Summary: "If he's just minor nobility, why does he need a bodyguard?" Steve shoved the folder which held Barnes' details towards the middle of the table. "He's not exactly prime kidnap material."
"His parents aren't worried about kidnapping," Fury said. "They need someone to steer him away from the dumb ass situations he keeps getting into."
"You mean he needs a babysitter." Steve sat back and folded his arms. "Seriously."
"If he's just minor nobility, why does he need a bodyguard?" Steve shoved the folder which held Barnes' details towards the middle of the table. "He's not exactly prime kidnap material."
"His parents aren't worried about kidnapping," Fury said. "They need someone to steer him away from the dumb ass situations he keeps getting into."
"You mean he needs a babysitter." Steve sat back and folded his arms. "Seriously."
"It's a one week assignment whilst he's in the country. If they like you and the two of you don't actually kill each other in those seven days, there might be the slim chance of a full time retainer - which," Fury held up his hand before Steve could get another word out. "Would be more than lucrative for both you and the company."
Steve stared at the face which looked out of half a dozen photographs on the table. Ridiculous eyelashes framed eyes that seemed to flit between silver-grey and palest blue depending upon the light. Full lips pouted at the camera, or, in one shot in particular, wrapped around a cigarette in the most obscene way possible.
"What kind of situations?" Steve asked, and ignored Fury's triumphant smirk. Yeah, yeah, so he'd bitten. Call him a sucker for lost causes that needed rescuing. Although listening to Fury's recounting of some of the things Barnes had been caught doing, it sounded like he needed saving from himself more than anything.
There’s a legend about people who live in the sea.
A tale about a woman who falls in love and turns to foam.
There’s a myth about creatures called ‘mermaids’, the ones who live beneath the surface of the water. Sometimes they are indifferent to man, sometimes they are curious, but more often than not they are dangerous. They are alluring with their siren call, the predators and lions of the deep. More often, they would sooner eat a man than fall in love with one.
There’s a different tale, one that hasn’t been told, not yet, that’s different from all of these.
There’s a tale where one did fall in love with a man, but unlike The Little Mermaid, this one was not kind or forgiving or even what you would call loving.
But he was curious.
He was curious enough to save a man, instead of eat him.
Summary: Bucky Barnes never remembers who he is. That doesn’t stop him from falling in love with Steve Rogers.
“But whatever the reason, though we now have a live subject, there appears to be considerable brain damage. The subject has no memory of his previous life. What he does have…are reflex memories. He knows the things he did before; how to fight, particularly, how to speak four languages, including, thankfully, Russian, and many other things. But he has no idea how or why he knows these things. He is nearly a blank state, but an incredibly dangerous one…”
– Captain America #11, Ed Brubaker
***
Bucky Barnes never remembers who he is.
That doesn’t stop him from falling in love with Steve Rogers.
*
Steve finds him.
At first, Steve brings him back to Avengers Tower and New York, so optimistic and full of hope that he doesn’t know how to turn Steve down.
Steve tells him stories, about his parents, his sister, and their little lives in Brooklyn – from Coney Island to the Stark Expo, and a HYDRA base in Italy. He listens to memory after memory of trenches in France and snowy missions from years long past; the only missions he remembers are filled with different snows. It all sounds like a story. Like he’s reading an old diary entry he doesn’t remember writing, the words all his, but not the memories. It feels right. It sounds right.
But something isn’t right, and he isn’t the James Buchanan Barnes that Steve Rogers once knew.
He considers lying, but Steve looks at him with such naked hope and want. Steve’s been looking at him that way since he was found. There is something inside of him that tells him to stay with Steve, to trust him, keep him safe. That’s all that’s left of who he was – and it tells him, Pretend. Pretend to be Bucky Barnes.
In the end, he thinks his decision to tell Steve the truth is the only part of Bucky Barnes left in him.
Summary: Captain America and Bucky Barnes were like brothers. Everyone knew that.
Gabe and Morita had just put their sleeping rolls down and were getting ready to strip down for bed, waiting for Dernier to come join them in the tiny shed, when they heard a door inside the house opening.
Gabe's attention was caught by Cap's urgent voice.
"Bucky, if we're caught--"
"There's nobody here," Barnes laughed. "Come on."
"I--"
"The men are all in a whole other building," said Barnes, and Gabe suppressed a chuckle. He glanced at Morita, who grinned back at him. "We've got this one all to ourselves."
"We could be--"
"It's our only chance. It's been weeks, Steve. Please." Barnes was really a manipulative bastard, thought Gabe. But Cap really needed to relax, and who knew what Barnes was gonna to get him to do - try to find a girl in the village, draw a mural on the wall of the forsaken house they'd taken over, eat some contraband chocolate... who knew. It would surely be good for their CO, though.
And unbeknownst to Cap and Barnes, "the men," having discovered that the chicken barn they were supposed to stay in was filled with debris, had decided to explore alternate arrangements. Gabe and Morita had entered a shed that leaned up against the house and was sturdy enough - and empty enough - to accommodate at least three of their sleeping bags, claimed it, and told Dernier about it. And moved in right in time to overhear their commanding officer and their sniper get up to something that they would be in prime position to hold over them as blackmail material. This oughta be worth a few cigarettes at least. Gabe unashamedly put his ear to the wall, grinning as Morita did the same.
"This ain't the orphanage, Bucky," said Cap seriously, his footsteps getting closer to them, and it was funny how much more Brooklyn he always sounded around Barnes. "We get caught and we're not going to get sent to Mother Superior's office."
"Sure. We could be court-martialled and sent to hard labor, life as we know it could be over." Barnes said scornfully, and Gabe exchanged a glance with Morita. Barnes was probably planning some prank. Probably on a higher-up. Phillips?
"It's not funny, Bucky," said Cap. "It could happen."
Barnes laughed. "Not to you. Court-martial Captain America? They'd protect you, bury it all."
"And you?"
"We're in a war, Steve. We could die tomorrow, and we'd miss this because you're too chicken shit to--"
"Because I don't want to risk you," said Cap, his voice thick, and there was an odd noise. Gabe's grin started to fade.
"The men are all far away, Steve, come on, we haven't been--"
"I can live with that," said Cap.
"Well I can't," said Barnes, his voice sharp. "It's not enough to just be pals. Yeah, it's great that we serve together and sleep across the campfire with all the other fellas all around, but it drives me crazy, having you so fucking near..."
What the hell--
"Bucky," Cap's voice was low, anguished, and suddenly there was another noise.
What the hell was... that sounded like they were...
Summary: A scifi AU with a fascist police state, a genetic caste system, a skinny young man who should not be alive for reasons too numerous to list, and the partially brainwashed assassin who shows up at his door in the middle of the night to send the world crashing down around his ears.
Long before Steve was born, if stories were to be believed, it used to be that one could poke his head out at night and hear laughter or music or television sets. Even after dark, there would be groups of men and women in the street. There were places to go back then, too—art museums and baseball stadiums and movie theatres, even bars with alcohol and dancing. Steve’s mother knew this, because her mother and father before her had told her stories from when they were children, and they remembered it all, she said.
“Why didn’t the Eugenics Police stop everyone?” her young son would ask.
“There were no EPs back then,” she would explain gently. “This was before the war.”
When Steve was a child, he believed his mother’s stories. He wanted to believe them still. It was the believing that was important now, she had told him once, shortly before she died. One had to believe that things could be better to fix them. And so to this day Steve would curl up each night to the sound of the curfew siren, close his eyes, and try to believe. But when the siren faded and the silence replaced it, the only sound he could imagine was that of splintering wood and the heavy footsteps of Alpha boots.
The sound of his door giving way still found its way into his dreams, even now. It woke him in a violent jerk that stole his breath and sent his heart hammering so loudly he couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t the EPs thundering up the stairs. Sometimes he would find himself on his feet at once; other times he would just lie rigid as a board until his breath would come normally again. But sooner or later, whether he managed to go back to sleep or not, there was always silence.
Except tonight. It was no dream that had woken him. The urgent rapping at the door came again.
Steve froze. Although he had practiced what to do in this situation a thousand times, he had no intention now of squeezing his frame into the crawl space behind the bed again and huddling there, still and quiet, while the officers tore unimpeded through what was left of his life. Though he stood no chance against a squadron of half a dozen Alphas, if he were to see his life end in the Labs either way, he wouldn’t go without resistance.
The knock came again, frantic, as Steve rolled barefoot out of bed, threw on his scarf and reached for his bat. EPs wouldn’t knock, he realized as he crept down the stairs, especially not at the door of a Delta.
He placed his feet carefully in the exact spots he’d memorized, where the floorboards made no sound. No, this couldn’t be the EPs. They would have broken through the door without question. Wood meant nothing to them. And yet, curfew should have long been in effect even for Betas by now. Who could it be if not an Alpha at this time of night?
He was halfway down the steps, fully in view of the doorway, when the knocking suddenly ceased. There was a brief stretch of silence, and then with two forceful shoves, the wood around the deadbolt exploded. Steve raised the bat as he’d seen men do in the old movies, ready to strike.
Silhouetted in the doorway was a man. Steve knew immediately by his height and build that he could only be an Alpha, but instead of the standard black and white uniform he wore the grey jumpsuit of an Epsilon, marred with dark patches that looked too much like blood. One arm was tucked limply at his side, wrapped in a swash of dark plastic and obviously badly injured. In the other he clutched a gun larger even than the ones carried by EPs. He looked right at Steve through his curtain of long, dirty hair, but he didn’t move.
“I’m warning you,” Steve told him, readjusting his grip. “I don’t go down easy.”
He didn’t know what he expected to happen, but it wasn’t the man’s eyes darting away to assess the rest of the room instead. The downstairs half of the house would have once been a living and dining room, but they had both been repurposed for as long as Steve could remember. The front was now dominated by a mechanic’s bench, and in the back, past a curtain, was the room where Steve’s mother had once seen patients after the public clinic had been closed down. In the era of cybernetics, one needed a bit of both medicine and technology to make a living.
Without warning, the man took a step forward. Steve readied his weapon, but the stranger paid him no mind. Instead he lumbered—slowly and with a limp—for the work bench, and let himself fall onto the nearest chair. His gun clattered to the floor beside him, and there was a similar metallic clink when he dropped his injured arm onto the table.
“Fix me,” he said. His voice came out like gravel, either long unused or like he had just screamed himself hoarse.
Steve neither lowered his bat nor took his eyes off him as he crept down the last remaining steps, mindful of every movement like he was cornering an animal. Just as slow, he reached out and pushed the door closed. The plastic had slid off the arm laid out on the table, and the limb now glinted under the last few wisps of light before the room was plunged into darkness.
Summary: The man who was once a weapon (and is trying to become a man again) finds a child wheezing one night. It awakens something inside him.
[or, the ex-Winter Soldier imprints on a child and lets her become his conscience]
[mostly fluff]
[mostly]
He finds her wheezing in the corner and knows that a damp warehouse is no place for a child. How he knows he does not know. But he knows.
He knows. It is… still confounding.
She is wheezing, hunched over, rocking back and forth. She has dark skin and when she looks up at him with terror, he sees her eyes are dark, as well. Her hair is matted and dirty, also dark. Her clothes are stained and torn.
He immediately drops down beside her and murmurs nonsense, pulling her in close. He did this, once. Or something similar. For someone who was small and frail, but still the strongest person he had ever known.
He had known people, once. Before.
Wipe him.
No. No more wipes. No more cold.
The little girl slowly calms, but her breath still sounds wrong. She needs – medicine. What kind?
“Th-thanks,” she mumbles into his chest, ear still pressed over his heart.
Summary: When a threat is made against the Captain America Pageant, Agent Steve Rogers is dispatched by the FBI to go undercover to see if he can find out who might be behind the threats. The only trouble is that Steve Rogers has never been any good at undercover.
Rogers was standing at attention in front of Fury’s desk.
It wasn’t the first time he had been on the receiving end of a formal warning, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. The fact that it was night outside, and the rest of the office was deserted told him how pissed Fury was.
“Sir,” he put in, when Fury stopped for breath, “I understand she was running a brothel, but she was still a lady. They had no right to touch her the way they did.”
Fury steepled his fingers, looking across the desk. “Why the hell do I put up with you, Rogers?” he asked, as he always did. “The 19th century called. It wants its manners back. You are an FBI agent. You deal with criminals, you treat them like criminals, d’you understand me? You don’t ask them if they’re well or how their dog is or whatever the hell it is you’ll do next time.”
Steve’s hands balled in fists by his sides. “Sir, I can’t help thinking if we treated them like people instead of like criminals all the time…”
“My god,” Fury groaned. “How the hell did you survive on the streets of Brooklyn?” He waved away any answer Steve might have made. “Anyway, no more beating on members of your own team. Are we clear?”
“Tell them to keep their hands to themselves, and I’ll do my best,” Steve replied evenly.
Fury watched him thoughtfully, drumming his fingertips on the desk. “Good enough,” he said. “Now, why I really got you up here, Rogers. We need you to go undercover.”
Steve felt like he’d slammed into a brick wall without warning. “What?”
“You, Rogers,” Fury replied. “We need you to go undercover.”
Steve tried to gather his scattered wits.
From every dressing down that Fury had given him, all he knew was that Fury thought he could be a good agent, if he wasn’t so old-fashioned. Old-fashioned guys didn’t get to go undercover, especially guys who got flustered when they had to lie.
“Me? Why?”
Fury got up and flicked on the projector hooked into his computer. Images lit up across the wall of his office. Dozens of men, smiling, laughing, good-looking men.
If anything, Steve was even more bewildered. “Sir, what is this?”
Fury was looking at the images. He had his hands folded behind his back, and he rocked on the balls of his feet. “This, Rogers, is the Captain America pageant,” he said. “Every state sends their best-looking, most respectable young man to try and win the shield with good old-fashioned manners and chivalry and all that crap women seem to like.”
“And I’m going undercover because…?”
“If you think I’m sending you because you’re pretty, you need to take a step back, Rogers,” Fury said with a snort. “We’ve had threats against the pageant. The usual: it’s a disgrace to masculinity, it isn’t the American ideal, it’s a travesty, all the usual bullshit. We need someone in there, on the ground, who can get access to all areas.”
Steve nodded, looking at the array of pictures. “Doing what? What’s my cover?”
Fury was smirking, he could hear it in his voice. “Welcome to the Captain America Pageant, Mr New Jersey.”
Summary: Bucky is a fashion photographer and pines over Steve for approximately four years.
He’s been worrying about it for… well, okay Truth? He’s been worrying about it for years, just a little, deep down. But now he’s worrying about it all the fucking time.
He thinks about it before he goes to sleep each night. He wakes up in the morning hoping it’s magically gone away. It pops into his head in classes, and even today, on his really exciting, special treat day, he can’t get it out of his head.
But he’d know, wouldn’t he? If he were gay, he’d have to know. And he doesn’t. It’s just this tiny suspicion; it doesn’t mean anything. A gay guy wouldn’t do the things he does. He only jerks off to straight porn, and he sleeps with women and enjoys it. And if he sometimes (most times) thinks about guys while he does, well, people think about weird shit during sex.
Besides, it’s normal to get turned on by guys. It’s like a Kinsey scale thing. If you don’t do anything about it then it doesn’t count. And it especially doesn’t count when it’s Steve, because come on, anybody would with Steve. Even when he was tiny and skinny he was so fucking lovely, and now…
Anyway, none of it’s definitive proof of anything, so he should just calm the fuck down and get on with his life. His life which is awesome, because his professor loved his latest project and got him a one-day placement with a fashion photographer.
He was really happy when she told him, and he went straight to find Steve. He ran into some other guys on the way, and he did talk it up, because hey, models. And maybe he said some stuff that was a little crass, and some of them said stuff that really wasn’t nice.
Like: “It’s like you got free entry to an all-you-can-eat buffet, Barnes. Un-fucking-fair. You gotta forget your phone in the dressing room, dude. Livestream the hot naked ladeez to your loyal companions."
That got a whole lot of yells of agreement from the guys, which was really creepy, and Bucky… well, maybe instead of calling them out on it he said something he shouldn’t have said about the hot naked ladeez. Steve walked up while he was in the middle of it and looked so disappointed, and fuck. Just. Fuck.
Now he’s here at the shoot. One step through the door, trailing after the photographer’s assistant, and he stops short, gaping like a moron. This is the point where he should really text one of the guys and say, dude, they’re all topless, oh my fucking god. He’s never even imagined that he’d see so many bare breasts on so many beautiful women at once. They’re everywhere. Big and small, pert and bouncy, and… hot, of course. Really hot.
With the first few girls that wander past him, chattering away while trying to wriggle their asses more comfortably into their tight jeans, he has to work really hard not to stare. Makes him nervous, because popping a boner wouldn’t be ideal, but luckily there’s all the photography stuff to concentrate on. After a while, he tunes out the distractions, caught up in talking about lighting and composition, and they get some really good shots. The girls look great. The clothes are awesome.
They break for lunch. He stands in a corner with his sandwich and looks around at the roomful of models, and thinks about how it’s been hours since he really noticed they were topless.
They’re still milling around, so he tries staring a little bit, like a real red-blooded American male, just to get back into it. But he can’t get back into it, because somehow their tits are just kind of samey, and it’s boring. The correct response to a constant stream of breasts is not, eh, seen one seen them all.
