Morning Madness
A terrible traitorous partnership between his nose and stomach woke him.
Bucky blinked up at the ceiling as he sniffed the air. Whatever was being cooked in the kitchen smelt good enough to brave getting up. It took some real willpower to pull off the blanket someone had so kindly wrapped over him. Standing took even more effort.
As was always the way, he felt even more sore than when he’d gone to sleep. Rest had let his muscles cramp to all high heaven until Bucky was moving with the sort of shuffled movements that someone born his year ought to move with. The room around was blanketed in darkness – though whether that was a testament to the true time or whether that was the mercy of the closed door and shut curtains, was anyone’s guess.
Steve was still stretched out along his own couch. He had also been a recipient of a warm blanket. The patchwork fabric covered all of him besides his face and his feet - which stuck clean over the edges of the couch. Steve’s face was smushed up against the arm of the couch. His breathing deep in only the way deep sleep could make it.
Bucky made the executive decision to do some recon before waking his friend.
Shuffling into the brightly lit hallway, Bucky stifled a yawn into his arm as he closed the door behind him. His bare feet slid along the wooden floors as he made his way into the kitchen.
There he found Tim and Becca talking quietly to one another as they cooked a feast.
“Somethin’ smells good,” Bucky drawled as he let himself into the room.
“Bucky!” Becca turned to him, bright smile on her wrinkled face.
Bucky stepped close to press a kiss to her cheek. “Mornin’ Becca.” He murmured, delighting in the beaming smile that split his sister’s face. “Tim,” he added, giving the other man a nod.
“How’re you feeling?” Tim asked, a smile on his face. The man’s twinkling eyes were locked on his wife’s obvious happiness. It warmed something in Bucky to know that the man his little sister had found loved and cherished her in the way she deserved.
Bucky shrugged his not injured shoulder. Only then did he realise he hadn’t pulled his t-shirt back on. Although with the sheer number of bandages wrapped around his torso, it almost didn’t matter. “Sore. Still tired.”
“Still tired?” Becca asked, frowning lightly. “You boys slept clean through yesterday.”
Bucky blinked in surprise, eyes finding the newspaper sat on the kitchen table. Sure enough, it advertised the beginning of a second day of rescue and clean-up efforts after the battle. They’d arrived here, after all was done, Sunday night, slept straight through Monday, and were looking at the beginning of a fresh Tuesday. “Huh.”
“Are you hungry? We thought you’d both be in need of a good feed.” Tim commented, gesturing to the mountain of breakfast food already sitting by the counter while on the cooker more sizzled away.
“God yes.” Bucky all but moaned. “Never been so hungry in my life.” He tried reaching for a piece of bacon only to have his hand smacked away by his sister. He turned a wounded look to her, but it did nothing but make her raise an eyebrow.
“Go fetch Steve and we can all eat together. Like civilisedpeople, James.”
Bucky rolled his eyes good naturedly but none the less wandered off to do his assigned task. It didn’t take much prodding to get Steve up once he mentioned the waiting food.
Becca and Tim both watched with partially fond, partially horrified, expressions on their faces as Bucky and Steve proceeded to put away every last scrap of cooked food. Only once the last sausage had been squabbled over and eaten, did they sit back.
“All full?” Tim asked in a voice that pleaded with them to be; if only for his own sake.
Steve grinned, nodding. “Thank you both for cooking. Buck and I will clean up.”
“Don’t volunteer my services.” Bucky grunted just to be contrary even as he stood to his feet and began clearing the table.
Steve followed him up and began carrying the last of the plates over to the sink. “I think you’ll find, Sergeant, that I’m the Captain here. You have to do what I say.”
“What you are is a little punk. Soon as I’m done being tired, I’m going to whoop you,” Bucky threatened lightly.
“You think you could win?”
“183,” Bucky coughed into his fist. He grinned smugly when Steve grumbled.
A knock from the front door had an amused looking Tim heading off to answer. Becca, meanwhile, sat further back in her seat. She was watching them in obvious amusement.
“What’s 183?” She asked, curious and devious in equal measures if the little smile on her face was any indication. Though she might be physically older than them now, one never really outgrew being a younger sister. She was ready and prepared to help her brother along with gently needling Steve. Or vice versa if the opportunity presented itself.
“Aliens,” Bucky leant back against the counter, dishtowel in hand while Steve began filling the sink with suds. “I took down 183, while the Man with a Plan over here only managed 176.”
“You killed one hundred and eighty-three aliens?!” Becca asked, looking just the slightest bit awed.
He nodded his head, preening just a little under her regard. Grinning widely, he added, “And Steve got only 176.”
“You boys are still on this?” An amused voice asked from the door to the kitchen.
Bucky and Steve looked round to see Natasha Romanoff leaning against the door frame, looking highly amused, while poor Tim hovered behind her uncertainly.
“Morning Widow,” Steve greeted. Red flushed very visibly from his cheeks, down his neck and chest, and up to the very tops of his ears when he realised his state of undress. The dishes were abandoned in favour of wrapping his arms around his exposed torso. Exposed being a relative term. Steve, much like Bucky, had bandages wrapped neatly around nearly three quarters of his torso.
“Please, Steve, call me Natasha.” She said, all but leering at them. Though Bucky figured it was mostly to make Steve blush even harder rather than any real interest.
“What can we do for you this fine morning?” Bucky asked, folding up the dishtowel to put on the counter.
“Fury wants a debrief.” She gave a shrug. “He wasn’t pleased when you both dropped off the radar.”
Steve and Bucky wore nearly identical expressions of disbelief. It was Steve who voiced their exasperation; “Our apartment got crushed.”
“And your phones?”
“On the Heli-carrier with our clothes.”
“Well,” another shrug, “it can’t be helped now, I suppose. You boys should get dressed. They’re expecting us back.”
“I’ll see if I can’t scrounge up something for you both to wear.” Becca said, getting to her feet.
“Thank you,” Bucky and Steve said in tandem.
“I’ll wait out front. Don’t be long.” Natasha instructed before all but sashaying away.
“You know,” Bucky mused as he and Steve watched her go, “she’s technically an older woman too.”
Only his bruised ribs saved him from an elbow. But it didn’t save him from the dark glower.
A short car ride later finds them, not in the Heli-carrier as they might have expected, but back in the office building they first woke up in. Natasha leads them through the building and drops them off in front of a door with little more than a nod to enter before she’s disappearing down the hall.
Waiting for them in the conference room, looking impatient and relaxed all at once, is Tony Stark. Bruce Banner is squashed into a chair in the back of the room looking shifty and uncomfortable. His obvious discomfort doesn’t stop the Doctor from offering them a warm smile of greeting when they walk in.
Bucky returns the gesture with a little nod of his own before all but throwing himself into one of the spinning chairs. His feet pop up onto the desk as he leans back, arms crossed, looking every inch the gutter-raised boy from Brooklyn.
“Morning Tony, Bruce.” Steve greets them, sitting across from Bucky in a far more restrained manner. He gave a pointed glare to Bucky’s feet but doesn’t try anything further to convince him to behave when Bucky’s only response is an insolent upward tilt of his jaw.
“I have something to show you,” Tony announces in his overly flamboyant way. Apparently, they were forgoing greetings or small talk. Seemingly from nowhere, the man pulls a tablet out and begins taping rapidly.
“Tony,” Bruce groans. It’s the voice of a man who’s heard one too many mad rambles from a friend.
“No. Just look,” Tony says. He flicks his finger forward and the image on his tablet floats up to hover in the air before them all. Bucky would be surprised if he hadn’t seen the same kind of technology used on the Heli-carrier only days before. Instead, he lets his attention fall on the silent video Tony is so desperate to show them.
Bucky blinks nonplussed to see himself and Steve fighting hard against a barrage of aliens on the wrecked streets of New York City.
“How’d you even get this?” Steve was leaning forward. His bright blue eyes wasted no time at all examining every angle of the video. Already he was looking for tactical faults that they could fix in their fighting. Bucky could see a lot of training drills in his future.
“It was the middle of New York, Cap. There’re cameras practically at every corner.”
And wasn’t that a comforting thought?
Bucky shook his head and leant further back in his chair. When it came to reviewing fights, he was more than happy to let Steve delve into the nitty-gritty. Bucky was much more the kind of man to be won and done.
“There a point to this little show ‘n’ tell?” Bucky asks the ceiling.
“Yes,” Tony breathes out. “Look at it!” He urges, drawing Bucky’s bored gaze back to the footage. “You can’t seriously look at this and then try to claim you’re not enhanced.”
“Jesus H Christ, Stark.” Bucky grunts with an almost painful roll of his eyes. “How many times do I gotta tell ya that I didn’t get none of the serum Steve did? Hell, I was on the front getting shot at when he was gettin’ injected with the stuff; we weren’t even in the same damn country.”
“I don’t know how,” Tony admitted with a shake of his head, “but clearly-,”
“Clearly nothin’, alright? What? You think maybe being a super soldier’s contagious? That if any ol’ schmuck sits next to Steve long enough they’ll be able to do the things he does?”
“That’s the point!” Tony is starting to get hot under his collar. The man’s hands are flying around his head in agitated waspish movements. “You can. You do!”
“Do what?”
“You do the same stuff Cap does! The exact same impossible, super soldier-y stuff.”
Bucky’s already shaking his head, “Stark, I’m tellin’ ya that it ain’t possible. Stevie and I-,”
“Buck.” Steve cut him off. “He’s, God, but I think he might be on to something.”
Bucky’s feet fall hard to floor as he sits up straight. It sets his ribs to aching but that’s hardly a priority when his best friend has gone and been contaminated by the crazy in the room. He stares at the side of Steve’s head with a mixture of bewilderment and concern.
“Steve. Stevie, pal. I ain’t got no enhancements. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, just take a look.” Steve jerks his chin to the tablet without ever once having taken his damn eyes off it.
Heaving a very put-upon sigh, Bucky turns his eyes to the projected footage.
Stark must have edited it somehow to show the highlights because it doesn’t run linear. It shows segments of the fights from all kinds of angles; all of them focused on Bucky and Steve.
Bucky watches as Steve throws his shield in a wide arc, downing aliens as it flies. The oversized frisbee carries its planned trajectory, soaring within the easy reach of Bucky; who wastes no time in snatching the thing up before sending it out on another clean run through the air, taking aliens down, and putting it neatly back in Steve’s hands.
“What am I even lookin’ at?” Bucky asked, voice turned sour. “You forget how long you made me practise with that damn thing? Course I’m able to throw it back.”
Steve shakes his head. For a second, Bucky thinks he’s managed to talk him ‘round. It was the God’s honest truth, after all. Steve and he had practised fighting beside one another with and without the shield, doing drills over ‘n over for hours upon hours. They’d needed to relearn the synchrony they’d first established in the back alleys of Brooklyn now that Steve was so much bigger and able to take on so much more. They’d managed it of course, but only after a long two weeks of training; Bucky had damn near wept in relief when the brass had called them out for a mission.
“Buck,” Steve said, his voice crushing any hope Bucky had that he’d managed to dissuade his friend from this line of thinking. “None of the other fella’s were able to throw it like you can. Even when I tried training ‘em that one time.”
“Exactly! You tried training ‘em one time! You near ran me into the ground for two damn weeks before I got it right,” which was only a bit of an exaggeration considering it hadn’t taken him more than a week to be comfortable with the shield; the last week had been pushing to see what they could do with it while also getting familiar with Steve’s new bulk. “Besides, none of the other fella’s grew up following your scrawny ass into bare knuckle fights all over Brooklyn.”
“Ok,” Tony interrupted, sounding almost reasonable as he began fiddling on his tablet, “how do you explain this then?”
The footage skipped forward to Steve and Bucky sprinting through the wrecked street. The picture jumped around a lot as it skipped from camera to camera, trying to keep the two fast moving soldiers in their frames. They’d jumped high and slid low to avoid wreckage as they’d made a mad dash for where Iron Man and Hulk had disappeared out of sight.
For a second, Bucky stared at it mulishly. Firm in his belief that he was nothing more than a regular average fella.
Right up until he realised that he had unknowingly been matching Steve’s speed as they’d scrambled across city blocks.
Steve had not been running at a speed a normal man could run.
Bucky’s throat went very dry as he stared wide eyed at the footage. His hands balled themselves unnoticed into white-knuckled fists where they sat on his thighs.
“I’m tellin’ ya I never got any of Steve’s serum,” Bucky’s argument was as shaky as his voice. He couldn’t pull his eyes from the footage – swallowing heavily when he saw himself outstrip Captain America as they turned a corner.
Steve’s hand rasped against the three-day old stubble on his jaw. “How the hell did we not notice?”
“‘cause I didn’t get no serum! This shouldn’t be possible.” Bucky wasn’t quite yelling, but he also was far past being quiet. “I don’t even understand – when the hell did this happen to me? How’d I not notice, huh?”
Steve’s elbows gave a short thud as he braced them on the table and buried his face in his hands. From the safety of his palms his voice was muffled but Bucky still heard it just fine, much to his own displeasure. “Azzano.” Steve grunted.
And Bucky went paler than milk.