Chapter Text
“Bucky, what the fuck is that?”
Yelena has seen a lot of really weird shit in her life. She was a child assassin, so really, you think she would’ve seen it all by now. But, she had to admit, seeing Bucky Barnes, the parent (even she’ll admit) of their group, the brainwashed super soldier, who was a two time Captain America divorceé, standing in the doorway with a small white cat cradled in the hands that had shot god knows how many people? Well, that was definitely a new one.
Bucky shrugged and answered, “It’s a cat, Yelena.”
She rolled her eyes and responded in an exasperated voice, with more than a touch of sarcasm, “Oh really, I thought it was some sort of alien from space- no shit Barnes, why do you have a cat?”
Before Bucky could answer, Alexei came in from the other room, covered in Thunderbolts* merch, with the remnants of whatever he’d just eaten stuck in his beard. “Ah! What do you have there, a little Китти?” Bucky nodded as he raised the cat up for Alexei to see. It was definitely small, with soft, light blue eyes, pupils big and round, limbs thin and short, covered in pale white hair, and a tail curling out from between legs that revealed the cat to be a girl. “Oh, it’s so cute!” Alexei reached out and petted the cat as she purred and nuzzled his palm. He continued doing this for about a minute while Bucky and Yelena collected themselves from this display of softness (not unexpected, but easy to get lost in for people like them).
“Okay, Bucky, you can’t just have a ca-“
“Yelena, I put up with all of your guy’s shit, make sure that we don’t get completely destroyed by the press, deal with Val, while making sure no one kills John, so yes, I can have a damn cat.”
It was at this point that, speaking of the devil, John walked in, with an exasperated look on his face. For some reason. “Wasn’t that guinea pig enough for the amount of pets we have?”
“Well obviously not Walker, I mean we have you.” Yelena said as she turned away from Bucky to look at John, as he grimaced and responded to the comment.
“Real Mature, Belova.”
Alexei pulled himself away from the cat to pat John on the back and steer him towards the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Taco America, if you are pet you are strong bulldog, pushing forward!”
Bucky and Yelena could see John trying to decide whether to be offended at that or not as he let Alexei steer him into the kitchen where Bob was probably doing the dishes. They turned back to each other and Yelena sighed and gestured to the cat. “Well if you’re going to keep,” she peered closer at the cat, “her, what are you going to name her?” Bucky smiled as he brought the cat a little closer to his chest.
“Alpine.” Yelena nodded and turned to walk into the kitchen with the others. “Long as I’m not cleaning the litter box, Bucky,” she threw behind her as she passed the table that had all the mismatched silverware from various take out restaurants, as they still refused to use the ones Val had bought.
She could hear Bucky chuckle and respond with, “Oh, she’ll just use John’s bed,” he whispered the rest to Alpine, “won’t you, princess?”
Yelena smiled at the words, the second half he’d probably not meant for her to hear. She walked through the threshold to the kitchen, finding a scene similar to what had been developing the longer they had been doing this Thunderbolts* thing.
There was Bob, standing in front of the sink, dressed in soft sweatpants and what looked like an old Air Force hoodie. She’d definitely be talking to him about what exactly his relationship was with the new Falcon later, but for now she sat down on the stool at the kitchen island, where Ava sat next to her, and handed Yelena some of the popcorn she had made as they watched John try to make dinner while Alexei kept offering his, “professional opinion,”…
“Alexei, no, get the powder away from the pot, it'll ruin the soup!”
“I was voted, “Best Cook,” in all of the Siberian Gulags, I think I know how to do this,” Alexei reasoned as he tried to duck around John to sprinkle in whatever he had found and bought for the sole reason that it had a certain design on the container. “Besides, look at our faces on the plastic!” John swatted at Alexei with a spatula he had grabbed from the counter, when Alexei had initially approached with the container, as he simultaneously tried to continue cooking.
“Alexei, just because something has our faces on it, does not mean it’s good!” He swatted a little harder to emphasize his point as he stirred the soup with the whisk in his other hand. “Besides, being the best cook inside a gulag is not some big accomplishment, there is no way you are coming near this soup!”
Alexei looked at John like he was a teenage girl telling him to get out of their room, a smile present as he turned to Yelena and Ava, who were still eating popcorn on the island. “Yelena, you remember my cooking, it was good, right?” Yelena paused in her motion of putting more popcorn into her mouth as she debated what she wanted to say. Because on one hand, allowing Alexei to put whatever he was holding in his hand into the soup could result in their dinner tasting like how the old Avengerz merch looked, but on the other hand, it would annoy John. So essentially, an impossible choice. Or not. “I mean,” Yelena thought as she opened her mouth to vouch for her father, “I can always just drink the vodka Dad thought he hid.”
It was at this moment that Alexei made a bid for his ingredient while John had his attention on Yelena, grabbing the spatula and hitting John, making him stumble far enough from the stove that Alexei could grab his bottle of powder and dump it all, unceremoniously, and ACCIDENTALLY, into the pot.
There was silence in the kitchen for a moment while Ava and Yelena’s face grew bright with what would surely be laughter soon; Alexei with an incredulous look of surprise eyes, and mouth wide; John, face half contorted in fury, half wide in pure shock, and Bob, leaning around John with a soft look of surprise and interest, like a child who felt a drop of rain on its head.
It was a soft gurgle of the now ruined soup that set everyone off.
To anyone outside the tower, it would’ve looked like a group of chaotic, adult children. And they would’ve been right.
John started making exaggerated hand gestures as he yelled at Alexei over what might’ve been a slightly unappetizing, but still edible soup, but was now not even in the realm of ingestion. Alexei, as well, held up his hands in surrender as he yelled back about how, “If you had just let me in the beginning!” And of course, you had Ava and Yelena, the former clutching their stomach as they laughed, somewhat cruelly, and the latter bent over, beating their fist against the counter. Accompanied by Bob chuckling softly as he stood beside Yelena at the table. And then there was the guinea pig, stationed in the doorway with their brand new roommate Alpine, looking at their humans with what was probably an amused expression, but then again it was hard to tell for the guinea pig with that small of a face. Though for the cat, the purr was telling. And finally, the man who’d just spent the entire time this had been conspiring telling yet another government official, that yes, they were a stable group, that they were indeed capable of safeguarding the nation and protecting the world, and that they weren’t just a bunch of depressed and homicidal lunatics.
Bucky stuffed his phone in his pocket as he leaned against the doorway next to the pets, a small smile on his face as he looked at his teammates, at his fellow stars in their own constellation of new beginnings. He did still miss his sun, his Sam, desperately, that wasn’t ever going to change.
But his stars, his constellation, well…
They were still pretty goddamn bright.
*********
“BARNES WHY THE FUCK IS THERE CAT SHIT AND PISS ON MY BED!”
“We needed a litter box, Walker.”
“BUCKY!”
“Meow.”
“You’re right Alpine, he is being crazy.”
“BUCKY I SWEAR TO FUCK!”