without losing a team member. They had transformed a four-hour protective transfer into a tour of three states, one livestock field and a diner bathroom of disputed accessibility.
But violence was an old language that they were fluent in.
Yelena closed the distance first.
Bucky heard one shot, then the wet crack of an elbow connecting with a throat. Walker took the man on the left, shield raised before the second volley reached them. Alexei tore the minivan’s sliding door from its track and charged behind it, roaring something in Russian which might have been a battle cry or a complaint about the manufacturer.
Ava appeared inside the SUV and dragged the driver through his own seat.
Bucky moved between the gunfire and the open van.
Behind him, Martin continued with the crossword. “Eight letters. ‘A feeling of unease.’”
Bob’s voice shook. “Anxiety?”
“Yes.”
A bullet struck the road near Bucky’s boot.
He fired twice.
One man dropped his weapon.
“Five letters,” Martin said. “‘A place of refuge.’”
Bob looked at the van, at Martin, at Bucky standing in the open doorway.
“Shelter.”
“Good.”
The air around Bob seemed to brighten.
Not much, just enough.
Bucky met his eyes. “You with us?”
Bob swallowed.
Then he nodded.
The light receded.
“Yeah.”
“Stay with Martin.”
“I am staying with him,” Martin said. “The distinction matters.”
The fight – if it could be called that – lasted all of twenty-eight seconds.
It took another twelve minutes to restrain the surviving attackers, recover Alexei from a ditch, and determine if the minivan remained technically operable.
Technically was doing substantial work – the rear bumper dragged against the road. One window was gone. The door had been reattached using two belts, a length of wire and what Alexei insisted was traditional Russian engineering.
“It will hold,” he said.
The door fell off.
No one spoke.
Alexei looked at it.
“Road is uneven.”
They arrived at the federal facility at 6:14 in the evening.
Ten hours and forty-six minutes after departure.
The receiving officer stood at the gate with a clipboard and the stunned expression of a man who had been told to expect a beige minivan and instead received the final vehicle in a demolition derby.
Bucky stopped beside him.
The engine coughed.
Smoke rose from beneath the bonnet.
Martin climbed out, straightened his cardigan and collected his satchel.
The officer stared at the missing door. “Were there complications?”
“No,” said the team.
Behind them, the bumper dropped off with a resounding clang.
Martin shook Bucky’s hand. “You should review your estate documents.”
“Goodbye, Martin.”
He turned to Yelena. “Eat something green.”
“I had pickle.”
“Not sufficient.”
To Alexei he said, “Your merchandise infringes at least four trademarks.”
“It is tribute.”
“It is actionable.”
Ava received a business card. “You could make excellent money in forensic compliance.”
“I would rather die.”
“That is what everyone says before consulting.”
Walker folded his arms.
Martin regarded him for a moment. “You should not drive.”
“I wasn’t driving when we were attacked.”
“You should not drive generally.”
Finally, he turned to Bob.
The crossword was folded inside Bob’s jacket pocket.
Martin smiled.
“You missed twelve down.”
Bob took out the paper. “What was it?”
“Six letters. ‘One who protects.’”
Bob looked at the others.
Walker was arguing with the officer about jurisdiction. Yelena had stolen the clipboard. Alexei was attempting to lift the bumper as though he might simply press it back into place. Ava stood half inside the security gate, unreadable and near enough to Bob that their shoulders almost touched.
Bucky waited beside the ruined van.
“Sentry?” Bob said.
Martin nodded.
“Good answer.”
He walked through the gate. The team watched until the doors closed behind him.
Then, Valentina’s voice came through the dashboard speaker. It is worth noting that the van’s communications system had not worked all day. It chose this moment to revive.
“Status update.”
Bucky looked at the cracked windscreen, the smoking bonnet and the empty place where a door had once been.
“Witness delivered.”
“Any complications?”
The team exchanged a glance.
“No,” Bucky said.
The engine died.
There was a long silence.
Valentina sighed.
“I’m sending another vehicle.”
“What kind?” Yelena asked.
“A van.”
Everyone began speaking at once.
Bucky stepped away from the wreckage and looked toward the western sky, where the last of the daylight had spread itself in gold across the low hills. Behind him, Alexei was blaming American manufacturing. Walker was blaming Alexei. Ava had taken Martin’s business card from Bob and was reading it despite her stated preference for death. Yelena had found Bucky’s unfinished pie in a takeout box and was eating it with her hands.
Bob came to stand beside him.
“You think Martin will be safe?”
Bucky looked at the armed facility, the reinforced gate and the soldiers stationed along the perimeter.
“Probably safer than he was with us.”
Bob smiled.
It was small, but it was there.
Yelena appeared at Bucky’s other shoulder and held out the remains of the pie.
He looked at it.
“You ate the ice cream.”
“It melted.”
“You ate it before it melted.”
“This is accusation without evidence.”
There was blueberry on her thumb.
Bucky took the box anyway.
From the wrecked minivan came a loud metallic groan – the remaining door had fallen off. No one turned around.
According to the map, the journey home would take four hours.
yap! saw the new spidey movie and my wife yelena was there - and that just made me miss my big potato thunderbolts crew even more... (also why are they the new avengers pls thunderbolts is such a cuter team name)
