Chapter Text
The one thing Steve Rogers gets criticized for is his physical appearance: 5’5 and 100 pounds soaking wet. That’s all people on the street see, not his blue eyes, long lashes, pink lips, and his golden hair. Not to mention his voice- something Bucky loved. Bucky also loved Steve’s witty remarks and his intelligence, which got him in this business anyway. It still hurts Steve to this day, how he couldn’t stop Bucky from dying. He relives it almost every day, his own deafening screaming drowned out by howling wind.
“Get out of your trance, Rogers. Thinking of him all the time won’t bring him back,” Clint says, stepping up to the window Steve’s been blankly staring out of for the past five minutes. “Need a clear mind to gather information, right? Everything will be fine. Now, we have a train to catch.” Clint Barton is Steve’s ‘Point Man’, his right-wing man. He’s the one who closely observes the subject and their projections, to gather information, to make sure everything goes smoothly; to find a job that will help Steve become a free man again. The only reason he’s not at the moment is because he’s a wanted man. Authorities think he killed Bucky. That Steve killed the love of his life.
They arrive at the train station, and see a young woman with brown hair and bright red lips, Darcy Lewis, their administrator for the “dream-machine” as Clint calls it, in memory of his Challenger. One of the men is average-sized with blonde hair and a crooked scowl, named Gilmore Hodge, and Steve scowls at Clint, since they both know that Steve has a knack for trying to beat up bad-guy looking types like Hodge. However, they need him, as their architect for this job. The man they’re going to get their first bit of information from is a very, very large man with shoulder-length blonde hair, scruff, and bright blue eyes. This Scandinavian man is the head of Odinson Engineering, Thor. He’s now against Laufeyson Engineering, the world’s leading energy company. Their client doesn’t know it yet, but the only reason that they’re going into a dream with him is to find a secure job.
Once the train has been moving for half an hour, Steve, Clint, and Thor insert the IV from the dream-machine, get comfortable, and Steve gives a nod to Darcy, who pushes the yellow button on the machine, sending them into Steve’s mind, sharing a dream that’s set in a new place, looks like the Middle East, maybe Afghanistan, Hodge already sitting at the table in the front room. Clint explains to Thor that they must enter a new dream. He isn’t hesitant to lay on the bed and be inserted into the next layer of the dreamscape. Neither Hodge nor Thor speak up on Steve’s new appearance: 6’2 and 150 pounds heavier, mostly in muscle. The perfect soldier.
Bucky loved him as he was, even though Steve got sick way too much than an average person, and got in way too many fights with guys the size of him now. Bucky loved how even though Steve was small in the real world, how he looked so fragile, that he was such a bully in bed (the nice kind, if that was even possible), that Steve and his skinny body was Bucky’s whole world.
Steve and Clint set up the second dream-machine in the bathroom, Clint sitting in a chair, while Steve sets one up over a bathtub filled of hot water, to let Clint give him the ‘kick’-what brings you back from your current dream. They get set up again, and Hodge pushes the button once more, and retakes his vantage point at the table. After they’re subdued, his subconscious bringing his projections closer, a riot of Middle Eastern-men filling the streets leading to their apartment.
***
“What’s the most resilient parasite?” Steve asks Thor. They’re in a elegant Japanese dining room, and Thor is eating across from him and Clint, on the sleek dining table. The three of them are dressed in well-tailored suits, even the security guards behind Thor. “A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?” Thor stops with his fork in front of his mouth. Clint glances between Thor’s concerned face and Steve’s smirk.
“What Mr. Rogers is trying to say-” Clint begins, but Steve interrupts.
“An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea’s taken hold in the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. A person can cover it up, ignore it-but it stays there.”
“But surely to forget?” Thor asks.
“Information, yes. But an idea? Fully formed, and understood? That sticks,” Steve taps his forehead, “In there, somewhere.”
Thor puts down his fork, starting to get the idea of the work Steve and Clint have been doing for years. “For someone like you to steal?” Thor says, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes. In the dream state, conscious defenses are lowered and your thoughts become vulnerable to theft. It’s called extraction.” Clint says.
“But, Mr. Odinson, we can train your subconscious to defend itself from even the most skilled extractor.” Steve continues.
“How can you do that?”
“Because I am the most skilled extractor. I know how to search your mind and find your secrets. I know the tricks, and I can teach them to your subconscious so that whenever you’re asleep, your guard is never down. But if I’m going to help you, you have to be completely open with me. I’ll need to know my way around your thoughts better than your wife, you therapist, anyone,” Steve gestures all around him. “If this is a dream and you’ve got a safe full of secrets, I need to know what’s in that safe. For this to work, you have to let me in.”
Thor smiles and stands up. One of the security guards opens the double doors so they see the party outside the dining room. “Gentlemen. Enjoy your evening as I consider your proposal.”
Clint sighs. “He knows.”
The entire building trembles, making them up cough at the dust falling through the cracks of the ceiling. Steve checks his watch. The second hand is frozen. Up above, Hodge is checking the tubes connected to Steve, Clint, and Thor. An explosion echoes down the street. Up above, in the real world, Darcy checks her watch and watches Hodge’s head bump against the window. The Japanese castle shakes again; when it stops Steve and Clint hear the crashing waves below the cliff and the other party guests-projections-chatting.
“Thor knows. He’s playing with us.” Clint says.
“I can get the information that’s in the safe. He looked right at it when I mentioned secrets.” Steve replies.
“What’s he doing here?” Clint asks, looking past Steve’s shoulder.
Steve just shakes his head. “Get to your room. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Clint scowls. “Fine. Remember that we’re here to work.”
Steve walks up to Bucky, unable to continue sipping his drink. His hair is longer than it was before he died, his sharp jawline has some scruff, and his blue eyes are dazzling. He’s almost as gorgeous as he was while he was still alive, in the real world. Steve leans on the rail of the terrace like Bucky, looking down at the jagged rocks.
“If I jumped, would I survive?” Bucky asks, smiling. His voice is deeper, quieter, as if he hasn’t spoken in years.
Steve looks down again, then back at Bucky. “With a clean dive, maybe. Buck, why are you here?”
“I thought you might be missing me, Stevie.” Bucky leans towards him, Steve does the same, ever so slightly.
“I am. But I can’t trust you anymore.”
“So...what?” Bucky stands on his tip-toes to kiss him, and Steve leans down to help him, but leans back at the last second. “Such a tease, like always.” Bucky whispers. Steve then takes Bucky’s hand tightly and they walk, past projections that barely pay attention to them, up to a room. Bucky laughs at one of the paintings, claiming that Clint’s taste for art is still terrible, and Steve only chuckles.
Steve puts on black gloves and asks Bucky to sit. He does, his eyes burning into Steve, that smile trying to slow Steve down from his task at hand. “Why do ya always have to leave, Stevie?” Bucky pouts, while Steve ties a rope to one leg of Bucky’s chair. Steve looks up and refrains himself from falling into Bucky’s trap. He’s more tricky in dreams than he ever was in the real world, and he knows it. Or at least he used to. Why, exactly, do you keep him in your subconscious, again? Steve thinks, but he pushes it out of his mind.
“K, Buck, do not, keyword: not, leave that chair. I’ll slip from the side of the building. Now, you don’t want that happenin’ to your Steve, right?” Bucky nods, his smile plastered on his face. Steve can’t kiss him, or he’ll be lost in this dream, so he blows a kiss towards Bucky, climbing out of the window.
A few feet down, Steve abruptly falls fast a good twenty feet, yelling “Goddammit, Bucky!”, because he fully knows that Bucky left the hotel room. Steve can see his coy little smile and for a moment, he hates to love him.
Steve has to climb up ten feet and gets out a glass cutter, then breaks into the kitchen, close to where the safe would be. He quickly walks through the kitchen, putting a silencer on his pistol. He then runs out of the shadows, shooting one of the guards, and catching him before he falls, so the others aren’t alerted. He shoots three more men, as fast as possible to get to the safe. There’s no time to waste. Steve opens and closes the double doors and enters the same fancy dining room from earlier and walks up to the door hiding the safe, quickly unlocks it. He takes the file that is important, folds it, tries to put the fake file back in when the hammer of a handgun clicks. He aims his on reflex. Thor and Bucky are standing in the doorway, Bucky aiming at him.
“The gun, Steve.” Bucky says, his eyes filled with a quiet fire, as if he’s been waiting to shoot Steve since the day he met him. Steve doesn’t move. Bucky sighs. Two guards bring in Clint and holds him. Bucky puts his handgun to Clint’s temple. “Please. As much as I don’t want to let you leave this dream, I don’t want to be a mean motherfucker and kill you..and you know, send you to limbo.” Steve slowly places his gun on the table and it slides it down.
“Now the envelope, Mr. Rogers.” Thor says. Steve takes the fake envelope out from his coat pocket and slides it down and raises his hands.
Steve looks at at Thor and says, “Did he tell you, or did you know all along?”
“That you’re here to steal from me? Or that we are actually asleep?” Clint looks at him with an ‘I-told-you-so’ face. Thor continues, “I want to know who your employer is.”
Bucky cocks his gun. “No point in threatening him in a dream.” Steve says.
“That depends on what you’re threatening. Killing him would just wake him up, but pain...pain is in the mind.” Bucky shoots Clint in the shin instead and he drops to the floor screaming in pain. Bucky looks back up at Steve, a scowl on his face, as if Steve actually did kill him. “And, judging by the decor, we’re in your mind, aren’t we Clint?” Bucky goes to shoot at Clint’s other leg, but Steve leaps forward and slides down the table, grabbing his gun and shooting Clint in the head, who wakes up into the first dream.
Steve runs out of the room, and the building begins to cave in on itself. Bucky calmly picks up the fake file Steve left on the table and gives it to Thor, who rips it open and yells as he flips through the blank papers. Steve stops on the stairs and reads his papers quickly. Up above, Arthur yells at Hodge to give Steve the kick, and doesn’t see Thor wake up, who pulls a handgun on Clint. Hodge tips Steve back into the bathtub. Down below, Steve can sense it, and looks up to see the walls cave in with water, and a tsunami rushes in over his body.
***
Steve wakes up, and gasps for air while trying to get out of the tub. By the time he’s up, Thor is in the bathroom, pushing Hodge away, but Steve leaps out of the tub and punches Thor, and takes his pistol. The two of them sit across from each other in the bedroom. “So, you came prepared.” Steve begins.
“I brought the gun because not even my head of security knows this apartment. How did you find it?” Thor replies. Steve looks at Clint, who is watching the violence of the riots outside become closer, louder.
“Hard for a man in your position to keep a love nest totally secret...particularly when there’s a married woman involved.” Steve says.
“She would never..”
“And yet here we are.” Steve smirks. Thor remains silent. “With a dilemma.”
“You got what you came for.” Thor spits back.
“Not quite. The key piece of information wasn’t there, was it, Mr. Odinson?”
“They’re getting closer.” Clint says from the window.
Up above, Darcy checks her watch and puts a pair of headphones connected to an iPod on Hodge. Thor puts his eyes on the carpet but Steve points his gun at him. “You held something back because you knew what we were up to..so why let us in at all?”
“An audition.” Thor states.
“Audition for what?”
“Doesn’t matter. You failed.”
“I extracted all the information you had in there.”
“But your deception was readily apparent.” Darcy looks at the machine in the silver briefcase, and looks at Hodge’s timer. When it hits ‘30’, she plays “Non, je ne regrette rien”, which echoes down into their shared dream. “So leave me and go.” Thor continues.
“You know the cooperation that hired us won’t accept failure. We won’t last two days.”
“Come on, Rogers.” Clint says anxiously from the window.
Steve sighs. “Now I have to do this the old-fashioned way.” Steve throws Thor on the ground, but before he can yell the old school ‘who the hell do you work for’ at him, Thor laughs.
“I’ve always hated this carpet. It’s stained and frayed in such distinctive ways. But very definitely made of wool. Right now I’m lying on polyester.” Steve looks up and glares at Hodge who shrugs. “Which means I’m not lying on my carpet in my apartment.” He smiles at Steve. “You’ve lived up to your reputation Mr. Rogers. I’m still dreaming.” There’s another explosion in the distance. Steve looks back, only to find that Clint woke up.
On the train, Clint rips off the tubes connected to his wrist. “How’d it go?” Darcy asks. “Not good.” Clint replies, checking the last three countdowns.
Thor gets up off of the carpet and smiles at Steve. “A dream within a dream. I’m impressed.” Steve looks at his watch, and hears the rioters coming up through the hallway. “But in my dream, we really ought to be playing my rules..”
“Yup, but see Thor-” Hodge begins. Thor looks at him.
“We’re not in your dream-” Steve continues. Thor turns back to Steve, but he’s vanished; his time was up.
“We’re in mine.” Hodge finishes, then the rioters burst through the door, taking over Hodge then Thor, waking them up in order.
Back in reality, on the train, Clint is kneeling next to the briefcase, then looks up at Hodge. “Asshole. How could you get the carpet wrong?!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Hodge counters.
“You’re the architect-”
“I didn’t know he was gonna rub his damn cheek on it!” Steve pulls Clint away from Hodge. And everyone says Steve’s the one who likes to pick fights. Not end them. Bucky usually did that for him.
“Let’s go.” Steve says.
“And you- what the hell was all that?” Clint says, his voice growing louder.
“I had it under control.”
Clint scoffs. “I’d hate to see it out of control-”
“There’s no time for this. I’m getting off at Kyoto.”
“Why? He’s not gonna check every compartment.”
“I can’t stand trains.” Clint moves to turn off the machine in the briefcase and takes the tubes out of Thor’s wrist. He shuts the briefcase. “Hey. Every man for himself.” He tosses a wad of money towards Darcy, who catches it without even looking up. Buck would’ve liked her. Hodge leaves the same time as Steve and Clint, but they go in different directions.
Moments after Steve and Clint get off the train, Thor wakes up and looks around. He only sees Darcy, who’s reading a comic book called ‘Captain America’. He looks at his wrist, and only smiles.
