For your amazing stories on ao3, how would Steve react to having a stalker? How would Bucky react to Steve having one?
coh god a stalker!!! it would be so awful but i’m not the friendly neighborhood angst queen for nothing. this got long. omg it got long.
how about in the these days ‘verse? steve continues working at the hug room at the VA after booger is born and him and bucky get together/married/bonded, and there, one of the vets gets too attached to him. now, let’s be clear, mental health is wrongfully correlated with violence way too often, and it’s more than cliche to say that a vet with PTSD is disposed to violence, it’s ableism
hug room is part of the VA center, but it is not exclusive to the VA, it’s a therapy service. so steve has patients from several places, it isn’t his business where they come from. his job is to reacquaint them with gentle touch and that’s all he does.
so one of his more difficult patients becomes too attached. displacement, that’s the psychological term for it. we’ll go ahead and say it’s a guy and an alpha, bc statistically, that is more likely. and his name is uhhhhhhhhhhhhh frank. maybe over a slow period, steve does help him become more comfortable with physical touch, but almost at the same time, frank develops an obsession with him. tries to book more sessions than have been prescribed per week, shows up at random times and asks if he’s free, things like that. it escalates slowly, but it’s first caught by steve’s boss, who politely and kindly turns frank away one morning and tells him that he’s no longer going to be seeing steve. frank actually throws a fit then and there and he’s escorted out.
steve tells bucky about it after. bucky says that if frank shows up again, call him and he’ll see him out. steve tells him not to be so dramatic.
but it does get worse. frank follows steve home one day, though he’s stuck outside the apartment building. steve doesn’t notice, unfortunately. frank begins watching him daily, yannow, the whole stalker deal.
one night, frank somehow gets steve’s phone number. don’t ask us how, one otherwise ordinary tuesday night, steve’s encouraging jamesy to color outside the lines while bucky attempts to cook something new and interesting i’m sure, and steve’s phone rings. unknown number. not actually the dreaded Unknown Number, it was just a number steve didn’t recognize. steve passes jamesy to bucky, answers the call, he says, “hello?”
“hello.” “who is this?” *long silence.* “hello?” steve repeats? *heavy breathing* steve gets disturbed. “I’m going to hang up now,” he says. “wait!” frank shouts, actually shouts, “baby,” he says, “don’t go!”
steve, highly disturbed, he drops the phone from his ear and hangs up right away. “what’s the matter?” bucky asks. steve wanders over to him, bucky tosses an arm around his side, and steve promptly blocks the number. “weird phone call,” steve just says. bucky hugs him closer. “well, don’t answer it again.”
but it doesn’t stop. frank doesn’t call again that night, but he does the next night. steve blocks every single number, but frank keeps managing to find different unblocked ones, and after a month of his calling, steve changes his phone number. that stops it, but only briefly. bucky wants to go to the police about it, but steve says they shouldn’t, since it’s only phone calls.
and then one afternoon while steve’s taken jamesy to the park, frank gets too close. jamesy’s playing in the sandbox and steve is sitting nearby probably drawing. frank comes up behind him all quiet-like and steve, absorbed in drawing and watching jamesy, he doesn’t notice. frank slyly takes the seat on the bench next to steve and starts inching closer. steve notices when he’s just breached the distance of polite-personal-space.
“hi,” frank says. steve jumps up from his seat, grabs his stuff and starts to run to grab jamesy. “wait, no!” frank jumps up, too, grabbing steve’s arm, “i only wanted to see you again, you’ve been avoiding me!” “this is inappropriate,” steve argues, “inappropriate and it makes me uncomfortable, please leave me alone.” “you keep dodging my calls!” frank claims.
Steve jerks his arm away from frank, leaving his notebook behind, he grabs jamesy and books it. frank picks up the forgotten notebook and claims it as a treasure.
when they get home and steve tells bucky what happened, bucky doesn’t even wait to ask steve if he should, he just calls the police. an officer comes by and steve reluctantly gives a statement, shows the records of all the calls, admits that the hug room had to ban frank bc he’d started harrassing steve. the cop takes it all down, says they’ll make a note of it, and then just leaves. that’s all they can do for the time-being. frank hasn’t done enough to warrant a restraining order or anything. they do send an officer to tell frank to leave steve alone, but that’s all they can do.
bucky does not like that. he wants to go hunt frank down himself and show him a thing or two about stark prosthetics up close (after tony succeeded with bucky’s arm, he did go on to exceed his father in affluence and wealth while all the while giving top-of-the-line prosthetics to people like bucky for pennies). but anyway, bucky definitely wants to show frank the point with his fist, but steve, you know, he only believes the fight is worth having if it’s for someone else.
but for the time being, frank does vanish. steve says “see, it’s fine!” and bucky says “he’s luring us into a false sense of security” and steve looks at him flatly with his eyebrows raised and blinks once and bucky splutters about cautiousness for a bit while steve just looks at him until he just slows until he stops. “okay, we’ll leave him alone,” bucky agrees reluctantly. “for now!”
and for the moment, frank does seem to move on. the phone calls stop, steve doesn’t see him again, jamesy of course has no idea what’s going on, he’s 2. he does know about banana peanut butter sandwiches and the most thinking he does is whether or not he wants chunky or smooth peanut butter.
a few months go by, steve and bucky think it’s blown over. and then one night, bucky’s out with the guys or he’s working late, and it’s just steve and jamesy at home. steve’s just put jamesy to bed and he took a shower and he’s probably like thinking that he’s going to get himself prettied up and he’s going to be ready in bed already prepped when bucky gets home, so he’s wearing a towel and he’s a lil bit drippy, and he notices that the shades are open so he goes to shut it and then he fucking screams and runs out because frank is sitting on the fire escape outside looking in.
bucky books it home and gets there before the cops. steve has at some point gotten into bucky’s bathrobe probably. the baby’s woken up, he’s hungry and grumpy, bucky’s out of his mind terrified, like, what if the window had been unlocked or he’d broken it, oh my god! and steve is just silently hugging jamesy and bucky bc he’s kinda in shock. cops do come and they look around, but they don’t find any trace of frank. the cops can’t pin anything on frank, but they say they’ll talk to him again and one of them advises steve and bucky to get a civil restraining order filed, bc in that case, if frank does show up again, then they’ll have something to charge him with.
bucky right away starts the process to get the restraining order. steve lets him do it bc he’s still kinda in shock. i mean, you go into your bedroom wearing a towel and there’s a dude with his eyeballs pressed to the glass, it’s a shocking thing! it takes several weeks, but they get it filed and in the meantime, bucky and steve put extra locks on the windows and the front door. around the same time, the phone calls start up again and they have to change steve’s number a third time. frank even calls bucky once, unfortunately for him, bc bucky stays on the line long enough to scream at him, and this time, frank’s the one that hangs up.
once the restraining order is filed, frank’s stalking does stop. for a while. a few months of blessed peace, and then bucky wakes up one night to the sound of the window rattling. steve does not wake up, bc he doesn’t sleep with his hearing aids in. bucky wakes up, gets up, suspicious, and actually grabs his sidearm. he creeps up to the window and pops the blinds apart. frank is on the other side trying to jimmy it open. immediately, frank starts to book it, bucky throws the window open and jumps out on the fire escape, yelling and screaming, people all across the building switch their lights on, and frank stops halfway down the fire escape to yell back at bucky, “you can’t stop me, i love him more than you.” bucky promptly fires a warning shot into the air, which does wake steve up, and frank books it again.
the police come. bucky did fire his gun, but it was into the air, nobody got hurt. this time, frank committed a criminal offense and the cops get to arrest him. he’s charged with criminal contempt of the first degree in violating the protection order filed by james b. rogers-barnes and steven rogers-barnes, and he’s given a fine and 2 years, 9 months in prison. frank briefly entertains the idea of suing bucky for firing the warning shot, but his lawyer advises him not to, bc he’d almost definitely lose and he’s lost enough.
steve and bucky both feel much safer with him behind bars. they nearly forget about him until the sentence is close to ending, but when frank is released, his lawyer contacts their lawyer with a very stiff and formal apology notice and the promise to abide by the restraining order there on out. ofc, violating it a second time would earn him more prison time, and that’s probably why. it’s a sigh of relief.
that got really long. i spent way longer on this than i should have. but! i hope you enjoyed this, ducky, and thank you so much for the ask! i did enjoy answering it and it’s definitely a really interesting scenario. god, now i’m wondering what would happen if slutty!steve had a stalker. tho, mafia-king!bucky would probs just shoot them at the earliest opportunity. which would make it a very short scenario. still, the kept boy ‘verse is partially murder kink. carry on, have a lovely day!