these are the times that try

[deadthenred]

WHO: Bucky Barnes + various
WHERE: Red Wings, the safehouse, ???
WHEN: Late March.
WHAT: Catch-all log for March, with some open prompts.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: N/A, will update if it changes.

[ Prompts are in the comments below. PM or message me at lightfellows if you'd like a closed starter. ]

Comments

1

[rehandle]

[ Little does Bucky know that what did they put in this? is the exact selection of words required to summon the manager.

It's only incidentally that he overhears, fresh from spending too many hours in the back room dealing with stock and needing the relative break of a stroll around the bar in search of empties. Bucky isn't talking to anyone in particular, but that doesn't mean he can resist an opportunity when it lines itself up for him. ]

Can I help you, sir?

[ Wry, he stands there with two empty pitchers and awaits a reply. How bold are you feeling, Mr. Barnes? ]

[deadthenred]

Not sir.

[ That is almost a reflex. He waves off the honorific with one hand. ]

You can tell me what they put in this. [ Not any alcohol he's familiar with, and he's been to a couple bars that aren't even on Earth. ] I'd like to know if I'm being poisoned.

[ His tone is more conversational than offended. Poison would be novel, at least. Most of the time it's just stabbing. ]

[rehandle]

[ Oh, that bold.

Huffing a breath that might be a laugh, Stephen reaches down with absolutely no concern for correct customer etiquette or any hygiene practice he's learned in his careers as doctor or bar owner to pick up the offending beverage and take a sip.

His brow very swiftly creases. Ew. A glance back over to the bar presents him with a relatively easy theory. ]

Did you get this from the woman with the red hair?

[deadthenred]

Maybe. A gentleman doesn't tell.

[ He doesn't want to get anyone fired, but it's not as though what happened here isn't obvious. ]

I'm not sure I've ever been poisoned before.

[rehandle]

You've not been poisoned, but you have been used as a guinea pig.

[ What did she put in this thing? Something from the kitchen? He doesn't put it back down. It's going straight down the drain. ]

I'll get you a replacement. Beer? Whisky? What's your poison.

[ badum tsh. ]

[deadthenred]

Vodka. If you've got it cold.

[ He doesn't really want to think about where he acquired this particular taste, but it's hard to screw up too much. ]

[rehandle]

Sure. Just a minute.

[ And Stephen head off to the bar, pausing to check in briefly with the primary suspect before pouring the contents of the glass away and setting to making up Bucky's order.

When he comes back it's with not one, but two glasses of chilled something. The glass he sets down in front of Barnes is definitely vodka. The other he puts down in front of what is seconds later to be his seat. Drinking alone? Old news. ]

Long day?

[deadthenred]

[ If he wasn't prepared for company, he shrugs that off. ]

You're not really supposed to drink it alone, anyway. [ Not that Stephen's drinking the same thing, by the looks of it. ]

They're all starting to blur together, honestly. The days.

[rehandle]

[ His is ice water - start in on those mid-shift drinks and it's a slippery slope. But he's been here long enough to know that sometimes, drinking alone is better with company. ]

Mm. [ He's been there. ] It gets like that when things are quiet. Takes a while to learn to be a civilian, no matter how much else is new.

[deadthenred]

[ He'd be surprised if Stephen was drinking on the job, but Bucky's been in some divey bars. ]

You think that's what we're doing here? Learning to be civilians?

[ But he glances around the bar at the hokey Middle West decor, and thinks that maybe that is the idea, for some people. ]

[rehandle]

No. Maybe a few. But it does seem to be the natural by-product of the wait between discoveries and disasters.

[ That's the nature of things here. Either there's far too much happening at once, or there's— well.

Life. ]

[deadthenred]

Civilians have disasters too, you know.

[ Maybe they get worser parts of all the chaos, because it isn't really their mess.

Bucky drinks his whole shot of vodka in one straightforward gesture. It'll get warm, otherwise, not as good. ]

I dunno how it it all started, in your universe. If people got scared.

[rehandle]

[ He won't argue that. But it isn't what he meant. ]

Civilians don't have to learn to be civilians.

[ They've got their own sets of problems that leave them drinking alone in local bars, but they won't be the same ones that've brought Bucky here today. Different experiences, or at least different perspectives of the same experiences. Neither invalidating the other.

The next part earns him a glance. ]

How what all started?

[deadthenred]

[ He nods at Stephen's point. Maybe that's true. He won't contest it, in any case. ]

Superpowers.

[ Superheroes? Maybe. But that's not what they are here, is it? ]

[rehandle]

[ Ah.

Stephen's brows raise, made vaguely tired by the concept of having to think about it. When you find your mystical mountain monk cult to be the least exhausting of the available options, it's a problem. ]

There are as many origin stories as there are super anythings in my universe. No uniformity, that's for sure.

[ Here, at least, their powers are all cut from the same cloth. Completely different shapes, sure, but shared origin, whatever that might be.

Or so it seems safe to assume. ]

Popular to begin with, fluctuating reputation thereafter.

[deadthenred]

I don't mean origin stories. I meant— when it first started happening. How people felt when it turned out some of them could fly.

[ This was clearly a formative part of Bucky's adolescence.

He's been thinking about it since Damian made that post about trying to put together a "Justice League." Do they use the Designated Hitter rule? ]

[rehandle]

[ Oh.

Interesting?

He remembers Scott Summers, wonders if this part of what he means. ]

That isn't really a staple in my universe. Mutants?

[ Their word, not his. ]

[deadthenred]

Oh, yeah, I guess. [ He wasn't thinking about mutants, but technically Namor is one. Though no one had understood that for a while. ] Do you not have people who fly?

[ Another pause. ]

Were there any masks before Captain America?

[rehandle]

[ "Do you not have people who fly?" Do you ever take a step back from your own life and realise it's actually really stupid? ]

No. He started a craze.

[ Which is code for 'Steve Rogers went into the ice and then everything just kept happening'. ]

People have been harnessing supernatural ability for millenia, but the whole public, man-made hero thing is comparatively new.

[deadthenred]

Huh, okay.

[ That's not too far off from how things had gone, in his world. But even that little difference— ]

Maybe that would've changed things, him being the first.

[ Since people really like Steve Rogers, and Captain America had a whole government apparatus behind it. Or they used to, back before that psycho HYDRA plot.

For the first time Bucky wonders if he even exists in Steven's world. If he even wants to. ]

[rehandle]

Maybe it did. For the better or not I couldn't tell you.

[ They've had their fair share of catastrophes, human and beyond. That seems to be a multiversal truth, at least in the two of their neck of the multiverse.

Stephen sits with the thought for a moment or two, takes a sip of his water. Then, a slight deviation: ]

You must've just missed him.

[deadthenred]

[ Of course, that gets his attention. ]

He was your Steve?

[ Of course he'd seen the name on the network. ]

[rehandle]

[ There's all the confirmation he needs that the history between the two of them is at least similar to one Stephen's tangentially familiar with. ]

He was from my world, yeah.

[deadthenred]

[ Huh. Bucky leans back in his chair a little, thinking about that. ]

Anyone else?

[rehandle]

Daisy Johnson. Carol Danvers was here until recently. Peggy Carter disappeared months ago now.

[ There have been others, some undercover, some - well, some Tony Stark. But he pauses there, hoping Peggy might be distraction enough. ]