After the Bar

[onlyforthedream]

It's not the first time I've carried Bucky, although it's the first time I've had to do so because he tried to drink a bar. I'm not entirely sure what point he was trying to make, but hopefully he feels that he made it- and nothing else, come morning. He's sort of walking- he refused outright any alternative- but I have to say, the bulk of his dead

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[widowskiss]

Natalia leaves her bedroom in her sleep clothes, hair wet around her shoulders and her feet swift across the bamboo floor. She'd noted their approach upon leaving the shower, but by the time she'd dressed she realized it was not one set of feet, but two, and half of them clearly dragging.

She's at the door just in time to hear the knock, and her face when she opens it sharpens from concern into something very much like dread. It's not injury, but drink - Natalia can smell it on him, and she looks up from James' squashed face into Steve's own. He left to observe Veteran's day, but James does not do this. He does not drink to excess, certainly not to the point of debilitation, and the circumstances to render him thus must be extraordinary.

"What has happened?"

[onlyapassenger]

"My pal, Steve, here, needed a problem to fix," Bucky slurs, trying to keep upright by his own power, but succeeding only in lifting his head from the mass that is Steve's shoulder. It's clear, immediately, that the liquor has loosened Bucky's tongue; he might not have been so candid otherwise, despite trusting these two with his life and secrets and both.

Smacking his lips together, his tongue darts out to the side of his mouth to catch a bit of drool; a laugh bubbles out from his throat, incredulous and unguarded.

"So I gave him one." There's a beat long enough for him to swallow, audibly. When he speaks again, however, the anger he's worked hard to drown over the past few hours resurfaces in his voice, if not his demeanor, too far gone to work up the rage he's sure to feel in the morning. "Clever, right? S'why we're partners. Always lookin' out for each other, me 'n Cap."

[onlyforthedream]

My gaze stays firmly to the left of Natalia's shoulder, my face as impassive as I can keep it. It isn't easy, remaining unmoved by Bucky's words. I succeed only superficially, and to someone who's worked with me as long as Natalia has, probably not that convincingly.

"We were caught in some kind of temporal loop event. No time passed here, but we were sent." My jaw clenches for a moment. I don't want to tell her, not because I don't trust her or count her as a friend, but because I don't want to say it out loud, I don't want it to be real, and anyone but Bucky and I knowing makes it seem much more so.

"We were trapped reliving the last day of the war." That's inaccurate.

"Our last day. Our last few minutes, actually."

[widowskiss]

It takes every ounce of Natalia's considerable will not to snatch James from Steve's arms the very instant he begins to slur. The urge does not disperse with time.

"I see the aftermath took some time to contain," she snaps, trying very hard to regret that in the moment that follows. Natalia is a woman given easily to anger, and it's only the control built up over an extended lifetime that presents her as anything but. She takes a breath, watches Steve's miserable gaze pass by her, and takes another. That James has damn near drunk his skin yellow is not reason to discount the horrors that came before.

"Come in," she says, moving to support James' other side. "Both of you. Please." Guiding one of James' sluggish feet over the threshold, she notes, "He's been through something like this before."