fic: Molotov and Other Cocktails (A Zombie A to Z)
Prompt: 208. Marvel Universe -- Bucky, Natasha, Clint, Sam (and ship combo you like) -- Zombie hunters
Summary: Second class superheroes’ Zombie A to Z with feelings for Zombie Fest 2013 @ zombi-fic-ation.
A: Apocalypse, now?
It’s almost funny that the zombie outbreak probably won’t even make it to the headlines.
The Avengers tower shakes remotely like a monster stirring in its sleep. The elevator keeps descending, however, and by the time it reaches the underground hangar Bucky’s done buckling his costume and Sam, who’s hopped in from the same floor with his bird, has his mask in place.
Waking up at two in the morning to the sounds of catastrophe and impending doom is nothing unusual with their line of work; getting called away from the action is. Then again, they’re not exactly first class superheroes, and while New York City is apparently under attack, someone has to take care of secondary problems. Like zombies somewhere in Midwest.
Clint, clearly sleep-deprived, is already there as well as Natasha, in a sweat suit but her arms full of equipment, and without further ado they rush into the Quinjet still present.
“Talk to me, Tony,” Natasha prays as soon as she’s powered up the communication systems. “We’re ready to take off.”
There’s static on the line before a screen on the control panel is lit by a close-up of Tony’s face and they hear a heartfelt stream of curses. “You’re ready? Did you get them?”
“I’ve got Clint, Bucky and Sam with me. I couldn’t reach Carol.”
“Yeah, I called her here, your gig’s not about property damage and she’s real good at it.”
“What the hell is happening up there?” Bucky asks leaning over Natasha’s shoulder.
There’s a distant, dull pang and some more cursing before Tony focuses back on them: “Giant robots, and those are my least favourite kind of robots. But there’s some weird puffy shit crawling out of the sewers as well, and T’Challa and Thor took off to check on something… I don’t know, it looks like some drunken love-child of Doom and Loki decided to throw a party here. Oh, fuck, wait a sec!”
The audio goes mute but the expression on Tony’s face doesn’t look like it’s good news. “Okay, cancel that wait and change it to get going! JARVIS is sending the coordinates.”
“Got ‘em,” Clint acknowledges from the pilot’s seat. “Buckle up, people!”
B: Brainwash 180°
Okay, team. If your mind has never been taken out to play and altered beyond recognition, raise your hand.
That’s right. It’s not exactly empathy you feel but cold nauseating grip deep in your guts. When your heart pounds in rushes of blood in your ears, whispering never again over and over, you know there’s no point arguing about “possible reversibility” or “civilian targets”.
You do what you have to. You do what you’re told.
Is there a difference?
C: Cause and effect
Natasha briefs them in on the flight.
The undead are not a new concept by any standards, and the virus has been around for decades. Spiked up by some mad Hydra-financed scientists’ eternal thrive for recreating the super soldier serum it has once again surfaced from where it was buried. A carelessly dumped test subject took a hike from the morgue and a couple of people got bitten. It’s usually all it takes to cause an outbreak, and now a - thankfully rather small - town is run over.
“The zombies are dead by all modern standards until - usually hours from the contagion - the virus kick-starts some parts of the brain and enables basic mobility,” she explains, and it’s becoming obvious this isn’t the first time she’s dealing with this virus. “Before you begin to doubt: no, there’s nothing human left. Personality is all gone. The only thing they feel is hunger.”
D: Dynamics
“It’s something,” Sam mutters out loud, stroking Redwing’s neck with his finger: the bird’s not too thrilled about flying without using his own wings but keeps stoically still and quiet, “that this ain’t even the most unrealistic set-up for a mission we’ve been involved in. I mean, zombies? Really?”
“This isn’t even in the top five,” Natasha comments with a dry smile.
“Yeah,” Bucky snorts, “didn’t the Spider-Kid tell something about fighting a vampire and some cosmic wolf-man?”
“That’s where you really get your kicks, isn’t it?” Clint observes without lifting his gaze from the navigating system. “Mr. Teenage Sidekick finally getting to call someone else the kid?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Barton?” Bucky suggests.
E: Expertise
By the time James’ got a knife on Clint’s throat and Clint is trying his best to bite the other man in the wrist Natasha is convinced that bringing the Falcon along was one of Stark’s better ideas. Flying and talking to birds aside, the man’s a steady act of normalcy in their company of celebrated killers.
“Do I really have to go team leader on you two?” she asks when James’ practically crawling into Clint’s lap in their scuffle and most likely preventing any piloting their archer might have to do.
“Nah,” James snorts. His shoulders relax, and there are only about twelve ways left he could kill Clint right on the spot (Clint’s got seven or eight).
“We’re done here anyway. Barton’s one shitty zombie.”
They break off their grips but Clint quickly catches a hold of James’ chin and plants a big smacking kiss on his cheek. “Tag. You’re it.”
“You’re the kind of person who licks everything in the fridge so no-one else gets to touch the goodies, aren’t you?” James asks and shakes his head while untangling himself from his fellow agent. His grin gives Natasha some hope of one day getting to know the “Bucky” Steve always talks about.
F: Falling 1) off buildings 2) for someone
Bucky takes a leap from the edge of the roof, the opposite building way too far to reach. It’s always an adrenaline rush, hanging between the sky and the ground, between someone else’s death and his own, and the time slows down, mercifully or sadistically, letting him relive the seconds before his first death.
Bucky falls, and Sam catches him.
G: Gross
“Oh fuck no,” Clint summarizes their collective feelings as the first zombie enthusiastically limps towards them as soon as they get out of the Jet. It must be one of the first ones that got turned, judging by the difficulties it has moving and the rotten stench surrounding it. It has been a thin elderly woman with almost white hair in a barely distinguishably blue dress. Its eyes are glassy bluish white and its teeth clatter like preparing to chew. Its hands it reaches towards them are covered in dried blood.
Natasha aims steadily at its head with her handgun and pulls the trigger. The thing slumps to the ground with a splat that makes them flinch. Bodies shouldn’t sound like that.
“One down, a few more hundred to go.”
H: Hunting
Zombies should be the easiest game in the world because they have no concept of “hiding” any more than “strategy”. They see, they come, they gnaw.
What they do have is strength in numbers, even if they’re not capable of profiting from it, and an insatiable craving making them unable to give a shit about anything else.
They come and they feed and they radiate pure desperation.
Bucky with a rifle and Clint with his bow stand on a roof and aim a bullet and an arrow after another as Natasha, Sam and Redwing herd the wandering corpses on the main street to the right direction. It’s nothing more than very easy target practice for now, and dropping yet another enemy with a lazy shot feels much worse than it probably should.
I: Improvising
A bullet not hitting a zombie’s head is a bullet wasted, so they prepare to clean tricky buildings with other weapons as well.
In the local hospital Bucky declares Natasha his favorite weapon: she’s not heavy to begin with, and with her agility it’s quite easy for her to use
Bucky’s bionic arm as a support and bash zombies’ heads with vicious kicks without getting too close.
Clint easily weaponizes surgical instruments as well as a box of screwdrivers as soon as he’s sick of pulling his throwing knives out of puddles of brain.
The look on Sam’s face after he’s beaten down a zombie-doctor with a zombie-nurses ripped-off arm causes the rest of them to lapse into hysterical fit of giggles that doesn’t cease until they have tears in their eyes.
J: Just in case
“Hey, Cap, you there?” Clint tries the Jet’s communicator while refilling his quiver. Steve’s apparently been trying to contact them several times.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Steve huffs, and even if Clint doesn’t have the visual on the relief is obvious.
“Is Manhattan still in place?”
“Mostly, yes. It’s a long story but we’re okay. Is Bu - Are you alright?”
Clint grins to himself but lets the slip pass without commenting: “We’re good, except for the therapy SHIELD’s gonna want to put us through after today’s retirement home incident.”
“I’m so sorry you got sent there,” Steve says, and there’s no doubt he really is sorry even if this is one of the times he’s not questioning Tony’s decision. “Could you tell Bucky and Sam that…”
He hesitates and after a few seconds Clint decides to be the bigger man. “Look, Cap, your boys are taking really good care of each other out there.”
However, he’s not that big a man. “It’s not really my place to judge, but you’re like the biggest of the big boys, and it seems like two thirds of your larger-than-life guy-love triangle are trying to define themselves through something else than Captain America’s shadow.” Jesus, SHIELD psychologists should be proud of him.
Clint can practically hear Steve opening and closing his mouth at the other end, wonders if he’s gone too far and if he should add that Steve’s boys are also definitely fucking in case the good Captain hasn’t noticed.
“Um, thanks, Clint. I guess?” Steve finally says. “You and Natasha take really good care of each other as well, okay?”
Clint bites back a laugh. “Sure thing, Cap.”
K: Killing the already dead
“Sometimes I think my so-called life isn’t worth anything, but I don’t want to die like this. No-one should die like this.”
L: Looking and seeing
“You have surprisingly little intimacy issues,” Sam says one morning, and Bucky hears a fill-in sentence.
You have surprisingly little intimacy issues
…for a brainwashed assassin.
…for a guy from your time.
…for someone so fucked-up.
…for someone with every reason not to trust people.
…for someone like you.
Bucky’s never spent too much time thinking about it. He squeezes between Clint and Tony on the couch if there are no seats left. He hugs Steve with full-body contact and nuzzles his neck while at it just to remember the scent of him. He touches Natasha’s hair (and nobody touches Natasha’s hair).
Maybe he needs to feel everything so intimately because he’s so fucked-up and can’t trust the people he cares about not to be taken away if he blinks.
Maybe he just laughs and pulls Sam back to bed.
M: Molotov and other cocktails
Clint squeezes out of the bar’s narrow window on the street level with several hands in various states of decay groping at his feet. The archer crawls a little further and collapses at Bucky’s feet to catch his breath.
“You know, I still think it’s a waste of perfectly good alcohol,” Bucky mutters and grimaces at him with a bottle in his hand. There are dozens of undead lured and now locked into the bar.
“I don’t fucking care about your Prohibition sentiments right now,” Clint growls between his gasps for breath. “Just blow it up!”
Bucky sighs dramatically, lights up the piece of cloth stuffed into the bottleneck, kicks another window next to the already broken one to pieces and throws the improvised firebomb in.
N: Nothing left to lose?
You pretend so hard to be a loner that you sometimes forget you actually like people. That’s why you’re doing this after all.
You can try to separate personal relationships from your work, but you know you’re only happy sleeping with someone who can also have your back in a fight. Or take you down in one.
O: Off the record, off with their heads
“We have a perimeter !” Natasha announces when she and Sam get back from their trip to the Quinjet. She gestures Clint and Bucky to gather around her tablet and shows a map covering the city and its immediate surroundings. “The undead shouldn’t be able to get past this circle.”
“Is there a but?” Clint asks, clearly suspicious. “There’s always a but.”
“The line’s held by a make-shift combo of Tony’s tech, SHIELD rookie agents, some army people and some local hunters who managed to avoid evacuation,” Sam says grimly. “A combo we really don’t want to see in action.”
“Officially this isn’t even happening,” Natasha adds. “If this spreads, World Security Counsel may finally take interest, and since Manhattan of all places seems to be under constant nuclear threat…” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence.
Bucky shrugs and pretends it’s an easy gesture at this point. “So I guess we kill ‘em all before they get out. No biggie.”
P: Promises 1) made 2) broken
Later that night they conclude the seventh floor of a hotel is safe enough place to sleep in after some barricades have been put into place and settle in a suite with two separate rooms.
Natasha undresses in front of Clint and starts going over her suit for tears while Clint searches for cuts and bruises in her body. Neck, armpits, thighs, all the places she cannot see herself, fingers brushing gently here and there.
“You’re clear.”
With a curt nod Natasha releases a breath she’s been holding and slides back into her sweat-soaked underwear. Clint peels off his own suit into a heap on his bed and obediently turns and twists and bends while Natasha goes over every inch of his skin.
“You’re too.”
She leaves her hand on her partner’s shoulder and Clint covers it with his own. The look in his eyes is haunted under all the affection as he asks: “Can you promise me you’d do it? If I was infected?”
Natasha bites her lip and knows the right answer is of course while she’s stuck on I’m not sure I could.
Q: Quick and dirty
They get naked, check that neither of them has been bitten or scratched without noticing and get under the sheets on the ridiculously large and luxurious bed. They settle down facing each other, both propped on their elbow, and there’s just enough light from the window to read expressions.
“You wanna?” Bucky whispers with a lopsided grin.
Sam snorts but reaches out to run his big warm hand along Bucky’s spine: “Yeah.”
Bucky makes a small approving noise as Sam’s hand makes a circle in the small of his back, repositions himself with one fluid movement and straddles the other man’s hips. He bends down to nip Sam’s bottom lip, the grin still intact; Sam brings a hand to tug at the hair in the back of his head and pulls him into a proper kiss, hot and heavy.
They muffle their moans and grunts for Clint and Natasha’s sake and jerk each other off heatedly and without finesse, but their teamwork skin on skin is just as tuned as it is in the field. That’s what they keep telling themselves they’re doing: teamwork, giving a guy a hand, fun times and some release.
But Bucky’s still on top of him, and the way his lips silently work around Sam’s name as he comes is so goddamn beautiful Sam just might be a little bit in love.
R: Remember when?
“Remember when we were sure we wouldn’t make it?”
“Remember when we realized we would?”
“Remember when we weren’t sure if we wanted to?”
S: Survivors
They find two people still alive and unbitten.
The other girl’s nine, the other fourteen, and they have spent days hiding under the floor of an old bakery. Turns out they’re sisters, and the younger one’s their spokesperson as well as the one who’s been finding them water and food. The older sister doesn’t speak at all, she moves as little as she has to and curls up in a fetal position as soon as no-one’s supporting her.
Bucky makes the run to the Jet to inform the nearest still-running hospital and the remaining locals that got away while the others make preparations for Sam flying the girls to safety.
Clint reassures the smaller girl that her sister will be just fine once they get out of here. What he doesn’t tell is that he knows the look in the older girl’s eyes: the state of dull terror where the mind has crawled into hiding and is not likely to have the courage to come back again. If he cries he doesn’t do it in front of them.
T: Trauma
It’s a lot like war and Bucky can handle it until they find the other children. The schools so far have been mostly empty but as they cross the yard of a daycare center they can hear eerie wailing. The building has kept the toddlers safe from outside threats but someone on the inside has been already infected. Natasha peeks inside through the window, tells Clint and Sam to stay the hell away and kicks the locked door open. Bucky follows at her heels.
He shoots a baby with its legs eaten and a bunch of three-year-olds, walks out and throws up everything he has in his stomach.
Sam gathers Bucky into his arms, fights a lump in his throat and thinks that from now on he knows one of the things that make Bucky wake up screaming in the middle of the night.
U: Unspeakable
Take a deep breath. Relax (you’re safe here). Search your feelings. Form them into words and you’ll notice everything gets easier.
Look them in the eye with a smile on your face: your friends, your lover, your leaders, your followers, your therapist.
They ask you what’s wrong.
You say: “Nothing.”
V: Valid reasons
“I’m sure we got sent here ‘cause living people don’t need to see us standing in the front line. We don’t stand for anything.”
“I’m sure we got sent here because we can do this.”
W: What would Captain America do?
“He’s a good man, you know,” Natasha says when it’s just the two of them keeping watch while Clint and Sam search yet another warehouse. “Sam, I mean.”
“And I’m not?” Bucky asks because that’s what he’s supposed to do.
“You know what I mean,” Natasha says because they’ve had the conversation about good men long before this. “I just hope this is not about your guilt. Or about Steve.”
“This has nothing to do with Steve,” Bucky says because he wants to believe that.
“With you and Sam everything has to do with Steve,” Natasha deadpans because someone has to point it out. “Wanting him or wanting to be him.”
Bucky looks away and sets his jaw to don’t talk to me for a couple of minutes. Natasha waits.
“He makes me feel nice things,” Bucky finally mutters and turns back to her, waiting to be mocked and knowing she’s not going to.
Natasha nods. “Then I’m happy for you.”
X: X-Files revisited
When the last zombie is finally and completely dead Natasha closes her eyes and wishes upon everything good in this world that this will be the last time.
Y: You and me, baby
“I’d do it,” Natasha murmurs into Clint’s ear on their way back home and Clint doesn’t have to ask what’s she’s talking about.
“I respect your willingness to die for a cause,” Sam murmurs into Bucky’s ear, “but I very much prefer you alive.”
Z: Zombies as a side-dish
It’s a surprise and almost heart-warming that they have a welcome committee at the Avengers Tower, and even more so when they are allowed to shower and get changed before being dragged to the common area.
Saving the world always requires an after-party with pizza, booze and slouching around. Clint leans to Natasha’s shoulder and hopes they don’t have to tell about the past few days. They wouldn’t make a good story.
Luckily Bucky kisses Sam at some point of the evening, and no-one’s interested in zombies after that.