Logan/Bucky
Rogue asks him one time, after a session in the training room ripped his jacket and she caught a glimpse of the words on his shoulder, if he's met them yet. If it's a promise for the future, or a painful leftover from his past. And he tells her honestly, that he doesn't know. He doesn't remember. He could have met them, and he wouldn't know at all. Rogue, like the good girl she is, simply pats his shoulder and passes him another beer.
This is, as his memories come back, he's fairly certain that he hasn't met them yet. He's still trying to pick everything out of it, because what he does remember comes in bits and pieces, but he would bet all the beer left in the fridge that he hasn't met them. Not with the twange of longing that comes when he looks at the black words in the mirror.
Logan traces his fingers over the line of writing, and wonders where they are.
There's nothing really for it though, but to wait. He really does have to. If he's met them, then it's gone for now, and he'll just have to see if the words fade. If he hasn't met them.... Well, at least he knows the words now, and that he hasn't had anyone messing with his memory for a while now, and he'll get to actually remember that the words are his when he meets them.
Logan pulls his shirt over his head, and turns to the door. Time to be brave, as Bobby might say.
Stark had invited the team to the Tower for what was officially the welcome back gala for Bucky Barnes, now that he'd been released from SHIELD custody and settled (far quicker than Steve had) into modern life. Unofficially, it was a chance for the network of of superheroes that had grown around the Avengers to met him, and get the chance to work out new relationships with those who hadn't been as close to the action in some of the more recent battles (eg Warren, who had fought alongside the Avengers three times now and still only knew Stark and Wilson).
Logan's sigh as he left the guest room Stark had given him is echoed by Rogue waiting on the other side of the door. "Ah hate this, sugar."
The only reply he can give to that to is to grunt, and offer her his arm.
Given how much neither of them want to be there, it’s no surprise that the party is already in full swing when Logan and Rogue step out of the elevator. Stark and Thor, apparently engaged in a drink that their respective girlfriends are trying to break up; Steve and Kurt leaning against the bar counter while Warren mixes them both drinks; Storm hovering in the air while Darcy snaps photos of her from below. The party isn't entirely superheroes; there plenty of normal friends around them, filling in the space in the room with laughter and talk. Logan's about to propose to Rogue that they take off again, but she seems to spot an interesting offering at the bar, and takes off. Logan sighs, and looks around for a place where he can wait out the party. He makes eye contact with Clint across the room. The archer smirks, and gives him a nod, jerking his chin towards the upper level of the main room. There an open space, a second level that looks empty. Logan smiles back as Clint goes back to talking with Scott (both men look bored).
Making his way around the edges of the party, it takes Logan a lot longer than he would like to to reach the stairs up to second level, and by the time he's gotten there, there's someone climbing the stairs ahead of him. Large shoulders, Logan thinks, wide and strong looking. A man, who climbs the stairs with an uneven swagger to his body. Barnes, Logan guesses, and a deeper sniff of the air confirms it. Metal, warm and soft, and the smell of gunpowder that's always make the Wolverine raise its damn ugly head. Oh fuck him sideways. It was not appropriate to be thinking about getting it on with Captain America's best friend and world's most famous prisoner of war.
Still, he was committed to finishing the stairs now, and Logan wasn't anything but a guy who could face this, even if that scent was going to drive him mad. When Logan looks around at the second level sitting area, he sees Barnes sitting down on the couch, his legs propped up on the coffee table. He smirks at Logan, all unlike the broken soldier that Logan had been told to expect.
"James Howlett as I live and breathe. What's a man like you doing in a place like this?"
Logan pauses. The voice tinkles at his memories, as does that continued application of that scent. "I know you?" Course as he says it, he realizes that Barnes might have known him just as Steve did, from the war, from before his memory was taken from him. He watches Barnes' smile falter, and fall. "Sorry, guess no one told you. Lost my memory 'bout three decades back."
He doesn't know what to make of the terror on the Barnes' face. It’s not a normal look, not one of a friend learning he doesn't remember (Steve), or a curious interest (Stark's). It's complete, and utter, devastation. Barnes looks like he's about to cry. The former Winter Solider stands, and Logan finds himself locked in place as that swaggering man steps towards him, pulling apart his shirt as he does. "You don't remember anything at all?"
Logan finds himself looking at a stretch of sharp muscles, pale skin that merges into red scars, metal shoulder blended with refined flesh. He gulps, and forces himself to look back up at Barnes' face. "Clean slate. Why?"
Barnes brings his metal hand up to tap his opposite shoulder, drawing Logan's attention to the thin black letters there on the skin. "Recognize this?"
Logan has to lean in close to read the small print. Has to take a couple steps forward, and then several steps back, his mouth falling open in shock. "Fuck me. That's mine."
Barnes only nods.
Logan reaches with a shaking hand to his own shirt, pulls it away to show his own shoulder, and the spiky writing there. "Yours;" but it's not a question. He can smell the truth of it. It's that smell, and that pain and lose that comes off of Barnes with every breath. “I don’t remember meeting you.”
Barnes gives him just a tiny twitch his lips, a pathetic half smile. “Funnily enough, I do. Want me to tell you about it?”
They end up on the couch, legs pressed together, shoulders brushing, Logan’s arm wrapped around Bucky’s back. Bucky tells him about the bar, about the husky way Logan had talked to him, how he’d known right off that Bucky was supposed to be his. Logan runs his hands over the mark on the other man’s shoulder, the words that Bucky had parroted back at him a century later. What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?
“Sorry I can’t remember it, kid,” he says softly, as Bucky uses his metal arm to touch the response on Logan’s shoulder. Well that ain’t what I fucking expected. “I understand if you’d rather have someone else. Heck, I’d play wingman if you wanted.”
Bucky looks at him asque. Hands, metal and human, come up to cup his cheeks. “Want someone else? Never.” And then Logan has a lap full of warm flesh, and there’s lips pressing into his, and a hardness digging into his hips, and he’s rocking back against it, and Bucky is chuckling against his chin.
Logan puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders; holds him close. “Guess that makes your point. Should we let the others know?”
“Ah,” says Bucky, with a twinkle in his dark eyes. “Steve’s been waiting seventy years to get us back together. He can wait another five minutes.”