Work Text:
Present day:
In the coach section of a PanAm flight from New York to Los Angeles, James “Bucky” Barnes sipped his vodka-on-the-rocks. The plane wasn’t the only thing hitting a patch of turbulence. Five hours earlier, RKO Pictures had declined to renew a third Captain America television spinoff with no buyer support on the horizon, not even in American-friendly Euro markets. It was a new era and the cool attitude towards war was cynicism, not patriotism. They didn’t want a guy wearing a cotton spangled outfit, they wanted the troubled veteran. Steve claimed he’d never cared for the suit anyway, and now was the time to pivot to avante-garde intellectual film, which was a fine strategy for a man who was a sculpted Adonis but not such a fine strategy for a stuntman with one arm. Stewing on his future prospects, Bucky shot a glance across the aisle at the man in a suit reading Life magazine featuring The Beatles. The same man who’d been in their hotel lobby. He thought about this unlikely coincidence and took another sip of vodka.
Meanwhile, in first class, Steven “Steve” Rogers mixed his half-spilled margarita and, through the designer lenses of his sunglasses, confronted the dismal reality that was the end of his decade-long career. It had been a successful run, admittedly. He still had the house, of course. A few million in the bank. It was time to hang up the shield, turn to more mature pursuits, challenge his talents as an actor. An actor. He was a pile of muscle with a pretty face. Hardly Wayne, Fonda or Newman. Everything special about him had come from his gym routine. He felt like a scrawny kid from Brooklyn again, no particular talents to speak of; a fraud, a phony. Maybe this was the end of the line.
***
Four years earlier:
The red, white and blue of the Captain America shield spun through the air and the set collectively held its breath, several assistants falling flat as a precaution. The memory of Jenny Simon’s concussion and Earl Watt’s broken camera was still fresh, and Director Erksine had specifically called in a Los Angeles Dodgers pitching coach to help with technique.
“Cut! Cut!”
A bell rang and Steve set down the two extras in Nazi uniforms he’d hoisted above the trench set. Erksine clapped his hands and called it a day, one week away from the production deadline of Captain America: Third Reich. Bucky rose from the muddied trench, fake blood still dribbling from his fake wound on his very real stump. This was his thirtieth movie on the stunt circuit and ever since the motorcycle accident it had been gory dismemberments that brought in the checks. Fortunately war movies had plenty of those.
“Goddamn that looked convincing, Buck!”
“Steven!” A brunette in a startling low-cut military uniform picked her way through the extras and techs and PAs milling about the set.
Peggy Carter, playing the great love interest of Captain America for the past three movies, had emerged onto Hollywood’s stage as a fully-formed ascendant star. Studio execs loved her, PR loved her, directors loved her. Men respected her. Legend was she had a black book with entries for every power broker in town. Perception was reality.
“Hey, Pegs--”
“There’s a party at Cliff’s tonight, you absolutely must attend. Word is Hitchcock.”
“The?”
“One and only.”
Tonight he’d planned on heading to Dino’s for drinks with Bucky like he did most every Tuesday night, but shoot, it was Hitchcock.
Peggy winked. “Who knows, stick close to me and you might be the next Jimmy Stewart.”
Well that was a load of bullshit.
***
Present day:
“You think there’s still time to be the next Jimmy Stewart?”
“Uh huh.”
Bucky turned them carefully up Cielo Drive in Steve’s blue Cadillac that had a custom stars-and-stripes medallion in the steering wheel, a gift from RKO for breaking the weekend box office record. Steve was reclined so far in the passenger seat that the headrest jammed into the backseat’s luggage. The turbulence and margarita had not been kind. Bucky checked the rearview mirror and confirmed that indeed the same black sedan from the airport was still exactly two cars behind them, a spectacular feat in Los Angeles traffic. Interesting.
“I’m all washed up, Buck. Face it. I’m officially a loser.”
“You’re not a loser.” Bucky pulled into the drive off the cul-de-sac and watched the black sedan casually make the loop and exit, windows tinted. A custom painted mural of Steve as Captain America greeted him through the windshield.
“No contract, I’m jobless. Jobless in America.” Steve fumbled with the car door. “A joke for the next generation. A party costume.”
“Relax. You’ll get on the horn with Pegs tomorrow.” Bucky sighed and walked around the Cadillac. It was a bright and balmy California afternoon. He noted the substitute groundskeeper had visited earlier, as per his instruction.
“No one wants Captain America anymore, Buck. It’s over. Hell, I don’t know why you’re still here.”
“Hey. Hey.” Bucky pulled him from the reclined seat and roped his remaining arm around Steve’s shoulders, steadying. “Cause I ain’t ever been working for Captain America. I’m with that little guy from Brooklyn who was too stubborn to quit in LA.”
“Yeah?” Steve’s eyes watered, his sunglasses forgotten in the car. “Ah, Christ. Those were the days, huh. You’re a good pal, buddy. A good pal.” He paused in their waltz to the house and pointed next door. “You know who moved in last month?”
“Who.”
“Phil Coulson. Just won an Oscar for The Avengers. That’s the future, right next door. Least I got one thing going for me.”
Bucky regarded the gated mansion opposite Steve’s. “Yeah, sure. Where’d you want the luggage?”
“Oh, uh.”
***
With a bittersweet sigh, Steve placed the Captain America shield on a wall-hook in the living room, between two giant posters from the premieres of Captain America: Patriot Calling and Captain America: Third Reich.
***
Later that night:
A friend of a friend of Jerry Lewis’s was throwing a party so it was a good enough reason to get out of the house and celebrate, as Steve put it, one final night on the town, one final night between old friends. See, Bucky had been his stuntman ever since he was a kid, doing stupid shit with dockyard equipment and stealing bicycles to ride off the pier. Throwing punches. That was back when he had both arms. And really, Steve didn’t like to think too much about Bucky with his left arm, because it had been on set for Steve’s studio movie Rebel Ranger that he’d lost it, doing a motorcycle jump in the rain. The least he could do was pay the hospital bills and make sure he got his fair shake with the stunt coordinators. But now all that would change. Bucky could take care of himself, sure, he was one of the best in the industry. You could set him on fire, hit him with a car; he knew all the tricks. It just wouldn’t be the same.
All this in mind, Steve’s mood was as low as a crippled cricket’s bottom and his hair-of-the-dog solution to the damned earlier margarita wasn’t working. He slouched at the estate’s poolside bar while some Cuban salsa pumped out over the Hollywood insider crowd, and tried to subtly determine if the man at the opposite end was a PR rep or an undercover cop. Meanwhile, a clique was slowly forming to his right, dominated by a woman who looked suspiciously like the Playmate of the Month and spared Steve a full two glances before ignoring him completely. His star power was already fading, he lamented silently, and sunk lower.
“You know who’s here. Right over there. Look.”
“Oh my God. Who let that commie back in the States.”
“Who?”
Eavesdropping, Steve’s eyes curiously followed the meaningful head-bob to the pool, where a stunning redhead was entertaining a coterie of men that included Bucky.
Natasha Romanoff.
Now, to the casual observer, a one-armed stuntman from Brooklyn and a world-renowned Russian ballerina seemed an odd couple. They’d met during Bucky’s murkier years on the Western Front, hell, the guy was a Green Beret while Steve had been stuck in a clerical office, and the rest was a rumor mill that continued unabated to this day. Impervious to the blacklist, Romanoff periodically appeared on the Hollywood circuit like Steve’s personal banshee, sending Bucky into late-night secret escapades, romantic getaways to god knows where, sometimes for entire weekends mid-shoot. Their on-again off-again arrangement exasperated him. Steve watched as Bucky’s arm encircled her waist, fingers resting on the top of her bikini bottom. He whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. It really was unprofessional.
Steve downed the remainder of his drink and stretched. Playmate of the Month gave him a generous third glance and this time he pasted on a smile. “Ma’am, I can’t help but find you a familiar face. Jog my memory?”
“Ma’am! Please, it’s Delores. Call me Dot. Say, aren’t you Captain America?”
***
Even later that night:
Bucky and Steve responsibly left the Cadillac at the friend of a friend of Jerry Lewis’s estate and hailed a cab back to Cielo Drive. Despite having spent the past two hours in the whip-sharp attention of Dot and her fellow playmates, Steve was left with a sour feeling in his gut that had nothing to do with margaritas and martinis. If he had to call it something, he would’ve reluctantly chosen “jealousy” but this was a loaded word. Bucky was in grim spirits himself, ostensibly because Natasha Romanoff was jetting back to Moscow on a red-eye before dawn.
“You gotta find a girl who won’t break your heart, Buck,” Steve advised, lurching to a halt with the cab in front of his house.
“She ain’t breaking my heart, don’t worry.”
“I’m just saying. I’ll always be here for you, buddy.”
“Appreciate that, Steve.”
Steve leaned into the cab, slightly unsteady, having caught a wind of inspiration. “Say, it’s our last night on contract. C’mon. Come in, have a drink, stay a while, huh? This is celebrating us, ten years, we don’t call it an early night!”
It was one o’ clock in the morning.
Bucky considered his trailer outside the drive-in theater in Van Nuys, and how he still needed to put down ant killer. “Yeah, all right.”
They put on the old records, for nostalgia’s sake, and cracked a few beers and a few jokes. Steve decided this was the night to open the bottle of whiskey he’d been gifted from one of Elizabeth Taylor’s personal assistants, a thank-you for favors between studios. The holy grail of his whiskey collection, it was not to go to waste.
“Well, pal,” Steve announced grandly, shortly after two o’ clock, “It’s the end of the line.”
Bucky raised his glass beside Steve for a toast, slouched into the massive leather couch. “To the end of the line.”
“It was a good run. I couldn’t have asked for better company.”
“Same to you, buddy.”
Steve’s face was very close and very earnest. Bucky studied his eyelashes. He didn’t flinch away when Steve kissed him quite suddenly on the mouth. As a matter of fact, this seemed a natural progression. He tasted like whiskey but he liked whiskey, so.
***
Bucky woke to find his face mashed into Steve’s naked armpit, a leg sprawled halfway across his body, which was at least still clothed in briefs. This was Steve’s bed, he realized, raising his head and wincing as the room spun. Steve let out a single snore from where he was sprawled on his back, like a sated Dionysus, and Bucky paused to admire him, wholly and completely, in a way that made his heart do a double-thumb that spelled trouble with a capital tee.
Then came a muffled clink from the front of the house and he sprang to life, hangover or not. Well, sprang was being generous. Tottered, maybe. Bucky grabbed the handgun he kept taped to the underside of Steve’s night table and paused in the dark hallway to add the knife he kept behind the framed photo of Steve’s folks, god rest their souls.
“Hhhngk!” was the only sound the intruder made when the knife caught him in the throat across the living room.
“Zimniy soldát!” the other two exclaimed in a unison so comical that Bucky giggled. Hydra, just as Natasha had warned. His stomach gurgled against the whiskey. No time for upchucking.
Gunfire erupted, tragically disposing of Steve’s beautiful glass coffee table and his kitchen cabinetry, although thwarted by the real Italian marble countertops.
Back in the bedroom, Steve flailed awake: “What the fuck!”
Bucky emptied the handgun, scoring a shot in one agent’s calf but taking one across his own thigh, and scrabbled for the knife block but incoming was too heavy. Opening one of the lower cabinet doors he uncovered a small arsenal of Campbell’s soup cans and began firing back, a grunt of pain signalling he’d hit home. In the immediate pause while the agent reloaded or tended to his broken nose or both, Bucky snagged the butcher’s knife and put an end to the agent’s concerns. That left one, who had taken up a position behind the couch, and emerged now with an automatic. So much for stealth ops.
As Bucky contemplated the severe disadvantage this development posed for him, the Captain America shield frisbee’d across the living room like a scene from Director Erksine’s wet dreams. The trajectory was immaculate, the force exquisite. It nailed the agent broadside and sent him backwards across the couch with a sizable dent in his skull.
Steve stood in the hallway, hair mussed and robe untied, arms and legs akimbo. “Holy shit! Bucky, are you okay? Who the hell--?”
Bucky leaned against the pock-marked counter, taking the weight off his bleeding leg and surveying the damage. “KGB,” he said solemnly.
***
“You’re sure you don’t need me at the hospital?” Steve asked anxiously, police lights cascading over his face.
“I’m fine. What the hell are you gonna do at the hospital anyway, it’s boring,” Bucky demurred as the paramedics insisted on loading him up on a stretcher. God knew he’d borne worse.
“You saved my life.” Steve gazed at him, those big blue eyes soft and endless as they’d always been, and if Bucky was a sentimental type he’d have called the feeling in his chest “love” but it was too simple and limited a word.
“And you saved mine,” he returned instead. Bucky smiled as the ambulance doors shut. Through them he called: “Hey! You’re Steve fuckin’ Rogers, and don’t you forget it!”
Steve smiled back and that was enough.
The ambulance pulled away and the cops milled about, marking off evidence for this and that, and Steve prepared to give his statement for no less than the third time, despite having a foggy recollection of the prior hours.
“What the hell happened? I heard gunshots and called the police right away.” A slightly balding man in pajamas and slippers stopped him on the sidewalk.
“Oh, uh, KGB agents tried to kill me and my friend,” Steve explained, and even now it seemed like a distant movie plot.
“Wait, like KGB, KGB? The goddamn Russians? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. We, uh, fought them off.”
The man shook his head and smiled. “No way. You fucking fought them off. That’s amazing. Aren’t you … aren’t you Captain America?”
“Yeah, yeah that’s me. Used the shield to kill one of ‘em.”
“You’re shitting me. Hey, my dad loved your movies, he went to all the premieres. I’m Phil Coulson, hell of a way to meet your neighbor but here we are, right?”
“Right. Right! Uh, Steve Rogers. Of course.”
“Why don’t you come on over, Steve, you look like you could use a stiff coffee.”
“I’d like that, thank you.”
“So what’s your next industry move…”