Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

John didn’t stop fully whaling on the practice dummy in the Watchtower’s gym until both him and the foam figure were dripping sweat. Even then, when the mat below him was damp and his hair hung in his face in limp strings and the dummy was permanently dented, he still threw out a few more halfhearted punches before calling it quits.

The Watchtower’s gym, if it could even be called that, was pathetic. A few hanging sandbags, a few BOB bags (reinforced by himself and Alexei on their downtime; the first punch Alexei threw at one had knocked it fully off its moorings hard enough to crack the far wall. They’d dragged a big mirror in front of the crack and no one had found out yet), and a single weight bench that went up to five hundred pounds. That worked for Yelena and Ava (and it would’ve worked for Bob, if Bob ever hit the gym), but for John and Alexei it was a joke. They’d barely been living in the Watchtower for a week, and they’d already resorted to sitting on each others’ backs for pushups; Alexei had godawful balance for a super soldier and fell off John’s back more times than he stayed on.

Bucky was never seen even near the gym, which was probably for the best. If he’d seen John balancing on his forearms with Alexei laying on top of him, yelling go, Johnny, go! in his thick ass accent, John would never hear the end of it.

The gym setup sucked, according to Val, because the Watchtower was under construction. That was a well-loved excuse, apparently, because she used it for everything. No hot water for two days? Construction. Bed frames but no mattresses? Construction. Two plates in the kitchen, only a handful of mixed cutlery, and grocery deliveries that would’ve barely fed one normal person, let alone a group of six abnormal ones? Construction. Yelena had actually backed her into a corner on that last point, physically and with words, because a big box had arrived the previous night full of food (questionable choices, but a lot of it), and other essentials that they’d been living without for the past few days since New York had been Voided. Still no pots and pans, though, even with John’s many petitions. He liked to cook, dammit, and he couldn’t make anything even remotely edible under the current conditions.

The worst part, though? They couldn’t leave.

It was all contracts and paperwork, legalese that John wasn’t very interested in and didn’t want to waste time wrapping his mind around, anyway. Bucky and Yelena had already talked with a pro bono lawyer (none of them wanted to mess with the OXE legal team even a little), and come to the conclusion that the six of them were well and truly fucked. Bucky was in the middle of an impeachment trial and had dramatically, violently, and publicly broken the terms of his government pardon in order to save them from OXE (re: flipping and/or setting on fire a bunch of government-adjacent vehicles resulting in… A number of casualties), Yelena, Ava, and John himself had been shadow operatives that had a sudden, damning light shone on all their shadow operating, Alexei was a goddamn Soviet-era super soldier who was a fifth of vodka away from praising communism on the local news, and Bob was…

Bob was Bob. No one understood him, let alone himself, but everyone who’d seen Sentry and filmed Void had splashed him all over the internet, and the crack sleuths trolling the message boards had put two and two together regarding the strange man in a threadbare sweater hanging around the New Avengers.

So, the six of them were effectively under house arrest in the Watchtower until the almighty powers that be (Val, the government, the lawyers, anyone who wasn’t John, Yelena, Bob, Ava, Alexei, or Bucky) decided what, exactly, to do with them. They’d been announced to the world as the New Avengers, which Bucky hated more than anything in the entire world (he always made the exact same face every time it was brought up, which looked eerily similar to the face he made whenever Bob played Skrillex over the main speaker system), but at least it gave them some sort of protection. A little bit of leverage over the powers that be.

Bucky didn’t agree with that, but John could count on one hand the things that he and Bucky agreed on.

John thought, and had thought since it happened, that everything would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if Sam Wilson had been the one who roared up on Alexei’s limo in the Utah desert. But they hadn’t gotten the pragmatic, even-keeled current Captain America and his sick-ass mech wings, they’d gotten Bucky. And, apparently, Bucky and Sam weren’t even on speaking terms anymore after a phone call Bucky had taken in what Yelena referred to as the Sentry fight room, after which Bucky hadn’t spoken a word to anyone for a full twenty-eight and a half hours. John wasn’t sure what, exactly, went down during that phone call, but if he had to guess, his name had been brought up at least once.

He knew Bucky didn’t like him. He knew Sam had one foot in that boat, too, but he’d still texted Sam after he’d accepted the shield, and another time during the whole Red Hulk incident (the area around the Jefferson Memorial in DC apparently still wasn’t open to the public), but Sam hadn’t responded either time. That was fine. John hadn’t expected anything else.

He dragged the (dented, sweaty) BOB bag back to the lineup of others against the wall and wiped it down with a towel that was probably sweatier than he was. Slinging the towel over his bare shoulder, he left the gym and took the stairs two at a time, climbing three stories to the floor of the tower designated for the New Avengers.

Thunderbolts. All of their Val-given obligations were always marked for the New Avengers, but they’d be damned if they’d refer to themselves as that. No one had forgotten the time in the common area when Alexei had offhandedly said New Avengers and Bucky, who’d been losing to Ava in chess and eating an apple at the same time, hucked the core at him from clear across the room. Vibranium arm, more power behind it than any MLB pitcher. Alexei still claimed there were seeds lodged in the back of his head.

Their floor had the previously mentioned common area, with a small kitchen (the floor below was home to the big one), and a sunken den area with couches and a TV. It, like the rest of the Tower, was bare and sparsely decorated; they’d been asked to make lists (John had turned his in the same day), but nothing had come out of them yet.

Three hallways branched off of the common area; one led to the communal showers that, honestly, reminded John very intimately of his high school locker room, and the others led to three bedrooms each. John’s hallway was the right one, and his room was first, then Ava, then Yelena. To the left, it went Bucky first, then Alexei, and Bob last. They’d based the room division on response time, spending a harrowing night waiting for each person to fall asleep and manufacturing a crisis to see how fast they were on their feet and ready to fight. Unsurprisingly, Bucky won every single time, but John wasn’t too far behind him, and even Yelena was up and at ‘em fairly quickly. During his test, Bob had been dragged by Ava into the common area by his feet and he still hadn’t woken up.

Their rooms, like the common area, were sparse. Another form they filled out gave OXE permission to retrieve whatever personal items they listed on the form; John had given them the address and key to his storage unit in Georgia, but none of his stuff had been delivered to the Watchtower yet. Yelena had a few of her things, only because she’d freaked out about a guinea pig she’d left at Alexei’s apartment in Delaware, and Bucky had disappeared one night for a few hours and returned with it, a cage full of wood chips, and a bag of pellets. She’d named it Cucumber, much to the delight of Bob, and it lived in her room and sometimes escaped to nap in puddles of sunlight with Alpine.

Alpine herself probably had more possessions than the rest of them. Val still didn’t approve of her presence in the Watchtower, but she was always on Bucky’s shoulder anytime Val dropped by, and they both, somehow, had mastered the exact same don’t fuck with me expression. Val chose not to make it an issue.

As for John, he had a bottle of allergy meds, his bent-to-shit shield, his suit, and a small pile of other clothes that were going to need replacing soon if he kept running them through the washing machine. He kept his shower caddy by the door and his towel on a hook on the back of it. His room had an OXE-issued bedframe and mattress, a blanket, and one pillow. The closet didn’t even have any hangers; he kept his clothes folded on the windowsill.

But, the worst part? It wasn’t the lack of outfit options, or the bare-ass decor, or Val’s annoying dropins. It wasn’t the weak sauce gym, or the weird conglomeration of groceries, or the lack of kitchen utensils. It was the weather.

Because it was fucking hot outside.

John wasn’t an indoors sort of guy. He’d rather jog a trail than use a treadmill, sit out on patios instead of inside at the bar. He hated winter, hated the rain, and especially hated when it was a billion degrees outside with a humidity level to rival the Amazon rainforest. He’d always ran hot, too, and now, since the serum, it was even harder for him to cool down.

So, when the temperature in New York City reached blazing heights that made the weather reporters wince and urge everyone to stay inside until the heat wave ends, he noticed. Even in the air conditioned Watchtower, even with temperature control. He was hot. Even hotter, now that he decided to go beat up dummies in the gym about it. It was time for a shower.

He entered the common area, ready to swap his gym towel for his shower towel, his one pair of gym shorts for his one pair of lounge shorts, but he was stopped in his tracks by the only thing that could’ve potentially rivalled the heat for annoyance.

“Walker,” Val said, and gestured from him to the rest of the assembled Thunderbolts, complete with expressions ranging from mild confusion (Bob), bored as hell (Alexei), completely done (Ava), to murderous intent (Yelena, Bucky, Alpine). “So nice of you to join us.”

“Didn’t know I was needed,” John said.

“You’re not,” Yelena quipped as John circled the room to stand next to Ava, who wrinkled her nose.

“Thanks for taking a shower, we all really appreciate it.”

“That’s literally what I was about to do.” John debated throwing his sweaty gym towel at her, but decided against it as Val’s eyebrows flattened in annoyance.

“Those are for all of you.” She waved a dismissive hand at a stack of folders on the kitchen counter behind her. They were all different colors, and said their names on the front. Or, at least, the top one (blue) said Yelena Belova. It would’ve been weird if they all said that, right? “More forms, more lists. Get them done by Monday, there’ll be another meeting with your representation, and hopefully we can get all of this squared away.”

“And we’ll finally start working?” John asked. “We could be doing a hell of a lot more than sitting around all day.”

“You stopped the Void, sure.” Val avoided looking at Bob, she usually did. “But you also caused the Void, so the citizens of America are rightfully a little wary of—“

“You caused the Void, Val,” Yelena said, her tone measured and calm. Val’s nostrils flared slightly. “And we all know it. So stop treating us like collateral damage, make this tower fucking livable, and let us do what we’re good at.”

“You may know… Things,” Val said, ever a politician, “but don’t forget what I know. What you’re good at, Yelena, is breaking the law. And the last thing we need is a bunch of unhinged criminals running around New York without checks and balances. Do you have anything to add, Senator? I mean— citizen?”

This was a venom-tipped arrow aimed straight at Bucky, who crossed his arms.

“Folders complete by Monday.”

“Yes.” Val’s smile was as sharp as it was insincere. “And I’m off for the weekend. I just added a pool to my house in Amalfi, and I hear the weather there is much nicer than what we’re dealing with here.”

Yelena returned the same smile with unerring accuracy. “Drown in it.”

“Oh, Yelena.” Val scoffed, turning towards the exit. “So charming, as always. Don’t call me.”

The doors slid shut behind her and Ava rounded on Bucky immediately.

“Way to ass-kiss,” she spat. He scooped Alpine off of his shoulder and set her on the floor, where she just twined around his ankles anyway.

“The faster we get this shit over with, the faster we can do our own thing,” he said. “I don’t like it, either.”

Well, that definitely needed to be added to the Things Bucky And John Agree On list. Alexei gathered the folders and distributed them; John’s was orange with his full name on the front, just like Yelena’s, and inside were, as promised, multiple complicated-looking forms. Bob groaned.

“It wants my social security number.”

“That’s, like, question one on the form, Bob,” Yelena said.

“Getting stuck on question one does not bode well,” Ava said.

Bob sat on the floor and plopped the folder in front of him. “I know it has a five in it.”

“Good start,” Bucky said. Yelena side-eyed him.

“Your social security number probably is five.”

“I don’t have one,” he said. “I was born before all that.”

That stopped her dead in her tracks, and Bucky let her stare for a second until he rolled his eyes.

“I have a goddamn social security number,” he said. Paused. “I really was born before that whole system started, though. FDR signed it when I was eighteen.”

Yelena blew out a breath. “Jesus Christ. You see the dinosaurs, too?”

“Just missed them.”

She took her folder from Alexei and leaned over to drop it in front of Bob, right on top of his.

“It’s too hot to deal with that.”

It was hot. Hotter than it had been when John had entered the room. Eh, it didn’t matter much; he was probably still all amped up after the gym. A nice long shower and a clean set of clothes would go a long way in cooling him down.

After getting his caddy from his room and swapping towels, John headed to the showers. There were curtains separating each shower head (four in total), but the general consensus in the Watchtower was that if someone was in the shower, it was a no-fly zone for anyone else until they were done. It gave some semblance of privacy, anyway, and the only time it had been broken to date was when Bob (drunk off his ass) and Alexei (Alexei) attempted to microwave chili in the can at three in the morning and had been summarily sent to the bathroom to hose off.

John hung his caddy on the farthest shower’s hook, put his towel and shorts on the other one, and flipped the shower on.

Nothing.

One drop of water dangled from the head and fell to land damningly between his feet.

He turned it off. On. Off. On.

Nothing.

He tried every other shower head. Nothing. All four, dead on arrival.

“Shit,” he said. It echoed.

Above his head, the fluorescent lights sizzled and shut off.

—

Ava phased back into the common area and flipped her mask back.

“The whole building’s shot,” she said. “There’s no power anywhere.”

“They must’ve fucked something up during construction,” John said. He’d put his gross gym clothes back on, left his shower stuff in the bathroom, and was currently laying upside down on one of the couches, watching Bob (upside down, from his point of view) go to town on three full pints of melting ice cream. Their fridge wasn’t working, no water came out of any of the taps, and every light in the Watchtower was out. “Of course it happens when there’s no one here.”

“Do you think we can fix it?” Bucky asked. Ava shook her head.

“I don’t even know where the power source would be,” she said. “And in a building this size… Who can say. There should be a backup generator, though. Maybe it’ll kick in soon.”

Minutes passed. Bob finished one pint of mint chip and moved on to cookies and cream. Alexei sat cross legged beside him and motioned for the box of frozen burritos Yelena had claimed out of their most recent grocery haul. John made a face.

“Are you really going to—”

Alexei took a huge bite out of one.

“Nevermind.”

“Hot in here,” Alexei muttered around his mouthful of half-frozen burrito, holding another to his forehead. Ava shot him a withering glare.

“Really? Because I don’t think anyone else noticed.”

“It’s hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk,” John muttered, his eyes half closed as he marinated in his own sweat. As he watched, Ava narrowed her own eyes.

“Well, that’s just idiotic. Who would fry an egg on a sidewalk?”

“It’s just a saying,” John said. If it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, it was definitely too hot to argue about said frying. “People said all the time back in Georgia.”

“Wouldn’t…” Alexei wiggled his fingers. “Bits get in egg? Twigs, small rocks, foot stink…”

“Guys. Come on. It’s a saying. No one’s actually outside frying eggs on the goddamn sidewalk.”

“Still a shit saying,” Alexei muttered. Bob tilted his head.

“Hotter than a crack spoon on payday.”

Yelena let out a loud cackle. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Super dark, Bob, but way better than John’s stupid egg thing.”

As John rolled his eyes (again, too hot to argue), Bob held out the unfolded burrito box he’d been listlessly fanning himself with between bites of ice cream soup, wiggling it in Ava’s direction.

“I think you need this more than me, Aves,” he said. “Your suit looks hot as shit.”

A few nights ago, Ava had spent a half hour trying to explain the logistics of her suit to Bob, who’d run the conversation around in circles tight enough that John hadn’t even tried to keep up. Some shit about aliens and pyramids and Star Trek, for some reason; John had tapped out completely when Bob started reciting Weird Al lyrics like they were gospel. Ava, to her credit, tried her best, but eventually she just said it’s fucking science, Robert and left it at that. Now, she cocked her head at him, an almost sheepish expression on her face.

“It’s air conditioned, but thank you.”

“You get air conditioning?” Yelena yelped from where she’d been laying on the floor in nothing but a sports bra and shorts. They were all in varying states of undress; Alexei in nothing but tattoos and boxers, Bob in a pair of mesh basketball shorts and a cutout tank top that was somehow more revealing than him just being shirtless, and even Bucky had been slowly removing articles of clothing as the temperature inched higher and higher. Yelena scrambled to her feet and pressed the side of her face to one of the vents in Ava’s suit. Her breath fogged up her breastplate. “Oh my god, that’s the good stuff.”

“Get your sweaty face off me,” Ava griped, but she sat still as Yelena cooled off her forehead and Bob crawled over the ice cream mess to lean against the vent on her other shoulder. She looked up at Bucky. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

He tilted his head back and sighed to the ceiling. “I guess I call Val.”

“Good luck,” John muttered, still upside down on the couch. Bucky retrieved his phone from the kitchen charger and the whole room sat in anticipatory, sweaty silence as he held it up to his ear.

“Voicemail,” he said.

“Try it again,” Yelena insisted. Bucky closed his eyes for a moment, breathed deep. A drip of sweat began to roll from John’s forehead to his hairline.

“It went to voicemail on the first ring. It’s either shut off or she has no service.”

“Or she blocked you,” Bob offered.

“Or she fucking blocked me.”

“I’ll try,” John said, digging in the pocket of his shorts. His phone was also sweaty. He searched up Val’s contact —the last time she called him was before the Vault, that was awkward— and hit dial. Straight to voicemail. “I’m blocked, too.”

“Shocker,” Yelena muttered.

“Saving day,” Alexei announced as he brandished his phone. “Lou Vargas will help.”

Yelena’s eyebrows knit together. “Who the hell is Lou Vargas?”

“Building maintenance guy. Head of whole operation.”

“Why do you have the head maintenance guy’s phone number?” she asked. Alexei shrugged.

“None of you watch North American ice hockey, so. I improvise. Make friends.”

“The Cats are pretty good.” Bob’s voice was muffled, probably because his entire mouth was pressed against Ava’s suit. Alexei scoffed.

“The Florida Panthers. Please. This is why you never get invite to hockey night in Red Guardian’s room. In summer, we watch Red Army reruns.”

“Is that what all that screaming is?” Ava asked. “The other night I thought you were skinning a cat.”

“One of Bob’s precious Panthers, maybe.” Alexei chuckled to himself as he dialed the head maintenance guy, who was apparently named Lou Vargas. It rang. And rang. Eight times. “Not blocked, but no answer. Lou’s Islanders will perish in a fiery doom for this aggravation.”

“No Val, and no maintenance guy.” Somewhere in the interim, Bucky’s t-shirt had been removed and was now a sad pile on the floor. He started to pace. “We sure as hell can’t stay here. Alpine and Cucumber are going to overheat.”

“It’s not great for us, either,” John said.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Ava asked. Bucky shrugged.

“It’s not ideal, and it’ll be cramped as hell, but I’m still renting an apartment in DC. It’s air conditioned, at least. We could go to a Smithsonian while we’re down there.” Ava’s face lit up.

“The Air and Space!”

“Yeah, sure, I think we can swing that.” He glanced over at Yelena. “No Smithsonian jokes?”

She waved her hand listlessly. “Too hot. Low hanging fruit.”

“All right, everybody, get off me.” Ava shoved Yelena and nudged Bob (much gentler) to either side. “Pack your bags, kids, and all the eggs you want to fry on the sidewalks. It’s Air and Space time.”

John, who’d been halfheartedly scrolling on his phone this whole time, still upside down, leaned up on one elbow. “Hold on, I have a different idea.”

“You live here,” Yelena said, still making an attempt to get close to Ava’s shoulder vents. “You have a storage unit and that’s it. I’m not spending one single second in John Walker’s storage unit of ass sweat and sadness.”

“It’s probably full of army memorabilia and dirty gym shorts,” Ava tacked on even as she and Yelena began to engage in some sort of slap fight over the air conditioning vent. John didn’t understand them. Not girls as a whole, just Ava and Yelena specifically. They went to bat for each other constantly, would back one another up at the drop of a hat (especially against him), but the other day he’d watched Yelena mutter about revenge as she nursed a black eye that Ava had given her for reasons still unknown. Whatever.

“I wash my shorts, Starr,” John shot back as he pulled up Google and typed in his search. He remembered this particular bit of info from an earlier mission for Val, something about a politician with a little too much insider info for her comfort, who also lived on the same stretch of boardwalk… “Yes! Here.”

He showed his phone, and everyone else gathered around, Alexei crawling across the floor as Bucky leaned over Bob’s shoulder, uninterested expression on his face as per usual.

“A beach house?” Bob asked.

“A fuckin’ beautiful beach house,” Yelena corrected.

“Pool,” Alexei breathed out as he scrolled a few photos over.

“What’s the deal, Walker?” Bucky put his hands on his hips. “You rob some bank none of us knew about? Family inheritance?”

“OXE barely paid me enough to live, and you were raking in beach house money?” Ava asked. “Fucking figures.” John grabbed his phone back from Alexei.

“It’s not mine, it’s Val’s. She bought it last year, some beach town in Jersey.”

Ignoring how Bucky immediately made a face at the word Jersey (New Yorkers were going to New York. Jersey wasn’t anything like Georgia, but it was still nothing to complain about), John gestured at the screen. The address was right there on the Zillow page.

“If she’s not going to give us a livable space, I say we go find our own.”

“Fuck yeah!” There was ice cream all over Bob’s face. “Wait… What are we going to do?”

“He wants us to break into Val’s beach house,” Bucky said. John swung his legs around the top of the sofa and sat up straight. Immediately, all sweat that had been pooling on his forehead streamed the opposite direction; it felt like he’d just gotten out of the world’s most humid swimming pool.

“No,” he said. “I want us to steal one of Val’s cars, and then I want us to break into her beach house.”

A slow, devious grin spread across Yelena’s face.

“I can finally do what I’m good at.”

“It serves her right for fucking off all weekend long and leaving us in this sweaty armpit,” Ava said. John pointed at her.

“You’re goddamn right it does, Ava. Alexei? You in?”

“Is pool involved?”

“You can hang out in that pool all weekend long, my man.”

“And we leave immediately?”

Bucky crossed his arms, staring at John, but the whole I used to be the Winter Soldier death glare could only take him so far. Now that this plan had been cooking in John’s mind for the past three minutes, there was nothing that could stand in his way, not even whatever moral compass Bucky had decided to follow that morning. One minute he was a vigilante, the next a congressman, then a limo-flipping extraordinaire, then he was shacking up with the rest of them in the Watchtower as other people decided their future. Whatever internal crisis he was dealing with could wait— it was beach o’clock.

“Bucky,” John said, opening his hands in a pseudo surrender, “c’mon.”

The stare continued. Jesus Christ, it was like talking to a brick wall.

“I think it would be really fun,” ice cream covered Bob said quietly from his spot on the ice cream covered floor. Yelena scooped Alpine up from where she’d been licking steadily at a patch of vanilla and held her up in front of Bucky’s face.

“I’m just a puddle of melted ice cream named Alpine,” she said in a high pitched voice. “And I’d love to go to the beach and get out of this…” She reverted back to her normal voice, looking over her shoulder at Ava. “What did you call it?”

“Sweaty armpit,” she offered. Yelena put her cat voice back on.

“This sweaty armpit and go to the beach with yoooouuuu.”

“God, fine.” Bucky took Alpine from Yelena and draped her over his shoulders like a scarf. “She’d never sound like that.”

“You do the voice, then,” Yelena challenged. Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Walker, you have the address to that house?”

“Yep.”

“We meet in the lobby in ten.”

“Why?” Yelena asked, leaning closer, shit-eating grin firmly fixed to her face. Bucky gave her a flat look as Alpine meowed loudly at his ear.

“Because, I guess, we’re going to fucking New Jersey.”

—

John had never hotwired a car. It hadn’t been a part of his skillset in the army, and he’d never needed to on any of his missions as US Agent. He’d seen it a million times in movies, though, and he figured it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out in a pinch. Watching Yelena hotwire a car, however, was on a completely different level. She somehow turned it into both an art form and a hundred yard dash at the same time.

“Lena, that was so fast,” Alexei said as the engine of one of Val’s huge SUVs turned over and Ava leaned in to turn the AC on as high as it could go. “You make your old man proud.”

She blew on her fingers. “Watch out, guys. Still hot.”

“Very impressive,” Bucky said. She nudged him with her elbow.

“You get the next one. We can race. May the best Russian asset win.”

“After what I just watched, I’m not sure I’m going to accept that challenge.”

Yelena turned to pop the trunk, and John didn’t miss her huge grin; it was the widest and most sincere he’d ever seen her smile, of course she was trying to hide it. Everyone piled into the car as he packed the trunk; Bucky kept Alpine’s carrier between the driver and passenger seats, and Yelena hauled Cucumber’s all the way to the back with her. Ava crawled to the very back with Yelena, Bob put John’s backpack on the seat across the aisle from his own, and Alexei was firmly relegated to the passenger seat by Bucky as soon as he tried to slide behind the wheel.

“I could drive,” he said as Bucky fastened his seatbelt and glared into the rearview mirror until everyone else did the same.

“I don’t think so.”

“I am very safe driver—”

“He did drive the limo pretty well, considering,” John said. Bucky aimed his mirror glare directly at him.

“Shut up, Walker.”

They kept the A/C on blast until no one was sweaty anymore and everyone who wasn't jacked up on super serum was actually cold; Ava pulled a full blanket out of her bag and, after a back and forth shoving match, conceded to sharing it with Yelena as Bob pulled on his worn old blue sweater, the one with the scraggly sleeves that John knew would be a cinch to mend. Bob seemed pretty attached to it, though. Maybe he wouldn't even want John to touch it.

John was good at that kind of stuff, the home ec, 4-H, Boy Scout kind of stuff. Liked it, too. It always felt nice, fixing something or creating something with his own two hands. In the service, he'd been the guys' go-to for sock darning and ripped pants, he re-sewed patches onto uniforms and even looked up a few videos on at-home cobbling for boot sole issues. The place he'd once rented with Olivia had a few garden boxes in the back, and he used to putter back there with any time off he was able to scrounge; he got pretty good at growing tomatoes, which he then turned into sauces and soups and salsas because, over any of the other skills that his army buddies called him housewife over (until it was their pants that needed mending), John Walker loved to cook.

His grandmother, more of a mom than his own mother had ever been to him, had passed away when he was sixteen, Before then, she'd taught John everything she knew in the kitchen, and what she hadn't known, he'd learned from Lemar's mom. Any skills cultivated on the smoker or grill came from Lemar's dad, and when he baked, he followed internet recipes painstakingly until it was second nature. It was the one place he'd never felt angry, never felt the white-hot rage amplified by the serum running through his veins. The kitchen was calming. Safe. It was a place mistakes could be fixed, anything could be thrown away and started anew.

He hadn't cooked much since Lemar died. Hadn't cared enough to cook for Olivia, had left her alone to puree baby food and figure out postpartum diets. He hadn't cooked for this new group of people yet, either, and he couldn’t even if he wanted to, thanks to a lack of utensils, pots, pans, or anything else that could’ve been useful. Food in the Tower was always delivered, premade and prepackaged and split into six unequal portions like they were zoo animals. Impersonal and kind of stupid, in John's opinion, because there was no way all that was cheaper than just letting them go out, buy their own groceries, and cook for themselves like adults. Maybe Val didn't think they could (which would be par for the course for her), and maybe a lack of cooking skills would be true for the others, but after almost being incinerated, the harassment from the Void, and all of Val's bullshit, John found himself missing the quiet calm of the kitchen.

As Ava and Yelena passed snacks up from the backseat, John handed packets of almonds and dried berry mix up to Alexei in the front seat, who tore open the top of the packets helpfully before handing a few over to Bucky. Yelena walked Alexei through a complicated process on the car's touchscreen with only minimal cursing from both parties, and before they'd even left the city she was blasting songs John had never heard from her phone in the backseat. Bob had heard them, though, all of them, and even Ava knew a few, and they spent the next half hour absolutely destroying everyone else's eardrums until Bucky demanded they either play a song they all knew (an impossible feat) or he'd reach back there (also impossible) and throw Yelena's phone out the window (not only possible, but probable). Yelena compromised as only Yelena could, and had Bucky pick the next song.

He told her to play Marvin Gaye, which led to Alexei begging her for the B-52’s, which turned into a lopsided circle of song requests. Bob got one (Shelter by Porter Robinson), Ava (Don’t Panic by Ellie Goulding), Yelena (Day ‘N’ Nite by Kid Cudi), John himself (The Reason by Hoobastank, a classic even if no one else thought so), Bucky again (Unforgettable by Nat King Cole, and Ava knew every single word, belting in the backseat), and back to Alexei (who didn’t get a choice that round, because Bob made Yelena play Rasputin by Boney M.). That got them to their first rest stop, somewhere in lower New York, where Bucky filled up the car's unsurprisingly empty tank, Alexei used the bathroom, and Ava and Bob disappeared for a disconcerting amount of time.

As soon as Bucky growled something to himself in the driver's seat about leaving them there and damning the entire rest stop along with them, they staggered out the front doors with armfuls of coffee cups. Yelena was given a hazelnut latte, Alexei some sort of milkshake looking thing (Bob had gotten himself the same, but with ribbons of caramel), Ava's was also a latte (vanilla), they'd gotten John a slushee from the machine (Coke), and all was forgiven as soon as Ava handed over an iced black coffee (two creams, no sugar) to Bucky.

John took a long swig of frozen Coke —the brain freeze was part of the experience— and turned backwards to face Ava.

"How'd you know I always get a slushee at rest stops?"

She shrugged, halfway through her latte. "Figured."

The rest of the drive passed by, surprisingly, with no incident, unless having to stop three times (three times) for pee breaks due to Alexei's apparently tiny bladder and the car's lack of Big Gulp cups counted as an incident. They continued to call out song choices, even though it meant being subject to Yelena's scorn or Bob's constant "is that even from this century?" which was always met with outrage from Alexei, Bucky, and sometimes even Ava "they're called classics for a reason, Robert!" Starr. John wore it as a badge of honor when he had Yelena play Would You Go With Me by Josh Turner, and, on his next turn, Bob asked her to play the same thing. The music sharing came to an abrupt end when Yelena put on Daft Punk’s Get Lucky and everyone in the car who knew it (all of them barring the driver) replaced every lucky in the song with Bucky. After the song’s third replay, he turned the volume down to zero and refused to turn it back up.

In the silence that followed, John tried to facilitate one single roadtrip game (the alphabet game had always been his and Lemar's go-to on long trips), but gave up after teaching it because Bucky, maybe in revenge for the whole Get Lucky incident, was an absolute menace at it. Apparently, Nazi-killing WW2 sniper skills also applied to finding the letter Q in a Nebraska license plate six cars in front of them, and after they passed the car too fast for Bob to confirm or deny the existence of said Q, they had to end the whole game before he went full Void and dragged the rest of them along with him.

So, just a regular road trip, then.

As soon as they rolled up to Val's (undeniably beautiful) beach house and strategically parked about a block away, Ava phased around and disabled any cameras while Bucky and Yelena took on the security system. Apparently it was a piece of cake, because all three were back within a minute or two. Bucky pulled the car into the garage and, together, the six of them unloaded.

“Whoa,” Bob said from beside John, head tilted back to take in everything he could as they lugged their bags and the rest of the food from the Watchtower’s dead fridge inside. Whoa was right. The ceilings soared, the wood floors were buffed to perfection, and all the beach-themed decor looked like it was right out of a catalogue. They were standing in a dining room of sorts, there was a lowered den with couches and a TV to their left, and, deeper in, John could see through a crack in a pair of double doors into an absolutely gigantic sun-soaked kitchen.

“Hey!” Alexei called from somewhere deeper into the house. “I see pool! She is magnificent, as expected!”

“Well, it’s easy to tell what Val cares about most,” Ava said, spinning to take it all in. “She plasters it all over the walls.”

Alongside the beach theme, seashells and crashing waves and cheesy sayings (life’s a beach, catch your wave— shut the fuck up), were huge portraits of, who else, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. John counted at least five from where he was standing.

“Jesus Christ.” Yelena wrinkled her nose at the biggest one, Val standing with her hands planted on a table in some boardroom somewhere. “This is embarrassing.”

“Let me help you with that.” Ava phased to the closest one, took it off its moorings, flipped it over, and hung it backwards. A white canvas took Val’s place. “Better?”

“A breath of fresh air,” Bucky said, carrying Alpine’s crate into a small windowed alcove off the dining room and setting it beside Cucumber’s. Alpine herself had already made herself at home on the top of one of the couches. “Anyone count bedrooms yet?”

“Four bedrooms,” Alexei said as he strode back into the den. “Couches here good for sleep, too.”

John poked through the rooms quickly; a room with a set of bunk beds, a smaller one with a twin bed, the main bedroom with a huge-ass bed and, hanging above it, a portrait of Val somehow bigger than the bed was, and a loft room that absolutely fuckin’ ruled.

“There’s a loft,” John said, trying to keep his cool, “I can just take that one, so—”

“Absolutely not,” Ava said. “That’s the best one.”

Bob’s eyes widened. “There’s a loft?”

“Okay,” Bucky said, “we’re picking rooms out of a hat, then. Walker?”

John turned. He’d been looking at a mural made out of sea glass. “Huh?”

Bucky gestured with his metal hand. “I need your hat.”

“I don’t have a hat.”

“Your fuckass helmet,” Ava said. “We need to pick names out of it.”

“I didn’t bring my helmet, we’re on vacation.”

“You brought the taco,” Bob commented from where he was, also, trying to puzzle out the sea glass art. John huffed a breath through his nose.

“Yeah, I brought the shield, I just didn’t bring… I don’t know. The rest of the getup. No one else brought their uniform, either.”

“I don’t have a uniform,” Bucky said. Ava gestured to her suit as John scoffed.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Here,” Bob said, unlacing one of his dirty white sneakers and tossing it over the assembled group to Bucky, who caught it on instinct and immediately looked like he regretted it. “We can pick names out of that.”

"Gross," Bucky said, "but fine. Whatever."

He took a small notebook out of the inner pocket of his jacket and ripped a page out of the back, tearing it into six and scribbling something on each slip before dumping them into Bob's shoe. He held out the shoe to Ava first, who wrinkled her nose and delicately pinched a slip of paper out of it.

"Bunk bed," she said. "Damn it. At least let me choose who's in there with me."

"Yelena," Bucky said. Ava nodded.

"Yelena."

Yelena slapped a hand over her heart. "What the hell, guys. I don't even get to pick?"

Ava looped an arm through hers, pulling her close. "Nope. I picked for you, bitch. It's bunk bed o'clock."

Alexei got one of the den's pull out couches, Bob's was the smaller room with the single bed, and when it was John's turn he unfolded his stinky shoe paper to see a single scribbled word— loft. He punched the air.

"Fuck, yes!"

"Oh, come on!" Yelena tipped her head back to groan at the ceiling. "You rigged it."

"How would I rig it?" John shot back as Bucky took his slip and threw the shoe back at Bob.

"Well, I'm sure as hell not staying in that room—" he pointed at the main bedroom, the one with the ostentatiously huge bed and somehow even more ostentatious portrait of Val hanging above it. "Alexei, switch me?"

Alexei wrinkled his nose. "Big bed, but at what cost? Pull-out couch gets job done just fine."

"Well, the den's got two of those." Bucky scrunched up his slip of paper and flicked it at him. "Looks like we're roommates for the weekend."

Alexei gasped, holding both arms out wide. "Red Guardian and Winter Soldier, front lines of defense. We protect team from beach-related threat, we share pull out couch—"

"There's two of them," Bucky said. "And I'm not dealing with any goddamn beach-related threats this weekend, we're on vacation. In Jersey, but still."

"Good attitude," Yelena patted Bucky on the arm twice before they split up to their new assigned areas; John dropped his duffel and shield up in the loft, which did, indeed, kick ass. There was a wide bed taking up most of the space, not bigger than the one in Val's terrifying bedroom, but gigantic all the same, and a squat dresser and nightstand. The low ceiling had small lights embedded into it, casting a soft glow over the whole space. Yeah, definitely the best room in the house.

He slid down the ladder back into the main area as everyone else circled up again. Bob crossed his arms.

"What now?"

—

Since there wasn't a single bathing suit between the six of them, they decided to go find some. It was a beach town, John figured, there was bound to be somewhere that sold beach stuff. As soon as they stepped foot onto the boardwalk (hot, sunny, almost unbearable even in the small amount of clothes he was currently wearing), they found one.

Shore Things was a two-story beach emporium, with sandy floors and walls of rolled-up towels and colorful shovels and buckets. Bob nudged John in the ribs.

"I need board shorts and a tank," he said. "I'll let you pick mine out if I get to pick yours."

"That's a dangerous game, Bobby." John scanned the racks like a man on a mission as the bored teenager behind the counter all the way in the back resolutely ignored them. "There's some pretty egregious shit in here."

"The egregious-er the better," Bob said, and they shook hands.

John found a pair of board shorts for Bob pretty quick; electric blue with red and pink lobsters scattered all over. Ridiculous looking for sure, but also right up Bob's alley. Nothing he'd hate wearing, but also funny enough that John would get a kick out of it all weekend. And who didn't love lobster? He slung them over his shoulder as Alexei pushed past, a different pair of shorts over his own shoulder— the brightest Hawaiian pattern John had ever seen in his life. Classic.

"You see the matching button-up over there?" he asked, pointing. Alexei lit up.

"Oh, yes."

A few aisles over, Yelena groaned.

"Don't encourage him."

"Don't listen to her," John said. "I bet you could find a matching hat in here, somewhere."

Alexei forged deeper into the store, a man on his own sort of mission now, as John moved on to the tank tops. Some were political, some he didn't understand, some were way too overtly sexual to be sold in the same store as sand toys and strollers, but he pulled the one just as Bob ducked into the aisle he was in.

"I got carried away." Bob's arms were full of tank tops. "I did get a great one for you, though."

He draped his pile over one of the racks and tossed John a pair of American flag board shorts (classic) and a black tank top with block white letters that said I FLEXED AND MY SLEEVES FELL OFF. John cackled.

"That's awful. Here's yours."

"Lobsters!" Bob said as he unfolded the shorts. "And what the fuck is this shirt?"

The white tank top John picked had a blue, yellow, and orange rendering of a pontoon boat in the center. The dark blue lettering above and below it read I NEVER DREAMED I'D GROW UP TO BE A SUPER SEXY PONTOON CAPTAIN, BUT HERE I AM, KILLING IT. Bob laughed just as loud as John had.

"That's so weirdly specific, how'd you know it's every Florida boy's life dream to own a pontoon? Look at this one, we have to wrangle Bucky into it somehow."

Bucky's was gray with black lettering: I RUN A TIGHT SHIPWRECK with an on-fire pirate ship underneath it. Alexei's had an arrow pointed up to the wearer's face with IS THIS GUY BOTHERING YOU? below it, and Yelena's just said I'M NOT AS MEAN AS I WOULD LIKE TO BE, AND I WISH PEOPLE APPRECIATED THAT MORE. They were in the middle of searching for Ava's when she phased next to them, wearing a huge floppy sunhat and an oversized white t-shirt over her suit; it was printed front and back with a cartoon woman's bikini body. She twirled.

"Hot, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Bob said. "You gotta let me borrow that one later."

John held out a tank top. "We picked one for each of us. Here's yours."

She unfolded it, read the pink block letters —I HAVE RABIES— and gave him a flat look. "I'd bite you if I did, Walker."

"I know," he said, grinning brightly over his shoulder at her as he followed Bob through the rest of the racks. They picked out towels and sunglasses and enough sunscreen to last for at least a year before checking out, ducking into the restrooms across the boardwalk to change, and circling up with the others outside the store.

Yelena found a touristy New Jersey visor and a black sporty bikini she'd pulled her jean shorts back over, Alexei was carrying an absolute bucket of sunscreen along with his Hawaiian printed getup, and Bucky wore board shorts (black) and a tank (black), along with his own backwards New Jersey baseball hat (it matched with Yelena's, and her shit-eating grin made it very clear who had bought it for whom). Everyone groaned at Bob and John's terrible tank tops, and after they passed out the ones they'd bought, there was even more groaning.

"I really do run a tight shipwreck," Bucky said, lifting his up to examine it. "If I wear this, can I take off the hat?"

"Nope," Yelena said, opening up the big woven beach bag she'd bought so everyone could shove their excess sunscreen and old clothes into it. "What do you say we drop this shit at the house, pack some food, and hit the beach?"

"Fine by me," Ava said, and Bob gasped.

"Oh, no way."

He darted into another store, this one more geared towards toys, and motioned through the window at a huge blown-up floatie. It kind of looked like a raft with walls, and was bright green with a yellow starburst in the middle. Yelena piled all her stuff in Bucky's arms and dove into the store after Bob.

"Looks like we're getting a floatie," John said as Alexei plucked a football out of a basket in the front of the store and marched inside to pay for it. "And a football."

Ava gestured toward the storefront. "What do you say, Walker? Want anything from this place, too? How about a bubble wand, or a kite?"

"Very funny," John deadpanned, but then… He saw it.

Leaning against the side of the store, half-buried in a stack of boogie boards. A wooden oval, flat and sleek, emblazoned with an ocean scene of hammerhead sharks cutting through waves and helpless little fish. A skimboard.

"Fuck yeah," he said under his breath as he rifled through the boogie boards to slip it out from between them. It had a nice, heavy heft in his arms, but still light enough to slice across the ocean. Ava rolled her eyes.

"You have to be kidding me."

"I used to kick ass on these things," John said. "I spent a whole summer perfecting it when I was like eight; my grandma used to rent a place on Tybee Island."

“Oh, please, tell us more,” Ava deadpanned.

"What is it?" Bucky squinted down at the skimboard still in John’s grip. "A surfboard for ants?"

"It's a skimboard," John corrected, even though Bucky's flat expression clearly communicated that he didn't care. "It's kind of like skateboarding, but in the super shallow part of the ocean. It rules."

"Sure it does," Ava said, and John didn't miss the snarky little look she shared with Bucky. Their loss. John ducked into the store, pushing past Bob, Yelena, Alexei, the football, and the boxed-up floatie, and paid for his kick-ass skimboard. He marched it all the way back to the beach house, put it on a prominent spot on the porch, and managed to scrounge together six sandwiches and a bunch of snacks and drinks out of what they'd brought from the Tower.

"We'll have to go grocery shopping then," he called back into the den where everyone else was sprawled on various sofas and armchairs, and got five thumbs-up in return, faces shoved in phones. No big deal. Val's kitchen was huge, maybe even bigger than the one in the Tower, and, unlike the Tower, this one was fully stocked. Pots, pans, a big waffle maker, a stand mixer, drawers full of appliances and cookware and utensils that looked brand new. Unsurprising. Val didn't really seem like one to get her hands dirty.

For the first time in what felt like forever, John wanted to cook. He wanted to make something good, not only for him to eat, but for everyone else, too.

"We all right with that cooler?" Bob craned his neck over the couch cushion as John hefted it with both hands. It was still something else, how strong he was now. He hadn't been a weakling by any means before the serum, but now even things that would’ve given him pause before were nothing but a cakewalk.

“Let’s hit the beach,” he said, and there was no objection, just a mad scramble for flip flops and sunglasses.

—

Val’s beach house was situated a block or two off a very quiet stretch of beach that immediately got less quiet as soon as the Thunderbolts stepped foot on it. Ava rented an umbrella from a stand that even set it up for her, Yelena spent two seconds trying to blow up the floatie she and Bob bought before giving up and making Alexei do it, and Bob stretched himself out straight on the sand in front of Bucky’s towel with his arms splayed like he was about to make Sand Angels, patent pending.

John spread his towel down next to Bucky’s and set the cooler between them. Yelena made a grabby hands gesture towards him and he cracked it open; a Diet Coke for her, Twisted Tea for Bob, and the rest of them were always fine raiding the Tower’s communal fridge for whatever beers were available. The ones John scooped out before they left were mostly Heineken bottles and Coors Light cans; Ava and Bucky got a bottle each, and he and Alexei started going through the cans.

It wasn’t long before Alexei scooped the football out of its divot in the warm sand and hucked it towards Bob, who threw it far past Ava but she phased after it, catching it right before it touched the ground. Alexei cheered, and the three of them began tossing it back and forth as Yelena dragged the now-inflated floatie towards the ocean.

“You’re not going to join them?” Bucky asked, tugging off his tank, folding it into a square, and placing it in Yelena’s tote before he stretched out on his towel with his metal arm under his head and his eyes closed. “Two time high school football champion, or whatever?”

“Threepeat,” John said quickly, rolling his eyes as soon as Bucky smirked. “Asshole.”

Eyes still closed, Bucky motioned towards Yelena’s tote again. “Aren’t there sunglasses somewhere in there?”

John dug around in it and emerged with the black frame and black lenses combo Bucky usually wore whenever he went on runs around Manhattan and tossed them on his chest.

“No sunscreen?”

“Serum doesn’t burn,” Bucky said, slipping the sunglasses on. “Don’t ask how I know that.”

“How do you know that?”

“HYDRA mission in Cairo back in the eighties. Two weeks.”

“Lose your shirt on HYDRA missions a lot?”

Bucky raised the sunglasses, cracking open one blue eye that raked John up and down. “Sometimes.”

“Jesus,” John muttered. “Okay, the serum doesn’t burn. I do, though, so maybe pass me some.”

Bucky blindly dug in the tote until he came up with one of the huge containers Yelena had bought back at the store. John was used to slathering himself up (summers in Georgia were nothing if not a bitch), but he still wheedled until Bucky rolled over far enough to get between his shoulderblades.

“I’m just letting her get comfortable,” Bucky said as he stashed the sunscreen back into the tote’s outside pocket for easy access, nodding his chin at Yelena in the ocean with the floatie. She was laying on her back, splayed like a starfish, propping her head up on one of the floatie’s shallow walls. Honestly, it looked a bit like a reverse bathtub. Bucky leaned his own head back onto his arm again, eyes slit like a lizard as he basked in the sun. “She’ll let her guard down eventually.”

“And then, what?” John asked as he spread his own towel next to Bucky’s. “You teach her the ultimate lesson of never being vulnerable to attack? Is this some training technique?”

“Nah,” Bucky said, and readjusted his sunglasses. “I’m going to flip her.”

John laughed once, a loud cackle, before he remembered who he was dealing with.

“She can, like… Swim, right?”

Bucky cracked open one eye to regard him with a look drier than the sand underneath them.

“She can swim.”

“How do you know? Can you swim?”

The eye closed again, and the sunglasses lowered like John’s question wasn’t even worth the breath wasted to answer it. Minutes passed as John baked in the sun and debated layering more sunscreen, until Bucky said:

“I learned how to swim off Rockaway Beach when I was a kid; my mother taught me. I taught my sisters, and…” His eyebrows furrowed beneath his sunglasses, the barest hint of movement. “Steve, too.”

“You taught Steve Rogers how to swim?”

Bucky cracked open his eye again, just barely, just enough to glare over at John.

“Someone had to.”

John shook his head. “Guess you’re pretty good at it, then.”

“Yeah.” The eye closed, the sunglasses lowered. “The army would’ve beaten it into me, anyway, and if not there… HYDRA had a lot of tests to run that involved water. Endurance, breath control, all that shit. I can only assume the Widows went through it, too.”

John huffed out a breath. “You just had to make it sad, huh?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Well, shit. Why don’t you prove it?”

Bucky heaved himself up off of the towel. “What, Walker, you’re sick of talking to me now? That’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” He made a big deal out of taking his sunglasses off, folding them, and sticking them into one of the tote’s inner pockets, and pointed back down at the towel and the divot of sand his body had formed. “Don’t steal my spot.”

John declined to mention that Bucky’s spot was, like every other spot, just a slice of sand under a burning hot sun, but instead watched as he moved across the beach, silent and deadly like a land-bound shark, towards Yelena.

As soon as his feet hit the ocean, the land-bound shark became an ocean-bound shark (so, just like a regular one), and he sliced through the water, arm over head without breathing once. He dove under a wave and John lost sight of him for a moment, until—

Yelena screeched as the entire float (with her on top of it) was launched up and out of the water; Bucky kept hold of it by one handle as she landed ass-first into the next breaking wave. From his safe spot on the beach, John pointed and laughed.

Bucky turned to point right back at him, shit-eating grin plastered across his face as he yelled:

“Told you I was a good swimmer, Walk—”

He choked on a wave as Yelena launched herself out of the water and directly onto his shoulders; he went down with her on top of him in a splash of seafoam. They tangled together for a while, each trying to dunk the other, Yelena yelling expletives and Bucky stuck between laughing his ass off and choking on mouthfuls of water.

John glanced over at Bob, just to make sure he was seeing all of this, and caught Bob in the middle of a side-glance over at him. Bob immediately flushed a little bit pink, or maybe that was just the sunburn. If serum didn't burn, did that mean whatever Bob was didn't burn either?

It didn't matter, because Bob was trying to communicate something super secret. It started with him jerking his head towards the ocean, or towards Bucky and Yelena, or towards the float that was steadily moving back to shore with every wave because Bucky had let go of it. Bob mouthed something. John mouthed what? right back. (Sue him, he sucked at reading lips.) Bob rolled his eyes and mouthed it again.

John made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and mouthed: WHAT?

Another eye roll and Bob tossed the football back to Ava and jogged down the stretch of beach. He skidded to a stop beside John's towel, dropped to his knees, and grabbed the sides of John's face with both of his hot, sweaty hands.

"Do you want to steal that float with me, or fuckin' what?"

"Oh!" John pushed Bob off of him and was on his feet in an instant. "Hell yeah, Bobby, why didn't you just say that?"

"I did," Bob said, paired with yet another eye roll, but he still hurried after John as he headed towards the ocean, trying to be as silent and stealthy as Bucky had been. Honestly, he didn't even need to mess around with all that, because Yelena was preoccupied with holding Bucky's head underwater with her entire body weight on his shoulders and Bucky was preoccupied with, presumably, not drowning.

They rushed the floatie at the same time, the cold water stinging John's feet as he whooped loudly, the same time Bob did as he flung himself onto half of it, leaving enough space for John to flop beside him. A wave washed over them and John came up for air spluttering, with Bob's warm shoulder pressed against his own.

"Hey!" Yelena threw herself towards the float, making to grab its handle, but another wave pushed it (and John and Bob) further away. Bucky stood, leaned into another oncoming wave, and pushed his sopping wet hair out of his face.

"Belova, when I catch you—”

Another wave smacked him in the chest and he stumbled back a few paces. Yelena dove for the float again, but John was ready this time, and leaned down far enough that he could use the sandy ocean floor to push off, evading her reach again. Bob caught on quick, and started kicking. Between the two of them, they managed to maneuver away from her every time she came for them.

"Barnes!" she yelled over her shoulder. "Will you help me out with this, or what?"

"Help you out with what?" He smirked at something behind the floatie, and John barely had time to look over his shoulder before Alexei jumped a wave, hollered something loud and brash in Russian, and bellyflopped right on top of the floatie (and John and Bob to boot). The air burst from John's lungs as he scrabbled to keep his face above water with five million pounds of Soviet-era supersoldier on top of him, and Bob was no help (he pushed Alexei further onto John to save his own skin, the bastard).

Somewhere in the pandemonium of bubbles and waves and ribs being crushed, the floatie was torn out from under John and Alexei and they both went down; John's knees hit the sand and he pushed off hard enough to get Alexei off of him and to reach the surface again.

Far out at sea, Bucky rolled over the side of the floatie and stood up… In water up to his thighs? John squinted.

“Is that a sand bar?”

“Hey!” Bucky waved both arms over his head. “I found a sand bar!”

He pushed the floatie back towards Alexei as John followed Yelena (who was, for all intents and purposes, a fantastic swimmer) and Bob out to meet Bucky on the sand bar. Alexei brought the floatie to shore for Ava to commandeer (trying her hardest not to get her suit wet), and pushed her through the rough waves out to where everything was more calm.

She floated in the float, Alexei floated on his back (holding onto one handle so Ava wouldn’t get swept out to sea), and John somehow got suckered into playing chicken. Bob swung his legs over John’s shoulders and grappled with Yelena stacked on top of Bucky, and they lost all four times they played except for one (and John was pretty damn sure Yelena let Bob win).

Eventually, after John choked on seawater one too many times and Bob faceplanted into the sand hard enough to give him a rash across his left cheek, they dragged Ava back to shore. After chugging water and passing around the sandwiches John packed (ham and cheese for Ava and Bucky, chicken caesar for Yelena, Italian for him and Alexei, and some potato chip/pickle/turkey abomination that Bob liked), Ava picked up the football again, tossed it underhand to John, and it was on.

Despite his insistence that it was cheating, Ava used her powers liberally, phasing around the beach to snatch the ball from him and hand it off to Bucky, who’d left-hand chuck the thing halfway across the earth at a speed it was impossible for John to follow (but not impossible for Ava). Yelena eventually heaved herself off her towel to join the evil team in their game of keep the ball away from John, and Alexei managed to tackle both her and Bucky in the span of two minutes.

Neither John or Alexei was a match for Ava, though, until Bob finished his sandwich and wandered past the tote and chair that were the designated markers for the good team’s goal. He opened both hands towards Ava.

“Hey, Aves, I’m open!”

“Not fair,” Alexei called from where he was currently sitting on top of Bucky. “He’s right by goalpost!”

“Everything’s fair in love and war,” Ava said, and hucked the ball to Bob, who caught it right in his chest.

Bob met John’s eyes from halfway down the beach, and he glanced over— John was only a few paces away from the evil team’s goal.

Bob winked, reared back, and threw the ball.

It was a perfect connection. John snagged it with both hands, turned, and ran. It happened too fast for Ava to phase, too far away from Yelena for her to stop it, and Bucky was dealing with Alexei’s ass in his face— John had a clear shot and no one in his way.

He sprinted past the floatie and the line Ava had drawn in the sand, slammed the football down hard enough that it stayed in the divot it made, and threw both arms into the air.

“GO BEARS!”

All the way down the beach, he heard it echo in Bob’s voice—

”GO BEARS!”

Alexei whooped as Ava and Yelena both yelled expletives; Bucky pushed Alexei off of him in time to join them in cursing out Bob, who stuck his tongue out.

“Four on two wouldn’t have been fair, anyway. Not my fault you thought I’d be on your team.”

“Everything’s fair when it comes to kicking Walker’s ass,” Ava grumbled as John tossed her the football, now covered in sand, and went back to the towel area. It was skimboard o’clock.

It fit in his hand like it was meant to. He carried it down to the shallows, positioned it, and—

He glanced over his shoulder. Everyone was gathered behind him, eyebrows lifted to various disbelieving heights (except for Bob, who looked encouraging, and Alexei, who gave him a thumbs-up). He huffed out an exasperated breath.

“I don’t really need an audience.”

“You made such a big deal about this whole thing,” Yelena said. “So, let’s see it.”

“Whatever,” John said, and threw the board down. Just like when he was a kid on Tybee, he raced after it, jumped on it, and…

Instead of flying through the rippling waves like he remembered, he slipped, scrambled, and landed on his elbows in the shallow water. The splash soaked him, and he heard Yelena’s laugh echoing.

“From one skimboarding expert to another, that was beautiful, Walker!”

Heaving himself up on one elbow, John looked down at the skimboard underneath him like it was the problem. “What the fuck?”

“We can’t be good at everything,” Alexei said from somewhere behind him.

“Try it again,” Bob encouraged.

John tried it again. And again. And again.

And fell off again. And again. And again.

“What the fuck!” He tossed the board into the sand where it stuck, upright and quivering. The sharks on the design looked like they were taunting him. Bob crossed his arms; he was the only one still watching.

“It does look pretty difficult,” he said. John raked his hands through his hair.

“I used to be good at this,” he muttered. “I should be better at it— What the fuck else would super serum be good for?”

Bob shrugged a shoulder, half of his mouth raised in a good-natured sort of smile. “Maybe saving the world, but what do I know?”

“Bobert!” Yelena called from back at the towels. “Jonathan! We’re leaving, get your asses back up here!”

“One more time,” John said, and Bob tugged the board out of the sand and handed it back to him.

One more time turned into John’s ass in the sand. Again. Bob laughed, but there wasn’t any malice behind it.

“Come on, Walker. It’ll still be here tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, unless I chuck this goddamn thing halfway to China,” John said, but Bob reached down and swiped the board out from under his arm before he could make good on his promise. “Hey!”

“I’m just helping you out,” Bob said, and carried the board the entire way back to the house as John trailed behind him, still muttering threats and curses the entire way there.

—

Post-showers, everyone was starving again. There was no food in the house to speak of, so when Bob suggested going to the boardwalk for dinner, no one fought him on it. Bucky and Alexei got four different pizzas from four different places and argued about which was the best while eating them, Bob got chicken tenders (with honey mustard) and curly fries, Yelena got an acai bowl and stole fries from Bob, Ava found a place that sold pierogi on a stick, and John got two orders of fried clams and another basket of fries that he shared with both Yelena and Bob when Bob’s were all gone.

They all huddled around a food court table with pizza boxes stacked in the middle (very reminiscent of their first night in the Tower) and ate, commenting on the others’ choices between bites. John got everyone (some reluctantly) to try some clams; Bucky was the only one who seemed semi-enthusiastic about them. Even Alexei made a face.

“Fried clams are fine,” John said as he swirled one in tartar sauce. “But I think I like them in linguini best; some lemon herb sauce? Shut the front door.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a clam before in my life,” Ava said, poking at the rest of hers. She’d taken a tiny bite and put it down in her pierogi basket. “It’s weird.”

“Lemon herb sounds pretty good, though,” Bob said through a mouthful of fries. “Do you think anywhere around here makes good linguini?”

John lifted and dropped one shoulder, still a little bit lost in the (tartar) sauce. “I could find a place tomorrow and pick up some fresh, make it for dinner tomorrow or whatever, if you guys want.”

He looked up. They were all staring at him with vaguely confused expressions and ketchup on faces (Yelena, Bob). Bucky was the first to break the silence.

“Since when can you cook?”

“Since forever,” John shot back, immediately on defense even as the hair on the back of his neck prickled and the tiny voice in his head (reasonable, annoying) warned him to calm down. He took a deep breath. “I’ve always been okay at cooking, I learned back home when I was younger.”

“Where was this skill when we were scrounging for food back in the Tower?” Ava asked, crossing her arms. Bob stole the rest of her fried clam, scooped some of John’s tartar sauce, and ate it.

“There’s not a single fucking pan back in the Tower,” John said. “How am I supposed to cook anything?”

Alexei shrugged. “Tower is pretty bare.”

“I’ve asked Val for stuff,” John continued, still feeling a little defensive. “She barely gives us food, let alone a full spread of equipment like she has back at that damn beach house.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Bob said. “We can put it to good use, if you, like, want to.”

“Yeah, okay,” John said. “Gotta prove myself to you idiots somehow, I guess.”

Bob grinned. “Linguini it is. What else can you make?”

“That’s one of my go-to dishes, probably,” he said, taking another bite of clams. “I can kill a chicken parm any day of the week. Fettucini, stuffed shells, lots of Italian— that was my grandmother’s favorite. I don’t know. Brats, stew, mashed potatoes. Fajitas are quick and easy.”

“I can’t believe you were going to keep this all under wraps,” Yelena said. “Five star chef right under our noses this whole time.”

“It wasn’t some big secret,” John shot back. She raised her hands in surrender, eyebrows equally raised like she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“Does this whole cooking thing translate into dessert at all?” Bucky asked, trying to be slick about it, but John (and the rest of the team, honestly) were all well aware of his sweet tooth. No dessert was safe from Bucky in the Tower, but the most in danger was anything licorice, anything chocolate, and any pastry or baked good with fruit in it. True to his Winter Soldier past, when it came to dessert, he left no survivors.

“Sometimes,” John said. “I’m not the best baker, but I try. The one thing I can make in my sleep is Lemar’s mom’s peach cobbler. Never as good as hers, though.”

Bob frowned into his mostly empty fry basket. “Who’s Lemar?”

John hadn’t meant to say Lemar’s name. He kept his personal life mostly under wraps in the Tower; they knew some about his currently ongoing custody battle with Olivia, but that was because Yelena was a nosy asshole when she wanted to be. But with Lemar…

John kept Lemar in a tiny little pocket of his brain. It was private, and it was all his, and that sadness was something he could dive into and wrap around himself like a dark, warm blanket. He could sink into it, all alone, and no one would bother him about it because no one knew about it.

John’s upset? Must be because of Olivia, or the Captain America thing, or the rest of his shit-ass existence.

Must be because of the living, right?

The dead don’t bother John Walker.

He shook his head down at the final fried clam sitting in a dollop of tartar sauce. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

“A friend,” he said, and that was that.

“You could make the peach cobbler for us,” Bob said, pressing a bit, and John realized it wasn’t because Bob knew anything about what happened in that dingy warehouse on the day John’s entire life fell apart, but because he was jealous. Of John having a potential friend outside of the Thunderbolts, maybe, or…

Or maybe of something else.

John shook his head once, hard, to get rid of any weird little thoughts bouncing around in there. “Sure. Yeah, I can— I can do that. If we find good peaches around here somewhere, or whatever.”

“What about there?” Yelena pointed at one of the shopfront walls, where different fliers were flapping in the cool ocean breeze. There was one, bigger than the rest, advertising a farmer’s market that happened every Saturday morning from six to noon. Ava snapped a photo of the address with her phone as John nodded.

“They’ll have peaches there for sure,” he said. “And I bet there’s at least one seafood stand for some kick-ass linguini.”

“Sure,” Yelena said, rolling her eyes. “Chef Walker. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Bob stood and started gathering trash as Bucky rapped the wooden table with his metal knuckles.

“Ice cream, anyone?”

—

Over a cone of butter brickle and a bowl of rocky road, respectively, Bucky confronted John.

Kind of.

Mostly it was just glaring.

“Are you going to tell me what your fucking deal is, or what?” John asked between spoonfuls of chocolate and peanut butter. The rest of the group was at the other end of the dock; Bob had leaned over too far and dropped his cone of vanilla with sprinkles over the edge, so they’d all gone back to the shop to get him another one. Not because they all secretly wanted another one, too, definitely not.

And John? He’d been left with Bucky.

“I think you can figure it out,” Bucky said, staring out at the dark ocean while swiping at his ice cream with his tongue. “You’re a smart guy.”

“Well now I know you’re going insane,” John said lightly, trying to joke a little bit, lift the mood or whatever, but Bucky just kept glaring like his butter brickle owed him money.

“I’m not going to tell you how to grieve,” he said, pushing himself off the dock and starting back toward the others. His low voice wound back to John through the salty night air. “But coming from someone who spent a lot of time doing it wrong, I think you’re doing it wrong.”

—

Under the bright early morning sun, John maneuvered the SUV into a tiny-ass parking space before calling back to both Yelena and Bob (laying all over each other in the backseat) to wake up. It had been less than a ten minute drive to the farmer’s market, but they really had woken up at the asscrack of dawn to try and get the best of the best.

Ava had been “asleep” (under her blankets with her phone on max brightness), Bucky had been “asleep” (fake snoring as Bob tried to poke him awake), and Alexei had been truly dead to the world when the three of them had left for the market. John slipped the SUV’s keys into his pocket as Bob gathered the reusable bags they’d found in one of Val’s cabinets and Yelena knocked her forehead against the headrest, yawning wide.

“Come on,” John said, rousting the two of them out of the car so he could lock it. As soon as they joined the hustle and bustle of the market, though, everyone was wide-eyed and awake.

“What’s that?” Yelena pointed at a spiky red fruit.

“Dragonfruit,” John said, picking out a few quarts of ripe peaches. They smelled like home, and their skin was perfectly fuzzy and firm.

“What about that?” She poked at a long, prickly leaf.

“Aloe,” he said.

“Aloe comes in a bottle,” Bob said, peering over Yelena’s shoulder.

“Get one,” John said, holding open the bag. “I can show you how to peel it and put it on your nasty chest burn.”

“I don’t have a nasty chest burn,” Bob said, holding open the neck of his tank top and peering down at his bare chest. John nudged him right under his nipple.

“Yeah, but you will. Get one.”

The aloe went into the bag, right next to a dragonfruit (when had Yelena snuck that in there?), and they moved along. Their next stop was an iced coffee truck, where he got two pumps of vanilla and one of hazelnut in his espresso, Bob got something called a snickerdoodle latte, and Yelena couldn’t decide between lavender lemonade and a peach tea refresher, so she got both.

They swept through the rest of the stands fairly quickly; John picked some vegetables to make side salads, and filled two of the reusable bags with clams from a bustling seafood stand. Yelena picked out a few loaves of bread for garlic toast, and Bob found a ratty paperback in an out-of-the-way used book stand for Ava. After loading the car, they swung past the local grocery store for boxes of pasta, various herbs and spices, other bits and bobs John couldn’t find at the market, and almost an entire cartful of snacks and sandwich ingredients for another beach day. Bob filled two boxes with donuts from the store’s bakery, even though the market had a full row of pastry stands.

“They didn’t have any with sprinkles,” he said, and that was that.

Back at the house, they found Bucky and Ava on either side of a still-asleep Alexei, half-watching some renovation show on TV as Bucky texted long paragraphs on his phone and Ava read a book she’d found on one of Val’s mostly-empty shelves. Bob gave her the one he’d found at the market (some noir mystery with the word ghost in the title), and she dove into it immediately.

As soon as the donuts and Yelena’s dragonfruit came out of the grocery bags, Alexei woke up. Everyone who didn’t go to the farmer’s market complained about the coffee truck (John was one hundred percent sure they were just jealous), so after breakfast they took a walk up to the boardwalk for coffee.

Even as fat gray stormclouds began to gather ominously on the horizon, they packed for the beach. The skimboard didn’t get any easier, but John kept working at it. Every time he fell, every time the bruises healed instantaneously, he thought about Lemar. How Lemar would be right next to him as he fell, how he’d laugh his ass off but still encourage John to pick the board up and try again.

He fell again, scrambling in the shallows, and tossed the board behind him as his knees and fists sank into the sand. Huffing out an exasperated breath, he slowly got to his feet. He turned, and was met with Bob.

As Bob held out the dripping wet, sand-covered skimboard, he smiled. Soft, encouraging.

“Again?” he asked.

“You just want to see me fall,” John said, half-laughing. Bob shook his head.

“I want to see you get up.”

“Yeah, sure,” John said, and took the skimboard. Despite himself, the next time he tried, he stayed on for longer. He still fell, but between the falls were bursts of success, long runs that had Bob cheering, that made John throw both arms in the air, tilting his face to the sun and letting its brightness chase the shadows away.

—

The clouds continued to encroach as the beach day dragged long. Whatever storm was gathering kicked up the waves even higher than the previous day; Bob and Bucky created a game with the football (basically they hucked it at each other when a huge wave was coming, and they had to catch it before getting obliterated. John was pretty sure getting obliterated was part of the fun), Yelena tried to use the floatie to surf (she stood up once. Obliterated), and Ava mostly hung out under the umbrella with her book as Alexei napped in the sand. She woke him up periodically to reapply sunscreen, despite his insistence that he and Bucky had the same brand of super serum and he wouldn’t get burnt.

(His nose had been red since yesterday. John was pretty sure they were all full of shit.)

A few hours after lunch, and after a group effort of burying Bob up to his neck in sand, Yelena fell asleep on her towel next to Alexei, and John figured it was about time to start on dinner.

“I can stay here with them,” Ava said, jerking her thumb behind her at Yelena (face down on her towel, back covered in swipes of sunscreen) and Alexei (face up, starfishing half-off of his own towel, mouth open). She gestured at the book open in her lap. “This shit’s starting to get really good.”

“I’m coming back with you.” Bob tugged on his sandy t-shirt, grimacing as it scraped across his already pink shoulders. “I’m getting fried out here.”

“Me too,” Bucky said, and slung his tanktop over his metal shoulder. “Not about the getting fried thing, though. I don’t do that.”

“Yeah, we know,” Bob grumbled as John hefted the cooler above his head and the three of them left the beach. It was a quick walk back to the house, and Bucky rinsed out the cooler as John ducked into one of the outdoor shower stalls. As soon as he was clean and all the sand was swept down the drain, he slung his bath towel around his shoulders and began poking through the kitchen.

“Need any help?” Bob asked, leaning around the doorway that led from the pool and patio into the kitchen. John waved him away.

“Stay out of my kitchen,” he said, and a wide grin crossed Bob’s face as he let the door shut behind him. Through the window, John watched as Bob baited Bucky out of laying by the pool and into some sort of competition on the diving board.

It wasn’t long before the rest of the crew returned from the beach. Yelena and Alexei joined the other two by the pool, and Ava hung around the kitchen as John prepped for the cobbler. He was a little flattered, until he found out that she was just phasing around to sneak peach bits behind his back. It was fine, though; there were more than enough peaches to go around, and he was snacking on them, too.

He put her to work after the fourth time he caught her stealing, and together they cleaned the clams and chopped herbs for the sauce. She was proficient with a knife, which was unsurprising, and with two people in the kitchen the time moved by quickly. The sauce came together fast, the clams cooked in an instant, and as Bob and Alexei set the table outside by the pool, John cracked open one of Val’s (probably insanely expensive) bottles of white.

He poured himself and Ava a generous portion and they clinked glasses.

“Thanks for helping,” he said.

“Thanks for cooking,” she said over her shoulder, and he caught a brilliant flash of white teeth as she grinned and headed outside with her wine and the basket of garlic toast.

They ate outside as the storm rolled in, darkening the sky and making everything look all ominous. Everyone tried clams this time around, and even Ava dished up seconds of the seafood linguini, clams included.

It was nice, cooking for people again. John leaned back in his chair as the clatter of dishes being passed around and people talking back and forth filled the porch area; Bucky chastising Alexei for eating the last of the toast, Bob sticking clamshells on each of his fingertips like a set of fancy nails, Yelena trying to teach Ava how to twirl her pasta with a fork and spoon. It felt close, it felt warm.

Honestly, bitching and arguing included, it felt like family.

He hadn’t had a family in so goddamn long.

“What’s up?” Bob asked, nudging John in his side. “You haven’t tried to fish for a compliment in five minutes. I think we have to—” He cleared his throat loudly, loud enough that everyone else stopped what they were doing. “God, John, this was so fucking good.”

“Shut up,” John hissed, but he couldn’t stop a huge grin from breaking across his face as Ava picked up what Bob was putting down.

“Seriously,” she echoed, ”so fucking good. Best clams I’ve ever had, which isn’t any, but still.”

“John Walker rules the waves.” Alexei lifted his wineglass. “Not with skimboard, but oven mitts? Even better.”

Bucky laughed, one loud bark of noise, as he also lifted his glass and clinked it against Alexei’s. “I’ll drink to that. And Walker—” He drained his glass and set it down probably harder than necessary. “Damn good. All of it.”

As one, they all turned to Yelena. She rolled her eyes.

“Walker’s a good cook.”

And, as one, they cheered louder than the thunder that reverberated through the clouds above them. Fat drops of rain began to fall, but they had an umbrella, and everything was fine.

Better than fine. Everything was perfect.

—

Ava had her hair twirled above her head in one of Val’s big blue beach towels, and Bucky laid out more towels across the couches to protect them from everyone else’s damp clothes. That storm had been no joke, and they’d rushed the rest of the food and all the table settings back inside as the rain had begun to fall in earnest.

John was back in the kitchen, checking the cobbler in the oven as Bob and Alexei did the dishes. The edges were perfectly crispy, the top dense and glistening. It looked exactly like Mrs. Hoskins’s back in Georgia, smelled exactly like those late summer nights where the moon and sun hung in the sky at the same time, the shadows drawing long, the air thick with humidity and fireflies. He breathed deep, and felt tears prickle in the corners of his eyes.

As he removed the cobbler from the oven and set it on the coffee table beside the couches that were serving as Bucky and Alexei’s beds, but were now piled with everyone besides him, he accepted a bowl of vanilla ice cream from Bob and a spatula from Ava.

“Chef dishes his own first,” she said, gesturing to the steam curling from the top of the cobbler.

“I’m going to say some stuff,” John said as he cut into the baking dish, depositing a hefty slice into Ava’s bowl despite her protests that he should eat first. “I haven’t said any of this out loud, and I don’t know if I ever will again, so.”

He moved on to Alexei, who held his bowl out and raised his eyebrows expectantly. John sighed.

“Okay. Lemar was my best friend. We went to the same schools, the same college, were stationed together in the army. His parents treated me like a son, and I…” He shoveled a piece of cobbler into Bob’s bowl, making sure he scraped all the gooey bits off of the spatula. “They were my family when mine sucked.”

He motioned for Yelena’s bowl, and she held it out.

“He was with me when they made me Captain America,” he said. “By my side the whole time. He knew how much I wanted it, knew how scared I was to fuck it up. But when he was killed… None of that mattered. I just wanted revenge.”

He slid a generous slice into Bucky’s bowl, and cut a piece for himself before sitting down on the couch between Ava and Bob.

“I know you all know how that whole thing ends, so I won’t go into it.” He offered the cobbler pan a halfhearted, sad little smile. “I ruined my life, but he lost his, so.”

“And this was his mom’s recipe?” Bob asked as John took a bite of cobbler. It was good, but it just wasn’t hers.

“Yeah,” he replied. “She hasn’t talked to me since Olivia and I split.”

“She makes wonderful pie,” Alexei rumbled from somewhere to Bob’s left. Ava scoffed.

“It’s cobbler, Alexei.”

“Same, same.”

“It’s really not,” Bucky said, and Yelena rolled her eyes.

“Dad, you can’t just call things whatever you want—”

“Pie, cobbler,” Alexei boomed. There were crumbs in his beard. “What is difference?”

As they began debating the structural integrity of pie versus cobbler, Bob leaned back next to John, bowl empty and blue eyes dark and serious.

“I’m sorry about Lemar,” he said. John managed a smile.

“It’s okay, Bobby. I miss him a lot.”

“He must’ve been special.”

“He was the best person I’ve ever met,” John said. “Some days I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Well,” Bob said, leaning up to slide his bowl onto the coffee table next to the empty cobbler pan, “whenever you miss him, or remember something he did, or just want to talk, I’m here. What was his last name again?”

“Hoskins,” John said.

“Lemar Hoskins,” Bob repeated, and something about the way he said it felt right. With Bob Reynolds, Lemar’s name felt safe. “I can’t believe he put up with you for so long.”

John laughed then, a real one, a burst of noise he didn’t see coming until it happened. Bob started laughing, too, and Alexei leaned over both of them to join in.

“I have idea,” he said in his big, loud voice, and hauled himself upright and headed to the bar cart Val kept in the farthest corner of the living room. He held up two bottles of liquor. “We drink!”

Yelena rolled her eyes again. “Dad—”

“Plenty of sparkling fizz water over here, Ла́почка,” he said, piling his arms with bottles and heading back to the coffee table. Ava lifted an eyebrow.

“Can you even get drunk?”

“Old super soldier trick to getting buzz,” Alexei said, pulling the top off of one of Val’s bottles of vodka. “Drink faster than serum can keep up with.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bucky said, and accepted the malt whiskey Alexei pulled off the bar cart next. “Walker?”

“Yeah, hit me,” John said, and Alexei tossed him another bottle. Of what, it didn’t really matter. Bob matched him shot for shot, Ava and Bucky began to rank and rate each whiskey in Val’s repertoire, Yelena was just as loud without booze, and soon the night began to melt around him.

—

“Fuck,” John said as his eyes cracked open. It was a struggle, they were practically crusted shut, and he groaned as he attempted to sit up.

He couldn’t sit up. Alexei’s torso was on top of his legs.

“What the shit,” he muttered, blinking as the serum chased away the morning bleariness and any vestige of a hangover he could’ve been nursing. Bob curled close to John’s chest, drooling all over his worn Bears t-shirt, and Yelena was back-to-back with Bob, one arm curled through his. Ava was on John’s other side, Alexei’s head resting on her shoulder.

They were all in John’s loft bedroom, on the bed together in one big pile.

It was actually kind of nice, and very warm. John allowed himself to enjoy it for a few more minutes —gingerly moving Bob’s head onto a pillow so he wouldn’t drown in a river of fuckin’ drool— before he smelled coffee.

That was it for him, and he managed to extract himself from the pile and descend the loft’s ladder without waking anyone up, which was impressive because he missed the last two rugs and cursed loud enough to wake up anyone who wasn’t currently passed out in Val’s beach house loft after a night of debauchery.

He peeked into the kitchen. Rain splattered the wide window looking out onto the pool and patio as Bucky stood by the coffeemaker, shirtless, Alpine perched on his left shoulder. His arm was on the island behind him.

“Morning,” John said, sliding onto one of the island stools. Bucky didn’t even turn around as he typed something into his phone.

“Morning.”

“How’s Sam?” John asked offhandedly. The muscles of Bucky’s flesh shoulder tightened.

“Frustrating,” he said, and then shook his head like he was upset with himself for even answering. “Frustrated. I don’t know.”

He turned to lean his back against the counter as Alpine nosed along his jawline.

“He doesn’t know why I’m doing this.”

John lifted and dropped one shoulder. “To be fair, I’m not sure why we’re doing this, either.”

Bucky looked at him, deadpan, for a moment or two before they both broke; John grinned and Bucky huffed a laugh through his nose and looked back at his phone.

“He supported me through the trials,” Bucky said. “Through my campaign. Through all of it. I feel like I’m wrecking all that for even considering going along with Val’s New Avengers shit. Betraying him. It’s the last thing I’d ever do.”

“Don’t come to me for relationship advice,” John said. Bucky twisted his lips together as he turned to pour the coffee.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

He pushed one of Val’s perfect white mugs (seashell patterned) across the island to John, who tried it right away. A bit of sugar, a splash of milk, and a little bit of…

“You put vanilla in here?” John asked. Bucky didn’t even look over his shoulder.

“That’s how you take it.”

“It really is,” John said softly, drinking the rest of his mug as Bucky reattached his arm and set Alpine on the counter, scratching under her chin with metal fingers as he fixed his own cup.

Woken up by coffee, the rest of the team slowly but surely filed into the kitchen. Yelena had on one of Alexei’s huge t-shirts, Bob was shirtless, and, over her pajamas, Ava only wore the collar of her suit. She only did that when she was having a good pain day; John made a mental note to ask her if she was doing anything different, or maybe it was just the stress-free vacation vibe that was helping her. There was something to be said about salt air, at least.

“Reynolds: hazelnut creamer, a million sugars,” Bucky narrated as he passed coffee cups to John, who stirred in the appropriate additions before handing it off to the recipient. “Shostakov: just milk, only a splash. Belova: whatever’s fastest, but she likes Bob’s creamer, too. Starr: drinks it black, ‘cause she thinks she’s cool as hell.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder as Ava squeezed her way between Alexei and Bob to take her coffee cup. She grinned up at him, sunny and bright, nothing like the cup of black coffee cradled in her hands.

“I am, and don’t you forget it.”

"What if we pack up here and drive back to New York early?" Bucky asked as John finished his coffee and dug around in the fridge. He motioned for a bowl, Bucky handed him one, and he began cracking the rest of the eggs left in the carton. He figured a scramble with cheese and the remaining vegetables they hadn't eaten as beach snacks would be a good a breakfast as any, and there were even some donuts left over from the previous morning. "Take the long way, stop somewhere for lunch. Maybe the power's back on by now."

"Sounds good to me," Yelena said, accepting the coffee cup Bucky slid her as she squashed next to the other girl on the same stool at the island. "Someone's gotta hose out that shower outside, it's full of sand."

"I'll start flipping the paintings back over." Ava set her mug down, rolled her eyes, and phased through the island and out of the kitchen.

With five people (John was making breakfast, so he felt like he was more than exempt from cleanup duty), making the house look exactly as it had when they walked into it was easy. Bob tackled the outside shower, Alexei ran sheets and pillowcases through the huge washer/dryer, Bucky vacuumed the living room with Alpine perched on his shoulder, Ava stayed vigilant on painting duty, and Yelena cleaned out the fridge. Under John's direction, she even packed up the cooler.

"Thank you," she said as she closed the lid and sat on top; he'd just passed over a plate piled high with cheese and eggs. "Not just for this, for all of it."

"All of what, Belova?"

"Don't be an ass," she said around a mouthful of breakfast. "I know you feel like you lost your team and your family after the whole Captain America bullshit, but..." She tilted her head and squinted at the ceiling. "Good god, don't make me say it."

John rested his hip on the edge of the sink. "I want to hear you say it, though."

"You're good," she said, shoveling more eggs into her mouth. "With us. I promise."

He nudged her leg with his bare foot. "Sappy as hell."

"Shut up," she snapped back, angling her leg at an impossible angle to kick him back. "Don't make me take it back."

"You can't," he said, and stuck out his tongue. "You promised."

He dished up the rest of breakfast and they all ate in the kitchen, scattered around the island or sitting on countertops. John ate quickly and left to pack his bag up in the loft as Bucky and Bob did the dishes and the rest of them piled their own bags in the garage, far away from the still-pouring rain. Before anyone could screw up the beautifully clean state of the house, they locked it behind them and hauled all the bags to the trunk of the SUV.

And they really had to haul. John had no idea what they'd all bought on the boardwalk, but it made their bags weigh about a hundred pounds each. It didn't matter; he hefted them one by one into the trunk as Bucky made the car run again and Yelena started queuing up songs to play.

She and Ava commandeered the middle two seats this time, shunting John all the way to the back with Bob and Cucumber's travel cage on the floor between them. It was actually pretty cozy; John stuck his legs on top of the travel cage and into the space between the two middle seats, and Bob flung his own legs on top. Tangled together like that, it wasn’t long before John, warm and content and full of breakfast, drifted off with his cheek smushed against the cold window.

When he woke up, he figured they were at another rest stop. One more Coke slushee for the road, and they’d be home. Good deal.

He hauled himself upright as Bob twitched awake and Yelena pressed her face to the window.

“This isn’t New York,” she said, her voice somehow sleep-bleary and accusing at the same time. Had they all dozed off on the drive home?

Except Yelena was right, and they weren’t home at all. Bucky parked the SUV and they piled out onto the streets of…

“This is DC,” John said as Bob spun around to take it all in (a Starbucks on the corner, a few pigeons splashing around in the rain, a few power boxes painted with swipes of color). “Why are we in DC?”

Ava gasped and pointed at an arrow that had a few landmarks engraved on it; the White House was a few blocks over, the Capitol Building a half mile in the opposite direction, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and…

“The Air and Space!” she said. Bucky made a sweeping motion with his metal arm.

“I made a few calls,” he said. “We have a private tour in ten minutes, let’s hustle.”

“Oh my god.” Ava grabbed Bob’s arm with one hand and Yelena’s with the other, pulling them both behind her as they, for the most part, just let it happen. Yelena laughed as she barely missed being decapitated by a lightpost.

“Jesus, Aves, both the air and the space will still be there when we get there.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Ava said, and continued pulling.

The museum, for all intents and purposes, was pretty cool. John had been once before, with school in eighth grade, and he vaguely remembered him and Lemar running around all the exhibits while Olivia tried to read all the plaques; always trying to get the most out of every opportunity while everyone else was obsessed with goofing off. He also remembered something about astronaut ice cream; he was pretty sure he liked it, but Lemar had spat his chunk out onto the sidewalk in front of the museum.

The planetarium show was John’s favorite part this time around, bar none. Bob sat next to him, all pressed against his side in the dark, and every time he gasped, John had to bite back a gasp, too. Something about watching Bob live his life, like really live for the first time, was enough to give John the same sense of wonder. Bob had never seen anything like the Air and Space planetarium show, and through his eyes, John was able to see it for the first time, too.

“That was fuckin’ sick as hell,” Bob said as they left, stars still in his eyes. Ava bumped into him, shoulder to shoulder.

“Saturn’s rings?”

”Sick as hell.”

They went through all of the interactive exhibits; learning about Galileo and telescopes and astronomy as Ava read every plaque (real Olivia activity) to whoever was listening, usually Bob and Alexei, although John did his level best to stick around them. He really just wanted to run ahead, to see everything he wanted to and to breeze past things that didn’t interest him, but he forced himself to slow down. To stay with his team, to put one foot in front of the other, to listen as Ava talked about black holes and Alexei asked his thousands of inane questions.

It was, if John was being honest and if he really wanted to quote Bob Reynolds, sick as hell.

Almost as fun as the planetarium was walking through the exhibit chock full of World War II fighter jets and asking Bucky, after each and every one of them, if he remembered it. No matter how many times he said the goddamn army fought on the ground, they still asked. He eventually decided to just lean into it, and started telling stories about piloting fighter jets that, honestly, might have been true. Alexei and Bob ate them up like they were, all wide-eyed.

In the gift shop, Bucky bought Ava a t-shirt with the solar system on it, a few sizes too big so that she could wear it over her suit, which she did immediately. John shelled out for a few packages of astronaut ice cream, which was better than he remembered, and no one spat it out. Bob pressed himself a flat penny with Galileo’s face on it, and they all managed to squeeze into a photobooth.

The photo strip that came out was four ridiculous images stacked on top of each other; the first was yelling and shoving as they tried to get comfortable in the tiny booth; Bucky and Alexei were in the back, Bob and John were stacked on top of them, and Ava and Yelena were squeezed in the front. The second was stupid faces (Bucky actually had his tongue sticking out, and Bob was giving Ava bunny ears), and the third, at Yelena’s request, was everyone holding their breath with their cheeks puffed out as far as they could go. John didn’t miss how Bob’s arm was slung across his shoulders in each and every one, fingers gripping John’s sweatshirt like he didn’t want to let go.

The last picture was the six of them all looking at the camera for once, all in various stages of laughter, mouths open, smiles wide, eyes crinkled. Yelena’s hair was sticking up with static, Alexei had his arms stretched around as many shoulders as he could grab. They looked like they were meant to be crammed in a photobooth in DC, having a fun weekend together. They looked happy.

John tucked the photo strip into his wallet, making sure it wouldn’t crease or fold, and followed the rest of them back to the car.

—

The Tower was still deserted when they got back, piling their luggage behind the island in the common area’s kitchen before collapsing throughout the room. The only good thing was that, sometime during the weekend, the power had come back on. The cool breeze of air conditioning brushed across the back of John’s neck as he dropped down on the couch next to Bob, both of them staring at the ice cream puddle on the floor that had been almost cleaned up before they left, but not well enough.

He was just about to stand up, dig his one pair of gym shorts out of his duffel to hit the weight rack for the first time that whole weekend, when the common area’s doors burst open.

Valentina barged through them like a bat out of hell, raking her hair out of her eyes as she swept her pointed gaze over the entire room. Taking stock of her superheroes, maybe.

“Oh, thank god,” she said, rushed, like she hadn’t had time to put her ice queen persona back on. She breathed out heavily. “You’re all here. I got an alert that the power—”

“Was out all weekend?” Yelena asked, raking her hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, we know.”

“All the security systems went down,” Val continued. “No air, no water—”

“Well, we survived.” Bucky crossed his arms from where he was cross-legged on the floor, Alpine curled in front of him. She’d been trying to lick the caked-on ice cream as he attempted to stop her. “No thanks to you, huh?”

“Yeah, it was hot as hell in here,” John chimed in. If they were going to give Val a guilt trip, he was going to make sure it was the fuckin’ trip of the century. “Hot as a—”

“Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk,” Bob said, cutting him off. Val turned to him slowly.

”What?”

”Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk,” Yelena repeated, dragging each word out like Val was an idiot. “It’s a very common saying.”

“Egg,” Alexei mimed breaking a shell into a pan. He made a flipping motion. “Fry.” He gestured to the ground. ”Sidewalk—”

“Yeah, grandpa, I know what the words mean,” Val snipped. “I just think they’re idiotic when you put them all together like that.”

“Well, you’re the one who locked us in here all weekend,” Bucky said, his arms still crossed. Alpine leapt onto his shoulder and curled around his neck. “Some brain cells might have overheated.”

“It really isn’t good for people to suffocate in oppressive heat conditions,” Ava said. “And we have animals in here, too. The press would have a field day with mistreatment like that.”

“Hold on,” Val said. “There’s no need—”

“Yeah,” Bob cut her off. “Maybe don’t leave us to overheat in this metal box all weekend like you left me in the Vault to die—”

“Okay, okay.” Val lifted both hands in what could possibly be seen as a surrender, which was about as out of character as she could get. Honestly, she looked a little frazzled herself; hair out of place, makeup half-done. Maybe the easy life in Italy wasn’t all it cracked up to be. “What do you want? A pay raise? Is that it?”

“We don’t even have paychecks,” Yelena said, deadpan, from behind Alexei.

“Just make this goddamn place livable,” Bucky said. Alpine yowled like she agreed. “Grocery delivery so we can cook our own food. Utensils and pans so we can cook our own food. Better gym equipment. Get the stuff we listed weeks ago. And enough of the legal bullshit— let us work.”

“I can do most of that,” Val said, and it only sounded a little bit reluctant. “As for the work—” she made air quotes very sarcastically “—did you fill out the packets?”

The packets were, as they had been when they all left for Jersey, stacked on the island. Yelena scoffed.

“My brain cooked in my skull, Valentina. Remember? Like an egg on a sidewalk? And you wanted me to fill out your million forms?”

“Just do it.” Val rolled her eyes as she made for the door, like she couldn’t handle even another minute around the six of them. Seven, if Alpine counted, and Alpine definitely counted. Val pulled out her phone and punched something into it. “I’ll coordinate a grocery delivery now, but you’ll have to deal without the other stuff until I—”

“Yeah, whatever.” John cut her off. “Same as every other day here. Just get it done.”

“Hope you had a good weekend,” Bob called after her as the door shut. Yelena let out a loud cackle.

“Did you see her face? I think she genuinely thought she cooked us alive.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time she tried,” Ava muttered. Bucky stood and nudged her in the ribs.

“Good call threatening her with the press. We should pull that more often, maybe it would actually get things done around here.”

“Maybe we should put Alpine in a press release or two,” Ava said, and reached up to scratch the cat under her chin. “That would get us some goodwill, at least.”

“Considering it,” Bucky said. “At least she’s cute.”

He set her on top of the packets on the island, and they spent the next fifteen minutes debating on whether or not the Alpine Press Release would get more attention if she was sitting with her head tilted like she always did when she was tracking dust bunnies across the floor (Bob, John, Ava), or if she was laying with her head on both of her curled paws like a bread loaf (Bucky, Yelena). Alexei was a wild card because he wanted both, somehow.

Right when the debate got really heated (Bucky pulled out his phone to show photo evidence of her bread-loafing in a sunbeam), someone knocked on the door of the common area. John went to get it, and came back dragging a large box.

“Looks like we’ve got dinner,” he said, flipping open the box’s lid. He huffed out a frustrated breath, wound back, and kicked a dent in the corner of the cardboard. “Goddamn it, Val.”

“What?” Bob said, coming to peer over John’s shoulder. There was nothing in the box but a few cartons of eggs, some cans, a few baggies of herbs, and a few other bits and pieces that John couldn’t do anything with unless he had cooking utensils. He’d felt so at home in the beach house kitchen, making good food for people he cared about. Why couldn’t that translate to here?

“It’s just ingredients,” he said. “Can’t do anything with ingredients in this fuckin’ bare-ass kitchen.”

Bucky glanced over his shoulder to Ava, Yelena, and Alexei.

“I don’t know. Sounds like John’s cooking dinner to me.”

“I can’t cook here,” John said, getting increasingly more exasperated. “I’ve asked for shit literally a million times just like we did tonight, you all heard Bucky. She doesn’t care.”

“I don’t really care what she cares about,” Bucky said. “Bob?”

From behind the counter, Bob shoved the pile of their duffel bags around the corner and right in front of John’s feet. Bucky smirked a very dangerous, sharp little smirk.

“It was his idea.”

That was aimed towards Bob, who shrugged. Even as he made the nonchalant movement, he was beaming. He smiled like a ray of sun cut through the clouds; it made everything brighter.

“Yeah, well. These criminals helped.”

John unzipped the first duffel; Alexei’s. It held the big wok from Val’s beach house kitchen, the entire jar of wooden spoons, and a good chunk of her extensive spice cabinet. Bucky’s held at least three stainless steel pans, a few bottles of high-end liquor, and a marble rolling pin.

Ava’s had the full pot collection, and Yelena’s was chock full of knives. John was sure there was other stuff somewhere in there, but there really were so many knives.

Finally, Bob’s duffel held only one thing; the ceramic dish John had baked Lemar’s favorite dessert in for the first time since he died. There was one peach left, a perfect heart shape, sitting in the center of the dish.

When John looked back up, Bob was still smiling.

“Had to say thanks somehow.”

“Good deal,” John said, ignoring the prickling in both of his eyes and the way heat pooled in the back of his nose. He swept a glare across the rest of the room, where his team, his family stood, waiting. “What are you all standing around here for? Dinner’s in forty-five, and someone better set that damn table.”

“I think I put Val’s fancy napkins in Bucky’s duffel,” Bob said as they started to unpack each and every pot, pan, and utensil. “Did we get a tablecloth?”

“I shoved it in Alexei’s,” Yelena said, and John dragged the box of ingredients back towards the kitchen, ready to turn all of its separate, messy pieces into something beautiful.

Chapter Text

Ingredients:

Pesto
Eggs
Salt and pepper

Instructions:

• Spread the pesto in an even layer in an 8-inch nonstick skillet
• Bring to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat, 1 to 2 minutes
• Add the eggs on top of the pesto and season with 1/4 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper
• Continue to cook until the egg whites are just set and the oil has separated from the pesto, 3 to 4 minutes
• Remove from the heat and cover with a tight-fitting lid (or a heatproof plate or a baking sheet)
• Let sit until the whites are completely set and the yolks are still runny, 1 to 2 minutes
• Make Yelena look up "popular southern idioms" on Google
• Serve with fresh tomatoes, basil, and sourdough bread

—

Ingredients:

6-8 fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice from ½ lemon

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375°F
• Slice peaches
• Do not let Ava Starr steal peaches
• Pour melted butter into center of 9x13-inch baking dish, do not spread butter around pan
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, 1 cup sugar, salt, and baking powder
• Slowly pour in milk and vanilla extract, and stir to combine
• Pour batter over butter, but do not stir
• Add brown sugar, peach slices, and lemon juice to a saucepan on high heat
• Stir frequently until sugar is completely melted and peaches have released their juices
• Pour peaches over top of batter. Do not stir
• Bake for 40-45 minutes or until top of cobbler is a golden in color
• Serve warm or cold, or with a scoop of ice cream (the whole container if you're Bob Reynolds)
• Double (or triple) the recipe depending on how many super soldiers are in attendance

—

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh mussels purged of sand
2 cups fresh clams purged of sand
2 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 cup calamari rings
¼ cup white wine
Cherry tomatoes
Fresh shrimp peeled and deveined
1 package linguine pasta
Fresh parsley minced
Salt to taste

Instructions:

• Place the mussels and clams in a pan. Cover with a lid. Over medium heat, let the clams and mussels open (about 7-10 minutes)
• The mussels and clams will have released their juices. Strain this juice and set it aside. Remove most of the clams and mussels from their shells. Keep a few in their shells for garnish
• Bring a pot of water to a boil. You will be cooking the pasta and making the sauce simultaneously. Add salt to the boiling pasta water and drop the pasta in about 8 minutes before the sauce is done
• Cook until it's before al dente (about 2-3 minutes before it's done cooking, remove it from the pot and place it into the sauce - the pasta will finish cooking in the sauce)
• In a pan, over medium heat, make the sauce. Heat the olive oil. Add the whole garlic cloves, season with salt and sauté until fragrant. Add the calamari rings. Cook for 5 minutes
• Add the white wine and let the alcohol evaporate off
• Add the tomatoes to the pan and cook for 5 minutes
• Add the shrimp to the pan and cook until cooked through on both sides, about 5 minutes
• Add the pasta to the pan, along with about one ladle of the clam and mussel juice and mix. Add more clam/mussel juice if needed. Mix the pasta with tongs, a sauce should start to form at the bottom of the pan
• Remove the garlic cloves
• Add the mussels and clams to the pasta, along with the parsley and mix
• Plate, and top with the mussels and clams that are still in their shell
• Bask in everyone’s praises (well deserved)