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Steve scanned the event brochure and struggled to steam the wrinkles from his vintage felt cowl. Wear the rubber one, Nat had advised. But it did funny things to his hair and gave him a heat rash on his neck. Nat sighed and looked up from her phone, surveying the dressing room. Her costume had been done hours ago to teach pilates with Thor for a special up-charge fee. Event registration included a discount code for her wildly successful fitness empire. Beside her, Clint reclined to balance an arrow on his palm. He was mid-production on a medieval drama with one of the major networks and about to be renewed, the brochure highlighted. Bucky – Barnes, Steve mentally checked himself – leaned in close to the mirror with an eye pencil, the same brochure creased open next to his elbow.
"Bruce is a no-show."
Steve stopped, the steamer hissing, and frowned. "What?"
Nat glanced back at her phone. "I quote, 'I can't say it tonight, I just can't."
"It's two words: Hulk Smash."
"It’s his only two words, Clint."
Pepper Potts strode in and assessed the scene, clipboard at the ready and wearing a sponsor graphic tee that proclaimed Avengers Movie Night: 10 Year Reunion! under her Courtyard Marriott lanyard. Steve could remember when their contract-mandated corporate galas were coveted tickets at the five-star resorts. "Where's Tony?”
"Shaking every single hand on the way in," Barnes muttered carefully. His event bio said only that he now spent his time fishing on the Gulf and Steve happened to know he had an owner's stake in a restaurant with Sam Wilson's sister.
Sam Wilson who had signed with their rival studio for a reboot deal worth eight figures per movie.
It was fine. Steve had cashed plenty of checks from Lifetime Originals the past few years. None of them eight figures. But it was fine.
He focused intently on a rebellious wrinkle in the cowl. This was the year he would play his cards right and get Buck– Barnes to have just one drink with him before they parted ways, for old times' sake. Maybe not fully old times' sake because the last time he'd had a drink with Barnes it was the beginning of the end of his ill-fated marriage to Agent 13, Sharon Carter. He'd panicked during the summer BBQ, seeing Barnes come out of the pool in those swim trunks, and drunkenly grabbed into a kiss who he could've sworn was his wife but was actually her elderly aunt Margaret.
Steve was gratefully pulled from this reverie by Tony Stark's arrival. He crowded into the doorway past Pepper, tossed his designer leather jacket, and clapped Steve across the shoulders.
"All right, here we go! Happy holidays in Vegas, got a good crowd out there! Are we ready?" He glanced around. "Where's Bruce?"
"He's a no-show."
"You're kidding. What about Hulk Smash? Who's going to say Hulk Smash?" Tony cast about the conspicuously silent room. "Well, the show must go on! The fans are ready, I'm ready, we're ready."
Tony was in his element. He had trademarked vodka and sunglasses, various Avenger endorsement deals across social media, and read each and every piece of fan mail. He and Pepper could strong-arm them into these reunion shows for another fifty years. With that thought, Steve popped an Advil and pulled on the cowl, tightened the strap on the shield. Clint threaded an arrow to his bow.
"You got any trick arrows?"
"I have one that's tipped with Krazy Glu and another that plays the Avengers theme song."
"Oh, cool."
"When's the last time you swung that thing?"
"Not too long ago. I mean not this exactly. Kettlebells. I do kettlebell workouts pretty regularly."
"That's great."
"Yeah. Keeps the back muscles defined, you know?"
Lugging around a solid steel shield for various events had been doing a number on his shoulders lately. Middle age was right around the corner, as his profile liked to remind him. He checked his posture in the mirror and flicked a sideways peek at Barnes, who was pulling a metallic fabric sleeve over a huge bicep that could probably bench press a truck. Save it for the minibar, Rogers.
Tony downed the last of his frankly unnecessary coffee and paused. "Barnes, you lightened the eyeliner? C'mon, it's not the same look!"
"My optometrist said to switch to something less dramatic."
Pepper checked her watch. “All set?"
Barnes held up the brochure. "This still says Bucky Barnes. I asked for Jim."
"Oh Jesus," Nat rolled her eyes and adjusted whatever support she managed under the catsuit.
Pepper shrugged. "Everyone knows you as Bucky, you can't pivot to Jim."
"How can it be a pivot to use my real name?"
Tony threw up his hands. "What the hell is wrong with Bucky?"
Steve stayed studiously quiet and fiddled with his shield straps.
"Places! … Clint. Clint. Clint!"
*
Steve pasted on a smile at the top of the second autograph hour and wished he had brushed his teeth after lunch. Rookie mistake. His head wasn't in the game this weekend. To his right, Tony was a veritable paragon of charisma and Steve tried to keep pace. To his left, Barnes's presence was a black hole. Steve glanced up at the next mid-level corporate investor in line and signed another copy of an old photo of himself that seemed more dashing every year.
"Mr. Stark, Peter Parker, I have to say you've been such an inspiration, I wrote my PhD dissertation–"
"PhD, wow," Tony had his autograph down to an art form.
"Thanks, and this one too? –on the theoretical energetic capacity of the original suit you designed, specifically the laser focusing which obviously is almost a thousand times more powerful than your typical high frequency focusing. It’s really what got me into marketing."
"The theoretical energetic capacity… This is, wow. Wow. Thank you. I'm flattered."
"Like pouring gasoline on a fire," Clint muttered from down the line.
Steve signed a cheerful Captain America bobblehead then noticed the press badge swaying at eye-level. Worse than glad-handing entertainment firms was providing fodder for another Where Are They Now segment. "Lang for the Daily Bugle, can you give us a clip for the ten o'clock hour?"
"Ah, sure. I can do this all day!"
"No, the other one, you know?"
Steve cleared his throat and pretended not to hear. He looked down but for once there was nothing to sign. Just keep smiling. Barnes kicked him under the table discreetly.
"Hm?"
"With you till…" the reporter prompted impatiently.
"I'm with ya till the end of the line!" Steve finally quipped in a manner so uncomfortably forced that Pepper frowned from across the room. He grit his teeth and smiled. Finally there was a water break.
"You wanna say Hulk Smash instead?" Barnes hissed.
"Sorry, it just makes me a little tense to keep repeating our signature vow, Bucky," Steve snapped back, his tension erupting in all the wrong ways.
"Jesus Christ, it was eight years ago, you know how many dicks I've ridden since then?"
"And you'll keep us guessing!" Nat interjected with a smile as Clint turned his hearing aid off again.
Steve considered throwing caution to the wind and going for it anyway; hey wanna get a drink later tonight and tell me about all eight years’ worth of dicks, Buck? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? He must've had a strange look on his face even with the cowl because Barnes did a double-take and Steve watched his expression go from irritated to uncertain. Then he had a collector's edition plaster cast of his arm presented for autograph.
*
Nat checked her makeup backstage from the main hall, amid the pervasive odor of chemical-butter popcorn. "So we do the movie and then Q&A? That’s it?"
One of Pepper's summer interns nodded eagerly. "Right, we'll have chairs on stage for the live commentary–"
"Great!" Tony rubbed his hands together and Clint sighed.
Nat paused. "Did you get my programming note? I don't do Q&A on suit fits and I have a strict no-hands policy."
"Same," Steve added wearily, rubbing a temple as the intern jotted this information, promised the sun and moon, and zipped away to prep the stage. Despite pre-screening the questions, someone would inevitably ask for or about America's Ass. He didn't know if he had it in him to play along this weekend. Maybe it was time to hang up the shield and retire from the gala circuit, find another way to pay the bills. He could learn fishing. He didn't notice Barnes sidling up to him until he was practically in his ear.
"Hey. What's up with you? Everything ok?" He had reapplied the darker eyeliner, Steve noticed absurdly.
Steve swallowed. Only a run-of-the-mill midlife crisis wondering if he'd spent the last eight years making one mistake after another. C'mon, Rogers, you're an adult. In a cartoon costume, sure. So is he. You both are. Square up. He cleared his throat and met Barnes's eyes. He made a conscious effort to not get lost in them, because somewhere in that gray-blue was a younger, better, version of himself.
"Yeah. Look, sorry about earlier. I, uh." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "It's stupid."
Barnes’s eyes narrowed but the stage lights dimmed, announcer cutting in with a feedback whine on the microphone. Movie time.
*
He knew all these lines by heart. Some etched into his heart.
And then it was all over. The house lights coming up, the applause. An explanation that Steve, Tony, and Nat would be taking Q&A.
By the time Steve returned backstage, Barnes was gone.
The after-event comedown was a deadening thing. Peeling off the suit. Arranging same-day dry cleaning so it didn’t stink up his luggage. Finalizing room charges. He’d been too tired to pillage the minibar. He checked in for his flight, on time, back to La Guardia. Coffee with Nat while he waited for the airport shuttle: Don’t you want to experience Vegas, Steve? Make any high-stakes bets?
*
Steve slung himself onto the airport bar stool and rubbed his eyes. He opened his messages and hovered over Pepper Potts. No. If Barnes had wanted it, he’d have given his number, email. Don’t stalk the man.
Barnes took the stool next to him.
“Bucky?” Steve blurted on reflex. “You got a flight?”
“It is the airport,” Barnes noted dryly, hunching over the counter and fiddling with a napkin. “Got five minutes to kill.”
Steve blinked and huffed a laugh, brain playing catch-up with his mouth.
“Ever think we’d still be doing this, ten years later?” Barnes asked, rubbing his eyes.
Steve settled back against the bar and shrugged. “Did I ever think I’d spend the rest of my life trying to live up to one role from my late twenties? Not really. But it makes people happy, for a little while.”
“Even if you gotta say the line a hundred times, huh.”
Steve chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, even if.”
“I’m sorry about earlier too, by the way. Shouldn’t have snapped.”
“Think I earned it, Buck.”
"Told you to stop calling me that.” Warm and fond as his leather jacket, same as he'd ever been.
Steve smiled to himself, nodded. Five minutes. What the hell. "Hey, can I buy you a drink?"
Barnes stared at him. Then smiled back and laughed once, incredulous. “Thought you’d never ask.”
“You might miss your flight.”
“Yeah. I know.”