[ most of the cereal is gone too, but it's the brand steve doesn't like, the one he keeps saying is 'okay'. it tastes like cardboard. bucky doesn't mind it. ]
and yet somehow i'm still the one who pays for all the groceries. interesting.
yeah, they did. they never flipped me to kia so i had a bunch of posthumous promotions and basically i ended up with more money than i'd ever use. why?
you eat way more than me, your calorie intake is insane.
[ sure, he eats, but he's taken note of steve's diet too - old habits die hard, he keeps track of his food because he has to be optimal, gotta be in peak condition - and steve's diet in a day is— ]
just wondering. royalties? any of your reels make it to public domain or do you have an estate these days?
my backpay's released in tranches, from. you know. conditional pardon.
they're still piecing together everything i did under hydra. they won't ask me directly because of the holes in my head, and i'm pretty sure they want to keep me in line in case they need me aimed at something.
it'll happen eventually.
[ just because the files are out there doesn't mean they could be read, after all. getting through the shield encryptions is one thing; digging data out from under that, for that layer that's all hydra, that takes even longer. zemo understood that, he put in the work.
bucky rubs at his jaw. this conversation sure is going places. ]
is this what we're doing? looking each other's intake over?
[ looking intake over, that is. steve is about to reply to the rest when he's brought up short. ]
they didn't in your world?
[ all three barnes sisters had kids, and the youngest of them made it to see steve, even. they've all passed by now, but the grandkids are still kicking. ]
[ like the abundance of protein shakes and meal replacement drinks and other pureed foods hasn't underlined it. steve's food processor has never seen so much work since he got here. he's working his way up to fried things, but if a dish can come in soup form, all the better.
and anyway— ]
becky did, but they're in iowa. checked in on them once, the whole "grand-uncle is a notorious mass murderer" didn't play well. ellie died in the 1980s, her son in 2001. the towers. no kids. judy never married.
[ rebecca, eleanor, judith. all three of his sisters buried together in a plot of land near sarah rogers, other people from the past. a neighborhood of ghosts.
there's a columbarium for a sgt james buchanan barnes, too. a small one, looming over the three girls, with engraved flourishes that tell him it was judy's idea. his baby sister, his favorite. parents don't get to play favorites, but he's the only son. she kept diaries until her mind went, and she always— well. she waited, until becky's husband moved her to an aged care center. missed her by two years. ]
[ it's strange how some things are so similar, and others so different. ]
becca's family's in illinois, not iowa. i visited them a couple times, but i was usually too busy to make it out of dc. el had more than one kid, her second son is still alive, or he was last time i checked in. judy didn't marry but she fostered a lot, so no blood relations but they're all family just the same.
i got to see judy before she passed, buck. nearly 100 years old and she was still sharp as a tack, she wasn't confused for a second. she told me not to stop looking for you. she made me promise.
[ at the time, steve had written it off as age catching up with her, but he should have known better. judy was always the smartest out of all of them, with the most heart. ]
[ he's not going to cry. not for the ugly turn his luck had taken in the last seventy years, because luck has nothing to do with this, and not for what could've been, because this wasn't his to begin with. maybe this was the trade-off. the ones he loves get to live a happy ending, but he's the one who has to foot the bill.
he doesn't mind. he doesn't. and he can't, because then it hurts to think of what could've been and how close he was to getting it. he's still human, somewhere inside. ]
she's my best girl, what can i say. took all the smarts i didn't get.
do you think about it? having a family of your own?
[ this feels like a conversation they shouldn't be having over text. it's not about groceries anymore, it's gone way beyond that—but then again, maybe this is exactly what texting is for. the hard stuff that hurts too much to say out loud. ]
i used to. before the war i wondered if there was anyone who'd have me, or if i should even pass along my genes in the first place. during... well, you know. we all told ourselves stories about what it'd be like back home, after. my own brownstone, a wife and kids, my best guy right next door...
after waking up i couldn't imagine anyone i'd want to settle down with. everyone in this generation sees captain america, not steve rogers.
turns out i was just waiting for the right partner.
i imagined it too, you know. you and me, still making a mess together, knocking assholes' heads together even after we got back. and then we'd settle down with a dame each in our arms, and we'd take turns bringing the kids over for sundays. break fast before church, go on a drive or a walk to the park. coach the boys on their swing, take the girls to their first dance 'cause you can't trust the lads to do it right.
[ a different life. a different time. even if they knew what they'd wanted, even if they had the words for it back then, there wasn't room for it in that world. ]
i would've been miserable, but i'd still have you. it would've been worth it.
[ i love you. i love you. i love you 'til the end of time. ]
[ steve hadn't, at the time, known what he wanted. it's easy to see with the benefit of hindsight—it is not just artistic appreciation of a well-formed body to feel one's heart speed up when seeing one's best friend shirtless, who could have guessed—but at the time steve really couldn't tell. he wasn't oblivious to the queer world, he was an artist, and new york has never been all that straight to begin with, but he didn't know it was his world. ]
i think we'd have come to our senses sooner or later. you wouldn't have been miserable forever.
[ the idea that this is the better way for them to have been together is too sad to accept, alright. steve rejects it categorically. ]
i think i could have convinced myself i'd be happy with a dame, at least for a while. you don't think you could have?
i already knew what i wanted back then. probably why i pushed so hard to get you with a girl, because some harebrained part of me thought it was. fuck. atoning for it. for wanting you the way i shouldn't have. like i was sick and i was gonna make sick right with me, worse than your bad lungs, worse than anything.
[ even now, he still thinks it when he's not careful. when he looks into the past far enough that he forgets things have changed for him now. ]
jesus, buck. you don't still feel like that, do you?
[ does steve have to give you a gay is okay speech, bucky? cuz he will. it will be extremely heartfelt and earnest and he'll end it by kissing all over your stupid face.
but okay, that question. truthfully, he thinks that he'd have married peggy not long after the war. it'd take ten years, probably, for her to point out the obvious and give him an ultimatum, and by that point they'd have a couple kids. the divorce would be messy, and the world would be nosy about what caused captain america's relationship to fail. they'd end up where they should be, but it'd be messy.
not a very good story for cheering bucky up. so: something softer, then. ]
i'd have kissed you after i pulled you into the train. i didn't know i wanted to until i did it, but after that i'd never wanna do anything else. after the war we'd buy one of those brownstones in red hook, outright cuz my salary was good enough. i'd work on art and you'd open up a garage. the government would ask us to keep fighting and we'd tell them to kick rocks.
[ for a lot of reasons, it couldn't have happened like that. steve couldn't have kept himself from joining back up for the korean war, or vietnam. even if he could have, the government wouldn't let him stay retired when he was such a good propaganda tool. they couldn't have lived together as bachelors for too long without turning a lot of heads.
it's a nice idea, though. a quiet life of art and fixing things, in a home they made together. ]
[ he doesn't have to point out the incongruities in the plot, the holes in the story; steve would know them the same way he does. it's a fantastic story, a lovely story - a story, ultimately, much like a dream.
it makes bucky smile despite its nature. there's little they can do about the past, even one so deeply shared across universes, but they can take comfort in being together now, under the shadow of what used to be. ]
that's a better picture than what i had in my head. guess that's why you're the artist between the two of us, huh?
[ they'll keep the shield and the rifles under the floorboards. they'll have deep windows, for extra privacy, heavy curtains that lock out both light and prying eyes. they'll have two mailboxes, two cars, separate rooms on separate floors, maybe a whole floor for judy if she wants to come and live with them too. and people will wonder, people will look and ask themselves if they're queer, and bucky will pretend not to hear anything so that they don't get in any trouble with the cops. ]
however it ended up, i'm glad we're here now. you and me like this. i like this a hell of a lot more.
[ it's as close as steve gets to the same sentiment, reluctant as he is to be grateful for any part of what happened to them, and bucky in particular. is he glad to have bucky with him still, against all odds? of course he is. would he give it all up if it meant bucky could have lived through the war and gone home and never picked up another gun in his life? absolutely. ]
are there versions of us out there that didn't go to war? uses that got to stay home in peace?
i've seen a few. not a lot that were happy. well, happy enough.
there's one where you married dottie from two streets over, and you two tried for kids but she kept miscarrying. there's another where i took over for my dad at the garage, except they kicked me upstairs so i never got to look at the cars, and you worked union with the carpentry guys painting signs and ads for storefronts.
we were each other's best man at a lot of weddings.
[ [ he doesn't mention the ones where things fell apart, because without the war bucky spent the rest of his years restless and wandering from woman to woman, while steve spent it looking for fights in different places. mccarthy's list, the japanese camps, civil rights and vietnam and even the aids crisis at the end. it wouldn't stop. ] ]
rather than dwell on that, we're going to pivot back to a question you conspicuously avoided, buck. ]
do you really think you're going to get me sick just by loving me? still?
[ if steve had to guess, it's not quite the "homosexual yearnings" thing that's the problem anymore. more likely bucky feels like his past makes him tainted, and he's going to ruin steve just be association—his reputation, if nothing else, has never been more of a controversial subject than it is now that the winter soldier's identity's been brought to light and steve is still solidly and immovably in bucky's corner. ]
remember what your mom used to do on sundays? used to be she went to church as often she could, before her work made her sundays too tired, and then you kept with fights more than you kept with church, and she didn't want much to do going alone to sunday service. so she would just read out loud by the radio while we made a mess by the sink, either i was cleaning you up or you were telling me off or both.
there was this one thing she would read out to us often. it was, what was it. colossians? romans? "so now it is no longer i who do it, but sin that dwells within me. for i know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh."
[ for i have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. for i do not do the good i want, but the evil i do not want is what i keep on doing. now if i do what i do not want, it is no longer i who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
maybe sarah rogers knew something he didn't. ]
Edited 2024-01-09 10:06 (UTC)
i, an atheist, am feeling so persecuted for my lack of christian knowledge right now
[ jesus, and pun absolutely intended, christ, bucky. ]
pretty sure no one in the bible considered that actual evil brainwashing was a thing that anyone'd have to be worried about happening, bucky.
[ or like. maybe they'd see it as the same as being possessed, in which case, still, there's a difference between the demon inhabiting the body and the actual human soul, right? look steve was as devout a catholic as anybody in their neighborhood but this is all a bit much, even for him. ]
is possession of the spirit not a big thing? we had neighbors threatening fire and brimstone and god's holy wrathful exorcisms on us every time we ended up drinking in their backlot, you remember?
god save the kids, 'cause the adults couldn't.
i don't know. i don't know. i feel like i'm just holding you back. like that's all i've been doing all this time, and i just never figured it out 'til now.
fuck it straight to hell, bucky, you know i'd be dead a million times over without you. you kept me alive when i was too sick and stubborn to take care of myself, you kept me alive through the war—you kept me alive when you didn't even know my name anymore. all you've ever been is good for me.
i'm the man i am cuz i had you with me showing me the good parts of the world. without you i'd have only ever seen what there was to hate in it. i knew love through you before i knew what it was i was learning.
[ it's a visceral thing, to feel the force of steve rogers' conviction in full force even through something so simple as a text. but that's the thing, isn't it? steve was the kind of person who got to the heart of the matter with such laser-focused clarity that you can't help but be drawn to him. it's breath-taking to witness in all its forms. ]
i would've done all of that for you anyway, steve. you're too good for the world to even have.
[ and what am i, if not a gaping wound in your heart and soul? ]
i want to worth it for you. as close to it as i can get.
[ hoo boy steve got heated there. he has to take a few minutes to compose himself and make sure his phone's okay—he was stabbing the screen with his thumbs somewhat as he was typing, there's a non-zero chance he's started some cracks in the screen—but in his defense bucky should know how strongly steve feels about him by now. "holding you back"—what a bunch of bullshit. ]
you are worth it. you don't have to do anything to earn it, you just are. same as i was worth it to you before the serum.
[ ...he assumes. look, there are things that must be constants across the multiverse, right, that's gotta be one of them. otherwise why is bucky even here? ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
multiverse au cos i'm obsessed sry
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sorry.
[ most of the cereal is gone too, but it's the brand steve doesn't like, the one he keeps saying is 'okay'. it tastes like cardboard. bucky doesn't mind it. ]
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good thing whoever's in charge of payroll in the army didn't get blipped. keeping you fed isn't cheap.
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[ it's in jest, mostly, but he does wonder— ]
shield did pay you, didn't they? you got your backpay?
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yeah, they did. they never flipped me to kia so i had a bunch of posthumous promotions and basically i ended up with more money than i'd ever use. why?
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[ sure, he eats, but he's taken note of steve's diet too - old habits die hard, he keeps track of his food because he has to be optimal, gotta be in peak condition - and steve's diet in a day is— ]
just wondering. royalties? any of your reels make it to public domain or do you have an estate these days?
my backpay's released in tranches, from. you know.
conditional pardon.
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[ bucky's not the only one monitoring the other's diet. bucky's getting close to enough food. almost adequate. ]
i have an estate, yeah. i'm mostly shoveling my money into charities or trusts for barnes and carter great grandkids, though.
you deserve a full pardon. your universe sucks.
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it'll happen eventually.
[ just because the files are out there doesn't mean they could be read, after all. getting through the shield encryptions is one thing; digging data out from under that, for that layer that's all hydra, that takes even longer. zemo understood that, he put in the work.
bucky rubs at his jaw. this conversation sure is going places. ]
is this what we're doing?
looking each other's intake over?
wait, did my sisters have kids here?
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[ looking intake over, that is. steve is about to reply to the rest when he's brought up short. ]
they didn't in your world?
[ all three barnes sisters had kids, and the youngest of them made it to see steve, even. they've all passed by now, but the grandkids are still kicking. ]
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[ like the abundance of protein shakes and meal replacement drinks and other pureed foods hasn't underlined it. steve's food processor has never seen so much work since he got here. he's working his way up to fried things, but if a dish can come in soup form, all the better.
and anyway— ]
becky did, but they're in iowa. checked in on them once, the whole "grand-uncle is a notorious mass murderer" didn't play well. ellie died in the 1980s, her son in 2001. the towers. no kids. judy never married.
[ rebecca, eleanor, judith. all three of his sisters buried together in a plot of land near sarah rogers, other people from the past. a neighborhood of ghosts.
there's a columbarium for a sgt james buchanan barnes, too. a small one, looming over the three girls, with engraved flourishes that tell him it was judy's idea. his baby sister, his favorite. parents don't get to play favorites, but he's the only son. she kept diaries until her mind went, and she always— well. she waited, until becky's husband moved her to an aged care center. missed her by two years. ]
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becca's family's in illinois, not iowa. i visited them a couple times, but i was usually too busy to make it out of dc. el had more than one kid, her second son is still alive, or he was last time i checked in. judy didn't marry but she fostered a lot, so no blood relations but they're all family just the same.
i got to see judy before she passed, buck. nearly 100 years old and she was still sharp as a tack, she wasn't confused for a second. she told me not to stop looking for you. she made me promise.
[ at the time, steve had written it off as age catching up with her, but he should have known better. judy was always the smartest out of all of them, with the most heart. ]
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he doesn't mind. he doesn't. and he can't, because then it hurts to think of what could've been and how close he was to getting it. he's still human, somewhere inside. ]
she's my best girl, what can i say. took all the smarts i didn't get.
do you think about it? having a family of your own?
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i used to. before the war i wondered if there was anyone who'd have me, or if i should even pass along my genes in the first place. during... well, you know. we all told ourselves stories about what it'd be like back home, after. my own brownstone, a wife and kids, my best guy right next door...
after waking up i couldn't imagine anyone i'd want to settle down with. everyone in this generation sees captain america, not steve rogers.
turns out i was just waiting for the right partner.
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[ a different life. a different time. even if they knew what they'd wanted, even if they had the words for it back then, there wasn't room for it in that world. ]
i would've been miserable, but i'd still have you. it would've been worth it.
[ i love you. i love you. i love you 'til the end of time. ]
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i think we'd have come to our senses sooner or later. you wouldn't have been miserable forever.
[ the idea that this is the better way for them to have been together is too sad to accept, alright. steve rejects it categorically. ]
i think i could have convinced myself i'd be happy with a dame, at least for a while. you don't think you could have?
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[ even now, he still thinks it when he's not careful. when he looks into the past far enough that he forgets things have changed for him now. ]
where would we have gone, steve? if we came back?
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[ does steve have to give you a gay is okay speech, bucky? cuz he will. it will be extremely heartfelt and earnest and he'll end it by kissing all over your stupid face.
but okay, that question. truthfully, he thinks that he'd have married peggy not long after the war. it'd take ten years, probably, for her to point out the obvious and give him an ultimatum, and by that point they'd have a couple kids. the divorce would be messy, and the world would be nosy about what caused captain america's relationship to fail. they'd end up where they should be, but it'd be messy.
not a very good story for cheering bucky up. so: something softer, then. ]
i'd have kissed you after i pulled you into the train. i didn't know i wanted to until i did it, but after that i'd never wanna do anything else. after the war we'd buy one of those brownstones in red hook, outright cuz my salary was good enough. i'd work on art and you'd open up a garage. the government would ask us to keep fighting and we'd tell them to kick rocks.
[ for a lot of reasons, it couldn't have happened like that. steve couldn't have kept himself from joining back up for the korean war, or vietnam. even if he could have, the government wouldn't let him stay retired when he was such a good propaganda tool. they couldn't have lived together as bachelors for too long without turning a lot of heads.
it's a nice idea, though. a quiet life of art and fixing things, in a home they made together. ]
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it makes bucky smile despite its nature. there's little they can do about the past, even one so deeply shared across universes, but they can take comfort in being together now, under the shadow of what used to be. ]
that's a better picture than what i had in my head. guess that's why you're the artist between the two of us, huh?
[ they'll keep the shield and the rifles under the floorboards. they'll have deep windows, for extra privacy, heavy curtains that lock out both light and prying eyes. they'll have two mailboxes, two cars, separate rooms on separate floors, maybe a whole floor for judy if she wants to come and live with them too. and people will wonder, people will look and ask themselves if they're queer, and bucky will pretend not to hear anything so that they don't get in any trouble with the cops. ]
however it ended up, i'm glad we're here now. you and me like this. i like this a hell of a lot more.
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[ it's as close as steve gets to the same sentiment, reluctant as he is to be grateful for any part of what happened to them, and bucky in particular. is he glad to have bucky with him still, against all odds? of course he is. would he give it all up if it meant bucky could have lived through the war and gone home and never picked up another gun in his life? absolutely. ]
are there versions of us out there that didn't go to war? uses that got to stay home in peace?
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there's one where you married dottie from two streets over, and you two tried for kids but she kept miscarrying. there's another where i took over for my dad at the garage, except they kicked me upstairs so i never got to look at the cars, and you worked union with the carpentry guys painting signs and ads for storefronts.
we were each other's best man at a lot of weddings.
[ [ he doesn't mention the ones where things fell apart, because without the war bucky spent the rest of his years restless and wandering from woman to woman, while steve spent it looking for fights in different places. mccarthy's list, the japanese camps, civil rights and vietnam and even the aids crisis at the end. it wouldn't stop. ] ]
i think we needed the war, much as it needed us.
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rather than dwell on that, we're going to pivot back to a question you conspicuously avoided, buck. ]
do you really think you're going to get me sick just by loving me? still?
[ if steve had to guess, it's not quite the "homosexual yearnings" thing that's the problem anymore. more likely bucky feels like his past makes him tainted, and he's going to ruin steve just be association—his reputation, if nothing else, has never been more of a controversial subject than it is now that the winter soldier's identity's been brought to light and steve is still solidly and immovably in bucky's corner. ]
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used to be she went to church as often she could, before her work made her sundays too tired, and then you kept with fights more than you kept with church, and she didn't want much to do going alone to sunday service. so she would just read out loud by the radio while we made a mess by the sink, either i was cleaning you up or you were telling me off or both.
there was this one thing she would read out to us often.
it was, what was it. colossians? romans?
"so now it is no longer i who do it, but sin that dwells within me. for i know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh."
[ for i have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. for i do not do the good i want, but the evil i do not want is what i keep on doing. now if i do what i do not want, it is no longer i who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
maybe sarah rogers knew something he didn't. ]
i, an atheist, am feeling so persecuted for my lack of christian knowledge right now
pretty sure no one in the bible considered that actual evil brainwashing was a thing that anyone'd have to be worried about happening, bucky.
[ or like. maybe they'd see it as the same as being possessed, in which case, still, there's a difference between the demon inhabiting the body and the actual human soul, right? look steve was as devout a catholic as anybody in their neighborhood but this is all a bit much, even for him. ]
well and truly jesus christ, preach
god save the kids, 'cause the adults couldn't.
i don't know. i don't know. i feel like i'm just holding you back. like that's all i've been doing all this time, and i just never figured it out 'til now.
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fuck it straight to hell, bucky, you know i'd be dead a million times over without you. you kept me alive when i was too sick and stubborn to take care of myself, you kept me alive through the war—you kept me alive when you didn't even know my name anymore. all you've ever been is good for me.
i'm the man i am cuz i had you with me showing me the good parts of the world. without you i'd have only ever seen what there was to hate in it. i knew love through you before i knew what it was i was learning.
"holding me back" my ass. fuck that.
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i would've done all of that for you anyway, steve. you're too good for the world to even have.
[ and what am i, if not a gaping wound in your heart and soul? ]
i want to worth it for you. as close to it as i can get.
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you are worth it. you don't have to do anything to earn it, you just are. same as i was worth it to you before the serum.
[ ...he assumes. look, there are things that must be constants across the multiverse, right, that's gotta be one of them. otherwise why is bucky even here? ]