a little excerpt from the meal i'm cooking in the kitchen:
(tentatively titled the ballad of a dove; sam wilson & bucky barnes & joaquin torres)
The December morning greeted him with a flash of wind against his face, sharp as a whip and cool as iron. Sam didn’t give Bucky a minute to breathe before he said, “Joaquin’s MIA.”
Bucky could breathe, but it didn’t feel very good. Louisiana didn’t get cold like Russia — it didn’t even get as cold as the American northeast, which was already laughable compared to Europe’s unforgiving climate. Yet, Delacroix’s version of cold spiked through his throat and punctured his lungs.
It wasn’t the news itself that concerned him so much; it was Sam’s face. His eyes were squinted at the horizon, his mouth pinched like he was trying to hold something horrible from jumping out, and his hands were stuffed stiffly into pockets.
So Bucky was concerned, because in their line of work, going MIA was par for the course. They had enemies. It wouldn’t be out of pocket to assume that he may have had to take shelter or discreetly take someone out. And while that was worrying, Torres was also the Falcon. He could take care of himself. He knew how to get a hold of Sam and Bucky if he was really in trouble.
He didn’t say anything, choosing to let Sam bathe in the quiet morning and his friend’s silent comfort until he could continue.
“Air Force released him to go home to his family for Christmas. When he didn’t make it home or answer any of his texts, his family called the police. Them and Nellis tracked him down to his car with a flat tire on the shoulder of I-10.”
There’s the way Sam said all of this, for one, with his detached tone of voice and forceful, even breaths. For two, he trailed off at the end of his explanation and lightly scuffed the ground with the side of his shoe.
“And he wasn’t there, I’m guessing,” Bucky asked, keeping his voice low. He still wasn’t exactly sure where the problem lied, yet. There were a million and one reasons for a man like Torres to abandon his car on the side of the road.
Sam sighed. “One of those battery pack tire pumps was sticking out his tire. The outside of the car is dented, scratched, and bloodied. Signs of a struggle. They think he tried to get a knife out of his car from the driver’s side but was unsuccessful.”
Bucky waited for more. It didn’t come. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” he clicked his tongue. “Investigation’s only begun, but they don’t have any major leads yet. No DNA, no witnesses, nothing,” Sam said. His tone hardened at the end, spitting the word nothing out like one would chewing tobacco.
dont anticipate me to ever finish this, but it is fun to get a little brainworm out onto paper. lets just say crazy things are happening in this fic and it WILL entail an insane trauma bonding experience for bucky and torres