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John loathed cold weather with a passion, but unfortunately here he was, trudging alongside Bucky on some covert reconnaissance in some frozen hellscape of a forest. Despite being bundled up in a thick parka over the top of his usual tactical gear, he was still shivering like one of those pathetic hairless cats Bob found so endearing.
Ugh, just thinking of them sent him shivering in disgust. Or that could just be the frigid temperature of his surroundings.
Goddamn recon missions in the middle of snowstorms – here he was, stuck in the damn mountains in the middle of some of the worst weather he’d ever experienced, all because Bucky had decided that the storm was the ideal cover for checking out a remote “weather station” that Val said was hiding the comms network of their latest group they were trying to dismantle.
“Tell me again why we have to be out here in this weather, Barnes?” he shouts up at the man a handful of metres ahead of him.
“Because, Walker, otherwise we’d be completely exposed up on the ridge approach to the target site,” he drawls out, face hidden by the scarf he has wrapped around it, and voice muffled.
“Christ, at least pick a slightly nicer route next time, Bucky.” John groans, tucking his hands closer into his sides.
Bucky’s response to his spectacular display of reluctance is to roll his eyes and trudge onwards, heedless of John’s bitching.
“Stop being so goddamn dramatic, Walker, and get a move on.”
“Fine, Jesus, but I will be even worse on the way down, I guarantee. We don’t even fucking know where this ghost site is, Buck.”
“Shut up and keep moving. Intel says we’re about thirty minutes out once we get to the ridge proper, then it’s a class four scramble onwards to our observation point.”
.
The wind howls over their heads, whipping flurries of snow up into the air, and sending it stinging against the exposed skin on their faces. Stumbling slightly as they finally crest the ridgeline, John grits his teeth and keeps moving, shivering again as cold trickles of snow melt down the gap between the collar of his gear and his neck. Numb fingers fumble at the hood of his jacket to draw it closer about him and ward off the bitter cold. Bucky is an indistinct silhouette some way ahead of him, just starting to make his way up and along the knife-edge rise of the terrain.
Fuck, he knew that his body was fucking weird about temperature now – the serum seems to have jacked up his strength, healing speed, and explosive power at the expense of his body's ability to thermoregulate. Now he was stuck either boiling or freezing his toes off depending on how the weather turned out on that particular day.
God, he really hated the cold.
Fuck again, this time with feeling.
It is a hair’s breadth moment between John trailing further and further behind Bucky’s stoic figure and plummeting off the razor-edge of stone.
His feet had slipped away underneath him, sliding on the frictionless snow.
Time hung suspended until, with a sharp crunch, his head ricochets off something and the world goes dark.
.
When he finally surfaces from unconsciousness, all John can hear is the whistling scream of the wind as it whips past where he’s lying.
Huh
He must have fallen a long way if he’s looking up at the ridgeline.
The burn at the back of his head, and in his ribs and ankle prove that too.
At least he’s not shivering like before.
John remembers, somewhere in the recesses of his brain, that that is not good, but he finds himself incapable of getting up – his limbs a flailing, uncoordinated mess.
John drifts away again, his consciousness sinking back into oblivion, vision fuzzing grey at the edges.
Mikey is standing in the corner of his vision, not a day older than when John saw him last, and Lemar is crouched next to his head yelling at him to stay awake.
That didn’t sound like him.
It sounded like Bucky.
As if by magic, Bucky appears next to him, windswept and panting for air. His sudden appearance had chased away the Mikey-shape, and Lemar too.
A hand taps at his face, frantic as the flap of a wren’s wings.
Bucky’s bright blue eyes – like chips of glaciers were placed there – are wide in panic, but John’s too far away from his body to care, and all he can feel is the uncomfortable jostle of his ribs as he’s lifted and thrown over something. The sudden change in position knocks him out completely.
.
John’s limbs are burning when he wakes up. The pain is entirely separate from his other injuries, and concentrates in his feet and hands as an awful fizzing heat, like someone’s lit a fire under them.
Someone has lit a fire, just not right by him – a flame flickers merrily in the woodstove opposite him – he’s stripped of all but his base layers that he always wears under his armor, bundled up in blankets like some swaddled baby, and there is a warm weight at his back, pressing up against him. He shivers, cold and in pain, and the weight at his back draws him in closer, the heat radiating out from it lulling him slowly back to sleep.
The next time Walker surfaces from that pit called unconsciousness, the burning sensation has faded to an unpleasant tingle in his fingers and toes, and he’s warm under his pile of blankets.
He drifts for a little in that fuzzy half-asleep and not fully aware state, only coming to full awareness a while later. It is then that John realizes that the weight at his back has a metal arm and is called Bucky.
His resulting flinch of confusion obviously shakes Bucky out of his fragile rest, as the man lifts himself up on one elbow and leans over to look at John’s face.
“You’re awake,” Bucky says, a stunned look on his face.
“Yeah well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Walker blurts out, his newfound consciousness not coming with an inbuilt filter apparently, “y’know with my eyes being open and all that.”
Bucky just sighs, both fond and exasperated, “You were barely conscious when I finally got to you at the base of that cliff, punk, and you were unresponsive for almost too long once I’d got you in here. It’s a near miracle you weren’t injured worse than you were.”
His eyes narrow as he catches sight of the sudden guilty look that has appeared on John’s face.
“Walker,” he whips out, as venomous as a snake, “What did you just think of?”
“Uhhhh nothing, really!”
“John.”
“Fuck you, Bucky,” he says, without any heat, “Just that I was sorry you had to go through a situation like back when Hydra got their slimy hands on you.”
“That’s not all of it.”
“Ugh, fine,” Walker snaps, recalcitrant, “I just remembered Val saying something about the after-effects of my version of the serum. Something about my body’s ability to regulate temperature when it’s cold?”
“A decreased ability to thermoregulate, and she sent you out here.”
Bucky has a dark look in his eyes as he absorbs what Walker just said.
John is, unfortunately, suddenly very aware of how close Bucky’s face is to his own – he’s leaning over him, with an arm either side of his head. The overwhelming fury in his gaze sends a shiver down his spine.
Bucky’s voice has lowered in pitch when he talks again.
“Tell me about this sort of thing, Walker, and I’d be able to change the mission plan.”
“But Val said tha-“
“To hell with that damned woman,” Bucky snarls, interrupting, “you’re part of a goddamn team now, you tell us that stuff. You tell me.”
John really is trying to pay attention to what Bucky is saying, but his focus is elsewhere at the moment – Bucky’s ice blue eyes are piercing, beautiful – and his whole body is still weighed down by a heavy fog of exhaustion.
He must notice his focus lagging, so he says, softer now, “No use arguing with a punk like you when you’re like this. Sleep – Yelena should be here with the jet in another few hours.”
“But wha’bout the mission?” he mumbles.
Bucky sighs yet again, and recounts how exactly the mission was a bust – the sparsely decorated hut they were in was all that was left of their target, and there was no intel anywhere in the one room building.
He ends the impromptu mission report, and says, again, “go back to sleep John, you’re practically passed out again.”
Walker sleeps, and when he wakes again for a brief moment he’s still wrapped in a blanket, but this time he was leaning up against a broad chest and he could feel the thrum of the quinjet in his bones. That means home, and safety, so he drifts back to sleep again, content, not noticing the soft kiss pressed against his forehead.