Work Text:
-1-
It started as a child's game: Steve opened a door and a bucket of glitter fell on his head. The cowl was off, so it got in his hair and down past his collar into his uniform. It got into all the tiny seams of his suit. It got down his gloves and stuck to his sweaty hands. Some of it, he discovered much later, even got into his boots and through the weave of his socks.
Natasha laughed. Cameras went off, the electronic click click click and flashbulbs familiar. Then it wasn't just Natasha laughing, it was Sam trying to stifle his laughter with the palm of his hand and Rhodey looking away and Sharon ducking her head and smiling behind a file and even Maria pretending she hadn't snapped a picture.
Then Steve jostled the bucket balanced precariously on top of the door and it fell on his head, too, and the rest of them stopped pretending they weren't laughing.
As practical jokes went, it was pretty harmless, and once he shook off the glitter, even he could appreciate the sparkle.
But it didn't let Natasha off the hook.
He just peeled off his gloves and ran a hand through his hair, sending out another glittering cloud of craft supplies, and he smiled right at her.
"How do I look?"
-2-
She may have won, but he didn't have to lose gracefully. So, yes, he definitely typed "please pack box with glitter" in the "special requests" part of the order form. It wasn't his proudest moment. But he'd spent two weeks finding glitter in places glitter didn't belong, the least he could do was return the favor.
Natasha swaggered. There was no other word for what she was doing. She swaggered right through the ready room in the new shoes and a skirt too short to be "decent" and a top so revealing Steve was pretty sure it wasn't meant to be worn when the sun was up. She looked good.
He was especially fond of the way the stray glitter in her hair and on her skin and still on the shoes caught the light.
She stopped right in front of him, put a hand on her hip, and thrust that hip out.
"Thanks," she said.
Steve was pretty sure he could see up her skirt from where he was sitting. He grinned up at her. "A bet's a bet."
She smiled her dangerous smile at him and leaned forward. She patted his cheek a little too hard, patronizingly and viciously motherly, and she said, "Yes, and you're not a sore loser at all, are you, Steve?"
-3-
He wanted a flashbang. It was supposed to be in that pocket. That one. Right there. The one he reached into and definitely did not find a flashbang in.
Crossbones kept advancing. He didn't slow, didn't falter, just kept up his sadistic monologue in Rumlow's voice, muffled through the mask, and kept stepping forward. Steve's leg was broken and his wrist was crushed and his mind blanked. If it weren't for reflexes honed in so many battles, yeah, he probably would have frozen up.
What he did, what he will never forget, what he will never be allowed to forget: he closed his hand around a fistful of what he found and he threw it.
Glitter arced through the air between Steve's fist and Crossbones' face. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. To less than a crawl. Steve watched it in stop-motion. The glitter in the air. The moment of awareness in Crossbones' eyes, exposed in the mask. The disbelief. The panic as he tried to close his eyes and duck. The instant the glitter made contact.
Time resumed its normal pace then, and Steve threw himself into a roundhouse kick while Crossbones was momentarily blinded. He shouted in pain and clawed at his eyes with his gloved fingers. Steve hauled off. His fist connected with Crossbones' temple and he went down like a sack of bricks.
(Later, in the debriefing, Maria stared at the footage playing on the screen, then turned slowly. She looked at him with... with an expression he couldn't quite read, and he'd gotten good at reading Maria over the last year.
"Captain Rogers," she said, and that was it.
She couldn't even think of what to ask him.
Beside him, Natasha was very studiously not snickering.
Steve stood up. He opened two of the pouches on his belt and stuck his hands in. He tossed fistfuls of glitter onto the gleaming conference table.
He said, "My equipment was compromised. I used the resources at my disposal." And he sat back down.)
-4-
He heard the cry of surprise from her bedroom and he smiled to himself.
"That's not funny, Steve!"
He thought it was pretty funny. She'd taken so long in the shower, he hadn't even had to rush.
From where he was standing in the kitchen, he could see down the hallway. He finished his drink and he watched Natasha fling open her bedroom door and stomp across the hall. She glared at him... and shoved right into the bedroom he'd claimed for the night.
He moved to the sink to rinse out his glass and he waited.
She shouted again.
Steve tsked. He called to her, "Watch your language, Romanoff."
She came out of his bedroom then. Dressed for bed in snug shorts and a sleeveless top, she was wearing exactly what he'd expected of her. She looked like a sleepy ballerina... who had rolled around in bright gold glitter. It was in her hair, still damp from the shower, and stuck to her skin, also still damp from the shower. She stalked down the hall, staring right at him.
Smiling at him.
He knew that smile. And he deserved it. He set his glass in the dish drainer. No reason for the dishes to become a casualty. He turned back to her.
She was still smiling. "You found the extra sheets, hmm?"
He shrugged. "It wasn't hard." She was planning something and he knew it. He just wasn't sure yet what it was.
"Once you remake your bed, it'll be nice and clean. But me, I'm stuck like this." She gestured to herself. To the glitter.
Realization hit him hard. She wasn't the only one dressed for bed and still damp around the edges. Steve put his hands up and started to back away. Maybe he hadn't thought this through as well as he should have--
Natasha launched herself over the island and wrapped around him like she was a small monkey and he was the branch keeping her from being eaten by the crocodile. Her glitter transferred to him, to his bare chest and arms and thighs. Some of it loosened, falling around them, dusting the island and the floor, some of it catching in a draft from the air conditioner and floating up around them.
She rubbed all over him, shoulders to knees, her sticky skin against his. She hugged him tight and looked him right in the eye the whole time.
Yes, he had failed to plan this as thoroughly as he should have.
Natasha let go of him and dropped gracefully to her feet. She smiled sweetly up at him and lifted on her toes to brush a kiss to his cheek.
"Good night, Steve."
-5-
Zola wasn't dead. Well, he was, he just wasn't as dead as Steve would have liked.
Apparently, he'd survived the Camp Lehigh missile attack and had built himself a new body. A mobile body. With long, tentacle-like arms he'd taken to waving around while he waxed villainous.
They were on an old hotel rooftop, under a rusting metal sign that was already obsolete. The light bulbs still in their sockets hadn't lit for years. Bucky stood near one edge of the rooftop, keeping RoboZola talking so Steve could sneak up on him from behind. It wasn't a sophisticated plan, but it was a plan, and it was the best they had. And it was working, too.
Right up until Steve stepped on what was left of a broken light bulb.
He saw Bucky's exasperation the instant before RoboZola whirled around. He tried to get the shield up in time but he was too slow; one of Zola's tentacle-arms lashed out.
Steve was falling.
Falling in a cloud of glitter.
He closed his eyes. Of course the pouches weren't sealed tight enough to keep the glitter where it belonged. Of course if he was upside-down, the glitter would come spilling out. Of course.
Of course.
An explosion above him made him open his eyes, and then Bucky was diving toward him, arm out. Steve tried not to read the expression on his face. He really did.
Bucky grabbed him and grappled him into a sturdy hold. Then he pulled the cord for his parachute.
Together, they floated to the ground under a red star in a cloud of glitter.
It was almost romantic.
"Thanks," Steve said, when they were on their feet.
Bucky looked at him, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. He tapped his comm on and started gathering his chute.
"Zola is neutralized," he reported, and with a slightly broader smile, "Captain Sparklepants is safe."
Steve huffed. "Captain Sparklepants?"
Bucky met his eyes. "We think it's time you got a new codename, Steve."
+ 1
When the robot started leaking through his shirt, Crossbones gave a cry of triumph and shoved the bot back as hard as he could. It stumbled, hair falling over its perfectly-sculpted face, and it stared down at its own chest. Crossbones whipped out the electric batons and extended the prongs.
It wasn't Steve, but it would do. He was going to make it hurt.
The bot looked up, the very human expression on his face one of disbelief.
"Fuck him up, pal!" shouted the small Steve look-alike bot from across the field.
"You made me leak," said the bot.
Crossbones just stared at him. "The fuck you going to do about it?" He held the batons out.
The bot smiled. And lunged.
Crossbones was knocked back, three hundred pounds of metal alloy and silicone skin pressing him down. He grinned through the mask. Like he hadn't had the real Steve sitting on top of his chest before? He was going to enjoy destroying this bot.
Then he smelled it. Maple. Maple and apple and the bot was grinning, and when Crossbones looked down, he realized where the smells were coming from. Sticky, thick goo oozed through the bot's uniform at his chest and at his crotch.
"What the--"
The bot laid down on him and wrapped his arms and legs around him. Crossbones could feel it oozing through his own uniform, soaking his pants, his shirt, getting on his neck between his collar and the mask, covering on his arms where the bot had them pinned between them. He squirmed, struggling against the bot's hold. The thing had been manufactured for an eighty-year-old woman, why the hell was it so strong?
"You guys ready back there?" it shouted, voice amplified through hidden speakers.
"Whenever you are!" shouted back the real Steve.
Crossbones turned his head and looked around until he found Steve. The real one, the one he'd come after only to get distracted by the decoy bots. The real one holding a fucking cannon.
No. Fuck no. No, he'd seen that on the news.
With a scream and a surge of adrenaline, he broke out of the bot's hold. He flung it off of him and he jumped up. He was sticky and reeked of apple and maple and the bot was coming at him again. Crossbones thrust out one of the batons and cranked the electricity up as high as it would go, and the bot shuddered and went limp.
"Hey, Rumlow!" shouted the tiny one.
Crossbones didn't look. He just hefted the other baton like a spear and threw it, aimed right at the real Steve manning the goddamn cannon.
It wasn't enough. Steve just stepped to the side. Before Crossbones could whirl and run--the new suit didn't allow for running, he wasn't planning on running away from any fights, he was only here to win--the cannon went off.
Crossbones fell to his knees.
Of all the ways to be bested by the apple-pie poster boy for an America he didn't believe in, it ended like this:
Soaked in maple syrup and apple-flavored lube and covered head to toe in glitter.
He bowed his head.