ongoing CA:TFA Bucky/Steve zombie apocalypse AU fic
For this prompt.
Putting this here because the sections are going to be looooong and I have no patience for making four comment posts for one section. Each cut goes to a section. I'll post at the comment thread every time I update it and link to the new cut section.
Once it's all done I'll figure out a title and make it fanciful and whatnot. For now assume at least an R rating for violence and gore and creepiness.
Thirty days, one-thousand four hundred miles and two pairs of boots into the apocalypse, Bucky finally came to the conclusion that he was going to die.
It wasn't a maudlin decision. It hadn't come from seeing the bodies lining the streets or the long stretches of abandoned cars or small children feasting on chunks of human flesh. It probably wasn't due to the ex-military sniper with a penchant for bad jokes and mildly suicidal tendencies who was his only source of company.
No, the conclusion came from the fact that Bucky was laying pinned on his back, his arm painfully dislocated and the world spinning as a slavering zombie prepared to sink its rotting teeth into his jugular.
"Stay down!"
Bucky jerked as blood and bits of skull splattered across his ski goggles, a particularly large piece landing on the nose of his respirator. The zombie's body slumped to the side and then a hand was wrapping itself around his good arm, yanking him to his feet and shoving him forward. He stumbled and fingers latched onto the shoulder strap of his ILBE pack, hauling him bodily up.
"Get to the water tower! Go!"
The water tower in question was about a quarter-mile away over flat desiccated farmland, lit up by the dusky red of the setting sun. It was made of steel and the legs kept it a good forty feet off the ground, a single ladder descended from the walkway that circled the reservoir. The distance seemed like forever but Bucky had done worse in the Marines, so he gritted his teeth and put his head down and ran.
Bucky had been away from the pack--a neighborhood, maybe, with moving corpses of soccer moms and school kids and beer-belly fathers--when he'd gone down, so they at least had a bit of a head start. But over flat ground zombies would always have the advantage: they had greater endurance, and with nothing to impede their way all they had to do was follow tirelessly until you dropped.
"Have you seen anyone else?" he panted as they sprinted toward the tower, glancing askance at the blond-haired man beside him. "My friend--"
As if to answer his question a glimmer of metal shone off the walkway; the sharp crack of a sniper rifle signaling Clint's presence as he covered their escape.
"I already sent him there, just go!"
They made it to the ladder, the man shoving Bucky up first, following quickly after. Once they'd reached the sectional he yanked up the drop-ladder, hauling it off the ground and securing it with a length of rope. The zombies swarmed beneath them with unhappy groans and Bucky shuddered as he glanced down at their mangled faces, not wasting any more time as he clambered up the ladder.
Clint's hand was waiting for him at the top, hauling him onto the walkway and clapping him on the shoulder with a little more forceful relief than usual.
"You're getting slow in your old age," he chided. Bucky leaned against the railing, tugging the respirator off his face and breathing heavily through his mouth as he scowled back.
"Give me my gun."
Clint snorted and held out the worn sniper rifle, shaking his head.
"Priorities. You need them. Rearranged, that is."
Bucky snatched his rifle from Clint's hands, cradling it protectively as he quickly checked it over for any nicks or scratches or pieces of half-chewed bubblegum. (It hadn't happened--yet--but Bucky had heard stories and seen just how many rifles Clint had gone through when they were deployed. He didn't trust him for a second.) Once assured of the weapon's integrity he dropped his pack onto the metal walkway, slinging the rifle over his shoulder instead. He finally turned to greet the man who had saved him.
He was younger than Bucky had first thought, though still a few years older than Bucky himself. He had blond hair and startlingly bright blue eyes that were watching them curiously. And he had the marks of a survivor on him: the SWAT shield he carried on his back, the pair of handguns at his hips and the sturdy motorcycle leathers that protected from simple scrapes and bruises. As Bucky watched he reached up to pull off what looked to be WWII-era aviator goggles from his eyes, resting them atop his head.
"My name's Steve," he said, before Bucky spoke. His face and voice were honest and open, and Bucky hadn't seen that kind of sincerity since before the outbreak. Probably even since before he joined the Corps.
"Sergeant James Barnes," he greeted, automatically. When Clint snorted he grimaced. There really wasn't a military to hold rank in, anymore, though they both still wore their dogtags. "Just call me Bucky," he said. "That moron's Clint."
Clint tipped an invisible hat in Steve's direction.
"Pleasure."
"Good to meet you both," Steve replied, and by his tone he actually seemed to mean it. He glanced down at the zombies howling beneath them before turning sideways, nodding toward a small door in the reservoir that Bucky hadn't seen before. "You might as well come in. They won't be leaving for a while."
Clint glanced at Bucky, who just shrugged as he hoisted up his pack and followed Steve obediently. He was right, they were stuck for a while, and they might as well spend it somewhere that wasn't hanging four stories above the ground. And Steve hadn't tried to shoot them, yet, which was a point in the man's favor.
The reservoir only had a small amount of water left pooled at the bottom, maybe four or five feet deep. Slats of wood and metal supports had been affixed to the interior walls to create a makeshift floor above the water, making the tower into a small secured hideaway out of most zombies' reach. There were stacks of canned food on the near side, along with a box of water bottles and utilities such as a lantern and a small heater. A sleeping bag and a pile of blankets were across the way, the platform reachable only by jumping, and a hunting rifle was propped up against a half-open crate.
"You make all this?" Bucky asked, looking around appreciatively. Steve shook his head.
"It was built like this when I got here. I had to go into town to get a lot of the supplies, but someone had already put it together. Go ahead and find some room wherever you can, I'll put on something to eat. There's water over there."
"We have our own supplies," Bucky started, but Steve just cast him a smile that stopped him in his tracks.
"It's alright, I'm just glad to have the company. Those of us left--we have to stick together, right?"
Which was wrong, very wrong, because Bucky had seen what the end of the world had done to people. He couldn't count the number of houses and towns he and Clint had passed where even getting too close was warrant enough for being shot at. He'd seen children turned away from safety because of scraped knees, men hoarding supplies with a vicious territorialism that they would back up with violence in a heartbeat. And yet in his heart he couldn't blame any of them, couldn't condemn their fear, because it was hell on earth and that changed everything.
"Feel free to wash up if you want," Steve added, oblivious to Bucky's internal brooding. "The reservoir water isn't good for anything else."
"Thank you," Bucky said softly, ignoring Clint already stripping down and heading down an inclined ramp toward the water. He took his time instead, unbuckling the utility belt around his waist, laying his weapons carefully aside. The rifle over his left shoulder and the bandolier of cartridges that went with it; the machete that was sheathed across his back, sticking up behind his right shoulder; the handgun at his hip that he'd picked up at Scott back in Illinois. He kept the pair of knives in the holster around his thigh on him, because he wasn't taking off his pants and even with Steve's boy scout demeanor, he still didn't trust anyone.
Especially not Clint.
"Ooh, someone developing a crush already?" Clint grinned as soon as Bucky got close enough to hear. He knelt down on the ramp, pulling off his shirt and reaching into the pool of water to splash the dust and grime and blood from his skin, dogtags jangling softly together. He briefly contemplated the merits of punching Clint in the face, or maybe drowning him, but those had been common thoughts in the past month, and he hadn't acted on them yet.
"Maybe heat-of-the-moment impassioned love?" Clint suggested, waggling his eyebrows. He was down to just his underwear, sprawled shamelessly on the ramp with his calves in the water, moisture dripping off his body. "If you're going to fuck him, just remember that neither of us have gotten any in months and I wouldn't say no to a free show--"
"Clint."
"Yes?" he drawled.
"I will stab you in your face."
Clint opened his mouth and made an obscene motion with his forefinger and cheek and Bucky did punch him, then.
"See anything?"
Bucky glanced up as Steve ducked out of the water tower, wrapped up in a thick blanket and carrying two cups. He held one out to Bucky, who offered him a grateful smile as he took the warm mug.
"Thanks." He glanced back out into the night, scanning the distant treeline as Steve sat down on the walkway next to him, long legs hanging over the side. "There have been a few stragglers, but the majority of the horde wandered back into town a couple hours ago. I haven't caught sight of any specials yet."
'Specials' was a term he and Clint used to designate anything outside of your regular shuffling zombie, from the reptilian-types to those fast suckers that had a tendency to jump on you and try to claw your throat out. But Steve seemed to understand the connotation, nodding as he sipped from his mug. It was something vaguely chocolatey, more water than anything else, but it was warm. After a moment Bucky set his drink down to shift himself on the walkway, combing his fingers through his hair. Clint had put together a makeshift sling for his dislocated arm that would help for now, even though they both knew it would probably be discarded in the next major fight. They were walking wounded fighting the walking dead, with no time to heal themselves or stop to rest.
"Can't sleep?" Bucky asked idly, glancing over at the man sitting next to him. Steve shrugged one shoulder, tilting his head up to look up at the night sky.
"I'm not used to having other people keeping watch for me," he explained. "So I sleep for a shorter amount of time, but more often."
Bucky nodded.
"Polyphasic sleep. That's what we're on right now; we learned how to adjust our schedules when we were deployed. We've got it lined up so that when I need to sleep Clint can keep watch, and vice versa."
He'd left Clint lying asleep with his back pressed up against the water tower wall, curled up in a tight ball with a sheathed knife clutched in his hand. Usually they'd be tangled together, curled up as one slept and one kept watch. It had become such second nature to be next to each other that Bucky had actually felt bad leaving Clint alone, but he needed to keep an eye on the ground from outside. (And he never would admit to the emotion, anyway.)
Steve had made good on his promise, putting together an impromptu dinner from assorted cans: beef stew, corn and beans, ladled into bowls that they passed between themselves in a kind of choreographed dance as they alternated bites of each. They'd sat around his heater exchanging news and stories, Clint leaning against the wall with a pout and a black eye. Steve was originally from Brooklyn, though he hadn't been in New York when the infection had broken out. Both parents were dead-actually dead, not walking-around-trying-to-eat-brains dead-and his father had been a soldier, which explained why he had some experience surviving when the infection spread.
He also, apparently, had been an art student, and Bucky had been suitably impressed when Steve pulled out a journal he kept on the different zombies he'd seen. It had sketches and notes and speculations, and Bucky had only gotten a glimpse inside before Clint was snatching it away, poring through it because no matter what the other Marine insisted, Clint was dangerously intelligent, and he devoured any scrap of information that might possibly give him an edge.
"What are you planning on doing from here?" Steve asked, pulling Bucky back from his wandering thoughts. He leaned against the railing, taking another sip from his mug.
"We've been going from military base to military base as we move," he explained. "The last one we stopped by was Scott Air Force Base, back in Illinois. We're headed to Fort Leonard Wood next. The bases have the supplies we need, and we figured if there were any other military personnel we could group up with them."
He glanced away with a grimace. Most of the armed forces had been deployed when the infection started. Soldiers overseas had been barred from returning, soldiers at home were sent to stop the spread of the infection. The bases they'd been to so far had been deserted, abandoned.
"You're working your way west?" Steve said, more of a statement than a question. Bucky nodded briefly.
"We heard reports that the west coast was clear. They're probably bogus, but," he shrugged. "Better false hope than nothing, right?"
Steve made a quiet sound of agreement, looking down into his cup. He looked so tired, then, and incredibly young. He had to be older than Bucky by a few years, but then Bucky hadn't considered himself young since he'd turned seventeen and decided the military was the best way to get the hell out of dodge. Probably since even before then-maybe when his parents died when he was twelve, and he discovered just how lost someone could become in the system. But Steve still had a charm about him, an innocence, and Bucky had to forcibly resist the desire to lean over and wrap an arm around the other man, or maybe hold his hand. It wasn’t entirely unselfish and he knew it-but he just wanted to touch someone who wasn't Clint, because Clint was a brother and Bucky didn't want a brother, he wanted-
"Did you hear that?"
Bucky had his gun back in hand before Steve was even done speaking, picking up on the low growling that was almost drowned out by the sound of the wind rushing around the water tower. His mug rolled discarded across the metal walkway, liquid trickling through the metal latticing to the ground forty feet below.
He levered himself to his feet as Steve did the same, body taut as he searched for the source of the noise.
"Go wake up Clint," he hissed. "But just-throw something at him, or poke him with something. Don't touch him unless you want to lose a bodypart."
To his credit, Steve just nodded and went to do as he was told, padding on quiet feet back into the water tower. Bucky pulled his arm out of the sling, letting the material hang against his side as he held his pistol with both hands, scanning the ground as adrenalin flooded his system.
There was no movement down below. Bucky did two quick circles around the tower, stepping light and silent. He could make out a few shapes in the distance, but they were too far to be any threat. And the noise was only getting louder: intensifying in pitch, settling into a kind of ominous rumbling that resonated through the metal of the tower.
Bucky felt Clint before he heard him, too used to the other Marine in his personal space as Clint breathed softly against his ear.
"Status?"
"Got nothing," he murmured back. Clint slipped him an extra pistol that he shifted to the hand of his injured arm, taking a few steps forward.
"Maybe it-above!"
The sound of metal screaming had Bucky diving instantly forward at Clint's shout, a heavy thud and the walkway shaking violently indicating he'd just avoided getting pounced. He rolled onto his back, hip hitting against one of the walkway's metal bars as he raised his guns to fire.
The-thing-let out a screech as it towered over him, sharp teeth bared and thick talons curved into vicious claws. It was on all fours and there was some resemblance to a human in its shape and body makeup-because Bucky could see everything, from the corded muscles of its chest and arms to its goddamn brains pulsing out of its skull. All of its skin was peeled away and it had a long appendage that flailed out of its mouth that Bucky blankly realized was its tongue, and he jerked to the side as said tongue lashed out, crunching into the metal where he'd just been laying. His bullets hit but didn't seem to slow the thing down at all.
A flash of silver cut through the darkness. Bucky jerked his arm up instinctively to cover his face as Clint's katana bit into the creature's shoulder, a spray of blood dousing the sleeve of his shirt. He kicked out as the thing reared back with a shriek, distracting it long enough that Clint could bury his blade into its neck-and then long legs were standing over him as Steve skidded to a halt and raised a shotgun to shoot the thing in the face.
Bits of bone and brain matter exploded like a smashed pumpkin. They splattered across Clint, who immediately started swearing and flailing about. The creature slumped forward in a heap, blood and chunks of body parts falling to the ground below.
"What the fuck was that?" Clint demanded as he picked pieces of unidentifiable flesh off the front of his vest. Steve reached down to help Bucky up, and it was only then that he realized how much his shoulder fucking hurt. He grudgingly slid his arm back into the sling as Steve shimmied past him, toeing the creature with his boot.
"A-mutation of some kind? Maybe?"
"Awesome," Clint muttered.
"If some of them can climb now, elevation isn't going to be an advantage any longer," Bucky said, looking down at the zombie-creature-thing with an increasing level of trepidation. Before, he and Clint had made a point to look for high-up spots to spend the night or rest at-but that was all moot if there were any more of those things running around. Not even that tiny offer of safety stood anymore.
Despite himself, Bucky glanced over at Steve, whose eyebrows were knitted together in a frown.
"This place isn't safe anymore," Clint said, stating what they all were thinking because he was Clint and because he had no brain-to-mouth filter when he was in combat mode. "You can't stay here."
"I know," Steve replied.
"You should come with us."
Steve blinked.
Bucky blinked.
Clint shrugged one shoulder, and then glanced down at said shoulder as he brushed off a stray bit of tendon. "We never stay in one place for long, and there's more safety in numbers. Admittedly, not a lot. But you're intelligent, you know how to handle yourself and you could keep up with us, and Bucky doesn't completely hate you."
"If that had any bearing on who I travelled with, I would have abandoned you a long time ago," Bucky muttered, still surprised with the fact that Clint was the one inviting Steve along. But when he looked up, meeting his friend's eyes, he thought he understood.
Because he wasn't the only one craving outside human contact, and not even just physically: they hadn't come across another soul since the outbreak who wasn't out to rob or kill them. And Steve was different. Steve was something from a time Before, back when the world was sane and people weren't always just struggling to survive on their own, taking from others if they had to. Steve was like a glimpse of what civilization was and could possibly be again, and neither of them wanted to lose that bit of hope-because they knew that they themselves probably didn't have that kind of humanity left in them, anymore.
Steve looked down at the creature, prodding it again with his boot before looking back up.
"Okay."
"Here, take this."
Steve accepted the respirator easily, looking it over before continuing to watch Bucky dig through a cracked-open supply crate in the quiet warehouse. Leonard Wood was closer to civilization than some other bases he and Clint had been to, so it had been ransacked already by civilians. But they only took guns and ammo, and the occasional heavy weapon-they never thought to take the useful stuff, or they passed over what they didn't know how to use.
He found an ILBE backpack at the bottom of the crate and handed it back to Steve before moving on to the next storage container, poking through it. Steve had a lot of practical things already, but he didn't know how to live as compactly as Clint and Bucky did: they had necessities down to an art form. The first thing he'd done upon reaching the army base had been to raid the quartermaster's for better gear and a kit for Steve-since Clint had immediately wandered off, because apparently Steve was Bucky's responsibility now-to replace what he'd put together in the post-outbreak world. Military-make was created for the kind of environment they were in, and Bucky didn't want to see Steve go down from a stray drop of blood in his mouth because he wasn't wearing some kind of protection.
"Look what I found!"
Bucky nearly banged his head against the side of the crate, jarring his bad arm against the wood. He turned around to scowl at Clint in a sufficiently annoyed manner but stopped when he saw what the other Marine was carrying.
"Is that a bow?"
Clint beamed at him, running his hand across the upper limb of the sleek recurve bow in a manner that Bucky was fairly certain shouldn't be witnessed outside of a locked bedroom. He had a sack slung over one shoulder, along with a quiver full of brightly-fletched carbon arrows that Bucky still wasn't comprehending.
"I found it in one of the lockers. One of the men on base must have hunted during his leave."
There was a brief moment of subdued quiet, a nod to the fact that whoever the soldier had been, he was gone now. But it passed quickly as Clint shook himself, dropping the bag down to the floor and blithely uncaring as Bucky frowned at him.
"You were supposed to find another rifle," Bucky pointed out. "Something with a scope, for long distances, so you can stop stealing mine? Remember?"
Clint waved a hand dismissively and slung the bow over his right shoulder, crisscrossing it with the quiver over the katana he already had sheathed there. He'd always been avoidant on just where, exactly, he'd learned how to carve people into bits with a sword, but Bucky had never really pushed the subject. He'd just nagged Clint into showing him how to use his machete for more than just hacking through undergrowth and they'd tacitly agreed they were even.
"The scope's more for scouting than anything else now, you know that. This will get good distance, and you can recover arrows. Can't do that with bullets."
"That's assuming you're still around to collect the arrows," Steve pointed out. Bucky flashed him a quick grin-he'd been pleasantly surprised, over the course of the three days it took to reach Leonard Wood, to find that the honest-faced Steve had a rather wry sense of humor.
"No faith," Clint sighed as he overturned the sack, spilling a ridiculous amount of weaponry onto the floor. "See if I ever get you nice things again."
Bucky perked up as he spotted a box of 9mm magazines.
"I take it back, you're goddamn Robin Hood," he said, crouching by the pile to pick out the ammo amidst the various knives and guns and grenades. Steve knelt beside him, snagging a sleek knife as Clint rummaged through the mess to produce a combat shotgun, which he held out to him with a grin.
"Here. An upgrade for your boomstick."
"My...boomstick?" Steve asked dubiously, casting Bucky a confused look. But he just shrugged his shoulders and so Steve accepted the weapon with a smile. "Thank you."
"I looked into storage-there are plenty of FSRs still left, though the boxes of MREs have been pretty heavily raided," Bucky said as he pulled off his bandolier of cartridges and began awkwardly refilling the empty slots, fumbling with his arm in the sling. Clint raised an eyebrow and eventually decided to take pity on him, taking away the bandolier and filling it himself.
"I hope whoever took them knows how to strip them down. All the extra crap they stuff in those will add a lot of weight. They should have taken the FSRs." He glanced at Steve, who was frowning but politely maintaining his silence. "First Strike Rations," he explained. "They don't have all the junk that a Meal-Ready-to-Eat has, like heaters or extra cutlery, and there's a whole day's worth of rations in one pack. We stock up on them at every base, since they're lightweight and you can eat them on the go. They don't taste all that great, but they get the job done."
"After the outbreak, most people stocked up on canned and dried goods," Bucky added as he fished out a package of shotgun shells and passed them over to Steve. "But that stuff is heavy, and it makes you want to stay in one place and hoard instead of moving on like you should. People didn't think about the fact that the military has making food that's supposed to last forever down to an art form."
"That's because nobody actually wants to eat military rations," Clint pointed out, levering himself to his feet. "Come on, this place is supposed to have an engineering facility somewhere. I want to see if they have any fancy toys to play with."
"Sir, yes sir," Bucky drawled, falling into step next to Steve as Clint headed toward the exit.
"Is he a higher rank than you?" Steve asked curiously as they followed behind. Bucky snorted.
"Nah. We're both sergeants. Though he could have been an officer, honestly, and I probably could have advanced more. But we're more the following-orders types." He paused. "Well, I follow orders. Clint takes them into consideration."
Steve laughed, the sound bright and honest. "I led my Boy Scout troop," he pointed out. "Maybe I should be leading you two."
Bucky glanced over at him with a grin.
"Maybe you should. I bet you'd look fantastic in dress blues."
Steve's cheeks tinged pink, but the smile on his face didn't falter. The base was surprisingly empty, free of zombies, and Bucky could almost pretend things were normal again. Clint was wandering into places he shouldn't go and Bucky was just back on base, taking a stroll with a rather stupidly attractive civilian who also knew how to use a shotgun. As Clint ducked into the engineering building a ways ahead of them, Bucky altered his steps so that he was closer to Steve, their shoulders brushing against each other.
"Motherfuck!"
The façade faded quickly.
Bucky yanked his pistol from his holster as he and Steve sprinted forward at Clint's startled exclamation, swearing as a small explosion rocked the ground beneath them. A concussive blast tore a hole through the side of the engineering building and Bucky threw an arm over Steve's shoulders, pulling him down into a crouch as they made it to the smoking building. Through the crackle of spitting electrical wires and falling debris Bucky could hear Clint shouting.
"- fucking psycho, you could have taken out the entire building!"
"Don't be ridiculous, I knew exactly what I was doing."
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and it was human and coherent, which thankfully didn't mean some kind of new zombie that could shoot lasers out of its eyes or something. Bucky poked his head into the building before walking inside, giving Steve the nod that it was alright.
The building was basically one giant construction shop, welders and sheet metal and pieces of mangled parts strewn across the long tables along the walls. Some of the more heavy machinery like the hydraulic press and the ironworker looked to have been cannibalized, thick wires winding across the floor: attached to a mess of equipment that Bucky couldn't even guess what it was used for. On the floor of the shop, Clint was standing toe-to-toe with a dark-haired man who had a metal glove on his right hand and a screwdriver in his left, looking completely unconcerned about the Marine yelling at him.
He also had a glowing blue disc in the center of his chest, and Bucky had about two seconds to be confused as to what it was when Steve spoke up, voice awed.
"You're Tony Stark."
Stark turned in their direction, taking them in with a sweeping glance. His eyes were bright with intelligence; narrowed in a wariness that came with the world as they knew it ending. He had a scruffy beard and smudges of grease on his arms and face, and that same haunted look on his face that Bucky remembered seeing on the TV after Stark had been rescued from his kidnapping in Afghanistan. It had only been a few weeks before the outbreak and the subsequent quarantine-a hell of a time to return to the States.
"And you're...what?" He squinted at Steve, then at Bucky and Clint. "You're too young to be important enough to have a protection detail of..." he gave Clint a calculating once-over, "I'm guessing Marines. Special forces?"
Clint stared at the billionaire for a few blank moments.
"You're creepy."
"Very eloquent," Stark congratulated him. He gave them all another long moment of assessment before something in his shoulders seemed to relax, and he set down the screwdriver he'd been brandishing at Clint. He cocked his head to the side. "Travelling circus troupe?"
"Just a group of survivors," Steve replied. Bucky followed him as they walked further into the building, stepping over bits of fallen drywall as he let Steve do the talking. He could be charming if he wanted to, just as Clint was actually capable of getting through a conversation without somehow subtly insulting someone-but they had both found in the post-outbreak world that social graces were just too tiring to keep up, finding themselves living in a new world of brutal honesty. But Bucky knew that Steve did, actually, care; that there was no façade on his face.
"I'm Steve: that's Clint, and this is Bucky," Steve continued. "We met a few days ago outside St. Louis. We're heading out west-"
"Following the yellow brick road away from the outbreak?" Stark shook his head, pulling off the odd-looking glove. It was attached to wires that snaked through the arm of his shirt, which led to the soft blue glow beneath the material. "Don't bother. I was coming from there when my plane crashed. The wizard's an asshole and Dorothy wants to sink her teeth into your skull."
Steve stiffened, exchanging a look with Bucky, and Bucky could have punched Stark for the brokenhearted expression on Steve's face. Understanding that their destination probably held no hope was one thing: knowing for certain was something else altogether.
"Well, aren't you a goddamn ray of sunshine?" Clint drawled. He was poking at the scattered half-finished pieces on the tables, which effectively drew Stark's attention to him with a scowl.
"Don't touch that, these are incredibly delicate- Put the repulsor ray down!"
Steve's lips twitched up in amusement as Stark lunged for Clint, and the tightness between Bucky's shoulder blades eased, just a little. He holstered his pistol and reached out to squeeze Steve's shoulder, offering him a reassuring smile. The responding smile on Steve's face was enough to brighten the rest of his damn day, asshole billionaire or no.
Said asshole billionaire had finally retrieved one of his toys from Clint, who responded to his glower with a shit-eating grin. Stark gave them all a brief once-over before sighing, reaching beneath his shirt to tug out the wires connected to whatever power source was under there.
"Come on. I might as well show you around before you try to destroy anything else."
Putting this here because the sections are going to be looooong and I have no patience for making four comment posts for one section. Each cut goes to a section. I'll post at the comment thread every time I update it and link to the new cut section.
Once it's all done I'll figure out a title and make it fanciful and whatnot. For now assume at least an R rating for violence and gore and creepiness.
Thirty days, one-thousand four hundred miles and two pairs of boots into the apocalypse, Bucky finally came to the conclusion that he was going to die.
It wasn't a maudlin decision. It hadn't come from seeing the bodies lining the streets or the long stretches of abandoned cars or small children feasting on chunks of human flesh. It probably wasn't due to the ex-military sniper with a penchant for bad jokes and mildly suicidal tendencies who was his only source of company.
No, the conclusion came from the fact that Bucky was laying pinned on his back, his arm painfully dislocated and the world spinning as a slavering zombie prepared to sink its rotting teeth into his jugular.
"Stay down!"
Bucky jerked as blood and bits of skull splattered across his ski goggles, a particularly large piece landing on the nose of his respirator. The zombie's body slumped to the side and then a hand was wrapping itself around his good arm, yanking him to his feet and shoving him forward. He stumbled and fingers latched onto the shoulder strap of his ILBE pack, hauling him bodily up.
"Get to the water tower! Go!"
The water tower in question was about a quarter-mile away over flat desiccated farmland, lit up by the dusky red of the setting sun. It was made of steel and the legs kept it a good forty feet off the ground, a single ladder descended from the walkway that circled the reservoir. The distance seemed like forever but Bucky had done worse in the Marines, so he gritted his teeth and put his head down and ran.
Bucky had been away from the pack--a neighborhood, maybe, with moving corpses of soccer moms and school kids and beer-belly fathers--when he'd gone down, so they at least had a bit of a head start. But over flat ground zombies would always have the advantage: they had greater endurance, and with nothing to impede their way all they had to do was follow tirelessly until you dropped.
"Have you seen anyone else?" he panted as they sprinted toward the tower, glancing askance at the blond-haired man beside him. "My friend--"
As if to answer his question a glimmer of metal shone off the walkway; the sharp crack of a sniper rifle signaling Clint's presence as he covered their escape.
"I already sent him there, just go!"
They made it to the ladder, the man shoving Bucky up first, following quickly after. Once they'd reached the sectional he yanked up the drop-ladder, hauling it off the ground and securing it with a length of rope. The zombies swarmed beneath them with unhappy groans and Bucky shuddered as he glanced down at their mangled faces, not wasting any more time as he clambered up the ladder.
Clint's hand was waiting for him at the top, hauling him onto the walkway and clapping him on the shoulder with a little more forceful relief than usual.
"You're getting slow in your old age," he chided. Bucky leaned against the railing, tugging the respirator off his face and breathing heavily through his mouth as he scowled back.
"Give me my gun."
Clint snorted and held out the worn sniper rifle, shaking his head.
"Priorities. You need them. Rearranged, that is."
Bucky snatched his rifle from Clint's hands, cradling it protectively as he quickly checked it over for any nicks or scratches or pieces of half-chewed bubblegum. (It hadn't happened--yet--but Bucky had heard stories and seen just how many rifles Clint had gone through when they were deployed. He didn't trust him for a second.) Once assured of the weapon's integrity he dropped his pack onto the metal walkway, slinging the rifle over his shoulder instead. He finally turned to greet the man who had saved him.
He was younger than Bucky had first thought, though still a few years older than Bucky himself. He had blond hair and startlingly bright blue eyes that were watching them curiously. And he had the marks of a survivor on him: the SWAT shield he carried on his back, the pair of handguns at his hips and the sturdy motorcycle leathers that protected from simple scrapes and bruises. As Bucky watched he reached up to pull off what looked to be WWII-era aviator goggles from his eyes, resting them atop his head.
"My name's Steve," he said, before Bucky spoke. His face and voice were honest and open, and Bucky hadn't seen that kind of sincerity since before the outbreak. Probably even since before he joined the Corps.
"Sergeant James Barnes," he greeted, automatically. When Clint snorted he grimaced. There really wasn't a military to hold rank in, anymore, though they both still wore their dogtags. "Just call me Bucky," he said. "That moron's Clint."
Clint tipped an invisible hat in Steve's direction.
"Pleasure."
"Good to meet you both," Steve replied, and by his tone he actually seemed to mean it. He glanced down at the zombies howling beneath them before turning sideways, nodding toward a small door in the reservoir that Bucky hadn't seen before. "You might as well come in. They won't be leaving for a while."
Clint glanced at Bucky, who just shrugged as he hoisted up his pack and followed Steve obediently. He was right, they were stuck for a while, and they might as well spend it somewhere that wasn't hanging four stories above the ground. And Steve hadn't tried to shoot them, yet, which was a point in the man's favor.
The reservoir only had a small amount of water left pooled at the bottom, maybe four or five feet deep. Slats of wood and metal supports had been affixed to the interior walls to create a makeshift floor above the water, making the tower into a small secured hideaway out of most zombies' reach. There were stacks of canned food on the near side, along with a box of water bottles and utilities such as a lantern and a small heater. A sleeping bag and a pile of blankets were across the way, the platform reachable only by jumping, and a hunting rifle was propped up against a half-open crate.
"You make all this?" Bucky asked, looking around appreciatively. Steve shook his head.
"It was built like this when I got here. I had to go into town to get a lot of the supplies, but someone had already put it together. Go ahead and find some room wherever you can, I'll put on something to eat. There's water over there."
"We have our own supplies," Bucky started, but Steve just cast him a smile that stopped him in his tracks.
"It's alright, I'm just glad to have the company. Those of us left--we have to stick together, right?"
Which was wrong, very wrong, because Bucky had seen what the end of the world had done to people. He couldn't count the number of houses and towns he and Clint had passed where even getting too close was warrant enough for being shot at. He'd seen children turned away from safety because of scraped knees, men hoarding supplies with a vicious territorialism that they would back up with violence in a heartbeat. And yet in his heart he couldn't blame any of them, couldn't condemn their fear, because it was hell on earth and that changed everything.
"Feel free to wash up if you want," Steve added, oblivious to Bucky's internal brooding. "The reservoir water isn't good for anything else."
"Thank you," Bucky said softly, ignoring Clint already stripping down and heading down an inclined ramp toward the water. He took his time instead, unbuckling the utility belt around his waist, laying his weapons carefully aside. The rifle over his left shoulder and the bandolier of cartridges that went with it; the machete that was sheathed across his back, sticking up behind his right shoulder; the handgun at his hip that he'd picked up at Scott back in Illinois. He kept the pair of knives in the holster around his thigh on him, because he wasn't taking off his pants and even with Steve's boy scout demeanor, he still didn't trust anyone.
Especially not Clint.
"Ooh, someone developing a crush already?" Clint grinned as soon as Bucky got close enough to hear. He knelt down on the ramp, pulling off his shirt and reaching into the pool of water to splash the dust and grime and blood from his skin, dogtags jangling softly together. He briefly contemplated the merits of punching Clint in the face, or maybe drowning him, but those had been common thoughts in the past month, and he hadn't acted on them yet.
"Maybe heat-of-the-moment impassioned love?" Clint suggested, waggling his eyebrows. He was down to just his underwear, sprawled shamelessly on the ramp with his calves in the water, moisture dripping off his body. "If you're going to fuck him, just remember that neither of us have gotten any in months and I wouldn't say no to a free show--"
"Clint."
"Yes?" he drawled.
"I will stab you in your face."
Clint opened his mouth and made an obscene motion with his forefinger and cheek and Bucky did punch him, then.
"See anything?"
Bucky glanced up as Steve ducked out of the water tower, wrapped up in a thick blanket and carrying two cups. He held one out to Bucky, who offered him a grateful smile as he took the warm mug.
"Thanks." He glanced back out into the night, scanning the distant treeline as Steve sat down on the walkway next to him, long legs hanging over the side. "There have been a few stragglers, but the majority of the horde wandered back into town a couple hours ago. I haven't caught sight of any specials yet."
'Specials' was a term he and Clint used to designate anything outside of your regular shuffling zombie, from the reptilian-types to those fast suckers that had a tendency to jump on you and try to claw your throat out. But Steve seemed to understand the connotation, nodding as he sipped from his mug. It was something vaguely chocolatey, more water than anything else, but it was warm. After a moment Bucky set his drink down to shift himself on the walkway, combing his fingers through his hair. Clint had put together a makeshift sling for his dislocated arm that would help for now, even though they both knew it would probably be discarded in the next major fight. They were walking wounded fighting the walking dead, with no time to heal themselves or stop to rest.
"Can't sleep?" Bucky asked idly, glancing over at the man sitting next to him. Steve shrugged one shoulder, tilting his head up to look up at the night sky.
"I'm not used to having other people keeping watch for me," he explained. "So I sleep for a shorter amount of time, but more often."
Bucky nodded.
"Polyphasic sleep. That's what we're on right now; we learned how to adjust our schedules when we were deployed. We've got it lined up so that when I need to sleep Clint can keep watch, and vice versa."
He'd left Clint lying asleep with his back pressed up against the water tower wall, curled up in a tight ball with a sheathed knife clutched in his hand. Usually they'd be tangled together, curled up as one slept and one kept watch. It had become such second nature to be next to each other that Bucky had actually felt bad leaving Clint alone, but he needed to keep an eye on the ground from outside. (And he never would admit to the emotion, anyway.)
Steve had made good on his promise, putting together an impromptu dinner from assorted cans: beef stew, corn and beans, ladled into bowls that they passed between themselves in a kind of choreographed dance as they alternated bites of each. They'd sat around his heater exchanging news and stories, Clint leaning against the wall with a pout and a black eye. Steve was originally from Brooklyn, though he hadn't been in New York when the infection had broken out. Both parents were dead-actually dead, not walking-around-trying-to-eat-brains dead-and his father had been a soldier, which explained why he had some experience surviving when the infection spread.
He also, apparently, had been an art student, and Bucky had been suitably impressed when Steve pulled out a journal he kept on the different zombies he'd seen. It had sketches and notes and speculations, and Bucky had only gotten a glimpse inside before Clint was snatching it away, poring through it because no matter what the other Marine insisted, Clint was dangerously intelligent, and he devoured any scrap of information that might possibly give him an edge.
"What are you planning on doing from here?" Steve asked, pulling Bucky back from his wandering thoughts. He leaned against the railing, taking another sip from his mug.
"We've been going from military base to military base as we move," he explained. "The last one we stopped by was Scott Air Force Base, back in Illinois. We're headed to Fort Leonard Wood next. The bases have the supplies we need, and we figured if there were any other military personnel we could group up with them."
He glanced away with a grimace. Most of the armed forces had been deployed when the infection started. Soldiers overseas had been barred from returning, soldiers at home were sent to stop the spread of the infection. The bases they'd been to so far had been deserted, abandoned.
"You're working your way west?" Steve said, more of a statement than a question. Bucky nodded briefly.
"We heard reports that the west coast was clear. They're probably bogus, but," he shrugged. "Better false hope than nothing, right?"
Steve made a quiet sound of agreement, looking down into his cup. He looked so tired, then, and incredibly young. He had to be older than Bucky by a few years, but then Bucky hadn't considered himself young since he'd turned seventeen and decided the military was the best way to get the hell out of dodge. Probably since even before then-maybe when his parents died when he was twelve, and he discovered just how lost someone could become in the system. But Steve still had a charm about him, an innocence, and Bucky had to forcibly resist the desire to lean over and wrap an arm around the other man, or maybe hold his hand. It wasn’t entirely unselfish and he knew it-but he just wanted to touch someone who wasn't Clint, because Clint was a brother and Bucky didn't want a brother, he wanted-
"Did you hear that?"
Bucky had his gun back in hand before Steve was even done speaking, picking up on the low growling that was almost drowned out by the sound of the wind rushing around the water tower. His mug rolled discarded across the metal walkway, liquid trickling through the metal latticing to the ground forty feet below.
He levered himself to his feet as Steve did the same, body taut as he searched for the source of the noise.
"Go wake up Clint," he hissed. "But just-throw something at him, or poke him with something. Don't touch him unless you want to lose a bodypart."
To his credit, Steve just nodded and went to do as he was told, padding on quiet feet back into the water tower. Bucky pulled his arm out of the sling, letting the material hang against his side as he held his pistol with both hands, scanning the ground as adrenalin flooded his system.
There was no movement down below. Bucky did two quick circles around the tower, stepping light and silent. He could make out a few shapes in the distance, but they were too far to be any threat. And the noise was only getting louder: intensifying in pitch, settling into a kind of ominous rumbling that resonated through the metal of the tower.
Bucky felt Clint before he heard him, too used to the other Marine in his personal space as Clint breathed softly against his ear.
"Status?"
"Got nothing," he murmured back. Clint slipped him an extra pistol that he shifted to the hand of his injured arm, taking a few steps forward.
"Maybe it-above!"
The sound of metal screaming had Bucky diving instantly forward at Clint's shout, a heavy thud and the walkway shaking violently indicating he'd just avoided getting pounced. He rolled onto his back, hip hitting against one of the walkway's metal bars as he raised his guns to fire.
The-thing-let out a screech as it towered over him, sharp teeth bared and thick talons curved into vicious claws. It was on all fours and there was some resemblance to a human in its shape and body makeup-because Bucky could see everything, from the corded muscles of its chest and arms to its goddamn brains pulsing out of its skull. All of its skin was peeled away and it had a long appendage that flailed out of its mouth that Bucky blankly realized was its tongue, and he jerked to the side as said tongue lashed out, crunching into the metal where he'd just been laying. His bullets hit but didn't seem to slow the thing down at all.
A flash of silver cut through the darkness. Bucky jerked his arm up instinctively to cover his face as Clint's katana bit into the creature's shoulder, a spray of blood dousing the sleeve of his shirt. He kicked out as the thing reared back with a shriek, distracting it long enough that Clint could bury his blade into its neck-and then long legs were standing over him as Steve skidded to a halt and raised a shotgun to shoot the thing in the face.
Bits of bone and brain matter exploded like a smashed pumpkin. They splattered across Clint, who immediately started swearing and flailing about. The creature slumped forward in a heap, blood and chunks of body parts falling to the ground below.
"What the fuck was that?" Clint demanded as he picked pieces of unidentifiable flesh off the front of his vest. Steve reached down to help Bucky up, and it was only then that he realized how much his shoulder fucking hurt. He grudgingly slid his arm back into the sling as Steve shimmied past him, toeing the creature with his boot.
"A-mutation of some kind? Maybe?"
"Awesome," Clint muttered.
"If some of them can climb now, elevation isn't going to be an advantage any longer," Bucky said, looking down at the zombie-creature-thing with an increasing level of trepidation. Before, he and Clint had made a point to look for high-up spots to spend the night or rest at-but that was all moot if there were any more of those things running around. Not even that tiny offer of safety stood anymore.
Despite himself, Bucky glanced over at Steve, whose eyebrows were knitted together in a frown.
"This place isn't safe anymore," Clint said, stating what they all were thinking because he was Clint and because he had no brain-to-mouth filter when he was in combat mode. "You can't stay here."
"I know," Steve replied.
"You should come with us."
Steve blinked.
Bucky blinked.
Clint shrugged one shoulder, and then glanced down at said shoulder as he brushed off a stray bit of tendon. "We never stay in one place for long, and there's more safety in numbers. Admittedly, not a lot. But you're intelligent, you know how to handle yourself and you could keep up with us, and Bucky doesn't completely hate you."
"If that had any bearing on who I travelled with, I would have abandoned you a long time ago," Bucky muttered, still surprised with the fact that Clint was the one inviting Steve along. But when he looked up, meeting his friend's eyes, he thought he understood.
Because he wasn't the only one craving outside human contact, and not even just physically: they hadn't come across another soul since the outbreak who wasn't out to rob or kill them. And Steve was different. Steve was something from a time Before, back when the world was sane and people weren't always just struggling to survive on their own, taking from others if they had to. Steve was like a glimpse of what civilization was and could possibly be again, and neither of them wanted to lose that bit of hope-because they knew that they themselves probably didn't have that kind of humanity left in them, anymore.
Steve looked down at the creature, prodding it again with his boot before looking back up.
"Okay."
"Here, take this."
Steve accepted the respirator easily, looking it over before continuing to watch Bucky dig through a cracked-open supply crate in the quiet warehouse. Leonard Wood was closer to civilization than some other bases he and Clint had been to, so it had been ransacked already by civilians. But they only took guns and ammo, and the occasional heavy weapon-they never thought to take the useful stuff, or they passed over what they didn't know how to use.
He found an ILBE backpack at the bottom of the crate and handed it back to Steve before moving on to the next storage container, poking through it. Steve had a lot of practical things already, but he didn't know how to live as compactly as Clint and Bucky did: they had necessities down to an art form. The first thing he'd done upon reaching the army base had been to raid the quartermaster's for better gear and a kit for Steve-since Clint had immediately wandered off, because apparently Steve was Bucky's responsibility now-to replace what he'd put together in the post-outbreak world. Military-make was created for the kind of environment they were in, and Bucky didn't want to see Steve go down from a stray drop of blood in his mouth because he wasn't wearing some kind of protection.
"Look what I found!"
Bucky nearly banged his head against the side of the crate, jarring his bad arm against the wood. He turned around to scowl at Clint in a sufficiently annoyed manner but stopped when he saw what the other Marine was carrying.
"Is that a bow?"
Clint beamed at him, running his hand across the upper limb of the sleek recurve bow in a manner that Bucky was fairly certain shouldn't be witnessed outside of a locked bedroom. He had a sack slung over one shoulder, along with a quiver full of brightly-fletched carbon arrows that Bucky still wasn't comprehending.
"I found it in one of the lockers. One of the men on base must have hunted during his leave."
There was a brief moment of subdued quiet, a nod to the fact that whoever the soldier had been, he was gone now. But it passed quickly as Clint shook himself, dropping the bag down to the floor and blithely uncaring as Bucky frowned at him.
"You were supposed to find another rifle," Bucky pointed out. "Something with a scope, for long distances, so you can stop stealing mine? Remember?"
Clint waved a hand dismissively and slung the bow over his right shoulder, crisscrossing it with the quiver over the katana he already had sheathed there. He'd always been avoidant on just where, exactly, he'd learned how to carve people into bits with a sword, but Bucky had never really pushed the subject. He'd just nagged Clint into showing him how to use his machete for more than just hacking through undergrowth and they'd tacitly agreed they were even.
"The scope's more for scouting than anything else now, you know that. This will get good distance, and you can recover arrows. Can't do that with bullets."
"That's assuming you're still around to collect the arrows," Steve pointed out. Bucky flashed him a quick grin-he'd been pleasantly surprised, over the course of the three days it took to reach Leonard Wood, to find that the honest-faced Steve had a rather wry sense of humor.
"No faith," Clint sighed as he overturned the sack, spilling a ridiculous amount of weaponry onto the floor. "See if I ever get you nice things again."
Bucky perked up as he spotted a box of 9mm magazines.
"I take it back, you're goddamn Robin Hood," he said, crouching by the pile to pick out the ammo amidst the various knives and guns and grenades. Steve knelt beside him, snagging a sleek knife as Clint rummaged through the mess to produce a combat shotgun, which he held out to him with a grin.
"Here. An upgrade for your boomstick."
"My...boomstick?" Steve asked dubiously, casting Bucky a confused look. But he just shrugged his shoulders and so Steve accepted the weapon with a smile. "Thank you."
"I looked into storage-there are plenty of FSRs still left, though the boxes of MREs have been pretty heavily raided," Bucky said as he pulled off his bandolier of cartridges and began awkwardly refilling the empty slots, fumbling with his arm in the sling. Clint raised an eyebrow and eventually decided to take pity on him, taking away the bandolier and filling it himself.
"I hope whoever took them knows how to strip them down. All the extra crap they stuff in those will add a lot of weight. They should have taken the FSRs." He glanced at Steve, who was frowning but politely maintaining his silence. "First Strike Rations," he explained. "They don't have all the junk that a Meal-Ready-to-Eat has, like heaters or extra cutlery, and there's a whole day's worth of rations in one pack. We stock up on them at every base, since they're lightweight and you can eat them on the go. They don't taste all that great, but they get the job done."
"After the outbreak, most people stocked up on canned and dried goods," Bucky added as he fished out a package of shotgun shells and passed them over to Steve. "But that stuff is heavy, and it makes you want to stay in one place and hoard instead of moving on like you should. People didn't think about the fact that the military has making food that's supposed to last forever down to an art form."
"That's because nobody actually wants to eat military rations," Clint pointed out, levering himself to his feet. "Come on, this place is supposed to have an engineering facility somewhere. I want to see if they have any fancy toys to play with."
"Sir, yes sir," Bucky drawled, falling into step next to Steve as Clint headed toward the exit.
"Is he a higher rank than you?" Steve asked curiously as they followed behind. Bucky snorted.
"Nah. We're both sergeants. Though he could have been an officer, honestly, and I probably could have advanced more. But we're more the following-orders types." He paused. "Well, I follow orders. Clint takes them into consideration."
Steve laughed, the sound bright and honest. "I led my Boy Scout troop," he pointed out. "Maybe I should be leading you two."
Bucky glanced over at him with a grin.
"Maybe you should. I bet you'd look fantastic in dress blues."
Steve's cheeks tinged pink, but the smile on his face didn't falter. The base was surprisingly empty, free of zombies, and Bucky could almost pretend things were normal again. Clint was wandering into places he shouldn't go and Bucky was just back on base, taking a stroll with a rather stupidly attractive civilian who also knew how to use a shotgun. As Clint ducked into the engineering building a ways ahead of them, Bucky altered his steps so that he was closer to Steve, their shoulders brushing against each other.
"Motherfuck!"
The façade faded quickly.
Bucky yanked his pistol from his holster as he and Steve sprinted forward at Clint's startled exclamation, swearing as a small explosion rocked the ground beneath them. A concussive blast tore a hole through the side of the engineering building and Bucky threw an arm over Steve's shoulders, pulling him down into a crouch as they made it to the smoking building. Through the crackle of spitting electrical wires and falling debris Bucky could hear Clint shouting.
"- fucking psycho, you could have taken out the entire building!"
"Don't be ridiculous, I knew exactly what I was doing."
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, and it was human and coherent, which thankfully didn't mean some kind of new zombie that could shoot lasers out of its eyes or something. Bucky poked his head into the building before walking inside, giving Steve the nod that it was alright.
The building was basically one giant construction shop, welders and sheet metal and pieces of mangled parts strewn across the long tables along the walls. Some of the more heavy machinery like the hydraulic press and the ironworker looked to have been cannibalized, thick wires winding across the floor: attached to a mess of equipment that Bucky couldn't even guess what it was used for. On the floor of the shop, Clint was standing toe-to-toe with a dark-haired man who had a metal glove on his right hand and a screwdriver in his left, looking completely unconcerned about the Marine yelling at him.
He also had a glowing blue disc in the center of his chest, and Bucky had about two seconds to be confused as to what it was when Steve spoke up, voice awed.
"You're Tony Stark."
Stark turned in their direction, taking them in with a sweeping glance. His eyes were bright with intelligence; narrowed in a wariness that came with the world as they knew it ending. He had a scruffy beard and smudges of grease on his arms and face, and that same haunted look on his face that Bucky remembered seeing on the TV after Stark had been rescued from his kidnapping in Afghanistan. It had only been a few weeks before the outbreak and the subsequent quarantine-a hell of a time to return to the States.
"And you're...what?" He squinted at Steve, then at Bucky and Clint. "You're too young to be important enough to have a protection detail of..." he gave Clint a calculating once-over, "I'm guessing Marines. Special forces?"
Clint stared at the billionaire for a few blank moments.
"You're creepy."
"Very eloquent," Stark congratulated him. He gave them all another long moment of assessment before something in his shoulders seemed to relax, and he set down the screwdriver he'd been brandishing at Clint. He cocked his head to the side. "Travelling circus troupe?"
"Just a group of survivors," Steve replied. Bucky followed him as they walked further into the building, stepping over bits of fallen drywall as he let Steve do the talking. He could be charming if he wanted to, just as Clint was actually capable of getting through a conversation without somehow subtly insulting someone-but they had both found in the post-outbreak world that social graces were just too tiring to keep up, finding themselves living in a new world of brutal honesty. But Bucky knew that Steve did, actually, care; that there was no façade on his face.
"I'm Steve: that's Clint, and this is Bucky," Steve continued. "We met a few days ago outside St. Louis. We're heading out west-"
"Following the yellow brick road away from the outbreak?" Stark shook his head, pulling off the odd-looking glove. It was attached to wires that snaked through the arm of his shirt, which led to the soft blue glow beneath the material. "Don't bother. I was coming from there when my plane crashed. The wizard's an asshole and Dorothy wants to sink her teeth into your skull."
Steve stiffened, exchanging a look with Bucky, and Bucky could have punched Stark for the brokenhearted expression on Steve's face. Understanding that their destination probably held no hope was one thing: knowing for certain was something else altogether.
"Well, aren't you a goddamn ray of sunshine?" Clint drawled. He was poking at the scattered half-finished pieces on the tables, which effectively drew Stark's attention to him with a scowl.
"Don't touch that, these are incredibly delicate- Put the repulsor ray down!"
Steve's lips twitched up in amusement as Stark lunged for Clint, and the tightness between Bucky's shoulder blades eased, just a little. He holstered his pistol and reached out to squeeze Steve's shoulder, offering him a reassuring smile. The responding smile on Steve's face was enough to brighten the rest of his damn day, asshole billionaire or no.
Said asshole billionaire had finally retrieved one of his toys from Clint, who responded to his glower with a shit-eating grin. Stark gave them all a brief once-over before sighing, reaching beneath his shirt to tug out the wires connected to whatever power source was under there.
"Come on. I might as well show you around before you try to destroy anything else."