Chapter Text
“Maybe they packed it wrong,” Steve said finally, frowning down at it.
“They didn’t pack it wrong,” Bucky muttered, studying the schematics. “It matches the picture, just - it doesn’t make any damn sense.”
Elbows braced on the edge of the workbench, Steve stared down the mechanism. It had been delivered from their supplier in an innocuous-enough looking box, but now that the parts were spread across the workbench it looked to have about a thousand pieces, none of which seemed to belong to the same machine: there were pipes, valves, electrical and telephone cables, strange looking plastic containers. A computerized interface was supposed to run the thing, but there were no buttons on it, nothing labelled in any way. The bare bulb hanging over them cast shadows on the machinery, laid out before them like an autopsy. But the client had requested it specifically: given them the model number and everything.
“I don’t want to do any more new construction,” Steve said, rubbing one eye beneath his glasses. “Let’s just stick to restoration.”
Bucky glanced up. “That’s strangely negative of you.”
“Buck, I hotwired a plane that was less complicated than this,” Steve said.
“Pal, the year before I escaped from Hydra, they sent me to the Gobi desert to find a crashed alien spacecraft, which I repaired and flew back to Siberia, and that was less complicated than this,” and then Bucky pushed away the specs, sat back on his stool, and sighed. “Okay, don’t laugh, but I’m gonna make a couple of guesses about this thing.”
“I’m not laughing,” Steve said gravely.
“Okay, well, first of all - I think it’s a shower ,” Bucky said dubiously, and Steve rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, I know it’s a shower,” Steve said, and when Bucky made a face at him, he added, “You’ve obviously never showered at Tony’s. Nine nozzles, water coming at you every which way: it’s like being attacked. And this,” Steve pointed, “is like a robot to set the temperature, and this thing here changes the pressure, and this is, I don’t know, probably a phone and a radio or something. But I don’t know what this is,” he said, pointing at another smooth black box of electrical components, “or this,” the thing looked like a bagpipe, “and I’m damned if I know what these little plastic reservoirs are for.”
“Well.” Bucky picked up the schematics again. “If I’m reading this right and I haven’t lost what’s left of my mind, they’re supposed to spray vitamins on you. Like vitamin C or something.”
They looked at each other, then stared down at the machine.
“I don’t want to do anymore new construction,” Steve groaned. “Let’s just stick to—”
Bucky’s phone rang. They held each other’s eyes even as Bucky wormed it out of his pocket.
“Yeah?” Bucky said guardedly, and then: “Yeah. Right away,” and then he was sliding off the stool and saying, “I gotta—”
“Yeah, go; go,” Steve said quickly. “I’ll figure this—” but Bucky was already halfway to the wooden staircase. Then Steve heard himself call, “Buck?” without really even meaning to.
Bucky halted mid-flight. His head jerked 'round. “Yeah? What?”
But Steve was paralyzed, conflicted; the words died in his mouth. “Nothing, sorry,” he said hastily. “You go on,” and Bucky bolted up the wooden steps and into their apartment, and when he came down a minute later he was wearing black pants and a tac vest and moving with the Winter Soldier’s grim sureness. He lifted a glossy black helmet from the back of their motorcycle and put it on, then pulled on a pair of goggles, obscuring his eyes. Steve quickly consulted the handheld computer Tony’d given them - “All clear” - and then held the small side door open so Bucky could wheel the motorcycle out quietly before roaring off into the Brooklyn night.
