Got to Get You into My Life

by FlamingoQueen

Summary:

The worst thing about being all the way down in Jamaica after a shitload of aliens attacked New York City is that all of the flights to New York City have been canceled.

Bucky can’t imagine why no one wants to go there. The threat has passed, the airports are all still standing, and people have places to be, damnit.

People like him. People who have seen long-lost dead pals come back to life on the screen and who can’t afford to let any grass grow under their feet or those pals will find new ways to risk their lives before they can get a proper scolding in for dying in the first place.

A direct sequel to Revenge (best served screaming).

(Or: Bucky and Venom join the Avengers. It goes about how you’d expect.)

Notes:

It’s finally time for the sequel that isn’t a prequel! ^_^ This will make more sense if you’ve read the first story in the series: Revenge (best served screaming). But it should be readable without having read that, as well.

Story title from “Got to Get You into My Life” by the Beatles.

Chapter 1: Xanatos gambit

BUCKY 

— Airport in Kingston, Jamaica: Morning, 05 May 2012 —

The worst thing about being all the way down in Jamaica after a shitload of aliens attacked New York City is that all of the flights to New York City have been canceled. 

Bucky can’t imagine why no one wants to go there. The threat has passed, the airports are all still standing, and people have places to be, damnit. 

People like him. People who have seen long-lost dead pals come back to life on the screen and who can’t afford to let any grass grow under their feet or those pals will find new ways to risk their lives before they can get a proper scolding in for dying in the first place.

We can still swim. 

“We’re not swimming,” Bucky mutters, and then smiles his most charming smile to the ticket lady. “Not when we can fly,” he adds. “So how close can you get us— Me. Just the one ticket, thanks. To however close you can get me to New York City. As soon as I can get there.”

She types into her terminal for a moment and then gives him a brittle smile. “I can get you to Albany International, sir. Flying out this afternoon.” 

“We’ll take it.” Bucky hands over the least bloodstained of his local cash. “Sorry, I’ll take it. Used to traveling with friends. Don’t ever really buy tickets for just one.”

It’s a lie, a horrible lie, but he is far from a horrible liar. That is to say, he’s horrible, but an excellent liar.

Most of the time. You are not doing so well right now.

Well I’m agitated right now. And you ate that target so fast my stomach’s hurting.

It’ll be a fun flight with an upset gut, surrounded by “delicious” snacks and forced to eat chocolate or else be downright famished on the other end of this journey. 

He can’t afford to be famished—neither of them can. They’ll need to be at the top of their game, fully fed and at least decently rested. 

I will help you sleep on the plane.

Thanks, love. I’ll make sure you get a snack partway in, just wake me up for it. 

How will you know which of the passengers are evil enough to snack on if you are asleep on the flight?

A snack made out of chocolate and caramel.

Oh. I will try not to be disappointed.

You just ate!

He exchanges identification for change and accepts his ticket with another smile. It pays to be polite to customer service people. They have shitty jobs dealing with shitty people, and karma dictates that bad fucking things happen to the people who act the worst toward them.

Sometimes, he’s karma. And Venom is the bad fucking thing that happens.

He’s been treated like shit, a non-entity with no rights or feelings. It sucks. He won’t stand to see it happen to others. But even if he’s not making the world a better place one entitled asshole at a time, he’s still as nice as possible just in case there’s another agent of karma out there with an eye on him.

It pays to be paranoid. They really are out to get him.

 

VENOM

— Airport in Kingston, Jamaica: Mid-morning, 05 May 2012 —

They are going to see the Pal! So soon, only hours from now, they will see the Pal. They will go up to the Pal and they will hug the Pal so tightly, hold him so close, breathe in his smells and soak up his heat and taste him—just a bit. Just a nibble for flavor.

We’re not eating Steve. Not even a nibble.

Of course not. Just gumming at him a little. Licking his face, maybe. 

The Pal will taste… Oh, they don’t even know. What will the Pal taste like? The Pal has been dead for so long. Will it be like licking a freezer-burned tater tot? Or will it be like scarfing down freshly fried up hashbrowns smothered in gravy with sloppy fried eggs on the side and biscuits so steamy hot and moist inside with butter that’s—

Oh my god, stop. Please.

They pick up a faint hint of unease from their host, a combination of hunger and nausea, none of which seems to relate in any way to the entirely proper state of his stomach. Bucky’s stomach is pleasantly full with room to spare, churning away at their pastry breakfast with healthy diligence.

Stopping, they say, even though there is no logical reason to do so.

It must be nerves. They have eaten several more snacks and even whole HYDRA buffets as quickly as they ate the banker with the alligator handbag, and it never bothered Bucky’s stomach before.

All the same, they rein in their recollections of the last scrumptious full breakfast they had, without even getting to the crunchy bacon or the cheesy grits or the pile of glistening mixed fruit.

You said you were stopping, Bucky complains. 

He has them there. They send along a contrite feeling and poke gently at his stomach, searching for anything that might have been amiss with the box of chocolate croissants he devoured before dawn. All seems to be incredibly in order.

Are you excited to see the Pal? Is that why you are feeling bad?

It doesn’t make any sense for this to be the case, but even after all their years together, Bucky’s body and mind can still do surprising things. And it is not every day the Pal returns.

What if he doesn’t approve of us, V?

We are amazing. And we will eat anyone who says otherwise. What is there not to approve of? 

Venom shifts around until they can form a pair of eyes along the back of Bucky’s gloved hand. Sure enough, there is worry on Bucky’s face.

We eat the dregs of society so that the others may flourish. We make a lot of money and travel to exciting places. We are nice to people others are not nice to. 

Yeah, are you listening to yourself? We travel the world killing and eating people for money. Not a whole lot of people out there would approve. What if Steve doesn’t approve?

They blink and sink back into Bucky’s skin. 

He is the Pal. He will approve.

But something about Bucky’s unease is now pricking their thoughts, too. If the Pal doesn’t approve, will they disappoint the Pal and continue doing what they do? Will they stop eating well and begin to starve for the Pal’s sake? 

What would they do about Larry if they had to shut down their company? Larry wants to end HYDRA as much as they do. They cannot let Larry down after so many years. Especially not when one of his offshoots has taken up the cause.

We need to spend some time planning this, Bucky finally says. Our flight isn’t for a few hours yet, so we’ve got time. And we’ll have the flight itself as well. But we need a plan.

Well Bucky is the one who makes their plans. Bucky will handle that and they will tuck themselves away between folds of intestine and send soothing signals all through Bucky’s gut to help him calm down.

And instead of thinking about the Pal as a delectable breakfast buffet, they will think of all the other things they know about the Pal. 

Earnest and well-meaning. Stubborn and protective. Stupid enough to crash a plane with bombs in it. Everything points to a Pal that is a good match for their host, a Pal they can love as deeply as they love their host, once the Pal has been properly introduced.

Maybe the Pal will be so pleased to see them that he doesn’t mind the changes that have happened since Bucky last saw him. Maybe the Pal will join them in their company, or at least in the hunt for HYDRA.

They were HYDRA bombs on the plane that killed him, after all. The Pal hated HYDRA. The Pal… hated HYDRA. Oh no. What if the Pal is upset with Bucky for being HYDRA’s Soldier for so long? But Bucky didn’t have any choices. He was a test subject being torture-tested the whole time. He didn’t even have a name or know how to eat.

Venom decides the Pal will not hold that against Bucky. Anyone who did could not be the Pal. 

Sweetheart? I think I’ve got it. 

What have you got? they ask, giving Bucky’s stomach a gentle prod to see if it feels better yet. Getting there. 

We’re going to join the Avengers.

What are the Avengers?

Wow, you really didn’t pay attention to the newscast, huh? Only saw Steve and the Other Guy.

It was not porn. I have you to pay attention to boring things for me. What are the Avengers?

It’s this team of freaks like us that kicked Chitauri ass yesterday. They let the Other Guy join. They’ll probably let us join, too.

Why are we joining their company when we have our own? Why aren’t we just going to see the Pal? We can say hi to the Other Guy while we are there.

The Pal is Captain America. They’re going to be swarming him with press and security. We’ll be lucky to get close if we just show up. 

But he is the Pal. Our Pal. 

Right, but he doesn’t know I’m alive any more than we knew he survived. How’s he going to know it’s us?

So we join the Avengers and then he knows it is us?

I figure if we try sneaking around New York to get close to him, we’ll run into issues, and we’ll be sneaking.

We are good at sneaking.

Right, but this is the Pal. I want to be aboveboard, you know? Honest. No sneaking.

We can get close to him by sneaking, but we do not want to sneak. But we want to get close so we will join the Avengers just to get close. And that is not a kind of sneaking?

…It’s an okay kind of sneaking?

Why is it better?

Because we might end up really wanting to join the Avengers. They’ve got the Other Guy on the roster, and Steve. How bad could the rest of them be?

The rest of them are not freaks, Venom grumbles. 

We don’t know that. They could be. They fought off the Chitauri with just their little group. Seems like that would take a team of freaks.

Doesn’t the red-headed one work with the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes?

Maybe she switched agencies again. She started off Red Room.

What if they get in our way? We have a style.

Look, if we join the Avengers and work with them, then they won’t be getting in the way of our operations. They’ll be helping, instead.

We will still get to eat the bad guys, though.

…Probably? We can try to add a clause in our contract stipulating a certain number of heads per enemy engagement, minimum. Larry can help us with the wording.

Well as long as we can eat the bad guys, they can help us catch them.

Right. So we get off the plane in Philadelphia during the layover and skip the rest of the flight to Albany. We pack up some proper gear at the apartment, say hello to our offshoot, then we ride up to New York, and we head for Stark Tower. 

What if the Avengers do not want us?

Why wouldn’t they want us? You said it yourself, we’re amazing.

What if they do not?

Then we’re in New York, we have a bag packed with the gear we’ll need, we book a hotel and find another way to get to Steve. Added bonus, we’ll try to get him to come to Philly with us and leave the Avengers.

If we cannot join them, we will steal him away from them?

Yes. He’ll… Maybe he’ll want to come with us. We just need to let him know we’re there, is all.

Either way, we win.

Either way, we win. Keep an ear out for our flight. I’m going put in a call to Larry, let him know what’s up.

And get yelled at.

Maybe. Or maybe he’ll think it’s brilliant.

 

BUCKY

— Airport in Kingston, Jamaica: A little before noon, 05 May 2012 —

“You want to what?!”

It’s about as enthusiastic as he’d expected Larry to be about the idea. Which just means they need to talk it over a bit more.

“Join the Avengers,” he murmurs into the phone. 

“No. That is a stupid idea.”

“It’s a solid plan,” Bucky says. “I’m sure of it. It’s not going to—”

Larry scoffs. “In what way is it a solid plan to join a scrappy team of superheroes when you are in the particular business you are in? I spend a lot of time clearing your name of things, but even I am going to come up against some problems trying to sneak you onto that roster.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You won’t have to sneak me anywhere. I’m walking up to them and asking to join.”

“And here I thought you wanted to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ve gone to great lengths getting you off their radar for you to walk in there and—”

“The Avengers, not the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes!”

Loud.

Bucky lowers his voice again. “We hate the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes, remember? They get in our way and mess up our jobs.”

“And who do you think is running the Avengers Initiative?”

Bucky frowns. Fuckity-fuck. “…I’ll admit to not having given that much thought. Ugh. Is it really S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“It’s really S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Larry says, sounding like his victory is around the corner. “You’d have to go through them and get past Nick Fury to get on the Avengers roster.”

“Well that’s unfortunate.” 

“Right. So can I assume you’ll be giving up this truly horrible idea and seeing sense?”

Bucky doesn’t answer for another long moment. Damn. S.H.I.E.L.D. Really? It’s just his luck the quasi-decent but ultimately irritating asshole division of the alphabet soup is behind the Avengers. How’d old Tommy end up getting mixed in with that lot? He’d even warned him about S.H.I.E.L.D. specifically.

“Jimmy,” Larry says. “Jimmy, listen to me. Once you get into S.H.I.E.L.D. records, I can’t get you back out. I’ve kept you in the shadows like a roach under the fridge, but if you turn on the light and crawl out from under the fridge, I can’t help you. You’re going to be seen.”

That’s kind of the point, to be seen. By Steve, specifically. If they have to get seen by others as well, that’s just an unfortunate necessity. Once Steve sees them, though… The others won’t matter.

“But there’s still Vinnie and Jamie and some of the others,” he says. “There’s aliases still available even if I burn Jimmy Varnes by walking up to S.H.I.E.L.D. and knocking on the door.” 

None of them will be the alias he’s had from the beginning, and it’ll suck to start over, but he can do it. It won’t be the first time he’s started over.

“They’re going to see through any of your other aliases, Jimmy. It’ll be a matter of time. By the time they let you into the Avengers, they’ll know all about our company. And they’ll know that all of the agents employed by that company are just you with a different name. They’ll know how prolific you are in your field of expertise.”

“Maybe we make that work to my advantage. Maybe I go in there without an alias and just use my old codename.”

There’s a long silence on the other end and Bucky can practically hear Larry’s arteries clanging shut in despair at the idiocy of the idea. But he still proceeds. 

“Say I saw the shit show in the City, wanted to throw my name in to help out next time there’s an issue. Winter Soldier crawls out from under the fridge after forty years to loan himself out to the good guys out of a sense of planetary harmony.”

Larry’s voice is tight when he answers. “As your legal counsel, I advise strongly against doing that. That agent died in the ‘60s and you’re better off leaving him there.”

“Well, let’s say I did it. How would we go about fixing the problem afterward?”

“I don’t know that we could. Just how much of your records are you planning to share?”

“Whatever I have to. Whatever it takes to get close to Steve Rogers.”

There’s a disgruntled sigh and a rustle of cigarettes in a box. Clearly Larry is giving up on instilling any common sense. “Give me an hour. I’ll see what I can do to get you safely disclosed to S.H.I.E.L.D. And Jimmy?”

“Yep?”

“Don’t you dare give up the real fight for this stupid flight of fancy.”

“No worries there, Larry. As fast as those fuckers sprout, we’ll chop them all down again. Death to HYDRA, to the end of the line.”

Larry grunts his satisfaction and hangs up on him, which to be fair, is probably the nicest way to end the call. Bucky slides the phone back in his pocket.

How are we doing on flight time, V?

Go to the gate. You can walk it. Larry does not sound enthusiastic.

He’s not. Bucky starts walking. But he’ll get us what we need.  

Larry is good at many things, and one of those things is making sure they have what they need to do a job, whether that be information or legal advice. Hell, he supplies the jobs after Des Moines. He’s a great middle man.

And we are sure it is a good idea? Venom asks. Usually Larry is right and we are wrong.

Okay, yes, that’s a fair point. Larry does have a more practical way of looking at things. But still.

This is about Steve. Larry… He shakes his head, not caring much that it looks like he’s arguing with himself. It’s not exactly a wrong impression for people to make. Larry can’t understand about Steve. No one can. Only us. No one else even knows our name.

Steve, though. Steve will know their name. Or, his name, rather. Steve won’t know anything about Venom, and that may be weird at first, but it’ll work out. Somehow.

The Pal… 

If we have to give it all up to get Steve back, we will. We’ll never stop hunting down HYDRA, never stop eating the worst this planet has to offer, never stop shutting down every A.I.M. workshop we come across. But to get Steve back… We don’t have to be in business, officially.

Venom shifts around until they’re nestled between lobes of his liver. It’s a comfort spot, like the space between stomach and pancreas, and Bucky feels bad for upsetting them.

But only if we have to stop being in business, Venom finally says. I like our business. There is a lot of variety on the menu.

Yeah, love. Only if we absolutely have to. But if we have to shut our doors as a hitman for hire, we still win Steve. Ultimately, whatever happens, there’s no losing.

Chapter 2: Aliens made them do it

STEVE

— Area near Stark Tower, New York City: Around noon, 05 May 2012 —  

Aliens.

Two weeks out of the ice and it’s aliens. An alien army, to be specific. And someone calling himself a god who is really an alien. And a man who transforms into a Hulk. It’s a lot of punches to roll with all at once, but he thinks he’s been doing a pretty good job, all told. 

It helps that he keeps imagining Bucky everywhere he turns around. Bucky would have loved this place, this future. Bucky, with his pulp fiction novels, his sci-fi thrillers, his unsolved mysteries. If anyone would be on board with the adventure that is an alien invasion getting thrown back by a team of superheroes, it would be Bucky.

And if anyone would be first in line to help people rebuild their lives and their homes after that invasion, that would be Bucky, too.

So as Steve hauls debris away and clears paths for people to reach what’s left of their homes, he can’t help but imagine that Bucky is there by his side, doing all of these things with him. Even dragging away a share of the press to give Steve breathing room.

Bucky always was good at charming his way into people’s hearts, and distracting people from the things the team wanted hidden. Didn’t hurt that he had a pretty face. Steve had always wondered if there might not be a way to… Well, it doesn’t matter now. 

Bucky isn’t here, he knows. It’s just wishful thinking, supposing that Bucky had somehow returned to life the same way Steve had, thawed out and reinstated, given a new uniform and set to work. And it’s doubly pointless to imagine a life with him, even though that’s apparently not frowned on in the future.

Bucky died, though. Has been dead for so long for everyone else that most people don’t even remember his loss. He’s just a side figure in Steve’s own story in the history books. A blurb in a museum. 

Steve brushes the thought aside and surveys the patch of wreckage he’s clearing. Almost done with this area, and then it’s time to head back to Stark’s ugly tower to clean up for yet another press conference. 

He half suspects that Fury and the press are in cahoots, that they’re conspiring to keep him in front of the cameras long enough that he can’t get any ideas about what Captain America ought to be doing going forward. 

They gave him the new suit, returned his shield, set him up, and now they don’t want to let him loose. Figures. He can see Barton on what’s left of a neighboring rooftop, ostensibly keeping a lookout for any trouble, but probably just making sure Steve himself doesn’t cause any trouble. 

Steve immediately feels horrible for thinking it.

Barton had his mind taken over by an alien “god” and is still reeling from it more than a little bit, for all he hides it. He’s probably on that roof reflecting on the battle and the actions that came before. The actions that led to the helicarrier nearly crashing, at the very least.

Sure, he may be watching over Steve, but he’s got his own issues to deal with and probably needs the time alone up in a nest of a sort. It’s uncharitable to overlook that.

Steve waves to him and then says his goodbyes to the rest of this section’s cleanup crew, extricating himself from the area with the charm he first learned from Bucky and later honed in the press tours once he realized he could apply it there.

Barton slips in beside him half a block from the Tower.

“Got another press conference?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for the answer. “That sucks. I’m just glad no one knows who the hell I am.”

“I haven’t had an anonymous day in years,” Steve says. “Everywhere I go, everyone knows who I am.”

They walk a few paces further in silence.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Steve adds. “The alternative is being dead from asthma or any number of other things and being one more random headstone in a church lot.”

“Morbid. I like it.” Barton bumps his arm lightly with an elbow. “Don’t let the others see you getting down. Especially S.H.I.E.L.D. They’ll send you to a cabin out in the woods to get happy again. It’s lonely out there and it sucks.”

“Noted. How long did you have to live in a cabin?”

“Oh, I busted out and went drinking. Played some pool in a nearby town. Won enough games of darts they didn’t let me play anymore.” Barton grins. “Still aced my psych eval afterward, though. There’s a trick to those.”

Steve might have to pick his brain to learn what the trick is, if they’re going to be a cohesive team going forward, working together whenever the planet needs them. Or even just to work against the assorted villains of the world.

It wouldn’t do to get benched for any of the things he’ll end up doing against orders.

“You’re probably dead sick of answering this,” Barton starts, “but how are you handling the whole future thing?”

Is he sick of answering it? Maybe, when it’s asked by a reporter with a mic in his face just trying to get a soundbite and a good photo. But somehow it doesn’t bother him coming from a teammate.

“Is this part of the psych eval?” he asks with a little smile.

Barton laughs. 

“If they ever get desperate enough to have me administer a psych eval, we’re in trouble.” He reaches up to scratch at the back of his head, looking ahead and up at the damage to the buildings they’re walking past. 

“No, I was wondering more about the before and after,” Barton says. “You saw all of this so long ago, and now it’s all different. I’m not sure how I’d handle it if everything changed overnight like that.”

Steve shrugs. “Well, the first thing I did was bust down a wall and run out into traffic barefoot, so I wouldn’t say I handled it all that well.”

Of course, he’d been set up, and there were enough things off-balance to set him on edge. It’s not like he knows what he’d have done if Fury had laid things out straight.

“But after,” he continues. “After was a little better. And a little not. I still miss things that were here two weeks ago but that haven’t been here in over sixty years. It’s jarring.”

And the tower is ugly—a lot of the buildings are ugly, really. And being followed around the tower by JARVIS the unseen but all-seeing, that’s jarring. And the future is full of aliens and Bucky would have loved it.

“That sucks,” Barton says as they get to the tower itself. “I’ll let you get cleaned up and stuff. But hit me up if you want to talk more. I’ll tell you all the psych eval secrets.”

Steve nods. “What are you planning to tell them for the next one?”

Barton grimaces and straightens his shoulders. “I think I’m going with ‘aliens made me do it.’”

BRUCE

— Stark Tower, New York City: Afternoon, 05 May 2012 —  

So this is a new sort of alien. A third sort. He’s really racking up the alien encounters, between Venom, Thor, and these new ones.

Bruce looks out the window at the rubble-filled city below, all the people listlessly picking through the debris and taking stock of the damage. He could be down there, could be helping. He’s not anything like Steve with his endurance and strength, at least not in his natural form. But he could still help.

Unfortunately, his earlier help smashing aliens will have Ross looking at New York City pretty closely, and if he stays in the damaged Stark Tower, he’s got a far better chance of escaping notice and eventually sneaking back out again. And he probably won’t have to rely on a pair of hitmen to help him do it.

It’s not that he thinks Ross will cause problems in an already-broken city. Or he hopes the man wouldn’t. But it’s just not worth the chance that he’s wrong. He’s avoided detection for so long, been able to hide almost in plain sight as a doctor in various little villages. It would be nice to be able to go back to that after this. To be put back, as it were, where he belongs.

If he belongs in a little jungle. He felt like he belonged on the helicarrier, at least before the incident with Natasha and Thor. It had felt good to work with Tony despite the man’s attempts to irritate him. And it had been nice to participate in some actual research, as well.

That… that had been a surprise. He’d honestly thought in the last five or so years that he was over the urge to explore the natural world, that he’d finally managed to leave laboratory life behind him. But that little taste, those mere hours of being part of something, part of a project, alongside another researcher… 

That had rekindled a spark, and that was surprising. A lot of things were surprising about the last few days. But not everything.

Thor hadn’t been that much of a surprise, not really. There were loads of conspiracy theories out there that all the ancient gods were just aliens from other planets. It’s how Stargate got so popular, after all. And there’s the so-called History Channel.

So what if an alien looked human and acted only slightly off from the norm? Jimmy was filled to the gills with an alien and he looked normal enough, despite the metal arm. Acted human, even if not traditionally normal. 

Then Loki, same sort of alien as Thor, apparently. Nothing much to be surprised by.

But the Chitauri. That’s the third sort of alien he’s known to show interest in this planet, and in a relatively short timespan. Maybe the planet is getting popular out there in the night sky. Maybe this kind of destruction is going to be a new normal as more and more aliens come to visit, or to invade. 

In a way, that’s a comforting thought. As much control over his emotions as he has now, there’s still the occasional incident, still the destruction that follows him, still a chance that he’ll wake up pantsless and exhausted in a pile of dusty concrete and twisted rebar.

If the age of alien visitation is upon them, he won’t have quite as much of a spotlight. There’ll be competition for massively destructive rampages and lost lives and livelihoods. Ross might even have his hands full fighting off actual threats and not hounding him.

And hey, he’s got an excuse for this latest swath of destruction trailing in his wake: Aliens made him do it.

He had to save the city, and in doing so he failed to save the city’s infrastructure. It’s still a pile of rubble with his name on it, but for a good cause. A better cause, even, than facing off against Blonsky had been. This threat to the people of New York City didn’t have anything to do with him, and that feels kind of nice.

Teaming up with others has felt nice, too. It’s been a long, long while since he last relied on anyone to have his back, and something tells him he actually can trust these people to look out for him, whether he’s Bruce or the Hulk. Something also tells him he can count on no one in this team eating the enemy in any literal sense.

That can’t exactly be said of the last team he was a part of, even if it was a team of two. Or technically three. Maybe four if you counted Wade.

Bruce turns away from the window and goes to sit in one of the chairs in the one corner of the room that doesn’t have any architectural debris swept up into it. The battle is over, and he’s too busy hiding from Ross to be any help in rebuilding the city—even if the city wanted him here, which it probably doesn’t. 

The best way to keep the Other Guy from breaking Harlem is to keep Bruce Banner out of Harlem, after all. Better to spend the time hiding in Stark Tower waiting for the right time when no one is paying any attention to the team and he can slip away. 

He hasn’t asked, but Tony will almost certainly be willing to smuggle him out under Ross’s nose, and he’ll go back to being a hermit in the jungle. Maybe he’ll go to Indonesia this time, hop around the islands for a while. Or maybe somewhere in South America again. Oh, or Greenland. He hasn’t been to Greenland in a while. 

Maybe he can call up Jimmy and see if they’ve got any ideas. But he’d just get Larry on the phone if he did, and he can do without another conversation with Larry.

If the Chitauri had been around much longer than they had been, he’s sure Jimmy would have shown up, either to help fight them off or… No. Definitely to help fight them off. Jimmy and his alien are a lot of things, many of them variations on hunger, but they wouldn’t stand for interplanetary takeover attempts.

Jimmy’s probably on the way here now, even though the main battle’s long over. 

Bruce knows he travels the world for jobs of all sorts, sometimes stays in far-flung places for months on end. If Jimmy saw the news about an alien attack—and he must have, wherever he is—he’s probably on a flight to New York at this very moment. 

Hmm. Maybe he’ll stay put. Let Jimmy come to him. 

 

NICK

— Office near Times Square, New York City: Afternoon, 05 May 2012 —  

He hangs up the phone with a frown. That’s the second call today asking to send in resumes and credentials. And the second call to his direct cell phone, instead of going through the many, many channels he uses to avoid talking to the general public.

He’s not sure how they’re getting this number, and he’s even less sure what to do about them. On the one hand, the Avengers Initiative turned out to be a stunning success despite the rocky start, and adding to the roster just means there are more potential agents to help in times of need.

On the other hand, he’s specifically selected these individuals to be part of the team, and the two callers are complete unknowns. He only wants carefully vetted people on this team, not just anyone who saw the news and wants to help.

There are places for helpers, certainly. But not on his team of defenders. 

Hill raises an eyebrow. “Well? That’s two of them.”

“And only the day after,” he says. “How many do you think will show up in the weeks to follow?”

She shrugs. “That might depend on whether these two make any headway. If the Avengers are known to be taking newcomers…”

“We’ll be up to our ears in wannabe recruits.”

Just what they don’t have time for. 

“We could send them through S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Hill suggests. “Take them in as agents if they’re good enough, let them prove themselves, and then offer them a place with the Avengers.”

They could, yes. And they might end up with two new STRIKE agents out of it, to replace Barton and Romanoff. Or, they could see what they have to offer, take a look at their materials, and be done with it right off the bat. 

The chances of them being Avengers-calibur are pretty slim, and S.H.I.E.L.D. is already crawling with STRIKE agents. Too many of them, almost, to keep busy on missions. 

If he agrees to meet with them while he’s still here in New York, he can send them to D.C. to go through S.H.I.E.L.D. or he can send them on to see how they mesh with the Avengers, if they’ve got enough going for them.

“I’ll meet with them,” he finally says. “Start a background check for Samuel Thomas Wilson and James Varnes. Get me everything.”

Chapter 3: And there was only one bed

BUCKY

— Apartment 521, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Late afternoon, 05 May 2012 —

“The bad news,” Larry says, “is that I’ve sent over your qualifications, and Nick Fury has agreed to see you.”

Bucky does a little air-punch before keying into their apartment. “That’s gr—”

“The worse news,” Larry continues sourly, “is that S.H.I.E.L.D. now has your information, and Nick Fury has agreed to see you.”

“Once again, that’s great!” He’s not going to let Larry get him down. If getting in with Fury is the first step to getting close to Steve, he’ll take that step. They are going to do this as by-the-rules as they can. They can do by-the-rules. They haven’t yet. But they can. He’s sure of it.

We are going to see the Pal!

They feel as excited as he does, but without all the worry thoughts about S.H.I.E.L.D. and approvals. He likes it when Venom is gleeful.

“I’m here at the apartment,” Bucky says. “Going to pack up a few things. Am I headed to New York or D.C.?”

Why would we go to D.C.? The Pal is in New York.

Because if we’re seeing Fury, that’d be down at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, probably? 

“New York,” Larry says. “He’s currently set up shop in a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility near Times Square.”

Bucky shakes his head. Times Square. Is nothing sacred? The bastards are everywhere. Not enough that they’ve got three different headquarters. No, no. Have to have little branches and offices in every major city on top of that. 

Just like A.I.M. and HYDRA. Everywhere.

But not quite as objectionable, Bucky returns. You’ve got to admit that much.

“Okay,” he says. “New York it is.”

Venom sends a questioning impression of a shitty motel room made even shittier by the destruction around the city. It’s as good as aking where they’ll be sleeping while in New York. It’s followed by an image of a bridge with a troll under it.

Good point.

“Hey, do you think you could—”

“I’ve secured a hotel room for you,” Larry says. “Check-in is as early as tonight, and you’ll have it for a solid week. It’s the last of its kind and it cost a pretty penny, so you’re welcome.”

Good old Larry. We should not have to sleep in a ditch ever again.

Bucky nods. Good old Larry. Always anticipating them, even without knowing the half of it. Some day, they might even show him the full picture of who he’s working with. He can probably handle part of it. Either the alien thing or the cannibal thing. Not both.

I vote the alien thing. 

Of course you do, love.

Then I could say hello.

“Thanks, Larry. I owe you a huge gift basket or something. Are you still avoiding nuts?”

“Send me pears, Jimmy. And the heads of our enemies.”

“The pears I can manage,” Bucky says. “But you know I keep the heads for myself.”

There’s a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Good luck.”

What should we do with our Christmas offshoot? Venom asks once Bucky’s off the phone. We should not leave them alone for too long. They will name themself Despair or Loneliness. 

Bucky inspects the perennial Christmas tree in the corner of the living room—plastic, lit up, gaudy as hell, and heavily decked with glass ornaments. And there, in the lower branches this time, is their as-yet nameless offshoot, tucked snugly inside one of the glass globes and carefully observing everything, including the security footage of the parking lot, front entry to the building, and hallway outside their apartment. 

It beats television for keeping a young symbiote entertained.

The ornaments, some of them from their very first Christmas tree, turned out to be perfect little incubators for symbiote babies, or offshoots as Venom prefers to call them. Snug, easily filled to prevent too much oxygen exposure, many of them clear so the little symbiote can see the life being lived around them. 

And easily visited with, as Venom is doing now, extending a tentacle and gently twining it around a seeking, searching tendril from their offshoot. 

It’s an imperfect communication method, but less risky than some of the alternatives. Unlike their previous, accidental offshoot in Des Moines, they both want this very much intentional one to thrive, so Venom can’t fully merge with the little one. 

What they can do is impart knowledge and whatever wisdom Venom thinks is suitable for their offshoot. Not too much, not enough to unduly influence the offshoot. But enough to ensure their offshoot is up to date on whatever current events Venom thinks a symbiote should know. 

Bucky goes over to the tree and sits cross-legged in front of their offshoot’s chosen ornament.

“We’re back, as you saw,” he says quietly, poking a finger into the mesh of tentacles and feeling their offshoot latch onto his finger and bond just enough to pick up sensation from him to go along with his words and to pass along their own sensations. Mostly their sensation is eagerness to explore, and maybe to hop around a bit inside of Lady Scrumptious, the rabbit.

Bucky sends back love and protection through the mild bond, and also a notion of “not ready yet” and “still too young.” With a side of “Lady Scrumptious is still next door.”

It’s important for their offshoot to practice bonding with living earth creatures, but to specifically learn how not to kill those creatures they bond with. So far, every animal smaller than a rabbit has been met with doom, but the rabbit has survived. The rabbit currently lives across the hall with Larry’s granddaughter Jennifer because “Jimmy” is out of town for a while. 

Their offshoot sends a wave “am too” and a borderline rebellious desire to prove themself. 

Bucky chuckles. “Just a bit longer. We need to find a cat no one will miss, or a dog, something big and friendly. And we still have to find you a proper host to bond with. Venom was lucky I came along. We want even better for you.”

There’s an image in his mind of Jennifer, complete with the school bag she usually brings when pet sitting the rabbit on short trips, or watering their plants. Jennifer likes to spend time over here. This apartment gets way better light than hers.

Patience, Venom says. Jennifer is too young.

And probably won’t feel great about eating heads, Bucky thinks. Jennifer is a great kid, has been a godsend since she graduated high school and moved in across the hall. But she’s still in college, and he doesn’t want her coursework to suffer because she’s busy eating people at night instead of sleeping. 

What they need is another super soldier—he carefully blocks all notions of Steve from his mind lest their offshoot get any smart ideas—or someone unenhanced who’s willing and able to kill people… but who is ethical about it and generally not crazy. He doesn’t want their offshoot stuck with the next Wade Wilson. Or the current Wade Wilson.

It’s been a thing to ponder since the Christmas before last when they formed and birthed this offshoot, and their offshoot probably is ready to move on from periodically practicing on Lady Scrumptious. 

But they have a new mission to conduct—get to Steve Rogers before he disappears again—and finding their offshoot the perfect partner will have to wait.

VENOM

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Late evening, 05 May 2012 —

There is a beautiful man in line in front of Bucky. A man who feels important, who feels like the future. He has nice shoulders and well-shaped arms, and he smells wonderful. Like healthy livers and strong hearts. He probably has one of each, exactly as it should be. 

Stop sniffing around for a meal, V. 

He is beautiful, though.

And delicious?

Well, yes. Probably so.

But a human can be both things at once. Their host, for example, is incredibly attractive. They see it in the expressions of others as they pass by, in the attention others pay to his body. But Bucky is also very, very juicy.

Thanks, love.

“Wait,” the man is saying, “so there’s not only no room here, but no room anywhere ?”

Ooh, that sucks for him. Guessing Larry really did get us the last room in the whole area.

The man at the front desk looks deeply apologetic, but also exhausted. He does not smell healthy. He smells like he needs fattening up before he is a good meal. Or at least a long nap to relax some of the muscles.

“I can check the database again, sir, but I’ll be surprised if anything has changed.”

The beautiful man in front of them shakes his head, those broad shoulders falling a bit in disappointment. “No, I should have guessed, with all the destruction everywhere.”

Oh no. If there are no rooms to be had, then the beautiful man will have to sleep under a bridge or in a gutter. Then how will they meet him again?

He will not have anywhere good to sleep.

Looks like it.

Offer to share our room with him.

What? On the basis that he smells good?

Yes. Offer to share our room with him!

Sweetheart—

Offer to share our— 

Okay! But you better not make it weird for him.

Deal.

Or eat him.

OFFER TO— 

“Hey, man,” Bucky says, lightly touching the man’s shoulder. “If you’re hard up for a place to crash, why don’t you come stay in my room.”

When the man turns around, he is even more beautiful, with glowing, healthy brown skin and a neatly trimmed beard, and deep brown eyes, and—

Can you stop for one minute?

Stopping.

“You managed to reserve something in advance?” The man shakes his head. “When I tried that, I got a runaround.”

“What can I say? I know a guy. He’s persuasive.” Bucky nods toward the man’s luggage. “Looks like you’re staying a while. Got the room for a week, if you want to share.”

Are you happy?

Almost.

The man hesitates, clearly weighing options, until he finally smiles—it is a beautiful smile, with even teeth and a little gap in the front—and extends his hand.

“Alright. At least for a night, until I can find something else. I don’t want to put you out or anything. Sam Wilson,” he says.

Now I am happy.

“Jimmy Varnes,” Bucky says, taking the hand and not holding it nearly long enough for them to get a sufficient sense of Sam’s skin through the glove.

You should have held on longer.

That would have been weird.

It would not have been weird.

It would have. Hush.

They hush, but with a grumble that says they don’t want to. Why should they hush when the beautiful man has given them his name and agreed to stay the night with them?

Bucky looks over Sam’s shoulder at the front desk. “Checking in for the week. Varnes. Jimmy.”

“I have you right here, sir,” the front desk man says, typing away at his computer and finally passing over two key cards. “Room 308.”

One of the key cards is for Sam, they say, doing a happy little jiggle around Bucky’s spleen.

Yes, yes. One of them is for our brand new friend we know nothing about. He doesn’t sound disgruntled about that. But he doesn’t not sound disgruntled. Curious.

Bucky hands one of the cards to Sam with a grin. “Roomie. Why don’t you get your stuff settled. I need to grab my own from outside.”

Sam smiles again—such a bright smile, and so warm!—and goes to the elevator to find their room.

“Want to tell me what the fuck that’s all about?” Bucky asks once they’re outside again. 

He is beautiful. 

“Yeah, you’ve said. So what? We’ve seen loads of beautiful people over the years, and none of them got an invite to shack up for a solid week.”

How to explain… They send over the sensation of significance and will-keep-meeting. He is like Larry. He means something. 

Bucky frowns at the saddlebags as he undoes the clasps. “So he’s useful? We’ll get along okay as long as he agrees to help us pay our taxes? We have a common enemy? What?”

I have a feeling.

“Well, as long as you have a feeling.” 

That is sarcasm, they say. I can recognize that now, and it is unbecoming of you.

“I think it’s very becoming of me.” 

Bucky gives the motorcycle a once-over, his mind sweeping over the various security features he’s built into it over the years. He disengages the features that will explode if someone tries to steal it. 

Better avoid blowing shit up. Enough shit has already blown up here.

We are on our best behavior, they agree. No blowing shit up.

“And no bringing this poor dude into our mess, either,” Bucky says. “He signed up to stay the night, maybe the week, not to learn about alien life on earth.”

The world knows about alien life on earth. That is why we are here. Because the Chitauri roaches chased the Pal out of hiding.

“That’s alien life invading earth. There’s a difference.”

Now there is, yes. But not at first. They decided long ago not to call their team lead to complete the takeover of this planet, after all, but the original goal had been invasion.

“Another thing he probably shouldn’t be made aware of.”

Their Bucky is feeling very prickly tonight. They take a moment to rifle through his brain, trying to discover the reason for it. It cannot be Sam. Bucky has invited Wade to share their room before, many times, and Thomas to live with them while trying to find his Other Guy.

Oh. But it is Sam. Partly Sam. Bucky’s brain is full of thwarted sexy times and nerves that need to be calmed. Not the nerves before a job, which are more a matter of anticipation than anxiety, but the nerves of will-he-approve that are all about the Pal.

And a few images of weighing out what to disclose to Fury and what to keep close to the chest. Usually it is the two of them vetting a job before taking it from Larry, and not the potential job vetting them before accepting them.

You will need calming down in order to sleep, they say, starting to understand.

“Little bit, yeah.” Bucky switches over to internal communication as they reenter the hotel with the saddlebags. And before you offer to help, remember we have a guest. Not just a houseguest like Tommy, but a guy in the actual room with us. We are not fucking.

I can still help you sleep. Even if the help is only chemical.

Yeah. It’s just not as fun that way.

They will make sure he has fun dreams, then, to make up for it. If they cannot have sexy times with Sam in the room, then Bucky can have dreams about sexy times. There can be no complaining about that with another person in the room.

Don’t you dare give me wet dreams unless you’re going to clean them up without Sam realizing they’ve happened.

You are not even wanting to dream about fucking?

Bucky punches the button on the elevator despite the camera in the upper corner that would normally inspire him to take the stairs, and lets the doors close.

They very responsibly stay put rather than be caught on film exploring the tiny space.

Not if I’m going to come across as a total pervert to some dude I only invited to stay because my alien lover thinks he’s pretty and would taste good.

He would taste good.

That isn’t the point, love. I have a reputation to maintain. He sets off down the hall once the elevator releases him. I’d rather not ruin it.

But we are sacrificing that reputation to join the Pal. And Sam does not know about it in the first place.

Oh, so because he doesn’t know I kill people for a living, it’s suddenly okay to invite him to watch a live-action tentacle porno?

What are you going to say we do for a living? That is a nice change of topic. They are so good at this.

I’ll think of something. 

He had better think of it fast. It is probably going to be one of the first things they talk about when getting to know the beautiful Sam. How easy it would be to tell Sam everything the way they told Thomas everything seven years ago.

Easy? Did your senses tell you Sam’s a freak? Because all I picked up from you was interest bordering on infatuation. 

Sam is not a freak.

There you go. Bucky keys into the room. Not a freak, so we’re not disclosing everything.

Even with other freaks, we do not disclose everything, Bucky.

Shush. I need to act normal.

Shushing.

SAM

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Late evening, 05 May 2012 —

It sort of figures that his luck is running this direction. Nearly all the flights canceled, cab fare higher than usual, no rooms at the hotel… and after that slight uptick of having a room offered, it turns out to be a one-bed room.

Worst case, he can sleep on the sofa, though it doesn’t look very inviting. Best case, well, it’s a king bed, so maybe Jimmy will extend even more hospitality in his direction.

And not the least because Jimmy happens to be a good-looking man Sam might approach in a bar to chat with, get to know each other, all that.

He also happens to look uncannily like Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s bestie from the War and before it. It’s probably just his eyes playing tricks on him, of course. He’s had Captain America on the brain since it turned out he’d been recovered from the arctic and was alive once more.

“And maybe I’ll be working by his side to keep the world safe,” Sam murmurs. From aliens of all things.

He flips through the file he brought with him, all his qualifications listed out with evidence and records. Maybe it will be enough, even if he can’t physically keep up with a super soldier. Other Avengers were merely human as well. 

And they couldn’t fly.

He’s feeling pretty hopeful about his chances, anyway. Director Fury had agreed to see him, to talk it over. Worst case, he’s unofficially affiliated with the team and gets called up on an as-needed basis. But best case…

Best case, he can fly again, feel the wind rushing past him, feel the sudden dips and updrafts in his stomach, feel free. He can’t get back into the air without going on another tour, and after Riley, he just can’t stomach that. But here is another opportunity, and to work alongside Captain America of all people.

The door opens to let Jimmy in, and Sam turns to greet him only to see that he’s got the messenger bag still and a pair of saddlebags for a motorcycle. And he’s staying for a week? What’s he going to wear?

“So you travel light,” Sam says with a gesture toward the sparse luggage. “On the go a lot, I guess?”

Jimmy shrugs. “You could say that. I travel more than most people I know, anyway.” He gives the room a brief once-over glance, and then sets his meager belongings on the sofa. “I’m going to toss the place, fair warning. It might look crazy, but I swear it’s reasonable in my line of work.”

Toss the place? 

And yeah, before Sam has a chance to respond, Jimmy is indeed tossing things all over. The bed is carefully inspected, the nightstands on either side, the light bulbs and alarm clock, the bathroom, the television— Everything in the place gets a thorough review, even the artwork on the walls and the walls themselves.

“So what line of work is it that requires all this for a hotel room?” he asks while Jimmy messes with the window and curtains.

Jimmy gives him a thoughtful look, and then turns his attention to the A/C unit under the window. “We’re going to go with consultant,” he says. “I don’t have an official title or anything. Do a lot of different things, really. But I pick up lots of trade secrets on the job and can’t let those get out.”

Consultant. Not what Sam would have expected. He was thinking maybe military, or… or just maybe military. Surely someone in espionage wouldn’t have invited him to share the room. And would have a better cover story with better delivery.

“Sounds exciting.”

“It can be,” Jimmy says. He puts the sofa cushions back in place. “Involves a lot of waiting around, sometimes, but when things get busy, they get really busy. How about yourself?”

Sam puts his luggage back on the sofa. “I’m a VA counselor. Used to be down in Louisiana, but I’m transferring up here.”

“Making the world a better place, one person at a time, huh?” Jimmy nods. “That’s cool. Why’d you transfer up here, though? It might be better weather now, but in winter you’ll freeze your ass off.”

Should he tell him? They hadn’t specified that anything was confidential, but he’ll feel pretty silly if he shares his dream with this guy and it falls apart. Then again it’s not like he’ll run into Jimmy all that often in a city this big.

“Well,” Sam says, “I’m hoping to be a superhero in my off time.” He grins, letting the other man know it’s okay to laugh about that. “This seems like the place to do it.”

Jimmy doesn’t laugh, though. It’s really more of a stare, and one that’s not even all the way there, like his mind is wandering.

“That’s,” he finally says, then blinks. “Yeah, okay, we’ll go for it. Why not?” He shakes his head. “No, not that part.”

Sam’s saved from having to respond, but he’s already got his mouth open with no idea what to say when Jimmy continues.

“You know,” he says, “good for you. Maybe we’ll be partners in the field someday.”

“You’re… Wait.” It couldn’t be. That’s way too much of a coincidence. “You’re hoping to join the Avengers?”

“Indeed, I am,” Jimmy says with a laugh. “We might be the only two people in the country who saw a regiment of Chitauri attack and decided to head toward the mess.”

“Chitauri? They have a name for them already?” Last news clip he’d seen, they were still just generic aliens.

Jimmy grimaces briefly. “Or so I’ve heard. Hey, do you want room service before we crash? I’m thinking chocolate cake.”

At this time of night?

“We could celebrate our eventual and inevitable success at joining up with the Avengers,” Jimmy says. “I’ll spot you— it’s comped in the room. Come on. Have some cake.”

Jimmy picks up the phone and orders up two slices of chocolate cake while Sam just nods.

Apparently, he’s eating chocolate cake at… He looks at his watch. At 10:30 at night. It would be rude not to eat at least a little of it. 

“So what is it you’re bringing to the Avengers that they can’t live without?” Jimmy asks after he hangs up. “Team of superheroes, after all. There’s gotta be something that sets you apart.”

Sam feels more on sturdy ground here. And it’ll give him an opportunity to ask the same question in return.

“I was in the Air Force,” he says. “Pararescue.”

“Nice. Challenging work, that.”

“Rewarding work,” Sam says. Until he lost Riley, anyway. “Wasn’t just a pilot, though. We had these wing packs we wore, actual metal wings, and we flew in to rescue people where aircraft couldn’t.”

Jimmy looks suitably impressed. “Flying? Okay. Yeah. Power of flight. That’ll do it. Especially with the military training to go with it, the experience in the field. How many tours have you done?”

“Just the two.” Sam feels the jab in his heart but moves past it. “I lost my wingman and just— It struck me hard. But I want to be up in the sky again, and if people need me, I can’t turn a blind eye.”

“I know the feeling. War, man. It really takes it out of you.” Jimmy gets the door when the cake arrives, and hands over one piece to Sam. “Sorry you lost your partner out there.”

Sam accepts the cake and settles on the desk chair to eat it. At least part of it. It’s a big piece of cake, and it’s pretty late for dessert. 

“So what about yourself?” he asks.

Jimmy takes off his gloves to eat, and holds up his left hand—made of metal and impossibly intricate for such a thing. “Have a feeling they’ll find a use for a guy with a cybernetic arm who’s got plenty of training in how to use it in a fight.”

Well, then. Lost a whole arm somewhere along the way. Guess the consulting business isn’t as hands-off as he’d have thought. Or maybe is very hands off in an awful way. The man seems to be doing perfectly well with the loss, though.

“Cybernetic arm is one for the books. That’s an amazing prosthesis.” Sam takes a bite of the cake, and it’s good. The kind of cake you can only eat so much of because it’s rich and moist, but you end up eating the entire slice anyway and regretting it later.

“Yeah. It has its perks. Think I’d prefer the original, but you make do with what you have. This arm’s served me well for years and years.” Jimmy grins. “You can say I’ve grown attached to it.”

“That?” Sam says, “is horrible.” He shakes his head. “You should be ashamed of that joke. You should feel bad for making it.”

Jimmy laughs around a forkful of cake. “But I don’t,” he says. “I’m feeling pretty good about it.”

“So what kind of fighting are we talking about?” Sam asks. “Military, back alley, MMA?”

Jimmy shrugs. He’s already halfway done with his cake, and Sam wonders if he had dinner at all.

“All real fighting is ugly, brutal business,” Jimmy says. “Whether you do it in the military or on the streets, it’s all nasty. Fun, but nasty.” He gives his fork a lick. “That said, sometimes you just have to fight it out.”

“Mm.” Sam ponders it while he eats his cake. It’s true enough that sometimes it’s only a fight that can end things, but he wonders just how much of Jimmy’s fighting comes from which variety. He doesn’t look like a brawler, per se, but looks can be deceiving.

“Wouldn’t think consultant work had a lot of fighting in it,” Sam says, “at least not the physical kind.”

Jimmy laughs darkly. “You would be surprised. But no, I did most of my fighting before I got this latest gig. No one really offers me much of a fight these days.”

“Do you miss it?”

He considers it for a moment, almost seeming to debate with himself. Then: “You know, I do, kind of. It was nice to be challenged once in a while. Have to go looking for a challenge if I want one, now. And that gets messy.”

Sam figures the Avengers will give him plenty of challenges, so that’ll probably be nice for him. He doesn’t say as much, though. Ideally, there won’t be anything for the Avengers to do, because if anything involves the Avengers, things are already going very, very badly.

But if they do get that messy, maybe he can help, and maybe this Jimmy fellow won’t be too bad to work with.

 

VENOM

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Very, very late evening, 05 May 2012 —

Finally, after a whole hour of waiting, they creep out of Bucky’s neck on a stalk, where they will look like just a bit of hair in the dark of the hotel room, and use their combined senses to make sure that their bed partner is fast asleep. 

Excellent. Breathing deeply, face relaxed and peaceful, lips ever so slightly parted.

It is time to learn more about the beautiful Sam.

They slink back inside their host to make sure his sleep curled around a pillow is still deep and peaceful as well, and then send out a few tentacles to inspect the luggage on the sofa. 

So far, they have learned that the beautiful Sam is from a place called Delacroix. They have never been there, but they have been close. New Orleans. Lots of fun things to do there. And spicy food that makes up for it being dead, dead, dead by the time it’s eaten.

And crawfish. Those had been good. Sucking all the delicious brains out of them. Mmm. 

It is a good thing they had chocolate for dinner.

The beautiful Sam likes the ocean, likes to be on boats, has a boat, even. And his progenitor’s tier-adjacent offshoot has two offshoots of her own. Nephews. Sam was very fond of them all, his little family of four.

Some day, they will be fully ready to be progenitors with their Bucky, ready to release their offshoot into the world to bond with a host of their own. And maybe there will be some nephews somehow. But the tiny symbiote back in Philly is not ready yet. No truly suitable hosts, anyway. 

They could hardly handle one loser baby, back in the ‘80s, but that was a useless raw cake baby, and not a symbiote. They can handle their offshoot, even while traveling. But they cannot leave their offshoot there for too long. As soon as they are settled in the Avengers, they will need to move their offshoot to New York. Maybe there will be a good host here. 

If not… Larry has offshoots, and one of them has offshoots of his own. There are hosts available if needed, even if Bucky needs convincing.

They flip through the wallet again, looking at pictures of the nephews and of the sister. Pictures of other people that weren’t mentioned. Likely friends, or maybe the progenitors of the beautiful Sam and his lovely sister.

There is the identification card with all of Sam’s basic measurements, his cards for making purchases, some cash. Oh, there is a condom in the wallet as well. The beautiful Sam is prepared and cautious. These are excellent traits.

They put the wallet back and rifle through the clothing in the luggage. Sam is prepared to wear seven whole outfits, and has a—

The wallet falls to the floor with a gentle plop, and they freeze, hoping that the beautiful Sam isn’t disturbed. He doesn’t seem to be, and after a tense minute, they turn their attention back to the luggage. 

There are two books inside, and a whole zippered pouch for what Bucky calls toiletries even though they don’t involve the toilet. They unzip the bag and pull all of the things out of it. Shampoo— smells nice. Very clean, and crisp. Sam will smell like this, clean and crisp, when he washes his hair.

They send another tentacle over into the bathroom, to sample the beautiful Sam’s toothpaste. Just a squeeze of it. Oops. Now there is toothpaste all over the counter. How do you put toothpaste back in the tube? Maybe they shouldn’t be doing this, after all. Bucky had said not to.

Said they shouldn’t make it weird for Sam.

But they are weird, both of them. Apart and together, they are a pair of weird losers and they should not have to hide their true nature. Not make it weird. Might as well ask birds to stop singing.

They wipe the toothpaste up, but it just smears all over the counter. And they can’t risk turning on the water… Or maybe they can. They turn on the tap just a little, and try to get the toothpaste off the counter. It only ends up watery and everywhere, including on the faucet itself. Hmm.

They pull that tentacle back inside. When cleaning up a mess makes it worse, you put the shovel down and stop digging, after all. 

Sam has deodorant that smells nice, too. It complements the shampoo and—

Sam is stirring!

They dart back inside their host just as the light on the other nightstand flicks on. 

Chapter 4: Confessions

SAM

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Just after midnight, 06 May 2012 —

The water’s running. He’s not sure how it woke him up, since it’s just a trickle, but it’s definitely running, and it wasn’t before.

He rubs at an eye and looks over at Jimmy, still dead to the world and in exactly the same position as before. If he cuddles people as hard as he’s cuddling that pillow, Sam’s… Well, Sam’s not going to think about it, is what.

He slips out of the bed and goes to turn the water off. If there’s a leak, they should report that, maybe get it fixed if the plumbers aren’t all otherwise occupied by the destruction in the city.

What he finds when he turns on the bathroom light is not a leak. It’s a toothpaste catastrophe.

Someone has squeezed his travel toothpaste hard enough to remove most of its contents, and then smeared that toothpaste all over the counter and faucet. There’s even a smear of it on the mirror.

What the hell?

“Someone,” yeah right. There’s only one someone it could be, and he’s fast asleep. This mess is still wet and fresh. And baffling. Why would Jimmy do this? Why would anyone do this? For that matter, how would anyone do this? If the water running woke him up, surely Jimmy getting out of bed would have, too.

“You know what, Sammy,” he murmurs to himself. “It can wait until morning.”

But as he’s heading back to the bed, he spots his luggage looking… gutted. His clothes are in complete disarray, his toiletries are scattered about out of their bag, his wallet is not where he left it…

Yeah, this can’t wait until morning. This is way more than toothpaste.

He goes to the door and turns on the main lights, looking at the piles of rumpled shirts and unpaired socks. Every stitch of clothing has been unfolded and tossed about.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Sam says, when the light fails to wake the man up. Or maybe he’s just pretending and has been awake this whole time.

Jimmy reacts like he’s waking up from a sound sleep, bleary and a bit confused. “What are you sorry about?” he mumbles to himself.

“What the hell, man?” Sam asks.

Jimmy rubs at an eye with his prosthesis. “What the hell, what?”

“What do you mean what?” Sam gestures at luggage. “And the mess in the bathroom’s worse.”

Jimmy stares at the luggage for a moment, looking exhausted and not only in the physical sense. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I told you not to make it weird.” He shakes his head. “So, of course, it just figures.”

Jimmy gets out of bed with a sigh. “I’ll help you fold clothes. Least I can do.”

“That’s it? You tossed my luggage while I slept, and that’s it?” That’s all the man has to say for himself? He’ll help fold the clothes he unfolded? Hasn’t he been through all of them thoroughly enough already?

“I’d apologize,” Jimmy says, “but I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again. So the apology seems disingenuous.”

Sam watches him fold a shirt in what’s a passable approximation of the way he’d had it folded earlier. “So, what? You just sleep-rifle through people’s things at night?”

“Not me, no.” Jimmy adds another folded shirt to the pile. “And you can stop pleading your case, sweetheart,” he mutters. “I said ‘don’t make it weird for him.’ Emphasis on don’t.”

Jimmy grabs the next closest item, and finds the sock’s partner to pair them up. “Going through this man’s belongings in the middle of the night makes it weird,” he says, talking to the next pair of socks. 

“Do you see how that makes it weird?” Jimmy asks himself. “And I don’t care if you were planning to put it all back. You fold clothes like you’ve never seen them before.” 

His eyes dart toward Sam briefly. “Yes, I’m aware.”

Sam raises both eyebrows. It is too early in the morning for this. He’s going to have to find somewhere else to stay, even if it’s under a bridge somewhere.

Jimmy sighs and looks directly at Sam finally. “Look, it’s already weird, so I’m going to go for broke. I want to show you something that will make it all make sense. Can I show you something, Sam?”

Sam isn’t sure what could possibly make all this make sense in any way other than Jimmy being a sleepwalking snoop who talks to himself more than is healthy, but he nods all the same. “Sure.”

Jimmy holds out his right hand, palm up, and a wriggling black worm comes up out of the center of his palm. The worm stops at about a foot long and swells up to be about as thick as a thumb, with a little tennis ball-sized knob on the end.

And then everything Sam knew about life picks itself up and throws itself out the window as the ball sprouts two milky white crescent eyes that somehow look contrite despite being a pair of moon shapes in a black blob at the end of a noodle coming out of a guy’s palm.

“What?”

“This is my extraterrestrial life partner. They get curious about things and have no boundaries whatsoever. Clearly.”

The noodle bobs its head and then elongates, twining around Jimmy’s arm until its head hovers near Jimmy’s. The noodle is actually kind of cute. Or if he’s going to be honest, ridiculously cute. Bordering on adorable.

“V, apologize to this man.”

And then the noodle’s face splits in two to reveal a mouth lined with needle teeth and filled with a red tongue far longer than logic says is possible, and adorable is off the table. 

…It’s still kind of cute, though. 

“I am sorry, Beautiful Sam. I wanted to know more about you,” the noodle says in a voice that’s far too deep to come from such a small head. And strangely wet.

…Beautiful Sam?

At least he’s not the only one thrown off by the moniker. Jimmy looks like he’s about to swallow his own tongue while looking at the ceiling and maybe praying for patience.

“And now you have no more toothpaste.” It sounds downright mournful about this.

“Yeah, we’re going to get you a rag and you’re going to clean the counter, love. Then we’ll buy Sam some new toothpaste tomorrow.”

Sam watches as Jimmy does just that, marching over to the bathroom and holding out the rag he’d used to wipe his face down last night. 

“Get to it. This is what you can do to make it up to Sam.”

Another noodle emerges from Jimmy’s right shoulder and swiftly becomes far more creepy tentacle than cute little noodle. It can turn on the tap, wet and wring the rag, and wipe up the mess, too. All on its own without any direction or gesturing from Jimmy.

“I really am sorry about this,” Jimmy says while the tentacle washes the mirror. “I thought we could go at least a night without anything weird. But I figure, you’re here to join the Avengers, so you’re going to get to know weird anyway, might as well start now.”

“It’s fine,” Sam finds himself saying. Is it fine? There’s a tentacle alien with a rag cleaning up toothpaste, and all of his luggage has been sorted through and handled by that same tentacle alien while its… host? carrier? While Jimmy slept.

But just a day ago, two days, now, aliens attacked New York and the city was saved by superheroes including a flying man with a hammer and a gigantic green man. And a defrosted WWII hero. Jimmy’s right— If he gets in with the Avengers, his life will be weird, and he might as well start now.

“So I’m guessing the alien is the real reason you think the Avengers will accept you on the team,” Sam says. “And not the metal prosthesis and combat background.”

Jimmy grins. “The specific nature of my ‘combat background’ will definitely help my case, but yeah. Venom makes it a sure thing.”

“That’s his name? Venom?” Sounds pleasant.

“Their name. But yeah. This is Venom, not quite in the flesh at this point.” Jimmy accepts a cheek nuzzle from the— from Venom’s little tennis ball head. “There’s a lot more to this situation, but this seems like plenty to share for now.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, this is plenty for now.” He’s not sure he can take more at this point. Not without really digesting what’s just happened, and what is still happening.

“Now we will buy you new toothpaste.”

Jimmy looks like he maybe disagrees, like he was planning to do that in the actual morning, when the sun was up, but then he shrugs. “Yeah, sure. We’ll head out and get you some toothpaste tonight, same kind as got wasted.”

The various tentacles retreat into Jimmy like they were reeled in, giving Sam a wiggle at the last moment before disappearing.

Sam can’t help but stare at Jimmy’s shoulder while the man pulls on yesterday’s clothes over the boxers and undershirt he wore to bed. There were once actual, literal tentacles coming out of that shoulder, and now they are nowhere to be seen, without even a residue. It shouldn’t be possible.

“If you want to be packed up and gone when we get back, no hard feelings and we’ll see you on the team later.” Jimmy slides his feet into his boots and bends to lace them up. “But the offer to share the room still stands.”

“…I’ll think it over.” 

BUCKY

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: After midnight, 06 May 2012 —

“Well, congratulations. Day one and we’ve made it weird.”

Bucky stuffs the last bite of chocolate into his mouth and then shoves the wrapper in a pocket while Venom forms a helmet for him to “wear” while they ride.

I did not mean to do it.

“Yes you did. You just didn’t mean to get caught. You could have at least cleaned the toothpaste up.” He knows they know how. Venom has a bad habit of over squeezing things that come in tubes, and with that habit comes the responsibility to clean up after themself.

I thought it would make too much noise.

Well, that’s fair, Bucky supposes. No telling how light a sleeper their roommate happened to be. And with their luck, Venom would have knocked things into the sink in their efforts to be silent.

So we will have to tell Larry about our arrangement, Venom says, just a hint of victory in their voice. He can learn about me now!

“How do you figure?”

Sam knows. The Pal will know. Thomas knows. So the whole Avengers team will know, if we work with them. Nick Fury will need to know. The world might find out on camera.

Well, shit. That’s true enough. He doesn’t suppose it’ll be too bad telling Larry that much. It probably wouldn’t kill him from the shock at this point. They’ve already established that “Jimmy” is just an alias but also the only name they’re willing to share. And that he was the Winter Soldier, and enhanced, and unaging.

Add in an alien, and that’s not too much more to swallow.

And we can show ourself to him, our fully bonded form.

“Maybe we stick with the tentacles and your head, and not go full-fledged hulking space monster on him.”

You like going full-fledged hulking space monster. We both like it.

“Yeah, but Larry’s like eighty or something. He’s spent the last four decades living off coffee, tobacco and spite.”

Mm. I do worry about his heart. And his lungs.

“So maybe we spare him the shock.”

His offshoots can handle the shock.

Bucky half wishes he wasn’t riding, just because the urge to shut his eyes in exasperation is so powerful. As it is, he keeps his eyes on the road. Venom could get them out of any number of bad wrecks, but it’s better if they don’t have to.

“But can they keep it to themselves?” Bucky pulls into a drugstore parking lot. “I’m on the more-is-merrier train, love, but the more people who know about you, the more chances of Des Moines 2.0.”

It’s a risk they’ve taken with some people, but not a lot of them. Wade’s never going to turn informant for A.I.M. or anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to tell him everything. Even freaks need to keep some secrets. Especially since Wade’s a talker by nature.

Kevin would tell his wife, Venom reasons, but Jason and Jennifer would keep the secret well. We could show Jennifer when we are in Philly next.

This time, Bucky does close his eyes and shake his head. It’s one thing to have Larry’s kids picking up the dubiously ethical legal ropes from their father, and another thing entirely to confront his granddaughter with the full truth.

Think about it.

“I’m thinking about it.” Bucky heads into the store with his “helmet” under one arm and switches to internal conversation. I’m thinking about having to find someone new to take care of our place when we travel because Jennifer is too freaked out to come water the plants.

Venom sends him a wave of disagreement with a hint of got-u-there. Jennifer has helped us polish our arsenal, and knows that we keep our go bag in the oven. She would not freak out.

Yeah, Bucky admits. You may be right there. Okay, if this thing with Fury goes well, we’ll let Jennifer in on the whole mess.

The mess, the whole mess, and nothing but the mess?

Thought you’d be upset at being called a mess.

We are a mess. Both of us. A big mess.

Venom snakes a thin tentacle out to grab at a chocolate bar on their way to the toiletries aisle.

“We have chocolate back at the hotel.”

Not this kind.

Bucky sighs and accepts the chocolate. Fine. You remember what kind of toothpaste your “Beautiful Sam” had?

That one there. Third from the right, with the bright blue stripe.

Thanks. Bucky picks up a travel size, just on the off chance that Sam’ll need to fly again and a big tube of toothpaste will get confiscated by the TSA.

Oh! Get potato chips.

No. 

Get potato chips! Venom demands.

Where are we going to put potato chips, V? In my jacket? Where they’ll get crushed?

I want potato chips, though.

And I want to still be curled up in bed without anything having gotten weird for Sam. Bucky puts the chocolate and toothpaste on the counter to purchase and digs his card out of his back pocket. We don’t always get what we want, love. Suffer in silence.

They do, in fact, suffer in silence for almost the entire ride back to the hotel. Or more accurately, they sulk in silence. Bucky’s almost tempted to look for a bodega and buy some chips after all, but it’s fucking late, and he’s fucking tired.

And he’s as good as promised to fill Larry and his granddaughter in on the source of his perpetual weirdness and the person he’s really always talking to. Who isn’t himself. And maybe Larry’s younger son, Jason, too.

That’s three more people in the world with the opportunity to betray them and possibly set a trap that could hurt Venom horribly. 

And you, Venom adds in a grumble. Soldier.

“I’m more concerned about your safety than mine, love. I’m just an enhanced super soldier with a cybernetic arm. There’s a limit to how fascinating I can be to the wrong people. You, though.”

Bucky shakes his head as they pull into the hotel lot.

“If anyone tries to take you from me, I’ll burn the world down to get you back. The world and everyone in it.”

Venom is silent on their way up to the room, wrapped around his spleen and apparently struggling to balance how disgruntled they are about the potato chips with how pleased Bucky’s statement makes them.

And Sam, actually sort of to his surprise, is still in the room, and semi-unpacked. 

Guess we weren’t too weird.

Venom swirls from a helmet shape to their full-sized head and extends a tentacle coiled around the little tube of toothpaste, which is held dangerously tight in those black loops and looks like it might pop at any moment. 

“Ta-da!”

Sam looks at them with wide eyes, and then hesitantly holds out a hand for the toothpaste. “That’s, um,” he says, not taking his eyes off Venom’s glistening teeth. “Thanks. For the toothpaste.”

“It is the same as the one I squeezed,” Venom says, dropping the nearly-burst tube into Sam’s palm. “I remembered.”

Sam nods mutely.

“It’s the different face, right?” Bucky asks as he makes his way over to the bed to take off his boots. “Or did you forget what they sounded like?”

Sam shakes himself and tears his eyes away from Venom, going instead to deposit the toothpaste in the bathroom nook.

“It’s definitely not the little noodle from before,” Sam finally says. “Is that the…” He looks at Venom to address them properly. “Is that your real face? Or is the smaller one the real you?”

“I can look like many things,” Venom brags, wet and gravelly to an even greater extent than usual.

“Convenient,” Sam says faintly. 

“It is very convenient,” they agree. “And you are very beautiful. I am glad we will see a lot of each other.”

“Right.”

Sam looks like he’s debating whether he should add something like “You’re beautiful, too” or “Thank you,” or “Can’t wait,” but he ultimately leaves off with the one word.

Bucky shakes his head again. What a cluster fuck of awkward interactions this whole evening has been.

“Do you want your special chocolate now, or in the actual morning?” Bucky asks as he fluffs his pillow.

“Morning. Before pancakes.”

“You got it, love.” He sets the chocolate bar on the nightstand and crawls into bed. “Please, please, whatever you do, leave Sam alone for the rest of the night. He needs his sleep as much as I do.”

Venom nods and draws closer, giving Bucky’s cheek a fond lick before slipping back inside. A moment later, a much smaller head pokes out of Bucky’s shoulder.

“Good night, Beautiful Sam.”

“…good night, uh, Venom.” 

Bucky grins once Venom disappears again. “You’re handling all this really well, you know.”

Sam shrugs and hesitantly makes his way to his side of the bed. “Well, I’d scream,” he says, “but I don’t want anyone to make a noise complaint and get us kicked out of the only room in town.”

Chapter 5: Interview with the asshole

TONY

— Stark Tower, New York City: Mid-morning, 06 May 2012 —

It’s not that he’s lonely, or that he’s ever been lonely. Because he hasn’t. Isn’t. There’s no loneliness here, just a lot of time spent on solo pursuits before it was time to “work well with others” and chase down an alien godling.

So it’s not that there’s anything like loneliness going on. There isn’t. He swears.

But it’s still kind of nice that Bruce hasn’t made any noises about disappearing back into the jungles of the world.

Because it was nice having a science buddy to work with, someone he could bounce ideas off of, someone he could trade knowing looks with, someone he could poke with screwdrivers and offer blueberries to.

And hell, maybe the guy does turn into a huge green anger machine from time to time. There’s nothing to say he can’t redesign some of this tower to be Hulk-proof. He’s got to rebuilt big chunks of it anyway. He might as well make it safe for all his new teammates.

He’s got teammates now. Actual teammates that work on the same team doing the same things, or at least working toward the same goal.

Not just people cheering him on or warning him away, but actual colleagues with nothing better to do than stick around cleaning up New York and hanging around the tower for whatever reasons they have.

Like Bruce. 

No signs of him heading out to help, probably because of this Ross asshole he mentioned. But he’s still here and not off hiding. Still accepted the lab tour. Still looked interested. Was interested. Tony could tell.

And it’s been a while now. Or at least, it’s been a couple of days. And he hasn’t sidled up to anyone and asked for help smuggling himself out of the country. Has actually taken up the offer to get clothes brought in so he’s got more to wear. 

Might actually be planning to settle down.

Ah, a science buddy. That would be really nice. It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Technically, the whole Avengers team could be part of that beautiful friendship. 

There’s Point Break, who’s coming back after getting his adopted murdering shithead of a brother settled in Asgardian jail. A good one for testing the Iron Man armor against, since he can take a licking and keep on ticking. Fun to teasingly insult, or insultingly tease, whichever. Doesn’t seem to take anything too personally. 

And Itsy Bitsy, who is at least not pretending to be Natalie Rushman anymore. He’s not sure how friendly they’ll end up being, but it would be nice if she and Pepper still got along. Pepper needs some friends, too, for all that she claims to be fine. Tony’s not blind. If he needs more friends, so does she. Rhodey is more long distance these days, but Pepper only has a therapist to chat with.

The Capsicle should keep thawing out as time goes on, which would make him a bit less fun to irritate, but might mean that he was up to the task of poking Tony back. And it will be a lot of fun showing him what all he missed while he was masquerading as an ice cube. 

And Cupid… He doesn’t have a whole lot to say about the archer other than to be curious about his trick arrows. Who at S.H.I.E.L.D. designed those for him? Or did he design them and someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. simply did the fabrication? And how can Tony add to his quiver? Making trick arrows could be a whole lot of fun, and he is there for it.

Mean Green is an ideal science buddy, of course—when he’s not angry—but his presence gives Tony an excuse to experiment with a suit that can take even a punch from a Hulk. Because what if they can’t calm him down after a mission and have to exhaust him sparring? The Mark VII won’t stand up to a Hulk, but there’s no need to stop there. What about a Hulkbuster suit that can duke it out with the greenest member of the party?

Yeah, life could be really social if everyone stays more or less in the tower all the time, instead of it just being Avengers headquarters for use when the team is gathered to do official Avengers business. 

It’s really Pepper’s tower, though, with just some rooms set aside for the team to stay in, and some conference rooms maybe they can use, plus room on the roof for a quinjet… Still mostly Pepper’s. And Stark Industries, of course, is housed underneath the personal labs and the living areas. Can’t forget that.

But aside from all of that, this place could be an Avengers clubhouse if they all stick around. And that’s exciting. He’s always been kicked out of various clubhouses for not fitting in, but no one here fits in well unless they’re faking it really well. In the tower, they wouldn’t have to fake it.

 

SAM

— Office near Times Square, New York City: Around noon, 06 May 2012 —

Sam takes a deep breath and tries to settle into the chair while waiting for his interview with Nick Fury. 

Settling is still hard, even after checking in with the receptionist, getting a guest pass, and being shown to this makeshift waiting room. It isn’t that he’s nervous about this interview—that, he’s pretty sure he has nailed just by dint of his qualifications. 

As he’d told Jimmy last night, before the unforgettable toothpaste confession and extraterrestrial introductions, he can fly if Fury can liberate his wings or Stark can remake them. He has military training, including discipline that many of the Avengers might lack. He’s in touch with regular people and can help with negotiations or with calming the unnerved. 

In short, he’s a catch.

No, he’s not worried about his interview. But there’s something unnerving about putting on a helmet made out of goopy gorpy alien slime and getting on the back of a motorcycle driven by a maniac in an alien helmet of his own. 

It had been cheaper and quicker than trying to get a taxi in this city, and they were going to the same place, after all. And he felt bad turning down the offer. Jimmy may or may not have been looking forward to it, but Venom was so earnest sounding… even if they also sounded like a sopping wet bag of rocks caught in a giant’s throat.

And hell, Jimmy had driven them to a brunch spot and gotten them something to eat before coming here. Chocolate pancakes, hot chocolate, fried up potatoes, and a rare steak for Jimmy, and a ham sandwich for Sam, who’d already eaten breakfast because he was up early enough to go to the hotel’s buffet.

So that wild ride with the constant chatter of Venom ringing in his ears is taking a while to come down from. Sam just hopes he’s calmed his nerves enough to present himself well when it’s his turn to interview with Fury. 

It seems likely that Jimmy’s interview is going well, since it’s still going on. Sam checks his watch—it’s been fifteen minutes now since Jimmy disappeared down the hall with a strict-looking woman wearing her hair in a bun who introduced herself only as “Hill.”

Either they are using codenames already or—

“Sam Wilson?” 

He gets to his feet and gives Hill a pleasant but professional smile. “That’s me.”

Sam follows her down a short hallway and into a room with a man he knows from the news to be Nick Fury.

In person, Fury seems even less approachable than he had seemed on the news explaining the Avengers Initiative. He also looks distinctly annoyed by something. Maybe Jimmy? Or would it be Venom? 

Sam wonders if Jimmy mentioned that part of his qualifications. He decides that either way, it’s not his place to reveal a thing. That, and he should demonstrate that he can keep secrets as big as an alien possessing a man. With the Avengers, there will be secrets that big, and he’ll be tasked with making sure the public doesn’t know.

“Director Fury,” he says in greeting. “It’s good to meet you. Thanks for seeing me.”

Fury doesn’t offer his hand, but he does gesture that Sam sit across the table from him.

Sam sits. 

Let the interview begin.

“Let’s cut straight to the chase, Wilson.” Fury has his materials spread out before him, and none of Jimmy’s that Sam can see. “Air Force. Pararescue. Two tours. Lost a flight partner. VA counselor, previously in New Orleans, now relocating to New York.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can operate an EXO-7 Falcon wing pack.” Fury looks up at him and sets a picture of Sam using the wing pack on top of the other papers on the table. “You’re good. One of the best.”

“I am, sir. The best now, with Riley gone,” Sam says. “No one else managed the pack as well as we did.”

“I’m sorry you lost him,” Fury says. “It sounds like you made quite a pair.”

Sam nods. “We were extremely effective.”

“So you can work with a partner. Can you work with a whole team of partners? With everyone doing something else, but all coordinated.”

Sam lets the question slide off his back like water off a duck. He won’t be ruffled. Fury knows his training. He knows that that training ensured that he worked well with a diverse team.

“I can, yes. I have extensive training in that area.”

“Think you can keep up with Captain America?”

Sam laughs. “That’s a tall order, but I’m up for the challenge.”

“How do you feel about aliens?” Fury asks. “The outer space kind.”

“Like the Chitauri?” Sam asks, and then mentally kicks himself as Fury raises an eyebrow. “I’m alright with them if they’re peaceful, but I’ll protect this planet and its people with my life if they’re not.”

“And if they’re fighting on our side?” 

Sam nods. “That’s the best case scenario, isn’t it? If they’ve come to help.”

Fury looks up at Hill and they share a look Sam can’t quite interpret.

“Well, you came in with Varnes, so we know you can handle high-stress colleagues.”

Fury stands up and extends a hand across the table. “Welcome aboard, on a trial basis.”

That was… quick. Like Fury had already made his mind up and the interview was just a formality. So why did Jimmy’s seem to take longer?

Sam shakes Fury’s hand. “Thank you, sir. I’m looking forward to meeting the team. Is there anything I should—”

“Paperwork can wait, unless you’ve got some time on your hands?”

Sam checks his watch. Well, either Jimmy will wait for him to get out, or he won’t. Worst case, Sam’ll get a taxi.

BUCKY

— Office near Times Square, New York City: A little after noon, 06 May 2012 —

“So the ghost story is real,” Fury murmurs as Bucky takes a seat. 

“Real as you are,” Bucky says. The seat is warm, which wouldn’t make sense unless someone else was sitting in it for a while. 

The beautiful Sam was here just now. You smell his shampoo.

So they just called him back to split them up for a bit, and interviewed Sam first. Anything to keep people on their toes, Bucky thinks bitterly. 

We missed him. Our beaut—

He’s not ours. Stop that.

There’s a grumble somewhere near his kidneys, but they do stop their ridiculous pining. 

Bucky will admit that Sam is a good guy. Nice. Accepting of things most people would shriek at and run away from. And yes, good looking. But that doesn’t make him “our” anything. Sam’s his own guy and that will be the case until Sam decides to change it. Not them. And no matter what Venom feels, Bucky isn’t putting the moves on Sam, so that’s not going to happen.

They have enough on their plate, between their offshoot and finding Steve…

I swear, if it wasn’t for Steve…

We would never be agreeing to work with the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes, Venom finishes for him, apparently done being grumpy. We would never have met the beautiful Sam.

Venom sends him a wave of relief that they did meet Sam and can now spend more time with him once they get past this interview thing.

Yeah, yeah.

“So, HRS, LLC.,” Fury says, flipping a folder open on the table that’s serving as a desk in this room. “Your go-between speaks highly of your work for the company, but neglected to disclose your job title or the nature of your work. And we’ve picked up your business cards from a number of crime scenes.”

Bucky grins. Good old Larry.

“Care to explain?”

Not particularly, Bucky thinks. But he’s here to get past Fury, and so explain he will. Just… He’s gotta protect his company, too, just in case he needs to fall back on it if this doesn’t work. 

“Ask away,” Bucky says. 

“What does HRS stand for?”

“HYDRA Removal Services.” 

That’s not so bad a thing to share with Fury. Let him know HYDRA’s still out there so maybe he can do something about it, and let him know that they won’t stop taking HYDRA down until the last member is so much fleshy tidbits stuck between Venom’s teeth.

“HYDRA was dismantled during WWII,” Fury says, “after the Red Skull’s demise on the Valkyrie. The Howling Commandos cleaned up the rest of the organization.”

“Cut off one head,” Bucky mutters. “HYDRA always grows back. The trick is finding out where to apply the pesticide next.”

“And that’s what you’ve been doing?” Fury asks, his voice dripping sarcastic disbelief. “You’re an effective hitman, even if too flashy for your own good. But hunting HYDRA? I doubt that.”

Bucky shrugs. “Your loss. I’ll never stop hunting them down like the rats they are.”

Fury narrows his eye. “Where do you bury the bodies?”

“Bodies?”

“Of your victims. Your ‘targets.’ You leave messes behind, and calling cards. But never bodies. So where are the bodies buried?”

“They’re not.”

Fury glowers at him. “Look, I know you have your mysterious ‘they were never seen or heard from again’ schtick, but I need to know where you bury the bodies—figuratively—if you’re going to work with us.”

“I don’t bury them anywhere.”

“Or where you stash them. What you do with them.”

Ugh. He’d really hoped to save this for much later in the process of getting there. Have it slipped into a contract by Larry when no one was looking. Keep it on the down-low. 

“No one’s gonna come back to haunt you once I take ‘em out,” Bucky promises. “It’s a one-way trip.”

Fury’s lips pinch together in a flat line of frustration. “I appreciate the mystery, and mum’s the word when it comes to whatever adoring fans you think you have in the world. But I’m going to need the truth.”

Bucky hesitates. He’s pretty sure they could bust out of this place without a problem, even if the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes went with sonic blasts and flamethrowers. But he wants to get through this interview and join the team so he can be near Steve. But if he says what happens to the targets… 

“It’d be really nice if you just trusted me on this one.”

Fury is unmoved. “I’m sure it would be.”

I think you should just tell him.

Yeah, you’re probably—

Worst case, we eat him.

“No!” Bucky yelps. “Not that last bit.”

Hill raises an eyebrow and shares a look with Fury.

Shit. That was out loud. 

Yes, it was.

Bucky shrugs in what he hopes is not an overly jocular manner, but can’t be sure of because he’s feeling more frazzled and less smooth than usual suddenly, as they near the precipice of actually telling S.H.I.E.L.D. what their deal is. 

There’s no coming back from this. 

“Friends,” Bucky says with a chuckle. “You know how it is. Never shut up, do they?”

You are really selling it, pal. You sound very sane.

Shut up.

“So, alright, then,” Bucky says. “You want the truth, here it is.”

He sits forward in the chair and spreads his gloved fingers out on the tabletop. “There are no bodies left behind, because a buddy of mine eats them.”

“A buddy of yours,” Fury repeats. “Eats them.”

“A buddy of mine eats them.” Bucky nods. “Usually before they die. Or as they die. Simultaneous to the dying. Apparently they taste better that way.”

They do! More nutritious, too.

“And are more nutritious,” Bucky obligingly adds. He shrugs. “And we do like to look after my liver.”

Fury stares at him, unimpressed, for almost a minute, and then closes the folder and stands up.

“Then we’re done here,” Fury says. “Come back and try again when you’re feeling more cooperative, and I might give you a second chance.”

No! Venom coils unhappily in the pit of his stomach as Fury and Hill both turn to leave the room. The Pal! 

“Hey, I told you exactly what you wanted to know, at great personal risk.”

“He did, he did,” Venom insists, having split off a tendril with a small head to give themself a voice.

Fury whips around to face them, his eye looking for the second voice in the room and finding Venom’s mini-head on its inky black tentacle. He eyes the head for a moment, and then slowly sits back down. He opens the folder and takes a note. 

“Okay,” Fury says. “So keep telling me things. Starting with, what is that?”

“I am Venom.”

“This is my good pal,” Bucky says. “My extraterrestrial life partner. Anyone nasty enough to end up on my hit list is tasty enough to end up on their dinner menu.”

Venom twines around Bucky’s arm and torso, nuzzling his cheek affectionately. “We are a good team. And we will eat anyone who says otherwise.”

“No we won’t,” Bucky says promptly, with a long-suffering sigh.

“We should. No one would say we were not a good team if we ate them.”

Bucky sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “If we eat everyone who crosses us, no one is going to be left to be afraid of us and spread the word.”

“We can spread the word.”

“Not if you’re so busy stuffing your face that we can’t a get a fucking job working with these people.”

Remember our pal, Bucky thinks at them. This is to get Steve back.

“We are a good team,” Venom says. “You have me. And I have you.”

“Yes, we are, love. But why don’t we try to join this team, too, huh?” Bucky asks, fully aware of the eyes on them while they discuss this. He’s never felt more vulnerable short of being vivisected. “Can we do that? Like we agreed?”

“…Hungry.” Venom slinks back into Bucky in an obvious sulk and curls up just under his pancreas.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky mutters. “Calm your tits, pal.” 

He reaches into a pocket and unwraps a somewhat melted Snickers bar, which he eats in a few large bites while Fury and Hill pin him down like a bug with the three eyes they have between them.

“So explain this situation,” Fury says.

Bucky gets the distinct impression that he’s not leaving this temporary headquarters without being a member of the Avengers, either willingly or under duress. Fury won’t let them just change their mind and head back down to Philly to continue their operations. They’re in it now whether they want it or not. 

Thankfully, this is still something they want. 

Bucky swallows his last bite and holds the wrapper out for Venom to lick at—every bit of chocolate helps.

And just as Fury is gesturing toward a trash can in the corner, Venom transforms Bucky’s shoulder into a mouth ringed with teeth and licks the wrapper with obvious hunger. Guess brunch wasn’t enough chocolate.

“Venom is an alien,” Bucky says as though nothing is happening. Yeah, just an alien—no one needs to know what kind specifically. “From outer space. A comet or something. They hitched a ride with me to get out of a research lab filled with rabbits back in the 60s, and we’ve been together ever since.”

Bucky pats his jacket to see if the second candy bar is where he thinks it is, and then thinks better of it. 

There’s no sense in revealing Venom’s home world of Klyntar, or their original goal of world subjugation and farming of life forms. And definitely no need to mention that there’s a boss of a sort that hasn’t checked up on Venom’s progress yet.

“Do you guys have a cafeteria or something? Could really go for some potatoes. Tater tots, fries, mashed up, hash browns, whatever. We’re not picky. Even a sweet potato would—”

“Gross,” Venom says out of his shoulder as a tentacle reaches into Bucky’s jacket to free and unwrap the second Snickers bar.

Bucky nods. “Actually, a sweet potato would not be fine. I take that back.”

He opens his mouth to take a bite of the candy bar Venom feeds him.

Fury watches him chew for a moment. And then: “I don’t like this. But I don’t want you off somewhere I can’t monitor the situation. So welcome aboard. Provisionally. Very provisionally.”

Chapter 6: Story within a story

Notes:

Sigh. Wasn’t planning to post this until Tuesday, but events conspire against me, haha!

BUCKY

— Office near Times Square, New York City: A little after noon, 06 May 2012 —

Provisionally, Bucky thinks as he leaves the building and leans against the exterior near the door to wait for Sam. Provisionally my ass. I’m in long enough to get to Steve, and that’s all that matters. If we have to take S.H.I.E.L.D. down like we’re dismantling A.I.M and HYDRA, then we will.  

We do not want a war with the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes, Venom reminds him.

And that’s true. They don’t. Not the least part because the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes seem to pull the Avengers’ strings to some extent. Or at least one S.H.I.E.L.D. asshole does.

Nick Fury, head of the Avengers Initiative but also Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Too many hats to wear equally. He can’t lead a team of global superheroes beholden to no one country and also an organization specifically designed to protect the homeland against threats. 

Those are pulling in opposite directions. 

Or at least answering to different people higher up. 

We could eat him and then no one is wearing hats or pulling strings. 

We can’t eat Nick Fury.

That is, they could, but now S.H.I.E.L.D. would know exactly where to look for the culprit. Not their address, though they probably have that on file somewhere under a different name or persons of interest file. But Bucky doesn’t want to go into hiding or live life on the run again. He’s comfortable in the specific shadows they’ve wrapped around themselves and traveled in. 

Only a few select allies know where they live—Larry, and Larry’s sons Jason and William, and Larry’s granddaughter Jennifer. Not even Wade knows where they actually live. He’s too much of a talker. And worse, he’d come visit. Wade is unpredictable like that and Jennifer shouldn’t meet him.

So they don’t need to get S.H.I.E.L.D. actually after them if they connect those dots. Playing nice with S.H.I.E.L.D. should do the trick, even if they’ve been avoiding them for so long. 

But the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes don’t need to know where he lives to make his life hell if he bails on this thing now. And if they try to kick him out for something—provisionally. what a jerk—then he’s going to have to completely reinvent himself and they’d have to learn how not to leave a trail of disappearances while also keeping Venom fed properly and often. 

They cannot kick us out, Venom grumbles, clearly picking up on Bucky’s mood. We will eat anyone who tries to separate us from the Pal. 

Bucky’s not sure they can do that if there’s a concerted effort to drive them away—not if Steve has to watch them eat his companions. He doesn’t think there’s much that would be able to turn Steve against them, but eating Steve’s friend group might do the trick. But he doesn’t challenge Venom’s statement. 

All they need now, really, is to let Larry know the good news, and to let him complain at length about how stupid this plan is. 

And wait for the beautiful Sam to be accepted onto the team. We can get lunch to celebrate!

“Already had brunch, love. I doubt Sam’ll be hungry.”

He could watch you eat. I enjoy watching you eat. I still remember when it was new to you and you were sure that you did not eat.

“Something tells me most people don’t enjoy sitting somewhere watching someone eat, V. That’s a you thing.”

And a you thing, Venom adds, their voice a soft ripple through his mind. You needed to learn how to eat. Sam was born knowing.

Bucky smiles. He recalls trying to feed the loser baby, and that hadn’t gone well. Such a mess. Human babies aren’t born eating, anyway. 

They just are not born eating soggy Cheetos.

Bucky wonders how the loser baby is doing now.

Probably a loser still.

“You’re so mean. That thing could be a real success somewhere.”

Not as much of a success as our offshoot will be.

No, that’s true. They’ve taken great pains to make sure the little symbiote back in Philly has the right early experiences and only exposure to sane people. They’ll turn out great.

 

---

 

“You’re still here,” Sam says with a tinge of surprise as he leaves the building a few minutes later. 

“We’re your ride, ‘Course we’re still here.” And then, while they make their way back to the motorcycle, because Venom insists: “Wanna get lunch to celebrate? You’re in, right? Piece of cake, slam dunk.”

Sam’s face lights up and he flashes that smile of his fit to make Venom wiggle around inside. “I’m in! I’m going to be an Avenger. Me.”

“Same here,” Bucky says. “So is that a yes on lunch?”

Sam’s eyebrows climb. “You have to eat a lot, don’t you? Is it because you’re eating for two?”

Bucky shrugs. “Never gave it much thought,” he lies. 

Truth is, he does have to eat a lot if Venom can’t eat a lot, because Venom has to eat someone, and Bucky can take it with the healing factor, as long as he eats enough to fuel that healing factor. But he eats a lot all the rest of the time, too. So maybe it’s an enhanced thing. 

They’ve pondered it off and on through the decades, especially at first, trying to figure it out. He’s not about to get into it, though. Not until he’s more than provisionally accepted. 

The less S.H.I.E.L.D. knows, the better. He can still have some secrets.

“I don’t know about lunch, but I could do drinks,” Sam offers. “If you’re okay to ride with a beer in you.”

“Can’t get drunk, more’s the pity. I’ll be fine if I drank the whole bar’s worth of booze.”

You would have a stomach ache. And need many trips to the bathroom. So much liquid.

Venom sends him an image of himself stuck in the bathroom pissing while a clock’s hands spin round and round. 

Thanks for that image. Just for that, no chocolate liqueur.

No! 

Bucky grins and sends back a wave of capitulation.

“They’re talking to you,” Sam says softly, “when you stare like that. What did they say?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not to drink the whole bar or I’d spend hours pissing it all away.”

Sam just nods. 

And really, what’s there to say in response to that? 

VENOM

— Central Park, New York City: Mid-afternoon, 06 May 2012 —

They do not think they will ever tire of watching the dappled sunlight play on the beautiful Sam’s smooth brown skin and short-cropped hair as the breeze causes the branches of the trees overhead to rustle and sway.

There are even birds to sing and chitter up in those trees. 

And not to be eaten, their Bucky reminds them.

Venom sends back innocent outrage. As if they would ever devour a bird out of the park while Sam was there to watch them do it. They are trying not to make it weird still. 

Bucky laughs. 

“What are they saying now?” Sam asks. “‘Cause I know I’m not that funny.”

Do not tell him! He cannot know. Not until he is our friend.

“Have to hear it for yourself to really get it,” Bucky says apologetically while sending along reassuring thoughts. 

“And you’re plenty funny,” he continues, “but not about the boat.”

Sam has been telling them about the homeland of the beautiful Wilson clan, Delacroix, where there is a tier-adjacent offshoot and her two offshoots. His family: Sarah, Cas, AJ. There is a boat there, which sounds much bigger than the boat they officially claimed their host in.

Canoe.

Okay?

It was a canoe, not a boat.

Tomato, potato.

Sam and his tier-adjacent offshoot inherited the boat from their progenitors, and they still use it to catch fish out of the water to eat. 

There is a pond in this park, and in the pond there are fish that they could catch and present to the beautiful Sam to eat. Or ducks on top of the pond, but they are birds like the ones in the trees, and Sam probably does not want to eat them.

Wouldn’t want raw pond fish, either, Bucky tells them. “Gross.”

“What?” Sam asks.

“Sorry. V’s thinking about catching you a fish out of the pond since you like to eat fish. I told them you wouldn’t want to eat it.”

Sam pauses. “So they listen to everything, then? They’re following along?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Not everything. Just interesting things.”

Like porn, Venom adds. Do not convey that to the beautiful Sam.

Oh? Why not?  

There is the sensation of fond laughter, but Bucky does not actually laugh. 

It is not time for sexy times, Venom says. 

Maybe later, it will be time, but their host has not agreed to engage Sam like that, and has not even asked yet. 

We just met each other yesterday! Bucky sends a rush of scandalized indignation their way.

You think he is attractive. Beautiful. You would chat him up in a bar. Earlier, we did chat him up in a bar. That always leads to sexy times. Except with Thomas.

Bucky shakes his head and does not respond to them. That means they have won the argument. Maybe there will be sexy times soon after all.

Bucky sighs. “You’re looking at me like I missed your response, Sam. Sorry.”

“Was just wondering what it was they found interesting about fishing. A lot of people consider it kind of boring.”

“A lot of people aren’t an alien who’s never used a fishing pole before as anything but a metaphor for anger management meditation.” Bucky shrugs. “I have a few memories of fishing, but they’re so long ago I’ve half forgotten them. I remember we were lucky if we could find a few worms for bait.”

“We? You and Venom?” Sam is frowning, but in confusion. Confusion is okay. It is not disapproval. 

“No, no, a friend of mine. Venom doesn’t bother with the tools or the bait or anything. Just scoops out the fish.”

Sam looks as though he is imaging that, and is smiling. “Must be nice.”

“Kind of takes the fun out of it. And if you think they’re hard on a tube of toothpaste, you haven’t seen a squished fish.”

Laughter. Sam is laughing and it is warm and beautiful just like everything else about him. 

“Think we’re starting Monday?” Sam asks when he has finished laughing.

“The sooner the better,” Bucky answers. “Before Fury can change his mind.”

“Phew,” Sam says. “So it wasn’t just me who got in on a trial basis.”

How dare the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes put Sam on trial!

Trial basis , love. Just like us. Provisional status.

Oh. Then that is not so bad.

It is insulting, and they are upset that the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes have insulted both Sam and their host with this provisional trial basis status thing. But it is not as bad as being put on trial. Larry has gotten them out of many trials so that they don’t even have to show up.

That’s because Larry has connections. And access to all our money for bribes.

And we do not get caught very often, even though we leave our card.

To be fair, also, when they do get caught it is because they wanted to get inside of the jail to reach a mark or to gather information to get to their next target. But their charges always get dropped or settled once they have what they need. One or the other, so that they can leave and pursue their actual targets. 

They always use a different face when they are infiltrating a jail so that no one will assemble pictures and decide that their host needs to stay in a jail this time. That would be messy, getting themselves out of a jail if the jailors thought they should stay. 

Messy, messy work. And so many heads. And all of their cover blown. They would have A.I.M. or HYDRA on their tail then, and they should be the ones doing the hunting now.

“—until the end of the week, anyway,” Bucky is saying. 

Venom shifts around in his mind to rifle through and find out what they missed. Oh, yes. They have the room for a week, so even if they are not going to see the Pal tomorrow, there are still many days to make the trip into the A tower.

That is where the Pal is, in the tower marked by a giant glowing A on the top of it. They will climb that tower and force their way in if they have to. Anything to get to the Pal. 

They will eat anyone who tries to stop them from getting to the Pal.

No we won’t. We’ll play by ear and keep our cover.

Venom floods their mental connection with disgruntled hungry vibes.

“Hey Sam?” Bucky starts. “How do you feel about a late lunch?”

CLINT

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late afternoon, 06 May 2012 —

Yet another boring meeting. He had a lot fewer meetings when he was with Natasha as STRIKE Delta. He’s only been an Avenger officially for a few days now, but there’s been a meeting or a debrief once a day since the team was started up, if not more. 

This one, even Stark got wrangled into. 

Clint has been ignoring most of the conversation—if it’s important, someone will repeat themselves when he asks—and concentrating instead on balancing his office chair just far enough back to feel like he’s falling without actually overturning it. It helps to have something safe to focus his attention on.

“Next item. With Thor off-world delivering Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard,” Nick is saying, “I’ve accepted two provisional members of the team.”

Clint nearly falls out of his chair. 

What? What happened to vetting every potential member for months and months—even years in some cases—and only adding in Thor because he was needed? That had turned out well, granted. But… 

This seems rash. And Nick is many things, a cunning bastard foremost among them, but he’s not rash.

Did Loki have that big an impact on Nick, too, and not just him?

Hill passes around a pair of folders to each of them, and then returns to her position standing to Nick’s good side where he can see her without turning his head. Just courtesy, that. Everyone knows Hill is one of the very few Nick trusts to stand on his bad side.

The top folder says Samuel Thomas Wilson on the tab, and inside is a list of stats and qualifications; no picture. The man looks impressive. He’s served in Afghanistan, two tours, works with the VA, lots of training—oh, pararescue. They could have used him when the Chitauri were active in the area, and could probably still use him now, even if no one is trapped in the rubble anymore.

It still looks like a war zone out there in some parts of the City.

Across the table from him, Banner perks up, going from a slump-shouldered mild-mannered lie to a fully upright and engaged member of the group. “Jimmy is in here?”

Jimmy?

Clint flips to the second folder, and yep, that tab says James Varnes on it. He opens it and gives it a skim while everyone else joins him in folder number two. There’s… not a lot. Cybernetic left arm, that’s cool, Stark will be interested in that. There’s no way he’s served in that many wars in that many places, though. Some of those have to be a lie. And— Shit, no. HRS, LLC.? Really?

Clint looks over at Natasha. She’s staring at the file, too. 

Clint has picked up no fewer than four of those stupid fucking HRS, LLC. “business cards” with practically nothing on them but someone’s name and a phone number answered by a gruff mystery asking who their problem is, and then promptly hanging up when they guess the wrong geography or make some other mistake in the convoluted path to actually get to the person on the card.

Those cards are always left behind in scenes where it’s been a bloodbath but there are aren’t any bodies around to have supplied the blood. Just missing persons, usually turning out to have been working for A.I.M. or some other shady group. 

Their ghost story, coming to them? He doesn’t like it. It smells rotten.

“I don’t like this, Nick,” Natasha says. “I don’t like this at all.”

“I’m surprised Jimmy’s in New York this soon,” Banner says, completely missing the tone of Natasha’s complaint. “He must have already been in the area.”

Clint isn’t the only one who looks over at him and stares. How does Bruce Banner know about this guy? He’s been living in the jungle for who knows how long.

Banner looks around at them all and his expression firms up from interested to serious. He addresses Natasha first, so Clint guesses he did catch her complaint. 

“If this is Jimmy Varnes, I can vouch for him.”

“He works alone,” Nick says, “he’s a hitman for hire, he—” Nick shakes his head. “Wilson is a shoo-in, but this guy I have worries about. He’s in here because I want him close if we have to act on him.”

“Jimmy is absolutely a team player,” Banner argues, “and while he has his quirks, so do we all.”

Quirks? Clint holds in a scoff. Quirks don’t begin to cover it. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s had HRS, LLC. on their radar for decades. Some kind of family enterprise, passed down from hitman to hitman junior. That’s not a quirk. That’s a character flaw.

Natasha’s expression is as dark as Clint feels about this. “On the one hand, keep your enemies where you can see them, but…” She shakes her head. “Anyone working for that company has to be unstable. At best.”

“If you thought I was stable enough to join this team,” Banner says, “then instability is not a reason to deny Jimmy a genuine spot.”

Nick takes a breath and lets it out as a sigh. “He introduced himself as James. But go on, Banner. How do you know him? I’ll take everything you’ve got on him. Like how you knew he’d be coming to New York.”

Banner gets a cagey look and glances around the room for support. They aren’t a very forgiving crowd, except Stark who isn’t paying any attention and is instead probably planning how to ask for Varnes to show off his robot arm.

“…We were roommates for a few weeks back in the day,” Banner says. “He’s good people. Literally, the plural. But it works, and he saved more lives in Mexico City by preventing an incident than he took while doing it.”

Banner looks vaguely regretful. “It was my own fault, and I learned a lot from him. He told me the key to controlling my anger issues.”

From the looks of it, there’s a lot Banner is leaving unsaid. But… Wait. Mexico City? Back in the day? How far back in the day?

Because there was the serial disappearance of tourists for a few weeks, no bodies found, no crime scenes, no nothing, and then suddenly a copycat took over and started stashing chunks in dumpsters. Still hard to trace every one of the missing tourists, but they did all have a connection—they were all Army personnel under General Thaddeus Ross. 

“Well.” If Nick had been sitting down, this is the point where he’d have leaned back in his chair. “Anyone else know either of these two gentlemen?”

Clint sighs and nods.

“I know the HRS bullshit, of course, but I was doing an odd job about the time we brought Natasha in, job right before that one, actually. I was trying to take out the tracksuit mafia, and I’d let myself get captured to skip the hunt and get brought directly to their headquarters.”

And it’s true. He did let himself get captured, whatever the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had had to say about his methods. It would have taken him weeks to get there otherwise. 

“I heard them talking about this Varnes guy, maybe it was Jimmy, maybe it was Vinnie, whatever it was, they were talking about this guy taking his own bite out of crime. He’d killed a few of their bros, working alongside some dude in a red and black gimp suit. They left one alive to run off and deliver a message.”

And Varnes’s card, the stupid mostly blank one. Seriously. Not even a website? Just how small a company is it? Everyone’s got a website.

“The tracksuit guys, they had me tied to a chair, and they’d busted up one of my hearing aids, so I couldn’t hear great, but I definitely heard when the guys upstairs started screaming. All the bros ran out of the room to make sure everything was okay, but it…” 

Clint shakes his head. “It clearly wasn’t.”

He remembers those several minutes very well, tied to a chair and wondering whether whatever was happening up there was coming down to him next. 

“The commotion only got worse—screaming, gunfire, the whole lot, and loud enough I could hear it just fine with my one hearing aid partly hanging out of my ear and the other one dead. Then it got real quiet, but no one came back downstairs.”

He’d been so tense, torn between the desire to break loose and get out of there and the knowledge that if he was found tied up he’d hopefully be spared whatever happened upstairs, but if he was free, he’d be assumed to be another of the tracksuit bros despite his much more appropriate attire.

“I waited a while,” Clint says, “not sure how long.”

He’d waited until he had to pee badly enough to untie himself. But he’s sure as hell not saying that. Natasha already knows—this was one of the stories he told her while bringing her in; the kind of things they do to protect people, not hurt them—but the rest of them don’t need to know.

“Then I slipped my ropes and got all my gear ready, because I didn’t know what was up there that would have taken out all the bros so quickly or so loudly.”

He shrugs. “And when I climbed the stairs, there wasn’t anything up there.”

“Not anything?” Rogers asks.

Clint’s starting to feel like he’s telling a ghost story, and if this is all connected, maybe he is. All they need is a campfire and some marshmallows on sticks. A flashlight held up to his chin. Shit.

“Well, there were tables and chairs and stuff all scattered about and broken,” Clint says. “And blood and bullet casings everywhere. Lots and lots of blood. But not bodies. Not even part of a body. Not even a finger.”

Yeah, this is definitely a ghost story. Mass disappearance of that many bodies. Makes no damn sense.

“Where was this?” Stark asks, having apparently mentally rejoined the group for story hour with Clint. “I feel like it belongs in a ‘Beyond Belief’ episode. You know, the one with Jonathan Frakes.”

Clint would roll his eyes at that, but he was just thinking about it sounding like a ghost story, so he just answers the question without the snark.

“Bed Stuy, back in 2002. The place was a restaurant with a basement, closed on Sundays, so at least no one else was there eating or anything when this went down, but it was pretty gruesome. I went outside to case the place before calling it in, and found some goddamn C4 packed in the roof and a few other places.”

Clint shakes his head, remembering the feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw that and realized how close he was to game over. If he’d waited just a few minutes longer, or if he’d taken longer to wash his hands in the bathroom, or…

C4 is a really rude way to cover your tracks, as far as he’s concerned.

“I hightailed it out of there before the place blew up. And somehow none of the surrounding buildings got more than a bit of scorch damage in the end, but that restaurant was toast. Totally gutted, and not a trace of whatever had happened in there.”

“What, not even the HRS calling card?” Banner asks.

“Not even a card,” Clint confirms. “Whoever did that could disappear bodies like a fucking magician with a rabbit, but he couldn’t be bothered to check the place for captives before blowing it up. Not cool. More to the point, not Avengers material.”

Banner shrugs. “Maybe he knew you were there and waited until you were clear to blow the restaurant up.”

…Huh. That’s a thought. But it’s still destruction of a crime scene by plastering another crime scene on top of it, and wanton destruction of property, and—

And they don’t really have a lot of room to talk about property damage after the battle in New York just a few days ago. Shit.

“I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes,” Clint mumbles. 

Chapter 7: Beginning of a beautiful friendship

Notes:

I did not do research into whether the all-you-can-eat shrimp special was going on during the month of May in 2012, and it’s doubtful they’d have such a special after the Chitauri attack when supply lines are in shambles. But it was funny, so I put it in here. ^_^

BUCKY

— Red Lobster, New York City: Dinner rush hour, 06 May 2012 —

Their phones go off at the same time, his and Sam’s, and because it’s just his current burner phone, Bucky doesn’t check it immediately. If it was a call on his real phone, the number only Larry, Jason, Jennifer, and Wade have, he’d take the call or respond to the text immediately.

Thanks goes out to the scientists finally making a phone that’s small enough to fit in a palm. It took a while to get there, but once they did, oh, what a great thing.

Unlike him, Sam checks the message. 

“Looks like they want us both there tomorrow morning for an informational session. Also, you have paperwork to fill out.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You don’t have paperwork?”

Sam shrugs. “Filled it out today before leaving.”

It pays not to put things off, Venom murmurs from somewhere near his appendix. The beautiful Sam is prompt and thoughtful.

Hey, I’m thoughtful. 

But not usually very prompt.

Procrastination is an artform I have mastered.

Venom laughs in their shared mindspace, full of joy and saliva. Eat more of the shrimp. Get the scampi and the fettuccine. 

I don’t want to eat them out of their entire stock, V. I’ve already had three meals worth. They’re glaring at me.

So glare back. Eat another biscuit. 

Bucky sighs and reaches for the second to last biscuit. 

“I don’t get it,” Sam says, leaning forward and keeping his voice low enough not to travel to other tables. “How does it work, with the eating all the time?”

“Your caution is appreciated,” Bucky says around a mouthful of buttery, cheddary biscuit. He swallows. “V’s a ravenous little space bug, and they need to eat when they need to eat. Usually I have chocolate on hand for that, but if I don’t have chocolate or a target, I’m on the menu.”

For once, Venom doesn’t demand an apology for the space bug comment. Bucky wonders if they’re miffed or just basking in Sam’s concern for them.

“They’ll eat you?” Sam asks. “But they’re— That’s—”

“Ultimately, my role in this relationship is to supply nutritious energy and to keep them safe from certain things.” He shrugs. “Their role is to provide insight based on my experiences, heal me whenever I need it, and help me fight our battles.”

“But they’ll eat you. Kill you, even.”

Bucky grins. “What’s life without risks?”

Tell him that I love you. Venom sounds—and more importantly, feels—so worried that Sam will get the wrong impression. That we are losers in love. He thinks that I will kill you. Tell him I will not.

“Seriously, Sam, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. They love me, and I love them. We take care of each other, we fill in for each other’s weaknesses, and we get along great.” Bucky pauses to take another bite.

“You never get to be alone.” Sam says. 

“You mean I never have to be alone again. That’s a perk, not a drawback. We share everything.”

“I don’t know, man.” Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think I could do it.”

Our arrangement is not for everyone, Venom says. Most could not do it, I think.

“That’s fine. No one’s signing you up for host duty,” Bucky says with a laugh. “You have to be compatible for it to really work long term, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you two are compatible,” Sam says. Then he blinks. “Wait, we got sidetracked. You were telling me why you eat so much. And I know it’s risky to let Venom get hungry, but… the rest of it?”

Well, darn. Looks like they’re going there, after all. Successful topic shift, not so successful after all. 

We can tell him. We can trust him. I can tell. 

Bucky leans in close, pulling his chair to the side a bit to avoid leaning over the food. 

“This is top secret,” he murmurs. “Confidential. All kinds of big red warning signs. Got it?”

Sam looks around at the restaurant. “This is really not the place to talk about it, then,” he says. 

“No, no, it’s fine. Hold my hand.”

“Um.”

“That or footsie under the table. I need contact. V’s going to explain.”

“Like the helmet, where I can hear them.” Sam touches his temple. “In here.”

Bucky nods and places his right hand on the table. “We’ll look like lovers to everyone else, but that’s fine. I don’t care if you don’t.”

Sam puts his hand on top of Bucky’s.

“Can they read my thoughts like this?”

No. I am not integrated into your system fully. We are not bonded, even temporarily.

“And you can’t hear my thoughts,” Bucky says. “This just lets you hear them without the whole restaurant screaming.”

Sam nods. “Okay, so tell me the secret. I’m ready.”

Bucky kind of doubts he is, but while he sends that along to Venom, he doesn’t put any restrictions or limitations on what Venom chooses to disclose. If there’s one thing they share when things get serious, it’s mutual trust in the other.

Jimmy is not Jimmy. Jimmy is Bucky. My Bucky. After a train crashed in the mountains—

“I fell off. It didn’t crash.”

I am telling the story, Venom snips.

“Sorry, love.” 

After Bucky fell off the train in the mountains, Venom continues, evil researchers found him and turned him into a mindless weapon. There was much torture-testing. Very much. I rescued him.

“We rescued each other.”

Bucky kind of expects a pity look from Sam, not that he wants one, but instead all he gets is some kind of dawning understanding, a lightbulb moment as something clicks for him.

“You’re—”

Bucky is enhanced, Venom continues without noticing that they are cutting Sam off. He is the best host a symbiote could ever have. Instead of relying on my healing, he can heal himself quickly. But he needs to eat in order to do that.

“So you don’t just look like him, you are—”

“Don’t say it,” Bucky reminds him. “We’re in public. But if you know, you know.”

“…You’re really old,” Sam says faintly.

“I age well.”

Like a fine cheese. Or a wine. Order more shrimp.

“No. I already said, we’ve had too much. They’re going to kick us out.”

Sam laughs, but it’s a softly amused laugh that holds no mockery. 

He can feel Venom squirming with delight at having inspired the sound of Sam laughing. Huh. Seems like his symbiote really is taken with Sam. The last person to get this kind of rapport with Venom was Wade, and that had been a surprise and a half back in 2001 when it turned out Wade could see Venom’s voice.

But most things about Wade are surprising, and the surprises keep on coming with him. If only he were sane. His healing factor is good enough to successfully carry a symbiote, but while Bucky would trust Wade with his life, he wouldn’t trust him to help their offshoot develop in the right direction.

 

SAM

— New York City: The worst of Monday morning rush hour, 07 May 2012 —

Sam’s actually kind of glad they were finally boxed in by all the traffic around them. All of Jimmy’s—all of Bucky’s, but he’s going to keep thinking of him as Jimmy so he doesn’t slip up in public—maneuvers on this motorcycle are technically legal and executed perfectly. But with the rest of traffic going as slow as it is, it’s really unnerving to be slipping between cars and accelerating around turns in ways that shouldn’t be physically possible.

It doesn’t help that he’s wearing Venom as a helmet again, and can hear all of the symbiote’s chatter. But now they’re going slowly enough that he can almost make out what Bucky’s saying in response. Mostly thanking Venom for checking blind spots and keeping Sam anchored firmly on the motorcycle. 

And insisting that no, they will not be traveling by rooftop any time soon, at least not in broad daylight. 

Sam wonders how they do that without wings. Maybe Venom can grow wings. They can grow tentacles, after all.

But Jimmy had looked impressed by “the power of flight” that first night and that wouldn’t really make sense if he could fly. But gliding, maybe. Sam tries to imagine Jimmy with a membrane of glistening black goo stretched taut between his arms and legs, like a humanoid sugar glider. 

He definitely eats enough candy to qualify. More chocolate cake for breakfast this morning, since there wasn’t time to eat out by the time he got up. Plus a Milky Way on the walk out to the parking lot.

We travel the rooftops when we are in our fully bonded form, our perfect form, when we are Venom.

“As opposed to when just you are?” Sam yells over the motorcycle’s rumbling.

Yes. I am Venom and he is my Bucky. But together we are also Venom.

Yeah, that doesn’t sound like it’ll get confusing at all. Sam’s glad he’s just Sam all the time. Though he’ll need a codename for the team to use on missions. Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk… The other was Thor, but that had seemed more like a name than a codename.

Oh, I like that car. Bucky, look at that car. The shiny red one.

He can be Falcon if no one minds. It’s what he and Riley used to refer to their duo as. The Falcons. Riley was older by a year, so he was Falcon One, and Sam was Falcon Two. For this, he’d just be Falcon, though, to bring some of Riley with him onto the team.

Hungry. Eat a Twix when we get to a red light.

It’s their first day meeting the team, and Sam wonders how it will go. It’s supposed to just be a casual thing, information exchange, getting to know each other, getting any lingering questions answered. And he does have some. 

That man’s radio is too loud. I am going to— 

“No you’re not!” Jimmy yells.

Yes I am! It is too loud. 

The radio that was playing in the car next to them suddenly switches off, and the man in the car stares at them with wide eyes, leaning to get away from them but trapped by traffic and the driver’s side door.

Do not complain. I did not take his steering wheel. Just shut off his radio.

And they’re moving again, no longer boxed in but free to zip in and out of traffic. 

Faster! The Pal awaits!

Assuming he survives this commute to the newly named Avengers Tower, Sam’s not above renting an apartment in the City if he can find one he can afford on his VA salary. But if he’s expected to live in the tower with the rest of them—if that is where they all live right now like the news reports say—then that’s an expense he does not need. 

What would those accommodations look like? One room and a small kitchen—the extended stay hotel model? Two rooms and a bigger kitchen? No kitchen at all? Shared bathroom or private? Living room or just bedroom? Would he be free to live elsewhere if he wanted to?

Out of the way, Toyota Corolla! 

What’s the training schedule like? What’s training itself like? Will he even have time and energy for his VA job? Will he need to drop to part time work, or even further cut his time there and do volunteer work when he can find a few hours a week?

What threats are on the horizon that they should be concerned with, or monitoring? How do they handle international issues versus domestic issues versus global issues? Does S.H.I.E.L.D. run the Avengers, or is Nick Fury just in two roles at once?

There it is, there it is. The Pal is so close!

Who’s in charge of Nick Fury? Surely he answers to someone at a global level for the Avengers Initiative, if it’s truly about the people of Earth and not just American interests in another guise.

He’s got health benefits through the VA, but are there any additional ones available that he could look into if he needs a therapist? Is the Avengers Initiative as much of a volunteer thing as it appears to be? How do the members of the team get paid? Is it just room and board? Is there a food allowance built in somehow?

So many questions to ask. 

The Pal, the Pal, the Pal, the Pal, the—

And as they pull up to the attendant and give their names in order to enter the underground parking garage, Sam feels one question just burning on his tongue ready to come out. 

Venom releases his midsection and slips from around his head like as though they’d never been there, not even a hint of residue regardless of how slick and wet they look. The giddy mantra of some pal or other slips away with the rest of Venom, and Sam is left with a mind pleasantly full of just his own thoughts.

“So who’s this pal?” Sam asks, feeling sort of sorry that Jimmy has to keep on hearing Venom’s chatter. 

And the moment he asks, he suddenly knows. Jimmy is Bucky, and Captain America and Sergeant Barnes were inseparable. 

“Never mind,” Sam says just as Jimmy opens his mouth to answer. 

“Yeah,” Jimmy says. He swallows and gives the motorcycle a quick once over before turning and facing the elevator into the building like he’s facing a firing squad. 

And actually, Sam can see it. It’s been decades for Jimmy, knowing that Steve is dead, and only a few weeks for Steve. Jimmy’s possessed by an alien who eats him alive from the inside, and is in love with this alien, and Steve just finished fighting off an alien invasion. Jimmy’s got a metal arm, and didn’t really die when Steve thought he did. What will this reunion be like?

 

BUCKY

— Stark Tower, New York City: Still too early in the morning, 07 May 2012 —

This is it, sweetheart, Bucky says into their shared mindspace. Steve is just half an elevator trip away.

The Pal! So close. Venom is a quivering lump of nerves at the bottom of his stomach, making him that much more anxious.

The Pal will like us still. You. The Pal has not met me yet. But he will still like you and will approve of us. I am sure. 

I don’t know. I’m worried about the bodies. Bucky bites on his lower lip as the lights tick up to ever higher numbers as the elevator climbs. There have been a lot of bodies, first as HYDRA’s Winter Soldier and then as Jimmy Varnes. 

There is a sense of relief blooming from Venom’s current stomach nook. Bucky investigates briefly and sees that they’re relieved that it isn’t them he’s worried about. 

Steve will accept you, V. I’m sure of it. 

And he will accept you. 

Bucky sure hopes so. 

Back before—before the War and during it, before the fall off the train—he and Steve had been… complicated. Always in each other’s back pocket, to the point where his mother threatened to sew some four-legged pants for them because they were joined at the hip. Now that’s Venom. They’re bonded on a level beyond what Venom even thought was possible.

Will Steve feel replaced?

And he doesn’t have the clearest memories of it, but he remembers sometimes getting confusing pants feelings about Steve as he was growing up. He’d mostly tamped down on these to keep the friendship stable, but… did Steve feel the same while they were growing up together in Brooklyn? 

And if he had, is it too late to see where that goes? 

The War. He doesn’t remember the War very clearly, either, at least not that first one. His time with Steve was one big blur of anxiety that Steve was going to get a shell to the head and be exploded the moment Bucky turned his back on the man. Always finding the worst parts of a battle to leap into, doing the stupidest shit.

Fucking waving at him in his sniper nest. Moron.

Bucky shakes his head. 

“You okay?” Sam asks. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Eager and anxious. It’s been so long. We both thought the other was dead.”

At least he assumes Steve thought he was dead. If Steve thought he was alive, surely he’d have come looking.

The elevator deposits them in a room filled with sofas that manage somehow to be both sleek and plush, with matching chairs and ottomans, and tables pushed off to the side of the room with sturdier chairs for working on things. And a wet bar, off to another side, with a kitchen attached. 

More importantly, the room has Tommy waiting in it with a big smile. 

Bucky grins and greets him with a hug. “Been ages, Tommy. Looks like you reeled in your big green marlin. Saw the footage. You two were magnificent.”

Tommy gets a shy look on his face and murmurs that he goes by Bruce these days.

Bucky nods. “Yeah, okay.” He’s been too busy to watch ceaseless newsroom chatter rehashing the same old facts, so he’s probably missed where Bruce was named and his cover was fully blown. 

Ask him what the other guy is named.

“That suits you better, too,” he adds. “And your other guy?”

“Hulk.”

Nice and simple. Sweet. I like it.

“V approves.”

“That’s the most important thing,” Bruce says with a laugh. “So you’re early. Trying to impress or did you give up putting things off until the last minute?”

Bucky points his thumb back over his shoulder at Sam. “Someone likes to be on time. ‘If you’re not early, you’re late.’”

Sam steps forward smoothly, flashes the smile Venom likes so much, and holds his hand out. “Sam Wilson. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Bruce Banner,” Bruce says. “Glad to put a face to a name. Looking forward to working with you.”

And then the door off to the right opens, and it’s Steve.

He’s talking with one of the others—blonde hair, hearing aids, lotta purple, some bandaids, vaguely familiar—and so Bucky has a chance to see that he looks good, looks well fed, decently rested all things considered, before Steve turns to face him and freezes like a marble statue, right down to the pale skin.

“Bucky?” Steve gasps out.

The Pal should not be having an asthma attack. Why does he sound like—

Because he’s relieved, I hope.

“Stevie,” Bucky says softly. “I thought you were dead. All these years.” He swallows hard. “They said you died. All the history books. The Smithsonian. Army records. I pulled everything. Everything said you were dead.”

“You—” Steve manages, sounding strangled enough that Bucky almost believes it is asthma. “The train. Zola. You fell off the train.”

Bucky nods. “And that sucked balls, I assume. I don’t remember the landing, just the fall. I survived it.”

Steve shakes his head. “How?”

How do I survive anything? he thinks bitterly. I’m a goddamn cockroach of a man.

“Zola’s experiments. Bad luck. I don’t know. But I got out in the ‘60s and—” It’s his turn to shake his head. “How did you survive? A goddamn fucking plane full of bombs, Steve. How?”

“The ice.” Steve sounds numb, frozen just like the ice he’s describing. “I was frozen in ice. I don’t remember anything after hitting the water. Just— Just ice cold water shooting up my nose and splashing across my face, and gasping for air in the cold as it got darker and darker.”

Steve takes a step forward and then falters, sinks to his knees. “This— This isn’t possible. This isn’t real. You’re a descendant, it’s a psyop, a trap, another of Fury’s tricks. It’s—”

Bucky closes the distance and grabs Steve’s face in both hands, dropping down to kneel in front of him. 

“Oh, I’m real, punk,” Bucky says with a fierceness that surprises himself. “I’m flesh and blood and something else entirely, and I haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m not going anywhere now that I know you’re alive.”

Bucky wants to wipe the tear tracks off of Steve’s cheeks, but he doesn’t trust himself to be gentle enough right now. So instead, he wraps Steve in a bear hug, squeezing him as tightly as he knows a super soldier can tolerate before even enhanced ribs will creak under the pressure. 

Another of Fury’s tricks, Venom growls in his mind as Steve breaks down sobbing in his arms. The Pal said that. 

“—hell is happening?” someone is asking in the distance. “Hey. Is Capsicle crying? I didn’t know he could do that. I thought super soldier serum made him leak-proof.”

We are safe, Venom reassures him as his attention shifts to pick up two new people in the room. I am watching our back. You watch our Pal.

Bucky leaves it to them, then, and closes his eyes and breathes in the familiar smell of Steve that he has not ever smelled in remembered experience but that is still as familiar as the sunrise and no less special. 

“I’ve got you, Stevie,” he whispers soft enough for only Steve’s ears. “Neither one of us actually died, so we were bound to find each other again.”

“It’s— It’s not,” Steve manages. He shakes his head. “Not possible.”

“Is too.”

“But that means… What happened to you?”

Bucky sighs into Steve’s hair. 

“Oh, man, what hasn’t happened to me? Look,” he says, “It’s a long story. Really long. I’ve got decades to cover. Wanna get some Panera? I could go for a potato chowder bread bowl with some chocolate mousse cake.”

“It’s… It’s just after breakfast.” Steve pulls back from the hug finally and stares at his face, searching for something Bucky can’t pinpoint.

“Okay, just the chocolate mousse cake.”

Notes:

Exciting news! Notearchiver has recorded a podfic of the first story in this series. ^_^ It's most excellent and you can find it and listen to it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57595474. I highly encourage you to check it out!

Chapter 8: Conspiracy theories

Notes:

I don’t know where Panera is located in New York City, but let’s pretend there’s one in walking distance. ^_^

NATASHA

— Stark Tower, New York City: Just after breakfast, 07 May 2012 —

“Okay,” Varnes—or Barnes, as the case may or may not be—says. “Just the chocolate mousse cake.”

Rogers responds with a tearful laugh, and Natasha is pleased to see that Varnes helps him up to his feet instead of expecting him to stand unaided. It’s a good sign. A sign that he cares.

She didn’t see or hear the entire exchange, but she saw and heard enough. Varnes “got out in the ‘60s,” did he? Got out of where? He doesn’t look old enough to have been born in the ‘60s, let alone to be escaping anywhere.

“Maybe there’s a bagel you could have instead, huh, Buck?”

“Oh, I’ll eat some bagels, too, if you want. But the chocolate mousse cake, that’s a must.” Varnes looks Rogers up and down. “But first, we need to get you into some different pants, buddy. You have to have something in your closet better than those dad khakis.”

“What’s wrong with the pants I’m wearing?”

Varnes purses his lips. “Seriously, Steve, if the choice is between bright blue tights and these khakis, you wanna go with the tights.”

“They’re comfortable,” Rogers protests as Varnes leads him past her down the hallway Rogers and Clint had come from, apparently assuming that Rogers has a room down that direction. 

“They’re awful,” he says. “A crime against your ass. Let’s get you into some jeans at least. And do you have anything but the plaid?”

“I like plaid.”

“You think you like plaid.”

They disappear around a corner and Natasha gives Clint a brief smile before entering the common room fully. 

“Anyone want to tell me what that was all about?” Stark asks from near the elevator. “Varnes is Barnes is not dead after all, what?”

“For all we know,” Clint mutters, “he’s an alien that impersonates loved ones to lure people to their deaths. I saw an X-Files episode about that.”

Natasha sighs and shakes her head. She has her own suspicions based on Red Room tall tales, but those suspicions would sound just as far fetched if she shared them. So she won’t say a thing about how it’s possible the Winter Soldier didn’t so much die or get decommissioned along with the entire Department X Siberia base, but instead escaped to roam the world as a ghost story.

She’s been putting together some research on that for years now, ever since Clint told her years ago about all the bodies disappearing at that Bed Stuy restaurant. The Siberia base that housed the Winter Soldier project was trashed, but there weren’t as many bodies as there had been staffers. Some of them had disappeared, among them the Winter Soldier.

That had been in the ‘60s.

She has a file as expansive as the Pepe Silvia conspiracy theory wall, though much more neatly organized, of every Department X and Red Room facility that has been similarly gutted throughout the USSR, and it’s the same at every one of them. 

Massive slaughter throughout the buildings, missing operatives, operatives torn to pieces as though mauled by a bear. Often with the pieces neatly arranged in stacks of like to like. Arms in stacks of arms, legs with legs, and so on. Increasingly as the years go on, fewer and fewer heads are discovered. Fewer and fewer other pieces, too. Until the more recent attacks left no bodies at all.

Red Room history had spoken of the Winter Soldier as an operative whose usefulness had ultimately run its course and who had been decommissioned. But Red Room lore, whispered in hushed tones between the girls in their beds at night, held out a different story. He had not been decommissioned—why would you decommission someone as useful as that? No, he’d escaped. And they could, too, if they were good enough at what they did. 

It had inspired her to be the best. And to escape, herself. 

And so when Clint had told her about the Bed Stuy ghost attacking the Russian mafia, she had wondered if the incidents were related. The Winter Soldier was ageless, after all. Whatever ghost has been taking down various Red Room and Department X facilities hasn’t stopped over the last five decades. It’s only gotten more adept at removing the bodies.

And HRS, LLC., whatever the first part stands for, was created back in the ‘70s. In December 1975, specifically. She checked their records with the state and federal business registration and trademark databases. That is plenty of time for an escaped operative like the Winter Soldier to recraft himself as an autonomous agent. And why not a hitman for hire?

Though that’s not what the company is said to do. They’re a cleaning service, specifically. And while there’s a lot of blood and destruction left behind in their wake, one can say they did a good job of cleaning a problem individual off the face of the planet.

She wishes she knew how they did it. 

Or how he did it. Does it. Because if the Winter Soldier is Jimmy Varnes, then she’s relatively sure that he’s the only employee there, just listed repeatedly with different names. And if the Winter Soldier is Jimmy Varnes, then he was active in New York after September 11, 2001. And used the same MO on Clint’s tracksuit bros as he did in the case of Department X and Red Room facilities.

And if Jimmy Varnes is actually Bucky Barnes, war hero who disappeared in the ‘40s shortly before Rogers dropped the Valkyrie in the Arctic Ocean… 

Well, she thinks. Let’s just add a new folder to my files.

She’s seen pictures of the Winter Soldier’s uniforms, and they featured tight black leather—or other colors, as the mission terrain required, but always tight, strappy leather. Snug pants that still had enough room to move. Combat boots. And what had Varnes been wearing but a tight black leather jacket with some decorative straps, snug black jeans he could still move freely in, and black combat boots. 

The only difference she sees beyond those needed to fit into society is the addition of white accents here and there. Stitchwork in white on black leather, white thread in the buttons, white lining, perhaps. 

And for that matter, if she takes Clint’s suggestion that Varnes is some sort of alien instead of merely an alias for Barnes, then what does S.H.I.E.L.D. have to say about aliens? She’d done some research into that once things calmed down after the battle. 

Persons of interest include a white male matching Varnes’s description, associated with a large black and white humanoid monster and an alien who doesn’t tolerate loud noises well. 

Natasha doesn’t see why they can’t all be right. There is such a thing as too much coincidence, but there’s also such a thing as many pieces suddenly slotting together into an answer. 

“Except there’s this little problem of Barnes being dead,” Stark says, interrupting her thoughts. “Even if he survived the fall off that train, which he didn’t, he’d be an ancient old man by now. Like, Professor Farnsworth old.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “I want to believe in miracles as much as the next guy, but this is a little hard to buy.”

She clearly missed part of the conversation. She’ll have to pick Clint’s brain for it later. That will be preferable to letting on in front of Stark that she slipped. 

Banner spreads his hands. “All I know is that I met Jimmy back in 2005 and got to know him. I thought he looked very familiar at the time, but I couldn’t place it. I didn’t know anyone with a metal prosthesis, and something like that would have made all the science publications. I assumed it was just another odd thing about him.”

The metal prosthesis might have thrown Banner off the trail, but it goes well with her Winter Soldier theory. The Winter Soldier had a metal arm with a red star on it. Varnes wore a jacket and gloves, but the cybernetic arm was in Nick’s materials on him. And no mention of a red star, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Wilson shrugs. “I thought he looked like Bucky Barnes when I met him a couple days ago. And I trust him.”

“Yeah, but.” Clint squints into the middle distance. “You can’t be suggesting that James Barnes changed his name to James Varnes and now goes by Jimmy instead of Bucky. That’s a shit disguise. That name sounds practically the same as the other name.”

Banner reaches into a pocket and holds up a familiar card. 

HRS, LLC. Natasha’s eyes light up.

“He gave me this when he met me,” Banner says. “I know for a fact that that man goes by Jimmy Varnes at least in his business dealings. And if he now claims James Barnes as well, so be it. I gave him a fake name when we met. I don’t hold his fake name against him.”

Jackpot. A definite connection between two of the suspected nodes of her theory.

“You’re supposed to be the logical one here,” Clint mutters. 

“Why not trust Steve that he knows his closest friend in the world when he sees him?” Banner asks. 

“Because he’s clearly emotionally compromised.” Clint jabs a finger the direction Rogers and Varnes went. “That was not a stable man who walked out of this common room. That wasn’t even in the same building as stable. We see what we want to see. We hear what we want to hear. It’s a classic con man tactic.”

“Well whoever it was definitely had a cybernetic arm,” Stark adds. “JARVIS took a scan in the elevator.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Great, so we know for sure it was Jimmy Varnes. A hitman. That’s so much better than just a con artist.”

Natasha laughs. “The only difference between a hitman and what we did for S.H.I.E.L.D. is that we were on retainer with the government, and Varnes is a free agent.” 

“I bet Varnes beams all his targets up to a flying saucer for experimentation,” he mutters. “ That’s why there’s no bodies.”

She nudges him in the ribs. “Let’s not jump to the conclusion that Varnes is an alien. I know you’ve got aliens on the brain lately. We all do. The whole planet does.”

The alien angle… She’ll add it to her files, but she really can’t see it.

 

STEVE

— Panera Bread Company, New York City: Just in time for brunch, 07 May 2012 —

They’re out of the chocolate mousse cake when they arrive at the Panera a few blocks down the street, but Bucky rallies after his initial disappointment… by buying an entire eight-inch chocolate raspberry torte.

Steve does his best not to stare wide-eyed at the price of such an extravagance. If Bucky is paying that much for a cake for them to eat, then he must be able to afford that. Bucky is doing well for himself in the future, and Steve will be happy about it, not “sticker shocked” about it. 

Bucky was the one who longed for the future, anyway. Steve had never thought he’d live to see it, but Bucky? Oh, Bucky was full of hope for what came next in life. 

Steve gets a breakfast sandwich, the price of which is also concerning, but Bucky just adds it to his total.

And then the two of them are sitting at a small table that’s barely big enough for one of them to sit at, but that is right up against the window so they can both see outside and far enough away from other patrons to avoid being overheard. 

Bucky immediately digs a fork into his torte and eats a trio of bites in quick succession, looking almost relieved instead of satisfied once he finishes swallowing the third bite. 

“That’s better,” he says. “We have a lot to catch up on,” he says, “but first we have to get introductions out of the way. Someone is figuratively dying to meet you.”

Steve frowns. Introductions to someone… who isn’t here? It’s just the two of them in this part of the Panera. Who’s he going to meet? And where are they? 

Bucky’s been living his life this whole time, so it makes sense that he will have changed, but there’s no one here to meet Steve, and it’s concerning that Bucky seems to think there is.

And Bucky’s behavior has been erratic at best since they got out onto the street outside the ugly tower of Stark’s. Occasionally seeming to miss whole sentences in their conversation, staring into space for a moment or two, even randomly laughing once.

“Alright,” Steve says, determined to give this a shot. 

So Bucky has changed a bit. Steve’s probably also changed a bit, just from the stress of everything that’s happened in the months since Bucky died. There’d been the attempt to mourn his friend, the Valkyrie, the Arctic, the ruse of Fury’s, everyone he knew being dead or senile, the loneliness in the future… the aliens in the future…

Bucky pulls off his gloves and then shields his right palm with his cupped left hand, so that no one will be able to see except the two of them. 

And then… And then some kind of worm emerges from his palm, as black as Bucky’s jacket and just as shiny and wet looking. The end of the worm swells up into a sphere about a dime’s diameter, and two tiny white crescent eyes open up. 

Steve stares, torn between revulsion and awe. 

On the one hand, he’s seen maggots and worms emerge from rotting flesh in the War, and he hates the very thought that any part of Bucky could be related to that imagery. On the other hand, the worm is more like a caterpillar than an earthworm or a maggot. Maybe an inchworm. Or maybe it’s like a tiny vine with a fruit pod at one end. 

Just, one that’s black and shiny and not green and fresh-looking.

“What, um,” Steve starts.

Bucky grins, and gives the top of the sphere a gentle stroke with his metal thumb.

“Not what,” he says. “Who. This is Venom. They saved my life in the ‘60s, when I was a test subject and weapon being used against my will by— Well, we’ll get to that. I accidentally helped them escape a research facility in Finland, and when we arrived back at the research facility I was being kept at in Siberia, they set me free.”

Steve looks from the worm-vine thing to Bucky’s face and sees that Bucky is looking at the little creature in his palm—the creature coming out of his palm—with all of the tenderness and affection he used to look at his little sisters with, and with something a bit more akin to what he’d looked at Steve with a time or two during the War and before it.

Love, as he had felt for his sisters? And maybe a hint of… desire, as he had felt—maybe—for Steve? Or is Steve reading into this expression?

Bucky looks up at him. “Then we were both free, together. We’ve been together since.”

“Together, how?”

“Symbiotically,” Bucky says. “I take care of their needs, they take care of my needs. When we’re together, we meet each other’s needs perfectly. When we’re apart, things aren’t so great.”

It sounds uncomfortably like what he and Bucky used to share, and Steve can’t help but feel a little replaced. 

“And… They’re a worm?” Bucky replaced him with a worm?

Bucky laughs. “They’re an alien. From Klyntar, which is a long way away from here. They call themselves symbiotes, and Venom is my symbiote, just as I’m their host.”

Aliens. More aliens. They just defeated an alien army intent on taking over the planet, but they did it with help from another alien. That balances out on the alien front. And the worm doesn’t look very threatening. 

It’s just. From the ‘60s to today. That’s longer than the time he’s known Bucky. Bucky’s been friends with this… with this worm… has relied on the worm in times of trouble, for longer than he’s known Steve.

And the worm had somehow rescued Bucky from a research facility in Siberia—how did Bucky get to Siberia to be held there as a test subject when he fell from the train in Europe? Steve had rescued Bucky from Zola’s research, but this worm has done just as much for him. 

Steve takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out. He will not be jealous of a worm. He won’t be. 

“This is a lot to digest,” he says. “But hi, Venom. I’m Steve Rogers.”

“They know. You’re the Pal, Steve. Capital P on that. We spent years trying to find you as soon as I learned my name and could look myself up. That’s when we learned you were dead.”

“You— Didn’t know your name?”

“I didn’t know a lot of things. I was fed through an IV most of the time, so I didn’t really know how to eat. Chewing and all that. I bit myself a lot learning to do that. But V helped.”

Steve tries to keep the horrified look off his face, and he knows from Bucky’s overly reassuring expression that he doesn’t succeed. 

“It’s okay, Stevie. It’s not your fault. It’s theirs, and we’ve been making them pay for decades now.”

“I didn’t know,” Steve whispers. “I didn’t know you’d survived. We left you— We— In the ravine…”

“I read up on it, yeah.” Bucky’s worm inches across his palm until it wraps around his wrist like a bracelet, and then Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s arm. “You did what you had to do. I’m not mad. Not even a little. Shit happened, and it’s over now. I have you back now, and you have me.”

Bucky returns to his torte for a few bites, and Steve tries to enjoy his breakfast sandwich. He’s already eaten breakfast at the tower, but he doesn’t want Bucky to feel like he’s the only one eating. 

“So you were in Finland. What were you doing there? How long were you there?”

“I was supposed to raid a research facility and steal all their work to bring back to— Well, to Siberia, let’s say. Can’t be too careful, and we’re in public.”

Steve gets a horrible creeping feeling in his gut. 

The Russians had been their allies in the War, but it was never a fully trusted arrangement. If Bucky hadn’t died in the ravine, if he’d ended up in Siberia, in Russia, if he’d been held captive as a research project—possibly because he hadn’t died in the ravine… And if Bucky won’t even say who it was who found him and dragged him away…

It can’t be HYDRA. Steve knows that. But the horrible creeping feeling in his gut is telling him that he doesn’t actually know that—that he just thinks it, hopes it. He has to know.

“Bucky, who held you captive as a research subject?”

Bucky stares for a long moment, seemingly arguing with himself. Or maybe with his worm. If the worm is a sentient alien of some kind, that would explain a lot of the oddities in Bucky’s interactions today.

“It wasn’t your fault, Steve,” Bucky finally says. “You did everything you could possibly have done to get rid of them, but…” 

Bucky sighs. 

“HYDRA is still alive and well in the world today. They’re just in the shadows— A base here, a facility there, usually tucked away in other organizations or hiding behind fronts. Like a fascist parasite feeding off bureaucracy and paperwork so that it can spread its evil out of dentist’s offices and banks and research centers.”

Steve’s sandwich might as well be made of ash. He sets it down. “I took out Schmidt, though. All those bombs. I put the plane down in the ocean. I stopped him!”

Bucky looks around the restaurant, and then back at him.

“And when you cut off one head, two more will sprout in its place,” Bucky says softly enough that only Steve could possibly hear him. “You cut off the main head, but you didn’t manage to cauterize the wound fully.”

What had Bucky said? That he was used as a weapon against his will and also a test subject. More experimentation on him, just like what Zola had done earlier. And that’s where the metal arm is from; it has to be. It’s a HYDRA weapon attached to his body, to make him a literal weapon for their use. 

Steve swallows a huge lump of nothing in his throat, feeling like he’s choking even though there’s nothing there.

“And it was until the ‘60s?” Steve whispers, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. 

Until the ‘60s… Bucky had fallen in the ‘40s. That’s two whole decades of experimentation, of torture, of being used against his will by the enemy he hated with a passion…

“Until ‘68, yeah.” Bucky shrugs. “I killed a President for them.”

Steve clenches and then relaxes his hands. 1968. Twenty-three years, give or take. And all because Steve didn’t insist that they search for him, even if just to bring a body back.

“Where are they now?”

“Well, Kennedy is six feet under in Arlington,” Bucky says.

Steve shakes his head. “You know what I mean.”

Bucky sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “And I don’t know where they are now. Every once in a while, I catch a whiff of them and torch a place to the ground, but the trail keeps going cold after a hit. They’re pretty fragmented for the most part, and they move quick to cut off any branch that gets compromised.” 

Bucky shrugs and digs out a huge forkful of torte. “Sorry, Steve. Next time I pick up the trail, I’ll let you know. Could use the help.”

Steve watches Bucky eat for a while, amazed and maybe a little appalled at just how much of the torte he’s eating in this one sitting. He’d thought perhaps they would be taking most of it back to the tower with them. But Bucky is eating that torte with the determination of a man fully intent on cleaning his plate.

Is he starving? Steve’s heard about tapeworms. Parasites of all kinds, really, from the educational materials for troops and from overhearing his mother talking before that. He hopes Venom isn’t that kind of worm.

“Is your… symbiote,” Steve asks, “is he hurting you at all? To climb through your palm like he did?”

“They,” Bucky says around a bite of torte. “Venom prefers ‘they’. And no, no pain at all. There are some drawbacks, some risks, but the benefits far outweigh them and the risks are absolutely worth it.”

“Okay. You would know.” Steve frowns at his abandoned breakfast sandwich for a moment. “Well, in that case, I’m glad you found each other. It’s lonely in the future, even with a team like the Avengers around.

“V wants you to know that you won’t be lonely anymore, because we have found you.”

Steve frowns. So the worm does communicate with Bucky like that, maybe talking into his mind or something. Distracting him from the world around him so that he focuses on the worm and the world inside him.

But there’s a positive to that statement from “V,” too. Bucky hasn’t replaced him with an alien worm, but is maybe hoping to have what they had before everything fell apart. How much of that does Bucky remember, though, if he forgot his name and something so innate as how to eat?

“You’re one of the first things I knew, Steve.” Bucky smiles at him. “I found my name in a file in Ukraine, and then I knew I’d forgotten someone very important. ‘Course, just after I managed to put a name to you, we found out you were dead. That sucked. But here you are!”

Steve smiles, trying to focus on the positives—HYDRA is around, but Bucky is free from them. There’s an alien worm creature inside of his friend, but the worm agrees that Steve is a good thing and wants at least a friendship with him. Bucky is changed, but Bucky is alive. 

“Here I am,” Steve says. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter 9: No spoilers

SAM

— New York City: Just before evening rush hour, 07 May 2012 —

He’s pretty much gotten the hang of wearing Venom by now, particularly when it comes to tuning them out when he’s trying to go over logistics in his mind. 

He hasn’t had a chance to pack everything from New Orleans to move it up here, and he probably won’t move the furniture. He’ll still need to get a week or two back down there to pack up his belongings and arrange for U-Haul rentals. It would be quicker and cheaper, if Jimmy lived somewhere between New Orleans and New York for them to go in together. 

Sam could use the company and the help packing, and at the very least, Jimmy could use someone to distract Venom from whatever packing he has to do. 

Paperwork has been sorted, benefits are in progress, and they have each been assigned accommodations in Avengers Tower. It’s just a matter of checking in with the VA office to let them know his availability and work out a schedule, and getting moved up there. 

Sam taps the side of his “helmet” to get Venom’s attention as they change lanes. “Hey, could you ask Jimmy if he wants to go in on a U-Haul?”

One of the bonus features of wearing Venom as a helmet is that he doesn’t actually have to yell, he’s learned. Venom can hear him even if he whispers, as long as both he and Jimmy are wearing the symbiote as a helmet. 

What is a U-Haul?

“Moving truck. For relocating to New York City.”

All trucks move, if they are not broken.

“It’s a truck for moving lots of things at once.”

What does it mean to “go in” on a U-Haul? We have a motorcycle. We do not need to get on a truck.

“Going in on something, so like splitting the cost and we both use the same truck. It saves money, that’s all.”

But we are not moving to New York City. We are keeping our apartment. We like the apartment in Philly. It has been our home for decades.

“And I’m keeping my condo down in New Orleans. But I want my things where I’m living. Ask Jimmy, Venom, please?”

We do not want to move our things. It was very difficult assembling all of that Swedish furniture. If we take it apart to move it, we will have to put it together all over again.

Sam’s betting Venom didn’t even ask. He’ll just ask Jimmy himself when they get back to the hotel. It’s not a big deal.

Bucky says we will move only the most important things, and leave the rest for Jennifer to keep or sell. She could use the money, Bucky says. College students are broken.

“Broken?”

They have no money.

“Broke,” Sam corrects. “College students are broke.”

He wonders who Jennifer is. Jimmy hasn’t mentioned any relatives, and family has definitely come up as a topic of conversation by now given how much Sam’s talked about his own. He can’t see Jimmy having many college friends, or any of them, really. So maybe she’s a distant relation of his that just hasn’t been mentioned.

Jimmy is Bucky, after all. Didn’t he have sisters? Sam needs to brush up on his history. If there are any of the Barnes clan left, it seems likely that Jimmy would want to keep in contact with them, even if he did so under the guise of Jimmy Varnes and not a long-lost great-great uncle or something.

In any case, that’s a no on the moving truck. Looks like he’ll be on his own for packing up unless Sarah can find someone to mind the restaurant while she helps. Cass and AJ are too young to help; they’d just get underfoot. 

Bucky says that if you are “hard up,” we can help you with the moving truck. Hard up means nearly broken. Very little money, but not no money. We are far from broken. We have many offshore accounts.

It’s just a matter-of-fact statement, about the whole “being rich” thing. Not a brag. Venom sounds like they’re trying to be helpful, if anything.

“No, I’m good. Thanks.” 

Just how lucrative is the killing profession, anyway? Multiple offshore accounts? Is Jimmy just that proficient and sought after? Or has he been investing wisely for the last several decades? Maybe it’s both.

“Unless you wanted to help me pack,” Sam adds. 

Probably Venom would love to help him pack, since it would mean they got to go through all of his things and not just the luggage he packed for this interview week. Jimmy might be another matter, though. 

Bucky says we will have to see. We need to tend to our plants and things soon. Our rabbit.

“You have a pet rabbit?” Sam cannot see that for the life of him. Jimmy is many things, but could not possibly be a rabbit owner. A dog or cat, Sam could see. Tropical fish. But a cute little bunny rabbit? Jimmy?

Lady Scrumptious is not a pet.

Oh my god, Jimmy has a pet rabbit, Sam thinks. And it’s named… that. He can hardly believe it. Sam grins.

“What color is… Lady Scrumptious?”

White with brown feet.

“So she’s not a pet. Is she family?” 

This could be so precious.

Lady Scrumptious is a rabbit.

Well. Leave it to Venom to be literal. Maybe Jennifer is the pet-sitter. There wouldn’t have been any need to bring that up if pets hadn’t been mentioned, after all. Pretty generous to just leave all his stuff to the pet-sitter, though. But if Jimmy is rich, maybe he can afford to do that.

BUCKY

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Late night, 07 May 2012 —

“How do you feel about sleeping over at the tower tomorrow night?” Bucky asks as they take the elevator up to 308. “I figure, we have rooms there now, and someone might need the hotel room we’re taking up.”

That, and Steve had kind of insisted once they got back from the Panera. 

The Pal insisted we stay tonight, Venom reminds him. 

Well, tomorrow night will have to do. I’m not riding back to the tower again tonight.

The Pal was disappointed.

He’ll get over it. He’s not going anywhere, he swore, and that means he’ll be there tomorrow.

Venom pouts in his mind but doesn’t formulate any words to go with the pout. 

“So I guess this was our last time riding together on your motorcycle,” Sam says as they walk down the hall together. 

Bucky blinks. “Why is that?”

“I’ve got luggage?” Sam stands back a little, letting Bucky get the door with the key card he already has out. “I’ll call a Stark car to come get me in the morning. Luggage can go in the trunk.”

“Not necessary,” Venom says, forming their backless face on a dozen wisps of inky ooze just before the door to room 308 closes behind them. 

“Cutting it close, V.”

“No one was in the hallway. I checked.”

“Still.” The last thing they need is to cause a panic because someone sees something spooky on a hallway monitor’s feed and fucking storms the place looking for alien life. Everyone’s got aliens on the brain lately, after all.

“Yes dear,” Venom grumbles.

Sam is frowning at them. “You’re thinking, what, that we tie my luggage to the back of your motorcycle? ‘Cause I don’t want it all spilling out on the street.”

“We can store it,” Venom says, tongue lashing about with excitement at the prospect of showing off their ability to regurgitate undigested meal items, like coughing up a target’s magenta stilettos to sell.

“Store it where? How?”

Bucky smiles. “V, hun, I think the car is a good idea.”

“But—”

He takes hold of Venom’s face and places a kiss between their eyes. “Love, there’s no need to show off. Maybe let’s take things a bit slower.”

Sam’s seen a lot and handled it well, but they don’t need to risk Sam freaking out in the hotel room when Venom takes over to devour the luggage and store it away for later. That’s best saved for a situation where Sam has the opportunity to get away from them and think it over at a distance if he needs to.

Bucky uses his handhold to send over a flood of affection and the impression of showing off their beautiful merged form in the tower’s gym so the whole team can greet Venom at once. 

“When the time is right,” Bucky says. 

“And this time is not right?”

He ignores the challenge in Venom’s voice and pretends that it’s a genuine question. “Exactly. It’s late, and I want to go to bed. We can show off later.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Think about it, overnight, okay?”

“Goodnight, Beautiful Sam.”

“G’night, Venom,” Sam says.

Venom seeps back inside his shoulder and goes to wrap themself around his spleen. 

Thankfully, Sam doesn’t ask what that was all about. He just goes about getting ready for a shower and bed.

I know what you are really thinking, Venom says once comfortably settled. You are thinking that the beautiful Sam would not want to spend the night here with us because he would not like what we are like when we are fully merged.

Not exactly.

But close. And you are wrong. He can take it. Bruce-who-was-Tommy could take it.

Bucky rolls his eyes. 

Bruce’s first night’s sleep at their safehouse had been interrupted by overhearing a few solid hours of Bucky getting absolutely railed by Venom and not being all that quiet about it. After that, what’s an alien taking over and eating a guy in a parking lot?

Bruce had Hulk inside him. He wasn’t afraid of anything hurting him —his fear was all about him hurting others.

Sam would not be afraid, either.

The only two people who have seen them like that and not been put off are Wade and Bruce. Both of them freaks. Even Logan had been creeped out by them, though not even slightly worried, and Logan had a metal skeleton and knives in his knuckles.

Sam’s not a freak. I’d like to think he has some survival sense. We’ve only known him a few days now, and I don’t have a great sense for his reaction to things.

Though he’d been initially weirded out by Venom’s full face and all the teeth that went with it after they got back from getting him new toothpaste. There’s a chance he’d be fine with them, all the same. Bucky just doesn’t want to risk it.

It’s late at night, and people are on edge. Not a great time for walking around clearing one’s mind.

He would be fine with us.

Steve wasn’t fine and all we showed him was a palmful of cute.

Venom laughs. The Pal thought I was a worm! 

Venom clearly didn’t pick up on Steve’s expression through that conversation. Bucky might have had most of his attention on Venom, making sure he was shielding the symbiote from prying eyes, but he had caught that flicker of disgust. 

Thankfully, he’s adept at hiding things from Venom when it’s important. And that? That had been important to hide. The entire world could find Venom disgusting and it would not matter as much as if Steve, their Pal, had been merely bothered by them.

Equally thankfully, Steve had quickly recovered by the time Venom was watching, and hadn’t been overly sad once Bucky made it clear that Steve was as important as he was to both of them.

And then the HYDRA thing had made Steve feel guilty and angry all at once, and any trace of concern about Venom had evaporated. 

Really, Bucky should have led with that. Done it in chronological order from an outsider’s perspective. 

But he’d done it from his own perspective, and that meant putting Venom first, not only because they’re that important, but because Venom is the reason he’s alive instead of mechanically putting one foot in front of the other at the command of HYDRA assholes.

 

STEVE

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late night, 07 May 2012 —

Steve had come down to the gym to lift some weights and maybe think a bit while pounding his fists into a heavy bag. But Bruce is down here doing some kind of handstand on a bright pink rubber towel with a pair of candles to either side, and… And Steve doesn’t want to disturb him with a bunch of noise. 

That, and he’s intrigued. 

After a few minutes, Bruce’s bare feet drop down to the rubber towel and he shifts his arms so that he’s lying down on the rubber towel on his back. 

“Do you need this space?” Bruce asks him, eyes closed and voice almost unnaturally calm. 

Calm. Maybe Steve needs to get a rubber towel of his own and try whatever this is. It’s definitely working for Bruce.

“Need? No. I was just coming to work off some steam, but— But I’d rather talk, if you have a few minutes. I don’t want to interrupt, though.”

Bruce takes a deep breath through his mouth, releases it slowly through his nose, and effortlessly sits up, pulling his legs in to sit cross-legged on the rubber towel, but with both of his feet on top of his calves, somehow, sole up. Steve has never seen anyone sit like that. It doesn’t look comfortable.

“I have all the time you need, Steve.” Bruce reaches for his glasses and then gestures toward a cubby in the wall where there are more of the rubber towels, but rolled up in a tight coil. “Grab a mat and have a seat.”

Steve goes to the cubby and picks a blue towel. It’s actually kind of squishy, more so than he’d thought it would be. Interesting. It might actually be comfortable to sit on this. Maybe not with his feet up like that, but cross-legged, sure.

He gets settled in front of Bruce, careful of the candles, and takes a seat. Yeah, he’s not doing that to his feet.

“What would you like to know?”

“Bucky,” Steve says. “You know about the worm. The alien. Venom. You have to. You were living with him for a while, and he’s not very good at hiding that situation when he interacts with someone for very long.”

Bruce smiles and nods. “I know all about them, yes. They’re more considerate than I thought when I first met them. But they don’t have much of a filter between what they think and what they say. And they have an interesting take on things.”

They, as in Bucky and the alien? Or… or they as in the alien? Steve decides he’s best off asking instead of assuming anything.

“Venom can talk?”

Bruces eyebrows climb a bit. “You— Didn’t meet them?”

“We were in Panera. And then on the street. And then with the team.”

Bruce nods. “I had wondered why Jimmy—Bucky, I’m sorry—didn’t introduce them to the team. We’ll be working together, after all, and it pays to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.” 

He shrugs. “But, then, I didn’t introduce the Other Guy to the team. Or I didn’t mean to, anyway.”

Steve remembers the issues they’d had once the helicarrier had been attacked by Clint under Loki’s control. 

“The team was briefed on Hulk, though. We knew what to expect. The risks.” Steve frowns. “Our briefing on ‘Jimmy’ didn’t mention that he was possessed by an alien. But Fury must have known.”

“I wonder if he does. Bucky was very selective. He may not have told Fury, or Fury might have only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

“But Fury has all of S.H.I.E.L.D. behind him,” Steve says. “They’ve been around since the War. They’re the ones who found me. They knew all of what did go in the dossier. How could they have missed that Bucky was…”

“That Bucky has an extraterrestrial life partner?” Bruce suggests. “He is not possessed. He is occupied. And please don’t make the mistake of thinking of Venom as a parasite. They don’t like that term.”

Steve nods. “I bet not. But how is—” He lets out a frustrated sigh.

“What exactly do you know at this point?” Bruce asks. “Because Venom chooses how and when to show themself, and I want to respect that.”

Steve looks at Bruce and realizes that Bruce is definitely on Venom’s side in this mess, if there are sides at all and not just a big splodging mess of motivations. That’s… That’s actually good. He needs to hear this from the point of view of someone who approves of the alien. He’s got to get his head wrapped around this for Bucky’s sake.

“I know they’re an alien from somewhere called Klyntar, a long way off. They call themself a symbiote and Bucky is their host.” Steve frowns. “It sounds like a parasite situation, whatever they call it. And they’re a worm that burrows into him and can become a bracelet sometimes as well.”

“I haven’t seen them as a bracelet before. Hm. So, you’ve seen a very small sample of what’s possible.” Bruce nods, looking thoughtful.

Steve gives him the time and space to think. Hell, he needs the time and space, too. What does he mean that’s a small sample? Just how much deeper does this iceberg go? Isn’t it enough that there’s an alien “occupying” his dearest friend? Talking into Bucky’s mind—maybe controlling it, even, like Loki did Clint’s—making him act strangely, and who knows what else.

“Venom cares very deeply for Bucky, Steve. Venom wants the best for Bucky. And all of that is reciprocal. From what I’ve seen, it’s a truly symbiotic relationship they’ve managed.”

“You called them Bucky’s ‘life partner,’” Steve says. “He’s known Venom longer than he’s known me. They’ve been ‘together’ longer than we had been.”

“It’s natural to feel jealous and hurt,” Bruce says softly. “Even like you’ve been replaced. Your place in Bucky’s life usurped by an alien lifeform. But consider instead that Venom is the reason your friend has survived to be here for you when you were recovered.”

Steve considers it. It’s true, after all. Without Venom breaking him out of HYDRA’s grasp and helping him learn to actually live outside of HYDRA’s control, Bucky would have had to endure HYDRA’s treatment even longer. Steve might not know what that treatment entailed, but it can’t have been kind.

He feels ungrateful thinking about Venom as a worm when Venom has done all of that for Bucky. 

“They’re a lot bigger than the worm I saw, aren’t they?” Steve asks. 

Bruce laughs. “Quite a lot bigger, yes.”

“But where are they, then? Do they live in the metal arm? Bucky didn’t bulge anywhere when they came out of his palm.”

Bruce shrugs. “That, I don’t know. I suspect the answer defies human science.”

“Do they look like a snake, since they’re bigger than the worm shape?”

“Hm. I suppose there’s a snakelike quality to the tentacles. I’d sa—”

“The what?!”

“Oh.” Bruce adjusts his glasses. “That’s how I think of the appendages. Many liquid strands weaving together into a solid mass. And prehensile, as an octopus’s tentacles would be, minus the suckers.”

“That’s— That’s a lot of alien to fit inside one person.”

Bruce chuckles again. “Like I said, the situation defies human science.”

There must be some scientific answer to it, even if it isn’t a human scientific answer. Just like there has to be some explanation to how Bucky can eat all that he does. Maybe Thor would know, if he comes back.

Steve wonders how the alien sustains themself. How does it eat? Is it like a tapeworm, after all, eating the nutrients from what Bucky eats? Is that the reason behind all the chocolate bars and the near-constant snacking?

“Bucky said they didn’t hurt him— I asked. Was that a lie for my benefit?” Steve asks. “I’ve heard about tapeworms. That seems like it would be hurting him.”

Bruce’s lack of expression is all the answer Steve needs, but he waits to see what answer Bruce will come up with, anyway. It could provide more detail that Steve will need later.

“Venom does require nutrients to survive. They’re a living being.” Bruce shrugs. “Living beings require nutrients. But Bucky can supply what they need without damage to himself. That, I promise you.”

“And if I ask what kind of nutrients, or what they eat, or—”

“I wouldn’t answer, no,” Bruce says. “Bucky will tell you what he’s comfortable telling you. I can provide some reassurance, but I won’t spill secrets that aren’t mine to spill. I have too much respect for the duo who saved the lives of so many people in Mexico, and whose influence has had such a positive impact on my relationship with the Other Guy.”

Steve nods. “Good. That’s good. I’m glad you’re in their corner. I just wish Bucky trusted me to be in his corner, too. Enough to share all of this. We used to share everything.”

“Give it some time. Venom didn’t show themselves to me all at once. It was in bits and pieces, and I didn’t see them fully until the day before we parted ways, when they defended themselves against a would-be mugger.”

Time, huh. Well, time is one thing they have now. Potentially, the rest of time. Bucky doesn’t look much older than he did before. That may be the alien, and it may be whatever Zola did to him. Whatever HYDRA did to him after the fall. 

“Thank you, Bruce.” Steve gets to his feet, careful not to disturb either candle. “This was a good talk. I feel a little better about things.”

“Any time,” Bruce says. “I doubt it will be long before you come to understand Venom and to appreciate their many quirks.”

Steve sure hopes so. He can’t lose Bucky again. 

Chapter 10: College AU

Notes:

Teeny tiny content warning in this chapter.

JENNIFER

— Apartment 521, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Mid-morning, 08 May 2012 —

Jennifer lets herself into Jimmy’s apartment and tosses her bookbag onto the sofa before heading to the kitchen to fill the watering can. 

It’s fertilizer day, so she adds a scoop full of the unlabeled crystalized plant fertilizer Jimmy keeps on the counter in a jar next to the sink. Well, the semi-unlabeled crystalized plant fertilizer. There’s a weathered sharpie-and-duct-tape label on the glass jar of it that has a hand drawn skull and crossbones and the word “NO” on it. That’s kind of a label. 

Jennifer has never asked what kind of fertilizer it is, specifically. It’s one of the many things about Jimmy that she feels like she’s maybe happier not knowing. Does he feed his plants crystal meth? Who even knows? Not her, certainly.

Because she has never asked.

Per his instructions, the mystery fertilizer gets added to the water and then needs to dissolve for a while before getting mixed in with a special not-for-food spoon and the plants watered with the resulting mixture. So she helps herself to a cheese stick from the fridge that’s always somehow well-stocked despite Jimmy’s hectic travel schedule and heads back to the living room to wait a while. 

The Summer One semester at the university hasn’t even started yet, but the professor released the reading list and syllabus early to give his students a chance to get the books they needed in time for class if they didn’t want to sell a kidney on the black market in order to afford the campus bookstore’s prices. 

So, because she has the books already, she might as well enjoy the bright eastern sunlight coming in through the windows while she does a little pre-class studying. Jimmy’s apartment gets great light ever since the building next to it got torn down and replaced with a park. Her windows might look out onto a lovely brick wall just out of arm’s reach, but Jimmy has a view worth double the rent she pays. 

Jennifer settles on the sofa to eat her cheese stick, and then decides to turn on the lights on the Christmas tree. She doesn’t always put on the lights when she comes over, at least not in the morning like this, but the lights are pretty against all the blown glass ornaments, even in the sunlight. 

And a few days ago, they’d been on when she came in, even though she turns them off when she leaves. So either she forgot to turn them off that time, or Jimmy had returned for a few hours and just not popped over to say hi. He does that sometimes, comes home in the middle of a longer trip and leaves again right away.

She thinks that might be why and how his fridge is always so well stocked.

It doesn’t explain certain other oddities—like the Christmas tree that’s been up and fully decked out the entire time she’s lived next door—but Jimmy’s oddities have never really bothered her the way they bother her mother sometimes. 

Jennifer had asked Jimmy once, two years ago, when she moved in next door, why he had a Christmas tree up in June. He’d said the main reason was laziness—why go through the effort of taking it down and finding somewhere to store it out of sight when he was just going to have to put it back up again in a year—but also that he liked the ornaments. 

And she gets it. They’re pretty. 

Some of them are just clear glass—but even the plain clear glass ones didn’t come cheaply. They’re thick glass and well made. Not the kind of thing you find at Walmart. And there are a lot of them that are fancy blown glass in stained-glass colors and patterns. And there are lots of fun non-globe ornaments to look at, foods and animals mostly. The blown glass cherry pie slice is her second favorite, right after the delicate glass zebra fish she’s almost afraid to look at lest it shatter under the pressure. 

He brings a new ornament home every time he travels, and he travels a lot. So he has more ornaments on the tree than she’s ever seen on another Christmas tree. Storing them all would be a huge pain in the ass. 

It’s actually a pretty good thing he does travel so much, too. He pays her really well for keeping track of his plants when he’s gone, and for keeping Lady Scrumptious over at her place when he’s going to be gone for a really long time. And she gets to enjoy his sunlight the whole time she’s apartment-sitting, too. 

Of all of her grandpa’s clients, Jimmy is by far her favorite. And by far the most eccentric. Traveling all the time for work, calling at weird times to check in, talking to himself and laughing at his own jokes that aren’t always funny and that sometimes he doesn’t even share but just laughs at and waves off like she wouldn’t understand.

But he’s nice and he gave her his real phone number for if she ever runs into problems. He taught her how to field strip and clean a rifle when she first moved in and happened to see the three of them he keeps under the sofa beside the machete, and she’s been to the shooting range with him at least half a dozen times. And when she started watering his plants for him, he taught her how to care for plants with the mystery fertilizer and how to use every weapon in his “go bag,” which he keeps in the oven.

The only reason she’s even in Philly instead of back home at a much closer university in Phoenix or at least in Arizona in general is that Jimmy’s here. Her parents trust Jimmy, even if her mother doesn’t like him, and Uncle Jason trusts him, too. Uncle Jason is starting to take over some of her grandpa’s clients, and Jimmy’s the most complicated client on her grandpa’s roster. 

Jimmy’s been over to family gatherings in Phoenix when he’s in town, too. And he gives the weirdest gifts, but good ones.

For her high school graduation, he gave her a great big old trunk covered in real leather and with metal trim to keep the corners in good shape and a big sturdy lock on the front. He’d said something about fitting at least two people in it—only he said bodies, not people—but Jennifer doubts you could close it if there was even one person in it, unless that person was a contortionist. 

It’s really old, too, according to the date burned into the wood at the bottom of the trunk. Probably worth a lot of money if she ever sold it, which she won’t. Not only is it sentimental, but it makes an excellent coffee table and holds a lot of stuff.

Most people gave her a card with twenty bucks in it when she graduated, and some platitude about going places. Jimmy gave her ancient luggage you could actually use to go places.

Jimmy’s gifts are always things you can use that you didn’t know you needed. Like the pocket knife she carries everywhere, a gift for her 16th birthday. “Every young woman needs to be able stab a pushy date in the kidney,” he’d said. 

Thankfully, she’s never had to stab a pushy date. But the fact that she could if she needed to gives her the confidence to tell pushy guys to back off before they get too invested in her. She’s not worth their time to push around, so they never have to find out if she’d actually stab them. And neither does she.

Jennifer pulls out the book of poetry she’s got to read for her summer class and gets ready to be bored to tears. She’s all about this Literature degree, despite her parents’ disapproval—it’s not law or medicine and therefore isn’t worth much to them—but she wishes there wasn’t a poetry requirement. Drama was bad enough—but at least with drama, there was a plot to follow. 

Three poems in, Jennifer decides it’s time to water the plants. Plants make sense. Poetry doesn’t.

But after stirring in the mystery fertilizer with the special “plant spoon” that never gets used with food or else someone could apparently be poisoned to death, Jennifer doesn’t see a peaceful park outside Jimmy’s window. She sees a pair of big black vans with a logo on the back and side that Jimmy showed her a drawing of and gave her a warning about when she first moved in.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

Specifically, “the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes,” as he’d put it. S.H.I.E.L.D. is a secretive paramilitary organization and also bad news.

Worse, she doesn’t duck out of sight quickly enough and one of the men milling around outside the vans dressed in all black with a tac vest on and clunky black boots happens to look up at her when she looks down at them. 

Oh shit. 

What does she do? What does she do? 

Jennifer sets the watering can down on the floor and goes to her school bag. 

What she does is call Jimmy. He’s traveling, but he’ll tell her what to do. 

And while she’s on the phone, she’ll go ahead and lock all of the locks on the door. Including the one she knows the apartment managers don’t know about that bars the door with a literal bar like a medieval castle in a movie when the enemy is coming with a battering ram.

He answers immediately, like he always does on those rare occasions she has to call. 

“Jen, what’s up?”

“There’s S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes outside your window, Jimmy, and one of them saw me!”

“Okay. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

STEVE

— Stark Tower, New York City: Mid-morning, 08 May 2012 —

“Yeah, I bet that was not a fun place to be,” Bucky says to Clint over a cafeteria tray that was once piled high with tater tots but now only has about a dozen tots left. “Food wasn’t that good either, when we raided the fridge. But you got out of there, okay. Wade made sure of that before he set the explosives off.”

“Who’s Wade?” Steve asks. 

“You saw me in the basement, tied to a fucking chair, and left me there?” Clint asks, too indignant to wait for an answer to Steve’s question. 

Bucky shrugs and pops a tater tot into his mouth, completely unconcerned as far as Steve can tell. “You were S.H.I.E.L.D. I avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. as a general principle, unless the objective is worth the risk. Like Steve. Steve is worth the risk, so I joined up despite S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I’m surprised you trusted Wade to wait until he got out,” Bruce murmurs. “Wade didn’t strike me as being very patient.”

“Well one of us had to go round up the escapees. I’m quicker than Wade. Gotta catch ‘em all.”

“Who’s Wade?” Steve asks again.

“A close friend and closer business associate,” Bucky says. “One I hope to hell you never have to meet.”

Bruce laughs. 

It’s clearly an inside joke, and Steve? Steve’s on the outside.

Steve wants to meet Wade. Steve wants to really meet Venom, too. Steve wants to know everything about Bucky’s life again, just like old times. He wants them to be as close as they had been, to share everything. Not to be told that one of Bucky’s close friends is also someone he doesn’t want Steve to meet.

But it’s up to Bucky what he shares. And there’s a whole lived life of several decades. Bucky can’t share everything all at once; there’s too much of it. And he’s not a book Steve can skim through picking out the important bits to remember and storing the other bits to examine later if needed. He’ll have to learn about Bucky all over again, at Bucky’s pace.

“So Wade’s the one in the red and black gimp suit they were talking about?” Clint asks. 

Bucky nods. “I’ll be sure to let him know he was described that way. He’ll get a kick out of it.”

“So what did you and this Wade guy do to disappear that many guys that quietly?” Clint asks. “I thought it was magic or something.”

“I ate them,” Bucky jokes, eating another three tater tots in quick succession as if to punctuate the joke. “Then swung after the others and ate them, too.”

“Yeah, okay, don’t tell us,” Clint mutters. “But Avengers don’t disappear people. So you’re going to have to go ahead and not do whatever you did then when we work together. Maybe if you take any ‘other’ jobs, you can disappear people, but keep it on the down low?”

Bucky shrugs. He’s about to say something about that, but his phone rings—super softly—and he holds up a finger. “Gotta take this. Jen, what’s up?”

Steve can hear the panicked response, though he’s certain no one else hears it but Bucky. The phone’s volume is ridiculously low.

“There’s S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes outside your window, Jimmy, and one of them saw me!”

Bucky’s face goes from lightly concerned to downright full of thunderclouds in the space of that one sentence, and Steve wonders just what beef Bucky has with S.H.I.E.L.D. and whether he’d ever share it.

“Okay,” Bucky says, his voice a combination of comforting and authoritative. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Answer everything I ask with ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ okay?”

“Yes,” comes the shaky response on the other end.

“Go to the Christmas tree. There are glass ornaments on it. In the back, near the bottom of the tree, do you see the black ornament with the white eyes?”

“Christmas tree?” Clint asks. “It’s May. Dude. Take down the tree already.”

Bucky ignores him except to turn his back on the group of them to better concentrate on the call.

Steve hears some glass clattering against glass coming from the phone, and some rustling of what must be the branches of a Christmas tree.

“…Yes,” Jen finally says. 

At least this Jen girl feels safe hearing Bucky’s voice. He can hear that the panic is just about gone, despite the bizarre instructions that couldn’t possibly be helpful in the situation.

“Take that ornament off the tree and get our go bag.” 

“Can I have a tater tot?” Clint asks. “You’re done with these, right?”

“Are you there?” Bucky asks, ignoring Clint.

Steve doesn’t catch the response as Clint repeats his own question, but he assumes it was another “yes” because Bucky continues.

“When I count to three, I want you to smash that ornament. Just throw it on the tile as hard as you can. And above all else, don’t be afraid. Are you ready?” Bucky asks.

“Yes,” says Jen on the other end of the line, her voice full of confidence.

“One,” Bucky says. “Two. Three.”

Clint goes to steal a tater tot off the tray and immediately yelps and scrambles backward, his chair tumbling to the floor, as his hand is slapped away by a whiplike black strand emerging from Bucky’s back. 

So Venom does get bigger. He can see why Bruce called that a tentacle, too.

“Do you hear a voice in your mind?” Bucky asks softly, gently, paying no attention to Clint’s spluttering and pointing.

“Y-yes,” Jen whispers so softly that Steve can barely hear her over what sounds like banging and angry voices in the background of the call.

“That voice is going to keep you safe and bring you to me. Do whatever it says, no matter how objectionable or scary the command is. You’ll be okay. I promise. I’ll see you soon, kiddo.”

Bucky hangs up and looks over his shoulder at Clint with sullen menace on his face.

“Speaking of S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes,” he mutters as Venom withdraws into his back. He sighs. “Go ahead and finish the tater tots, Clint. I need to call my lawyer.”

“What the hell was that thing?” Clint yells, cradling his hand and staring.

Steve looks at Bucky, wondering what explanation he’ll give, but Bucky just gives him a thumbs up and turns his attention to his phone.

“That’s Venom,” Steve says, answering for Bucky. “An alien that’s part of him now.”

“More aliens?” Clint asks. “Wait, then I was right! It is a flying saucer!”

Steve frowns. “A what?”

“Flying saucer. Alien spaceship. I said it yesterday, when you were gone, that I thought he was beaming the bodies up to his flying saucer, and I was right.”

Clint rubs the back of his hand where there’s a red mark, but ultimately rights his chair and sets in on the remaining tater tots. 

“‘Tasha owes me five bucks.”

JENNIFER

— Amtrak train car, Levittown, Pennsylvania: Nearly noon, 08 May 2012 —

Jennifer grips Jimmy’s go bag white-knuckle tight and stares out the window at the passing countryside. 

She’s been on the train many, many times, but she’s never been on the train with a rabbit in a carrier and someone else’s go bag that turns out to have surprisingly few weapons in it this time. Just a roll of cash, some boxers and an undershirt, and lots of fancy foreign chocolate. A toothbrush, too. And floss. She guesses Jimmy needs to take care of his teeth if he eats as much chocolate as this indicates. 

The rhythmic sounds and motion of the train help soothe her nerves, but not enough to make up for the fact that she remembers leaping out the window with the go bag on her back at the instruction of a low, rumbling woman’s voice in her mind not a full minute after learning the voice’s name.

Jennifer, the voice had said to her, sounding halfway to a gargle and seeming to come from all over at once. I am Trust. And you are safe. Take the bag. Jump out of the window.

She can’t believe she actually did that! 

She did, though. 

She smashed the ornament, some kind of melted putty had splattered all over her feet and disappeared into her shoes, the voice gave her instructions. And just like that, she had put the go bag on her back, shoved the window open, and leaped head-first out. She thought for sure she’d be dead, despite what Jimmy had said about it being okay, and despite what the voice had said. 

I am Trust.

She still hears the voice, even. 

Jennifer looks down at the ticket stub clenched in her fist. She knows that she’s on her way to New York City. Maybe Jimmy is there. Maybe that’s just the next stop in this journey. She has no way of knowing because the voice had told her not to use the phone again. 

In fact, she doesn’t even know how she got here. She jumped out the window—

Good job.

—and then she was here, on this train. Going to New York City with a bag of chocolate and a rabbit.

Eat more chocolate.

Jennifer loosens her grip on the bag and opens the zipper to get out another chocolate bar, this one wrapped in blue and silver. She’s already done this six times since she became aware that she was on the train with no idea how she’d gotten here. 

Eventually, someone on the train will see her eating all this chocolate. They will think rude things about her. Probably. But Jimmy said to do what the voice said, and there is a lot more chocolate in the bag still. 

Jennifer crams the chocolate bar into her mouth, taking a giant bite as she realizes how hungry she is.

What else will she realize only after she’s acted on it? What even happened between jumping out of the window and ending up on the train to New York City?

We ate the heads of an entire STRIKE team, is what happened, comes the voice she’s still hearing. Then we went up over the roof, broke into your apartment, collected Lady Scrumptious, and headed for the train station. No one followed. We ate the ones who tried and took to the rooftops, where we lost all of our remaining followers.

“We what?!” Jennifer yelps as soon as the full meaning of the voice breaks through her stunned senses.

Think your thoughts, the voice instructs. I will hear them. No one else will hear. Do not speak. Speaking is dangerous.

Jennifer licks a bit of chocolate off her finger and crams the wrapper back into Jimmy’s go bag. 

Tentatively, she forms a thought in her mind and consciously thinks it as though speaking.

Wh-what do you mean we ate heads? she thinks.

There is an image in her mind suddenly. She sees the S.W.A.T.-looking S.H.I.E.L.D. vans and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents outside of them, one of them pointing up at her. She sees a vivid red tongue dripping saliva— her tongue, somehow—and then the agents are shooting at her, and she is lifting them one by one in glistening black tentacles and cramming their heads inside of her mouth, and—

Jennifer feels her stomach heave inside her like all of the chocolate she’s had to eat is about to escape, and then suddenly the wave of nausea is gone as though it was never threatening to close in over her. 

Oh god, she ate people!

I did the eating of the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes. You did the eating of the chocolate, Trust says, tone gentle despite being so deep and gravelly and wet.

Jennifer figures she might as well call the voice Trust. It seems polite to refer to the voice by the name it chose rather than just call it a voice, especially if they’re going to be talking to each other like this. 

Thank you. Then, after a moment, even more gently and reassuringly: You are not a cannibal, Jennifer.

Where the nausea had been rising before, now there is intense protectiveness and fondness, a wordless reassurance that everything will be alright. And further, that everything is alright at this moment, too. That she has nothing to fear, and is perfectly safe. 

Jennifer takes a calming breath and returns her attention to the window. 

She’s seen and heard Jimmy talking to himself all the time, calling himself V, which makes sense because of his last name, and also love and hun and sweetheart, which always made less sense. But now she realizes the truth of that—Jimmy must have something like Trust living in his head, too. 

…What are you? Jennifer asks. 

I am Trust. A symbiote. You are mine to protect, my temporary host.

Host? Like hosting a party, maybe. Or… something darker. She hopes it’s like a party.

I need chocolate or heads to survive, and my progenitor has supplied ample chocolate to get us to New York. The STRIKE heads were a delicious appetizer and will help sustain me.

Jennifer licks her lips and does a mental count of the chocolate bars left in the bag. Trust called them ample. She hopes so. She doesn’t want to eat more heads.

What happens if you don’t get either thing?

That will not happen. We are going to my progenitor, who will know what to do. 

Jimmy’s in New York?

There’s a sensation of debate, as though Trust is deciding what to say in response. 

At the station, eat two chocolate bars, Trust says instead of answering. Then get a taxi. Not an Uber, but a taxi waiting there at the station for people without reservations. Have it take you to Times Square. There is a hotel near there. “Paramount.”

Okay. 

They’re nearly there, after all. She supposes it’s time to get ready to follow instructions again and trust that it will all be okay.

The symbiote’s name is pretty apt, after all. 

Notes:

Content Warning: Jennifer has some unhealthy internalized body image and diet culture perceptions, but the narrative doesn’t support or validate these perceptions.

Chapter 11: Reunions

Notes:

It’s technically Friday here, and I can’t sleep, so have the chapter even earlier than usual. ^_^

Extremely mild content warning on this chapter.

BUCKY

— Hotel by Times Square, New York City: Noon, 08 May 2012 —

There’s nowhere to park for love or money when they get to the hotel where their offshoot last heard they were headed. But that’s fine. He just parks between two cars with out-of-state license plates—they’re staying at the hotel, obviously, and there’s a decent chance they won’t need to move their cars any time soon.

Venom gives each car a surreptitious nudge to the side to ensure there’s enough room to avoid scratching anyone’s paint. 

“Thanks, love.”

You are welcome. 

There’s a distinct sensation of pacing coming from Venom now that there’s no need to watch out for traffic. 

When will our offshoot arrive with Jennifer?

“Might as well ask ‘are we there yet’ for all that won’t get annoying soon,” Bucky murmurs. 

He opts to lean against the wall rather than go inside. Jennifer will see him right away this way, instead of having to go inside and look for him. She’ll be stressed out, whether she trusts their offshoot or not, and he’d like to do whatever he can to cut back on that. 

And this way he can keep an eye on the motorcycle, too, make sure he doesn’t get a ticket—or towed, which would be worse.

What if the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes apprehended them? What if our offshoot cannot handle a host that big yet and something goes wrong and Jennifer is hurt? What if Jennifer’s fear unduly influences our offshoot and they choose to go by Terror or Anxie—

It’ll be okay, he reassures Venom as a group of people leave the building in a clump and head for the tour bus that just pulled up. 

Bucky slides his phone out of his pocket to check the time. The bus schedule in Philly plus the train schedule to the City should put her here any minute, but she’s gotta get a ride in from the train station, and that might have taken a while. Adding in time stuck in traffic, and—

“You’re going to miss the tour, man,” one of the stragglers tells him.

“Not here for the tour,” Bucky says. “Enjoy it, pal.”

You are worried.

No, not worried. Just aware of the time.

Jennifer might have had trouble getting to the bus station. It was broad daylight out, and that means someone might have seen her on the roof. And— 

They need to check the news. 

He unlocks the phone and hits up his google alerts page. Nothing about a monster in Philly, no police reports about anything in the area around his apartment, no nothing. Either it’s already been covered up or their offshoot got lucky.

There’s no way to sneak a symbiote around in broad daylight during the lunch hour if said symbiote has to go climbing up buildings, jumping roof-to-roof, or eluding S.H.I.E.L.D. teams. Or eating people.

There should be enough chocolate in his go bag to get Jennifer and the symbiote she carries all the way here without a single snack of the human variety, but there’s also a good chance she won’t need all of that. 

Because STRIKE teams were the worst, most persistent assholes of all the S.H.I.E.L.D. asshole subtypes, and their offshoot probably had to eat a few of the bastards to get clear. 

And that, he is sure, would have made the news this soon after the Chitauri thing, even with a directive to keep it quiet. So no one saw them, clearly. That’s the only way it would have worked out like this.

Or no one saw them but the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes who were looking for them, anyway. 

Looking for us, Venom says darkly. And knowing where to look.

Could be a coincidence. 

The man with the eyepatch sold us out.

You know, V, I doubt it’s like that. 

What’s far more likely is that the information ended up in the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases, and from there, it got mixed up with all the tidbits of other data being added to a file S.H.I.E.L.D. has on their company based on the cards he leaves behind. Or from the various run-ins they’ve had with S.H.I.E.L.D. more directly.

Just a cause and effect chain right on down to some grunt working their case getting an alert and doing something about it as a matter of course. 

That is giving them the doubt benefits. They do not deserve the doubt benefits.

“Benefit of the doubt,” Bucky mutters. But Venom’s right. They don’t necessarily deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

So. There’s no point in sending a STRIKE team to his apartment after him if they’ve got all the information Fury has—Fury knows he’s not there. So they’re not operating on Fury’s orders. They’re operating without letting Fury know, too, or Fury would have called them off. 

He doesn’t know everything there is to know about S.H.I.E.L.D.—he does avoid them, after all, just like he told Clint—but he knows a little from word of mouth. Or word of Wade’s mouth, anyway. STRIKE teams are only sent out with the Director’s blessing, even if he doesn’t specifically order the strike.

But Fury would have called them off, Venom says. You thought that just a moment ago.

Right. So he didn’t know. His STRIKE teams are bypassing him entirely. Either he’s a shitty Director or someone else is pulling STRIKE’s strings in the background.

And so we can eat him, after all. 

No, love. We still can’t eat Nick Fury.

But heads will definitely roll if anything’s happened to Larry’s granddaughter over this.

Heads will roll right into our waiting mouth, Venom swears, even if Jennifer is fine. Our offshoot’s development has been threatened, Larry’s grand-offshoot has been threatened, Lady Scrumptious has been threatened. The threat will not stand.

No, Bucky agrees. No, it won’t.

But he’s not so sure it’s S.H.I.E.L.D. alone that needs to meet the chopping block for the threats. S.H.I.E.L.D. has a way of waiting until it’s got all the pieces before anyone makes a move. This is preemptive. This is a rush job.

So the one pulling the strings knows him and wants him out of the way eagerly enough to send STRIKE in before they even know for sure whether he’s in there. Who’d be careless enough to do that while being desperate enough to—

She is here!

Bucky looks up as Jennifer hands a cab driver a wad of bills over the seat and scrambles out of the car with his go bag slung over her shoulder and the carrier in hand. 

“Jimmy!” she yells as she darts around a couple wheeling their luggage out of the hotel. 

Jennifer drops the bag and the carrier and launches herself at him hard enough that he has to make a big show of nearly being bowled over for the benefit of their meager audience who is no doubt expecting such a thing. Regular people get pushed off balance by things like that, after all.

He hugs her tightly and doesn’t let go until she does. He’ll provide as much reassurance as she wants and needs, and not just because she’s got their offshoot along for the ride.

“Good job, kiddo,” he says as she picks up the bag and offers it to him. “Knew you could do it. And hey, you got the rabbit out, too. That’s great.”

“I don’t really know how, but…” Jennifer bends down to inspect the carrier and make sure the rabbit is fine despite being dropped like that, and then looks up at him from her crouch. “They say their name is Trust. Who’s yours?”

“Venom. Trust is our kid.” Bucky grins. “Trust, huh? We’re really proud of you, Trust. You did a great job.”

He extends a hand, and as Jennifer takes it, her frown of confusion at the gesture becomes understanding.

Venom and Trust twine together for a moment, and Bucky sees that the young symbiote is no longer inky black but has a faint reddish-pinkish sheen. Growth, development, adaptation. Their offshoot is starting to come into their own now that they’ve had some experience with a human host. 

I hunger, Trust murmurs into the muddled sensation of their four-way connection. 

It gets easier, Venom reassures them. Eat more chocolate, Jennifer.

“Okay,” she says, letting go of Bucky’s hand and inadvertently breaking the connection to dig out a chocolate bar from the bag. 

“Why don’t you hold onto the go bag,” Bucky says. “We’re good, me and V, but you’re playing host to a ravenous youngster.”

“Will Lady Scrumptious fit on the back of your motorcycle, Jimmy?”

He nods and grabs the carrier to get it settled. “V’s good about making sure nothing falls off. Even if they still don’t like all the noise the motorcycle makes.”

“Am… Am I going to have to keep eating this much chocolate?” Jennifer asks as she drops a wad of candy bar wrappers into the trash can outside the hotel door. “It’s delicious, but…”

“Just for a little while,” Bucky says as he fastens the bungee cords that will reassure any observers that the carrier is in fact well secured by more than magic. “We’ll think of something different for the long term.”

“But not more heads, right?”

Bucky laughs. “Not for you, no.”

He motions for her to put the go bag fully on and then join him by the motorcycle. “Pay attention, Trust. This is how you form a helmet.”

TONY

— Stark Tower, New York City: Early afternoon, 08 May 2012 —

“So wait,” Tony says, “run that by me again. You have an alien,” he continues, not about to let Buckster run that story by him again. “Inside of you,” Tony says. 

“Not like Thor-style aliens or Star Wars aliens or even Chitauri aliens.”

“Star Wars has a lot of variety,” Clint says. “There’s—”

“A glob of goo the size of a football—” Tony plows ahead without getting into an argument “—has taken up residence inside you.”

Tony flails a bit, trying to gesture his way into understanding how Buck-Buck doesn’t have a football-sized bulge somewhere like a tumor, and failing. 

“And you’re in love. You and the goo.”

Oh, there goes Bucky Bear’s eyes, glaring. Sore spot? Sore spot. Interesting. 

“Do I have this right?” Tony asks. “You’re in love with the goo? And there’s a goo baby? Yours and the goo’s?”

He tries his very hardest not to think about how that birth might have taken place. Did he shit out a glob of goo one day and they named it and called it their baby, or what? 

“And now a co-ed is going to be eaten alive by Goo Jr. unless we—”

“It sounds like you have it right,” Bucky interrupts. Loudly. “The overview, anyway,” he mutters. “Not any of the nuance.”

“How do I have it right?” Tony asks. “How is any of that right? What about that sounds right to you? Guys?”

Tony looks around for support. And strangely, he doesn’t seem to be getting it. Capsicle is just stoic about this, which is weird considering it’s his undead bestie who’s shitting out goo babies. Tish-tash is looking cunning and that’s worrisome all on its own. Bartonio is just curious-looking, and neither Bruce nor the new guy look surprised in the slightest.

It can’t just be him who thinks this is either an elaborate prank or else seriously disturbing. He’s read all about parasites that make their hosts do all sorts of crazy things like drown themselves or grow funky stalks out of their heads, and parasites in general tend to eat away at their hosts sometimes literally, but he’s never heard of one like this. 

But that’s “alien” for you. All sorts of weird shit possible with aliens. And chocolate does the trick, huh. Who’d have thought chocolate would appease an alien? E.T. was right with the candies. E.T. didn’t phone home here, though  instead they stayed put and spread.

“I get that it’s weird,” Clint says, “but so much makes more sense now than did before. I mean—”

“No no no,” Tony says. “Nothing makes sense about that. People don’t fall in love with chocoholic alien goo and have goo babies with it.”

“Yeah,” Bucky growls. “We do. Just shut up for one minute and let the team discuss this without your xenophobic ranting.”

“Xeno— I am not xenophobic. I got along with Thor just fine after the fight in the woods.”

Buckyboo rolls his eyes. “If you have to fight us before you can be civil, this gym is going to be a wreck you won’t walk away from.”

“Come at me, goo baby.”

“No,” Captain Killjoy says, stepping hands-up between them. “No one is fighting it out this time. We’re here to discuss what to do about the— About Trust. And Jennifer. And this STRIKE raid.”

“And Lady Scrumptious,” Wilson adds.

“Who’s Lady Scrumptious?” Tony asks. 

It’s bewildering enough that there’s a goo-possessed co-ed eating tater tots and chocolate milk in the cafeteria, but now there’s a new player on the field? Named that?

“Their pet rabbit,” Wilson says. 

“Not a pet,” Blockbuckster mutters. “Just a rabbit.”

“You have a pet rabbit?” Tony asks. “She brought your pet rabbit with her? How’d she have time for that? I thought she was running for her life.”

“From a pair of STRIKE teams, yes.” Bucky looks at Romanoff and Barton, their transplants from S.H.I.E.L.D. “They’re moving without Fury’s okay, so I assume they’re acting alone, or on someone else’s orders.”

Natalie shakes her head. “STRIKE only moves when Nick’s signed off on it. There wouldn’t be any reason to raid your apartment unless—”

“Did you tell anyone about your baby?” Cupid asks. “Maybe that got in the files somehow and— But even then, Nick’d ask you about it, not send in a raid. You’re supposed to be one of us now.”

“Trust has been a carefully kept secret for over a year. No one knew about them but Venom and me.” He shakes his head. “Either the STRIKE teams moved on their own, despite protocol, or there’s an infestation. Wouldn’t be the first infestation I’ve come across.”

“Infestation of what?” Bruce asks. 

“My first guess is HYDRA.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, unpack that,” Tony says, dropping the goo baby situation for the time being. His dearly departed dad might have been a lot of things, and most of them a distant alcoholic parent figure, but he at least helped clear out that menace. HYDRA is for the history books.

“The information Fury got when I interviewed got into the system,” Buckster says. “But not the information on where I actually was. So someone is moving fast—too fast—trying to take me in.”

“Or to eliminate you,” the spider says. “STRIKE teams generally aren’t taking hostages.”

Sergeant Goo smirks. “Oh, they want me alive. There are only two groups who know enough about me to want to pick me up that badly once they get even a hint of where I might be,” he says. “HYDRA and A.I.M. And of them, only HYDRA would be desperate enough to act without the full picture. Because I can tell you all about them, and they want the world—and especially any hero types—to think they’re long gone.”

“I know HYDRA,” Rogers says, grim. “What’s A.I.M.?”

“Advanced Idea Mechanics,” Romanoff says. “It’s a dubious research group. Technically everything they do is above board and legal, but they’re questionable at best.”

“And at least tangentially connected to HYDRA,” Buckster adds.

Tony holds up his hands. “I know A.I.M. They aren’t HYDRA. Unethical creeps, but not HYDRA. No one’s HYDRA. Because that’s all been wiped out for decades now.”

Bucky shrugs. “They called me Soldier in a bell tower in Des Moines back in ‘82, and knew the intro to the activation phrase. I don’t believe in that kind of coincidence.”

“You are him,” Natasha whispers.

Him who?! What’s even happening? Tony’s so good at following conversations, and this one keeps throwing him. It is not okay.

“Was,” comes the response. “Very, very much ‘was’ him.”

Was who, though?

She smiles. “You were my role model when I was in the Red Room.”

“That’s scary. I shouldn’t be anyone’s role model. Least of all that part of my life.”

“You got out,” she says. “They said they decommissioned you, but there were rumors, disappearances, destroyed facilities with human wreckage. I knew it had to be something else. That you got out.”

Buckster nods. “Okay. That you can admire.”

“Okay, so A.I.M. and HYDRA want you,” Tony says, giving up on finding out who they’re talking about at the moment. JARVIS can play this back for him and fill him in. He’s having an off day, is all.

And that’s enough of this sentimental childhood hero worship crap. Not everyone had heroes to worship growing up. Emotions are for the weak. 

“What’s your beef with A.I.M. other than being deadnamed in a bell tower?”

“Might be the handful of days they spent busily vivisecting me after the bell tower. Hard to be sure, though.”

Yeek. He knew the A.I.M. people were ruthless in their pursuit of science, but vivisection? How’d they manage to get that past even their own unethical ethics committee?

Does A.I.M. even have an ethics committee? Yeah, of course they do. Everyone has an ethics committee.

“Well at least you were out for that, right?” Tony taps his arc reactor. It’s clearly sharing hour, so he can share. He’s a team player, whatever Fury has to say about it. “I was out for it. Even in a cave.”

“Out?” Buck-Buck laughs.

“Pain killers and anesthesia don’t work on us, Tony,” Bruce says softly. “Or they don’t work on me. I assume they don’t work for you, Bucky?”

“Nope. Never have. Not after Zola.”

There’s a grim silence after that, just for a moment, but long enough that Tony feels the itch to start talking just to fill that silence. Silence is usually bad, in his experience.

“So you’re thinking HYDRA is still around, and I guess you’d know, and you think they’re tucked away in S.H.I.E.L.D. somewhere,” Tony says. “Because STRIKE teams raided your goo baby love nest.”

That earns him a glower from Goo-daddy, but Tony feels the mood in the room lighten a bit despite that. Success.

“HYDRA is alive and well,” Bucky says. “And I’d give up chocolate if it turns out they haven’t infested S.H.I.E.L.D.”

And giving up chocolate would mean he gets to be in the same position as the co-ed in the cafeteria, wasting away because of his goo alien parasite. So gross.

“Then we’ve gotta tell Nick,” Barton says. “Get him digging into it.”

“That’s one way to do it,” Buckyboo says, mild as milk. “Another way is we dig into it ourselves, and clear out the infection with fire.”

“We’re not blowing up S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Cupid says. “I know you like your C4, but there are good people in there.”

They don’t have to blow up all of S.H.I.E.L.D., though, Tony thinks. JARVIS can burrow in there and flush out the rats, and then they can set fire to them. Or disappear them, whatever their newest members feel like. 

“If you were looking through a personnel file, what would tip you off that they’re HYDRA?” Tony asks. “Could you tell JARVIS what to look for? Because JARVIS can get the goods, and then we go in and know who we’re there for.”

“It’s not the modern personnel that’ll clench it. They didn’t just take over a pair of STRIKE teams. They have to be wormed all throughout. We need history. Historic records.”

Tony snaps his fingers. “Then you’re in luck. JARVIS can dig those up, too.”

Captain Oldtimer nods. “That’s great. Tony, you get on the history. Clint, Nat, you get in touch with Fury. In the meantime, what do we do about Jennifer and Trust?”

Buck-Buck sighs. “I need to talk to Bruce. And we need chocolate. A whole lot of chocolate.”

Notes:

Content warning: Just a behavioral thing here, with Tony being a bit confrontational (but in a way that’s true to his character, not anything over the top). In his defense, the whole concept of Venom is a bit much. Probably a good thing Bucky didn’t explain the whole picture complete with cannibalism.

Chapter 12: Outsider POV

Notes:

Running late today, but here you go!

BRUCE

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late afternoon, 08 May 2012 —

“So Philly is closed out, then?” Bucky asks, pacing in the lab and touching things along his way as he talks to his lawyer on the phone. “Good. Good. And you and Jason got out alright?”

Bruce knows that Larry is his lawyer. He’s not sure who Jason is. Someone associated with Larry, clearly. Maybe a law partner. As for Philly, maybe that’s one of Jimmy’s safehouses and not his actual home base—Bruce knows he has a safehouse in nearly every geography. But he suspects that the apartment was more than a safehouse. Was maybe where he truly lived.

Which makes it all the worse that it’s getting “closed out.”

At least he can set up a new true residence in the tower, perhaps.

“Fire,” Bucky laughs. “Classy. Sorry you got roped in on—”

Fire? What in the world? There was a pair of STRIKE teams that raided his apartment, but they hadn’t set fire to the place. From what he heard in the gym, they’d hardly gotten his door open before they were… dispatched.

Probably eaten by Trust, in fact. He wonders how Jennifer is handling that.

“No, no. Larry, I know you’re involved, I know. You hate them, too, but you weren’t involved-involved. There was a buffer. They didn’t know who you were. Now you’re a target. Hell, I don’t even know where to send your pears now.”

Venom sneaks a tentacle out and makes their own inspection of the things around the lab while Bucky continues to pace. A keyboard gets their attention and another tentacle joins the first to mock-type out a message. 

It’s just a keyboard smash since Venom doesn’t appear to know how to actually type, but Bruce hopes it doesn’t actually impact any of Tony’s work.

“Just stay low,” Bucky says. “I’ll wipe them out, I swear, just like I always do. But it’ll take time this go around. I’m part of a team now, and not just bringing in a friend or two.”

Bruce smiles. He wonders who else is on Bucky’s roster of hitman friends. Wade, he knows, is a fellow freak as far as Bucky’s concerned. Are there others? Just how many so-called freaks are out there, and how many of them are in Bucky’s contacts?

Bucky grimaces. “Ugh,” he says. “Yeah she might need to transfer to a different school, I don’t know. At least she’ll have to drop her summer courses. She can’t go back to Philly any time soon. Not until the threat has passed.”

Jennifer, then. A topic change. Why does Bucky’s lawyer know his pet-sitter? Maybe there’s a family connection.

“She’s fine, yeah.” Bucky swats one of Venom’s tentacles away from a microscope they’re busily readjusting as he nears Bruce again on his pacing rounds. “Took the train up here as soon as she spotted them.”

Bruce is glad to see that Venom is at least still comfortable enough around him to exhibit some of that playful curiosity. Earlier, with some of the others in the cafeteria, the closest they’d gotten to a look at Venom was a tater-tot protection slap. And Steve only saw a “worm” at the Panera. 

Maybe Venom doesn’t really want to be part of the team. Or maybe they’re feeling shy. It had taken days to get much of a true look at Venom back in Mexico City. And he was just one person at a time and a fellow freak. This is a whole team of somewhat normal people.

“Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I gotta run. Larry, look, just stay low. And let Jason help more. You’re fucking ancient, I don’t want you dying on me because you overworked yourself.”

Bruce smiles. 

“Okay. Okay. Yeah, and when you get settled I’ll come visit your new office. I’ll bring the pears.”

Bucky hangs up and slides the phone into his back pocket, where it promptly ceases to disturb the sleek profile of his jeans. 

If Bruce had to put a name on what happens when Bucky and Venom store things like that, he’d call it a pocket dimension, literally. He’s half convinced Bucky’s clothes themselves are part of it, but at the least, he knows Venom is the source of the ability. 

“Everything okay with your lawyer?”

Bucky shrugs. “He’s not mad, at least. But yeah, they had to burn down their office to throw off the scent. Most of the black market connections will still be good to go—this isn’t the first handy fire, and black market lawyers are hard to come by and cherished by the ones using their services. But some of the legit clients will be lost.”

“And Jennifer?”

“As long as I keep her safe, he doesn’t mind a little disruption in her life. It’s her parents that’ll be the real issue. Her mother. Her mother doesn’t like me and I don’t know why. But as far as Jennifer’s told them, she’s staying with me for a week or so. That buys me some time to fix this.”

Bruce nods. So Jennifer is a relation. Maybe a granddaughter, if Larry is “ancient.” He’s glad Bucky’s found some relatively normal human connections, even if it started off as purely business.

“So what do you need to talk to me about?”

“There’s something in chocolate that Venom needs to survive. And something in human brains. It’s the same thing, but I don’t know what it is. Neither do they. Or they know it when they encounter it but can’t explain it to me or put a name to it.”

Bucky spreads his hands, palm up. “You were a researcher. I thought… Maybe you could research it.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “You want me to do research on you?”

“Just find out what it is, how to make it,” Bucky says. “Conjure up a supplement, or something.”

“A supplement of this mystery chemical compound.” 

He could do that, yes. Run through a matrix of all chemical compounds in both sources, find some overlap or combinations of overlap, look for other sources of the same elements that make up the compounds. See if there’s a way he can manufacture the compound needed without using human brain matter as a source for it. He’d be able to use chocolate as a source to distill this compound from, but not the other.

But Bucky has survived for decades without needing something like this. Has something changed for him, or is it just that Jennifer will need a workaround?

Bruce hesitates, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay as-is, yeah. I love chocolate, and eating people is fun, too. But Trust is just starting to grow up, and Jennifer isn’t up for ambushing criminals in dark alleys to eat their heads after her night classes.”

No, Bruce can’t imagine that she would be. Most university students aren’t into murder and cannibalism.

Bucky sighs, clearly worried. “Jennifer isn’t enhanced. She won’t survive if Trust has to start taking nibbles on her organs to stay healthy.”

“Is Jennifer Trust’s host, then? Something that’s fixed in place like that? Immutable?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Temporary host. And Trust can live in Lady Scrumptious while Jennifer sleeps and tries to regain her energy reserves, but… Trust will need a true host soon.”

Bruce nods.

“And unless Steve gets a whole lot better about symbiotes really quickly, whoever takes over as host is going to need those supplements just as much as Jennifer does.”

He wants to reassure Bucky that Steve is trying, wants to tell him about his conversation with Steve and the way Steve is already starting to come around. But that’s between Steve and himself, and just like he won’t divulge Bucky’s secrets to another, he won’t betray Steve’s confidence.

“And it’s definitely the same chemical compound in both chocolate and human brain tissue,” he says, just to confirm.

Bucky shrugs. “V can hardly tell the difference, and that difference is just the amount. Have to eat a lot of chocolate to make up a meal, or just a couple of heads every week or so.” 

“Hm. I’ll see what I can do. Do you…” Bruce hesitates again. But it has to be asked. “This is a delicate topic, but do you have any objections to serving as a research subject for this? Trying out my results and being studied?”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head. “It’ll help keep people like Jennifer safe while protecting our offshoot. I’m all-in.”

“You know,” Bruce says, “I’m surprised you chose to have a child considering the circumstances with the chocolate versus heads. This was bound to come up as a problem.”

“In a few years, maybe. We’ve been looking for a good host, and until Trust bonded with someone, they could get by on just what nursing Venom and I could provide between jobs. This situation wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“And they can’t go back to the Christmas ornaments, I take it.”

“Venom says they’d starve if they did. So no. The egg has hatched, and the chick needs to eat.”

CLINT

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late evening, 08 May 2012 —

“Where do you put it?” Clint asks around his mouthful of sandwich. 

They’re in the cafeteria—again—and it’s a good thing Stark Industries staffers work odd hours, or there wouldn’t be anything to eat down here. And clearly Barnes needs to eat. Again. 

“You ate a huge load of tater tots earlier, plus at least a dozen candy bars between meals, which you also ate, and now a nighttime snack sub with all the fixings?”

Clint doesn’t mention his own late night snack sub, with only the tasty fixings and none of the vegetables. He’s only eating the one sandwich, anyway. Barnes is on his third.

Barnes shrugs. “Gotta eat for two, is how Wade always puts it.” 

“But where does it go? Your stomach couldn’t possibly fit that much inside it.”

“Hammerspace,” Barnes says. “Pocket dimension. Ate a bag of holding once and now everything goes in the bag. Take your pick.”

Clint frowns. Hammerspace or pocket dimension? Bag of holding? Like from D&D? Might as well say it was magic. The all-you-can-eat buffets must be thrilled when they see him coming. Maybe all the ones in Philly have banned him.

“You wish you could eat as much as I do,” Barnes says between bites.

“Yeah, I kinda do. Imagine all the pizza I could eat.” 

But it seems like Barnes has to eat all this, not like he wants to. Maybe it’s not such a great thing after all. 

“So the disappearing people,” Clint starts. “Is it a spaceship? Does Venom have transportation?”

Barnes looks at him for a long moment. Then he’s looking through him instead, eyes focused on some point in the distance, or maybe not focused at all.

“Well he’s going to find out sooner or later, love. They all are. Even Steve.”

Clint looks around to make sure no one’s close enough to hear the guy talking like that. That’s something he’s noticed, as Barnes relaxes his guard around them a little. He talks to his alien and it’s like hearing half a phone conversation. 

“What am I going to find out?”

Barnes sighs. “We already told you, actually. We eat them. Venom does. While we’re in our merged form.”

Clint blinks. “That was a joke. You were joking.”

“V got here on a comet. They don’t have a spaceship. They survive on chocolate and human brains, and to keep them fed, I became a hitman for hire. We eat the bodies and the lack of a body is one of our calling cards now.”

It’s Clint’s turn to stare now. How does he react to that? What’s the response that keeps the conversation open and doesn’t make it weird or accusatory? This guy is an Avenger now, so the whole eating people thing won’t work well, but on the other hand, if his alien needs it to live… 

In the end, Clint goes with his initial reaction: curiosity. 

“That’s a really weird combo, brains and chocolate. So it’s like if a zombie had a sweet tooth?” 

Clint tries to imagine what kind of merged form would be able to eat that many people. Probably pretty big. Bigger than the Hulk, with a huge mouth. He’s got Little Shop of Horrors in his mind now. Gulp gulp gulp, and down the bodies go. Feed me, Seymour.

“You want to see us?”

“What, just me? Why not the whole team?”

And why not his childhood bestie first? It’s fine that Banner knows because they met years ago before anyone knew Cap was alive somewhere in a giant ice cube. But why is Cap not privy to this?

“You seem curious, and V doesn’t think you’ll spook. We were going to show the whole group in the gym earlier—that’s why we asked to meet there and not a conference room. But Stark didn’t take the concept well, and V really wanted to eat him because he was being such an asshole. Didn’t think it was worth the risk to let V take over and possibly try a nibble.”

“You can’t control him?”

“Them. And we don’t control each other. We discuss things. But I’m the one with the impulse control, and I’m not fully in charge.”

Huh. No control, just communication. Like maybe they really are symbiotic and it’s not an invasive parasite thing. Well, that relieves some of his worries about whether there was any mind control going on there.

“Alright, then. Let’s go. Soon as I finish this sandwich. I can’t eat as fast as you can.”

 

---

 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Barnes says to no one in particular. “He’s not a freak but he’s good with Bruce. It’ll be okay.”

Technically, Clint thinks as they stand in the empty gym, he is not “good with Bruce.” Or he’s good with Bruce and not so good with the big angry green guy Bruce becomes. The Hulk is terrifying. And there’s a decent chance that Venom is also terrifying, in a different way. 

But he needs to know who he’s working with, and that means he needs to know what Venom is like. He can’t afford to be spooked on a mission, and it sounds like they’ll have a mission coming up soon if the S.H.I.E.L.D. records do reveal a HYDRA infiltration.

“I mean, we don’t have to do this,” Clint says, hoping he’s being reassuring in the face of Venom’s cold feet. Does the alien have feet? “We can lift some weights. You can spot me. I’m due for leg day.”

One of those ropey, liquid black tentacles seeps out of Barnes’s side and the strands of it don’t form a pointed tentacle tip like the ones that had appeared earlier in the gym before Stark had gotten rude about goo babies, or the one that had slapped his hand away earlier in the cafeteria. 

Instead, they start to form a face. A face filled with way, way too many teeth. And a tongue like a snake, bright red and dripping saliva that never actually falls to the floor. There’s no nose in the face, but the eyes are bright milky white crescents.

Clint can see this thing biting off a head, sure. But this can’t be the whole thing, because where’s that head going to go once it’s past the teeth? There’s no throat, no body, just a thick mess of strands forming a flowing stalk that supports the face. Hell, there’s no back of the head to this Venom. Just the face.

And the teeth. Can’t forget the teeth for a minute.

“Going it in stages, huh?” Clint says. “That’s an impressive set of chompers.”

“Thank you,” the face says, and it sounds as wet as it looks. And deep. A lot deeper than Barnes’s voice, and it carries.

“Bet flossing’s a real bitch.”

“Flossing? We do not floss.”

“Yeah, we do,” Barnes says. “I do. There’s no need for V to floss.”

Clint can’t look away from the— from Venom’s face. There’s just so many teeth. His survival instinct says to get the hell out of here. But he’s got a lot of practice ignoring his survival instinct. It’s what he’s been doing his whole life, it seems.

“So no spaceship,” Clint says. “That’s a real shame. If you had a spaceship, I’m sure Stark would be nicer just for a chance to explore some new technology.” 

Clint doesn’t mention that the cybernetic arm would count as new technology, too. It wouldn’t be as interesting as a spaceship, in any case.

“I have never been on a spaceship. I have been on many comets, though. And visited many worlds.”

“So… you’re just stopping by for a visit?”

“I am staying. Bucky is my host and I am ride and die with him.”

“Ride or die for me,” Barnes corrects. “And no one needs to know about your travels before Earth. Trust me.”

“They were not very exciting,” Venom says. “But they were tasty.”

“Yep.” Barnes rolls his eyes. “Said no one needs to know. Meaning maybe don’t explain all the life forms you’ve eaten.”

Oh shit, did they come here just to eat people? Is this really like Little Shop of Horrors after all? 

“So the heads thing is real,” Clint says. “Really real. And you eat the whole thing? Um, the whole person?”

“In pieces, yes.” 

Somehow the face looks smug without having an expression.

“Heads first.”

“But not just anyone off the street. Just people you’re hired to kill. And wow that still sounds horrible when I say it out loud. Avengers don’t kill people, you know.” At least that’s what he was told when Nick approached him with the idea months ago.

“But you killed the Chitauri roaches without hesitation. Are they not people?”

“They were— Trying to—” Clint stops talking. That’s not the question being asked. Venom’s asking if aliens are people. And… And they are. So therefore Avengers do kill people. Shit.

Barnes grins. “They’ve got you there. Avengers absolutely kill people. The so-called difference is that you only kill the right people. But who counts as killable varies depending on who’s doing the calculations.”

“We only take jobs that eliminate the right people. We are karma’s bitch.”

Barnes sighs. “Agent. We’re an agent of karma. Do bad things, bad things happen to you. We’re the bad thing that happens to people who do sufficiently bad things themselves.”

“Exactly.”

Venom’s weird floating face thing pivots to the side right as Barnes turns his head, and Clint looks off that direction to see what it is that’s gotten their attention. 

There’s Cap at the entrance of the gym, looking grim and hurt at the same time. Why hurt?

“…Hi Venom.” Cap says, sounding just as hurt as he looks. “It’s good to finally see you.”

Oh. “Finally,” huh? So that’s what the hurt is about. He’s hurt that Venom is showing themself to Clint before him. And yeah, Clint can see why that might suck. Clint, after all, is not the childhood bestie inseparable on the schoolyard and battlefield and whatever else. 

“Hello, Pal.” Venom doesn’t seem to be picking up on the hurt part of things. “You are looking well fed. That is good.”

“You found something?” Barnes asks.

“We found something,” Cap says, his expression hardening as he gets down to business. “It’s Zola.”

Chapter 13: Insider POV

Notes:

My dad’s in the hospital and it’s not looking great, so I’ve traveled to see him. I don’t have my laptop with me, but I do have my phone. Depending on how things go, I may be a bit late with Friday’s chapter, but I do hope to answer comments soon. Thank you for all the comments last chapter—even though there’s been a delay in replies, I treasure every comment!

VENOM

— Stark Tower, New York City: Close to midnight, 08 May 2012 —

“Well that’s how you got a HYDRA infestation, right there,” Bucky says. 

They are looking at a photograph, an old one where the colors are all replaced with the faded yellow from long ago. In it, there are many people, all of them men, all of them researchers. And there, on the right toward the back, is the one man, the one researcher that has caught their host’s eye immediately.

We will eat him, Venom promises. 

He’s long dead, love. Has to be. Or he’s ancient, decrepit, probably tastes like shit. 

They would still eat him. The man—Zola, he discovers after a brief rifle through Bucky’s mind—is the researcher who first torture-tested Bucky, before he was the superb enhanced specimen he is today. Torture-tested him for a month. 

The Pal rescued him, but not before he was enhanced. 

In a way, they suppose, quietly and to themself, they owe this Zola some gratitude for the enhancement. That rankles. They do not want to owe a torture-tester any gratitude.

“Apparently, S.H.I.E.L.D. took advantage of Project Paperclip,” the redhead says, “just like everyone else in the sciences did.”

“But Zola,” the Pal says. 

He sounds hollow, broken. They wish very much that this Zola was alive and well. So that they could eat him. Slowly.

“They recruited Zola. Peggy—” The Pal shakes his head. “She was working with him, working with Zola. And so was Howard. Zola was there from the beginning.”

“Some other country would have picked him up if they didn’t,” the redhead says. “They probably just meant to keep an eye on him.”

Just like Fury wants us close, Bucky thinks. But that’s not how it works—sometimes when you bring the serpent in from the cold, it bites you.

And sometimes lays its eggs inside of you.

“Not how snakes work, sweetheart.”

But it is how HYDRA works.

“True.”

“What’s true?” the asshole asks. “Why are we talking about snakes?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Zola and whoever else they picked up is where you have the infection starting. Whoever was working with him is likely tainted, and then whoever worked with them, and all the way to the present day.”

“But Peggy. Howard.”

Bucky grumbles into their shared mindspace, but he keeps his actual thoughts on the matter to himself. 

Eat them? If Zola is dead, are they alive?

“Pretty sure they’re dead or decrepit, too.” Bucky looks over at the Pal, and a wave of sympathy floods their mindspace. 

“Steve, I’m sorry. But they knew exactly who he was, and they let him in the door. They might not have been compromised themselves, but they compromised the entire organization by ‘keeping an eye on him.’”

“Just playing devil’s advocate here,” the tater-tot thief says, “but what if they thought he was coerced to do the HYDRA stuff and they gave him a chance to come clean. I mean, by your terms, Natasha is compromising the place, too. She was Red Room.”

What is devil’s advocate?

Pretending. He doesn’t really think Zola turned over a new leaf or was forced to work with HYDRA, but he’s putting it out there so we can all consider it.

“They may have bought a lie or two, sure,” Bucky allows. “But the end result of bringing him in kind of proves that they were tricked, in that case.”

“You think they knew. That he wasn’t— That he was still HYDRA.”

Bucky nods. “And I think they should have kept an eye on him by putting him in a cage if they had to do anything less than kill him. Not have him staffing their research facility.”

“Regardless, this would seem to prove that HYDRA is alive and well within S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Bruce says, “but it doesn’t tell us where within S.H.I.E.L.D. to look now. Zola died in ‘72.”

“Start with STRIKE teams, and work your way out from there,” the redhead suggests. “There has to be a paper trail of some kind on the STRIKE teams that were part of the raid. Someone sent the order, and that’s our rat.”

And we eat him!

Finally, someone they can eat!

“No, love, we don’t eat him. Not right away. We need him alive to find out more. When he’s all used up, then we can eat him.”

“Um.” The asshole holds up a hand, kind of waves it around a bit. “Hey, hi there, no. No one’s eating anyone.”

Just the head.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “We are. Venom needs to eat, and they need to eat heads. Human heads. And/or, lots of chocolate. Heads are preferable.”

“Go raid a chocolate factory,” the asshole says.

“What does it matter how the traitor dies?” the redhead asks. “If we’re going to end up interrogating this person to the point where they’re ‘used up,’ then why not let Venom eat them? It’s that or prison for life.”

“Why not? Um, Avengers good, cannibalism bad.”

“Venom’s an alien,” she reasons. “It’s not cannibalism.”

“I mean,” Bucky says, “technically.”

“Technically what?” the asshole asks. “Technically it is, or technically it isn’t?”

Bruce sighs. “It’s a complicated situation, ethically, Tony. But it’s over very quickly.”

“Oh, well at least no one suffers for too long. Like that makes it okay.”

Oh, the traitor will suffer, if he is HYDRA. The things HYDRA has done to their Bucky… All of HYDRA will suffer greatly.

Best not mention that, love.

“Sir,” comes the voice from overhead. “Director Fury has passed along a message. Agent Jasper Sitwell sent the STRIKE teams.”

Ah-ha! The snackable hour approaches. They will eat this Jasper Sitwell, and things will be well again.

Things aren’t well now? Concern radiates through their shared space, and a bit of guilt-if-something’s-wrong.

They give their host’s liver a quick nudge. You did not eat much chocolate today. 

I’ll eat more tomorrow. Sorry.

M&Ms for breakfast?

Sure.

 

BUCKY

— Stark Tower, New York City: Close to midnight, 08 May 2012 —

“You’re not sleeping yet?” Bucky asks as he taps on the door to Jennifer’s guest room. “It’s pretty late.”

“We’re not tired,” Jennifer says, though her eyelids definitely look a bit on the droopy side.

“Trust may not be tired, but you need your sleep if you’re going to host them tomorrow.” Bucky points to the rabbit in its carrier. “And that means you need to get into Lady Scrumptious, Trust.”

Jennifer yawns. “But I like their company.” 

“Unless you get over the eating heads thing, you’re not going to be a suitable host for Trust, Jennifer. You can’t eat enough chocolate to curb that craving, even if you can somehow manage to eat enough to counter the need itself.”

It looks like Jennifer is about to argue, but then she sighs instead, clearly pensive. 

“Jimmy, what do you do for a living?”

And now it’s his turn to sigh. She’s probably been considering this question since she got here, if not beforehand. And he could lie. Tell her all kinds of occupations. But he’s not really interested in lying to her when she asks directly. Especially since she might be thinking about occupations that would let her stay bonded with Trust. 

Better to tell her the plain truth. She’s in it far enough not to keep that a secret from her.

“I’m a hitman, kiddo. I kill people for cash, and yeah, we eat their heads. All the rest of them, too.”

Jennifer frowns. “But you’re so nice.”

“I try.” Bucky heads over to the rabbit carrier and gets Lady Scrumptious out of it. “And it’s because I’m nice, and because I try, that you need to shoo Trust out into the rabbit.”

Her shoulders droop. “Can I have Trust back in the morning?”

He decides not to remark on the word choice there—it’s pretty clear to him that she’s not thinking of Trust as a trinket or object she can have but as a friend she can keep near to her. That, and after the day Jennifer has had, it’s not at all surprising that she’s too tired to pick better words. The whole situation is still pretty new to her, and not one she’d have had any reason to expect going into things.

“When I come to get you for breakfast, yeah. But Jennifer, Trust isn’t going to live long on chocolate alone. And neither will you. If you don’t learn to help Trust eat other people, Trust will have to start eating you.”

Slowly, a maroon droplet appears on Jennifer’s hand, and then another, and then several tiny streams inch like molasses into a glob roughly the size of an orange. 

Our offshoot grows! Venom says, pride radiating through their mindspace. 

Yeah, by taking little nibbles out of Larry’s granddaughter. Let that continue too much longer and she’s fucked. Then we’re fucked, too.  

Trust reluctantly seeks out the rabbit in Bucky’s arms and joins their mass to the rabbit’s. 

“Sorry, Trust,” Bucky says. “But Jennifer needs the sleep. And she can’t wake up to feed you every hour.”

“It’s really just heads or chocolate? There’s not anything else that will do?”

Bucky shakes his head and gives the rabbit a pet along the back. “Not yet. Not that we’ve found in the last forty years. Though we’re working on something.”

Jennifer laughs. “You’re not nearly that old.”

“Nope,” he says. “I’m older.”

No lie like the truth. 

“Get some sleep. I’m headed out on a mission, and I’ll be back in the morning at some point.”

VENOM

— Quinjet over Washington D.C.: A few hours before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

The team has suited up except for Bruce who has not changed and the beautiful Sam who does not have a uniform yet. Or his wings. 

The asshole is now a mecha warrior, and they want to crack open his carapace and eat him like a delectable crab. But their host has made it very clear: they are not to eat Tony Stark. Not even a nibble. Not even a threatening lick.

Stop one is to pick up the wings for Sam to wear, so that he can fly. They cannot wait to see their beautiful Sam—

Not ours, love.

—flying through the midnight sky like a… A bat? A moth? What are the nocturnal birds…

“Owls.”

“What about them?” Sam asks.

Sam, their beautiful Sam, no matter what Bucky says, has chosen to sit on their right, while the Pal is sitting on their left. They are surrounded by wonderful people.

“V is thinking about nocturnal birds.”

“Oh. Why, exactly?”

You can tell him.

So can you. Time to get social, sweetheart.

They send out dissatisfaction, but also a small head on a stalk.

“We are getting your wings, Beautiful Sam. So that you can fly like an owl through the night.”

Sam’s cheeks flush prettily, the rich brown of his skin ever so faintly tinged with pinker hues than normal. They want to lick him so badly, but the panic in their host at the thought of it makes them keep their tongue mostly to themself. 

“Holy fuck, that’s a lot of teeth!” says the asshole-turned-mecha-warrior.

“Actually,” the Pal says, ignoring the distraction, “Tony and Natasha are going with Sam to get the wings. We’ll drop them off, and they’re going to meet back up with us after.”

“Then where are we going?”

“To dig Sitwell out of his hole and get some information.”

They grin, wide and toothy. “And then to eat him!”

They cannot wait. 

 

BUCKY

— Quinjet over Washington D.C.: A few hours before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

“Okay, when he says ‘eat’ him, is he talking about, you two have a storage locker somewhere?” Stark asks. “Temperature controlled? Lots of meat hooks? Take your time? Like an alien larder, or…?”

Bucky decides, with difficulty, on patience and not violence. The man is wearing some kind of high-tech armor, so he’s not going to be as easy to shut up with violence as he would have been in a gym. And they’re on a quinjet—some of the others on the team wouldn’t fare so well if the jet crashed.

“Venom is not a ‘he,’” Bucky says, for what he hopes is the last time. “Venom is a ‘they.’ It’s not that hard to remember.” 

“And the alien larder?”

“Not a thing. We eat them on the spot.”

Stark shakes his head. “But conservation of mass. There’s no room for you to just pack away a whole body, let alone several. Where’s it go?”

Bucky shrugs. “Inside.”

“But—”

“The last researcher type who tried to figure Venom out without our permission found out the answer to that question the hard way.”

“The tasty way. He was delicious.”

“Sure, sure, it’s just—”

“We’re here,” Natasha says, “if you want to focus on the mission any time soon.”

Clint takes over the controls while team wing pack gets ready to head out.

“Good luck, Beautiful Sam.”

“Thanks, Venom.” 

Sam hardly even looks disconcerted at the moniker anymore. Maybe Venom is wearing him down, or maybe he’s just confident enough to accept his beauty in the symbiote’s eyes. In any case, Stark seems to have shifted into mission mode at long last and doesn’t make a big deal of it. 

Which is good. Because defending Venom’s choices in life is something Bucky will do until the end of time, but it does ruin an appetite. 

 

VENOM

— Just outside Sitwell’s apartment, Washington D.C.: A couple of hours before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

The target is inside of his apartment, according to the infrared sensors Bucky is using. The target is not alone. There are two others with him, in the study. 

Snacks?

Maybe. We’ll see.

“How are we getting the door open without this turning into a firefight?” Tater Tot whispers. 

“Same way I get every other door open,” Bucky mutters. “Go for it V.”

They ooze out from the sleeve of their host’s jacket, seeking out the crevices between door and the surrounding frame, and then slip inside. So many locks, and an alarm. They begin unfastening the locks. 

“There’s an alarm,” Bucky murmurs, passing along the intel. 

“Try one three four nine,” Tater Tot says, eyes fixed on their flowing strands. “That’s the last four of his Social. And of his work password.”

Got that, V?

I got that. They mash their tentacles into the keypad and press the Off button. So easy. You can enter.

“We’re clear. Let’s do this.”

The Pal gingerly opens the door, and the three of them enter the living room of the snackable target. Tater Tot shuts the door behind them. 

And then it is time to strike. 

They snatch the gun away from one of them with a tentacle as he raises it to fire, and hand the gun to their host. He might want it for resale. Bucky makes a lot of money reselling their victims’ belongings.

“Secretary Pierce,” Tater Tot says, sounding numb, dumbfounded. “Rumlow, I’m not surprised by, he’s STRIKE, but you?”

“Nice piece,” Bucky says, turning the gun—Rumlow’s—over in his hands. “Also, nice place you got here. Want to come with us all quiet like, or is this going to be a bloodbath?”

There are outraged explanations that they pay no attention to, so boring, so overdone. Everyone always has a reason for their actions that should get them off the list of snacks. They let their host bother with those. So far, it has never resulted in a missed meal.

“Which one’s which?” Bucky asks partway through the claims that this is official S.H.I.E.L.D. business and they need to leave now.

“Sitwell’s the bald one. Pierce is the old one. Rumlow is the leftover.”

“Careful, Barton,” that one growls. 

Bucky points to the three of them in turn. “Sitwell: information. Pierce: important. Rumlow: snack.”

Really?

“Really, really. Soup’s on, love.”

They emerge from their host and merge with their host, quickly forming their full bonded self to the startled shriek of the bald one and the yells of the others. One of the other two is yelling “what the fuck is that?” but it is hard to be sure if that is the old one or the leftover as they zipper up around Bucky’s face. 

Tater Tot, they are sure, is the one who yells “whoa fuck,” though. Tater Tot sounds impressed, not afraid. 

It is two easy steps toward the snack, and an easy grab as the snack tries to avoid them and pulls a knife to slash at them. And then, oh yes, it is dinner time. 

“Mm,” they croon into the snack’s terrified face. They lick all over the man’s cheek and temple, tasting his fear as he uselessly tries to cut and saw at their arm. “So much adrenaline. We will enjoy this.”

“No! Nooooo!” The man screams as they open their jaws wide and clamp down on his neck. 

The vertebrae slip apart like softened butter, and the snack’s skull shatters under their teeth like a walnut. And oh, the juicy meats inside. So delectable, and it has been so long since their last meal. Too long.

They want to savor it, but there are still two more in the room, the old one standing still and looking cunning—dangerous, that one—and the bald one cowering and trying to break free from the Pal’s grasp so that he can flee, all the while whining “not like this, not like this.” 

“Delicious,” they say, licking the stump of neck that is clutched in their hand like a push-pop. “Who is next?”

No one, yet, love. They have information we need. We should take them to the roof.

“Bucky says we should take them to the roof. To get information from them. Not to eat them. Yet.”

 

BUCKY

— Rooftop of Sitwell’s apartment building, Washington D.C.: A couple of hours before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

They’ve left what remains of Rumlow in the apartment, and Clint is getting Secretary Pierce zip-tied snugly and gagged in the quinjet with Bruce. He’d been spouting nonsense about his rights and abduction and immunity and legalities that have never concerned Bucky.

Larry takes care of any “legalities” that come up. And what’s the harm in abduction when the real threat is that Venom will eat his head right off his neck like the Tootsie-Pop owl. One, two, three, indeed. Three licks to get to the center of a Secretary of Defense’s head.

Currently, Venom’s being patient for the sake of information. They’re holding Sitwell with a tentacle so that his feet dangle over the street a foot’s distance from the rooftop. They can do this all night, but it’s probably time to start asking questions. 

Tell him he’s rotten, but he’ll taste great.

“You,” Venom breathes wetly into Sitwell’s face, “are a termite. You feast on the rot of HYDRA and spread it further. You are a pile of horse shit, smeared under a farmer’s boot. You are not worth saving, except for what you know. If you play the game, you might win a prize.”

Close enough.

“I— I don’t know anything. Pierce told me to send those teams to your apartment, and I did it. I just follow orders, I—”

“Lots of people follow garbage orders, and doing so makes them garbage people. We are the trash collector, we are karma’s hungry dog of war, and you are looking so tender—” Venom pauses to lick Sitwell’s face “—and juicy.”

“Oh god,” Sitwell whimpers. “Please.”

“What’s HYDRA up to,” Steve says, showing no signs of distress at the situation unfolding on the rooftop. “Tell us and you’ll live.”

“But we want to eat him!”

Steve gives them a disapproving look and then turns his attention back to Sitwell. “Tell us and you’ll live,” he says again.

Patience, V. He said the rat bastard would live but we didn’t say jack shit about that, and he hasn’t been very cooperative. We may eat him yet.

That almost soothes Venom’s ruffled feathers. But not quite.

Flip him upside down and shake him a little. Gently. He’s fragile.

They do that, shaking him until he pukes onto the street so far below, and then set him right side up on the rooftop to try to recover himself.

“Answers will get you places, Sitwell,” Steve says. “Like prison, alive. Your silence buys Venom a meal ticket.”

“Y-you don’t have the guts for it, Rogers.” 

Fighting words, but voiced in a pathetic tone. Bucky laughs in their mindspace. Sitwell is clearly grasping at the last vestiges of his courage before they slip away entirely, gathering up every last bit of spine in an attempt to bluff his way out of this. It’s something he’s seen countless times in his targets.

“You won’t let this thing bite my head off. Rumlow was a fluke. You were as surprised as we were.”

That may be the case, but what Sitwell doesn’t know is that Venom is not Steve’s to command. They—Bucky and Venom—do what they want. And they want information and a snack, in that order.

“Take one of his ears off,” Steve says.

Venom grins hungrily. That is an order they are happy to follow.

A suggestion, love. Even Steve doesn’t order us around. No one does.

“Wait, wait, I—”

There would be a scream except that Venom has stuffed Sitwell’s mouth full of tentacle. The things you learn when you spend long enough interrogating and then killing people for a living.

“Next up is your left hand,” Steve says. “Unless you tell us what HYDRA’s doing within S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Sitwell holds his hand to the bleeding wound on his head and stares at them. Then, finally, he starts talking.

Once the words start flowing, they keep flowing, and pretty soon, a picture of world domination via souped up “helicarriers” bristling with weaponry starts to unfold. Project Insight, he calls it, the formation of a global police state in which an algorithm decides who will cause enough trouble to be preemptively killed for it versus who is a docile enough lamb to be spared. 

As far as Bucky can see, that puts the whole Avengers team in the troublemakers category, and especially himself and Steve. But even if it didn’t, any special project of HYDRA’s needs to be dismantled and every single one of the rats involved destroyed.

“What is a helicarrier?” Venom asks.

Bucky listens for the answer. It’s a good question.

“An airship that can hover like a helicopter and that’s big enough to carry a lot of quinjets,” Steve says. “Fury has one.”

Oh, well if Fury is the owner, that makes it okay. We can definitely trust him.

Sarcasm?

Sarcasm.

According to Sitwell, the plan is for three of these things to start on the East Coast and work their way westward through the land. Then on to new geographic segments. 

“And where are the other two?” Steve asks. 

“Not built yet. There’s only the one. Under the Triskelion.”

That doesn’t mean much. If one could be built and stored there, then others could be built and stored elsewhere. Worse, there’s nothing stopping HYDRA from doing just that at any point in the future, even if they prevent them from swiping Fury’s pacified warship. 

Ask where the algorithm is stored.

“Where is the algorithm?” Venom asks. 

“New Jersey,” Sitwell whines. “Camp Lehigh.”

Notes:

Content warning: Canon-typical cannibalism, at long last.

Chapter 14: Came back wrong

Notes:

Thank you for your kind comments, everyone. My dad’s in hospice care now, and it’s a waiting game. I’ll try to do comment replies when I can.

Also, there’s an extremely minor content warning in the end notes.

STEVE

— Rooftop of Sitwell’s apartment building, Washington D.C.: Just before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

They’re running out of time to get this show started, but he’s confident enough that between the three they dropped off at the Air Force base, they should be able to liberate a wing pack. Preferably without making a huge mess of the base or making enemies of the US military. 

And then either Tony or Sam can carry Natasha to the rendezvous spot, after which they go after the algorithm in Camp Lehigh. 

They’ll just have to take Pierce and Sitwell with them to the next phase of this mission… and hope Sitwell doesn’t make too much of a mess bleeding from his missing ear.

Part of him still wonders just what is going on with himself that he’s willingly allowed a team member to mutilate another human being, and that the team member in question is Bucky possessed by an alien.

And part of him suspects that it’s a holdover from his loss. He lost Bucky to HYDRA, to Zola in particular, and he’d sworn to see all of HYDRA dead or captured. He’d thought he’d done that, or at least paved the way for others to finish the task. But… 

Now he has Bucky back, but it’s like Bucky came back wrong. 

Bucky had always been efficient and a little vicious when it came to HYDRA. But he’d never been eager to maim anyone. That must be Venom coming through, maybe tarnishing Bucky somewhat.

He just can’t imagine Bucky biting off a man’s head with little to no warning, and that’s essentially what happened back in the apartment. Rumlow had been a HYDRA agent with a gun one moment, and the next, Bucky had the gun and was telling his alien to eat Rumlow.

And it had happened. Two steps, one bite, and it was over. Except that Venom had kept licking Rumlow’s neck stump afterward, lapping at the blood. 

And that was Venom, not Bucky, Steve’s sure of it. Venom was huge. Venom was inky black with grayish white veins and brilliant white eyes, and more teeth than Steve could keep track of, and a strangely prehensile red tongue that couldn’t possibly fit inside their mouth except that it did and Steve had seen it fit with his own two eyes.

Just as he’d seen the mouth open to nearly 180 degrees to fit Rumlow’s head inside for that fraction of a second before the brutal chomp.

At least he’d saved Sitwell and Pierce. Clint was busy with Sitwell, bandaging his head up and zip-tying him for the journey ahead. The man was down an ear, but hey—he had both hands and most of his head still intact.

Steve shudders. He’d been bluffing when Sitwell was over the side of the roof. He’d been bluffing when Sitwell was turned upside down and shaken. He’d been bluffing when he threatened the man with decapitation. 

So he’d had to get things back under control. That made it okay that Captain America had instructed a teammate to mutilate a person. Didn’t it?

Did he come back wrong, too?

“What are you doing to this one?” Venom asks behind him.

Steve is still not used to hearing that voice coming out of the place where Bucky should be standing. Still not used to the wet bass of it, like a churning river of saliva over jagged rocks.

“Zip tying his hands together. Same as Pierce,” Clint says. 

“To prevent a struggle?” Venom asks.

“Sure. And to keep him from hijacking the quinjet while we’re busy in Camp Lehigh.”

“We enjoy the struggle. And he will not be alive by the time we are in New Jersey.”

“Cap said he’d live.”

“We did not say anything of the sort.”

Sitwell moans into his gag, and Steve turns around to protest in time to see Sitwell’s eyes rolling in fear.

“Venom,” Steve says. “I’m a man of my word, and so is Bucky.”

“We are so hungry, and he is so juicy.” Venom licks at the blood drying along Sitwell’s neck, and the man wets himself. “Just the head.”

“No.”

“Bucky lies all the time. He is good at it except when he is not.”

Steve is about to snap that Venom doesn’t know Bucky like he does, but the truth is the opposite, and he realizes it. Maybe Bucky does lie now. He didn’t used to unless it was very important that someone not know the truth. A matter of life and death. But…

“Bucky says that we did not promise,” Venom says. “That it was not your promise to make, but ours. That we do not take orders from anyone, not anymore.”

“But he did talk,” Clint says, pulling the zip ties snug around Sitwell’s wrists. “There’s gotta be some reward in that.”

Muffled by the gag, Sitwell’s agreement is not so much words as it is a fiercely nodded head and pleading eyes. 

“But the snack.”

“We brought a whole gallon ziplock bag of M&Ms,” Clint says. “Wasn’t it so you wouldn’t need to eat anyone?”

“That,” Venom says in a voice that is somehow prim despite being rumbling wetness, “is for breakfast.”

Steve sighs. “Okay, I know I don’t speak for you guys, Venom. But can I reason with you? Or maybe talk to Bucky?”

He had hoped, maybe, that getting Bucky to come back out would reduce the murderous cannibal instinct that’s clearly taken over, but Venom does not disappear inside. Instead, only half of Bucky’s face is visible as part of Venom’s mouth opens up like one of those future shirts with the hood attached, revealing Bucky inside the hood.

“Yeah, Steve?” Bucky’s voice is his own, but wet, somehow.

“Come on,” Steve says. “We can’t just kill this guy. He’s got more information to spill, I’m sure.”

“I’m kind of beyond caring what information he’s got. He’s HYDRA. They’re scum. More than that, they’re eminently edible. We don’t let them live. Ever.”

“Can we make an exception to that rule?”

“You’d rather we eat the other one?” Bucky asks. “He’s the important one. He knows way more, has way more connections, and—”

“How about neither?” Steve asks. “How about we decide in the tower? As a team?”

Bucky’s expression closes off, and then his whole face is lost as the hood closes back up and Venom snaps their teeth decisively, but harmlessly. 

Venom stalks off toward the quinjet with more grace than Steve had thought possible, and sloughs off like a thick coating of oil before seeping inside of Bucky as the man starts up the ramp.

“Something tells me they’re not too happy about leaving Sitwell off the dinner menu, Cap.” 

“I’m still not too happy about the first decapitation,” Steve mutters. “I can’t stand there and let another happen in front of me after I promised a man he’d live.”

He grabs Sitwell by the front of the shirt and drags him upright. “Walk. I may not be able to guarantee your safety, but I won’t even try if you make trouble.”

BRUCE

— Quinjet over Washington D.C.: Just before dawn, 09 May 2012 —

Bucky’s eyes are stormy when he sits down next to him on the quinjet, and Bruce can imagine why. He might not have heard the entire argument, but he didn’t need to—hadn’t needed to hear any of it, really. It was obvious enough that Venom wanted to eat the man they’d hauled up to the roof, and Steve didn’t want the man to be eaten. 

It’s been some sixty years since Bucky Barnes last took an order from Steve Rogers, and all the time he spent taking HYDRA’s orders must have made authority figures something to hate, or at least not to obey. It’s hard to go back to acknowledging leadership when you’ve been your own leader for so long.

But in a pinch, even the Other Guy had followed Steve’s command back in New York City, against the Chitauri. Although the command had been to smash, something the Other Guy was already fully intending to do.

“It’s not easy to accept a ruling that goes against your nature, is it?”

“My nature?” Bucky asks sourly. “Look, just because I kill people for a living doesn’t—”

“I mean your nature when it comes to providing for the ones you care about.” Bruce spreads his hands. “Even me, and you didn’t really care at first except on the principle of things.”

Gradually the storm clouds lift and Bucky sighs. “Okay, you have a point.”

“You’re helping Jennifer, helping Trust, helping Venom,” Bruce says. “And Steve doesn’t see that part of it yet, but he’s got eyes. And he knows you.”

“From before. What if I changed too much?”

There’s a real undercurrent of fear to that question that Bruce can’t respond to as he’d like to because Steve is in the process of hauling Sitwell up the ramp to the quinjet, and might overhear. 

“I doubt you have,” Bruce says. “Talk later?”

Bucky nods, looking pensive. 

Bruce wonders whether Venom is chattering away in Bucky’s mind or if the duo are feeling silent and broody inside as well as out. He supposes he could ask, find some other subject to branch their conversation into. But Bucky probably wants to be left largely alone. Especially if Venom is sulking in there.

“Useful information?” Bruce asks Steve instead. “He sure seemed to be talking toward the end.”

“Sang like a bald canary,” Clint says. “HYDRA’s going to try to outfit three helicarriers, minimum, into battleships and open fire on all the people who will cause problems for them. East to West, pew pew pew. There’s some kind of math equation that will tell them who those people are.”

“And there’s only Fury’s helicarrier, right?” Bruce would hate to think if that one were captured by HYDRA, and it’s only minorly equipped with weaponry. 

Bucky shakes his head. “What makes you people think even ‘just’ Fury should have one of these things?”

He doesn’t, actually, and he doubts Steve does, either, but Bucky’s still talking.

“Flying fortresses are not in the interest of anyone unless they’re some kind of pleasant utopia where people can go in on a spa week groupon.” He shrugs. “You know. Like a cruise with whale watching and a rock wall and a chocolate fountain. And even then, I would be suspicious.”

“Nick’s trying to protect the planet with his,” Clint says. “And it worked, too.”

“There wasn’t a helicarrier above New York City blasting Chitauri roaches out of the sky,” Bucky says. “It was you guys, your team, that protected the planet.”

Clint shrugs and takes the quinjet up, cloaking it against the coming dawn. “Fury put the team together. That’s gotta count for something.”

“It does. But he doesn’t need a personal castle in the sky to do all of this. Especially one that could be hijacked by HYDRA.”

“HYDRA has to get to it before they can hijack it, though,” Bruce says.

“Not necessarily,” Steve says, clearly thinking about possibilities. “There were Tesseract weapons onboard. HYDRA may already be manning most of the stations whenever it takes off.”

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has Tesseract weapons.”

“At least a few crates full of them,” Clint says with a cheerfulness that sounds false. “It was what Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was really about. Using the Tesseract for clean energy production was secondary to building an arsenal that could chase off alien invaders.”

“Would that even work?” Steve asks, looking at Bucky.

“Most aliens are just as dead with a regular bullet to the right spot as they’d be with blue light that zaps you out of the dimension.”

Only most? Interesting. Bruce wonders if Venom is one of those aliens, or if it would take something more to kill them. He’s not sure the Other Guy is killable, but maybe a Tesseract weapon would do the trick, especially if it’s more a matter of shifting between dimensions and less a matter of actually harming the target.

“What do you mean out of the dimension? Those weapons disintegrate people,” Steve says. “I’ve seen it, back in the War.”

Bucky shrugs. “Venom says the Tesseract doesn’t destroy stuff. Just transports it.”

“So Schmidt isn’t dead, only gone,” Steve says. “And all the people who got shot with those just got moved to another dimension?”

“Or a different planet, or into space, or wherever. It’s about transportation, not destruction.”

Bruce nods. That makes sense. The canister they put the Tesseract in that Loki and Thor used to travel back to Asgard. It hadn’t destroyed them when it was used. And Thor had seemed to know how to use it. And hadn’t Loki arrived through the Tesseract somehow? Clint wasn’t very talkative about what had happened in the base in New Mexico, but he’d described the Tesseract as a door.

“Oh great,” Clint says. “So Loki’s locked up on the same planet as a multidimensional travel agent, so if he gets loose, he can use the Tesseract to go anywhere he likes, no risk of getting disintegrated at all. That won’t turn out badly for anyone.”

 

BUCKY

— Empty field near Washington D.C.: Around dawn, 09 May 2012 —

Who the fuck is this Loki guy? 

Venom might know. They know a lot about what’s out there in space, and Loki is definitely either a gaudy supervillain Bucky somehow hasn’t heard about despite traveling in the circles he travels in, or he’s an alien. Because he can’t be the actual Norse god of mischief. 

Asgardian princeling. Adopted. 

Asgard is a real place?

He’d honestly thought the Norse stuff was mythology. Next thing, Zeus is going to turn out to be an actual thing, too, and Olympus is a spaceship on top of a mountain.

One of the nine realms. We avoid them. They avoid us.

Us being Klyntari symbiotes in general, Bucky picks up from the sensation that accompanies the words. 

So it’s like in Stargate?

Venom hmpfs and mutters that they are hungry for the rest of Sitwell’s head.

Venom’s always been derisive at best about Stargate. The whole goa’old thing had really pissed them off for some reason. Bucky gets how insulting it would be if it were somehow based on the truth of symbiotes, but since it’s just made up nonsense it doesn’t make sense to be mad about it. 

We’ll eat him, love, Bucky promises. When Steve’s not around.

The Pal will be disappointed. 

He’ll get used to disappointment. Anyway, it’s me he’s disappointed in, not you.

The Pal is already disappointed? Dismay floods their shared mindspace. Is it because we ate the other one’s head and stole his gun?

Maybe. I don’t know. But even if that’s the reason, you’re not the one he’s disappointed in.

What’s the likelihood that Steve expected “better” of him? Or at least something less monstrous than letting an alien take up residence inside of him and devour other human beings. What if Steve really doesn’t approve of his profession and career choices over the decades? 

Should he have become a linguist after all? Made use of the languages thing instead of the expertise in tracking people down and killing them?

How would I eat if you were studying languages all day?

Or translating for people, Bucky explains. Or teaching. There’s stuff I could have been doing, probably.  

Sounds like hungry work. 

And the whole serial killer thing wouldn’t work if we were stuck in one spot for a whole semester or whatever, Bucky agrees.

Bucky sighs and ignores the curious look Steve gives him. The sigh was meant for Venom, anyway. Bruce doesn’t even pay him any attention—but then, Bruce has his eyes closed and is probably meditating or something.

What he needs to do is sit Steve down and really explain things. Not just introductions to Venom on the small scale, but a full explanation. What Venom needs to eat, how often, what the alternatives are. How he and Venom met, in detail. How he and Venom have been handling HYDRA, in detail. And A.I.M. All of it.

Because at the rate they’re going, they might lose the Pal again.

No! We will not lose the Pal. We will eat anyone who—

That’s Steve’s problem with me, in a nutshell. 

Then I am the problem, Venom says, accompanied by a despondent wave of sadness.

No. The problem is that I don’t make you follow orders. I don’t follow orders myself, so why should I try to make you follow orders? But Steve…

Ugh, Steve. He wants to just fall back into what snippets of memory he has of Steve and try to recapture some of what was lost. He wants to explore Steve kind of like they hadn’t managed to before or during the War. He wants to take Steve by the shoulders and shake him until he gets that Bucky has changed, and not necessarily for the better, or the worst. Just for the different.

And since he can’t do any of that, Bucky gets up and heads for the cockpit rather than have Steve in his peripheral vision, so close but so far away. 

“Hey, Buck?” Steve asks as he passes.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” Steve smiles up at him with an unspoken apology in his eyes. “For leaving Sitwell alive.”

But we will eat him! You promised!

Bucky stares at him and then blinks. “Don’t thank me quite yet.”

He continues on to the cockpit and sits in the copilot’s chair next to Clint.

The Pal, what?

Steve is Captain America. He’s the leader of this team, and he was the leader of the Howling Commandos. We followed orders on those rare occasions he gave them. He probably expected that from me, like old times.

“You going to be okay with just the one head, or do we need to break out those M&Ms?”

“We’ll be fine. But thanks, Clint.”

The rendezvous, a big open field outside the city, is empty when they set down in it a few minutes later. 

Where is the beautiful Sam?

Clearly not here yet. 

There’s a chance the other team got caught up in bureaucratic niceties, if they didn’t manage to fully sneak in. And it might be that they’ve been turned away without the wings and will need to drive to the rendezvous spot, which might be awkward to manage if they have—

Speaking of the asshole, Venom mutters as Stark comes flying into view—without company. He left the redhead and the beautiful Sam behind!

Probably for a reason, sweetheart.

What reason could there possibly be for leaving Sam behind? Or the redhead?

Bucky assumes they’ll find out shortly.

And they do, when Stark’s fire hydrant of information is distilled into something a little more akin to a drinking fountain. 

No such luck getting the wings, but he’s seen the things and can make Sam a pair of them back in his workshop. Easy peasy. Which is good to know, but doesn’t help them in the meantime. They have a raid to make on an abandoned military base in New Jersey and not much time to wait for him to manufacture Sam’s wings. 

They probably don’t even have the time needed to wait for Sam and Natasha to arrive by car.

How will they arrive by car? They do not have a car, and Beautiful Sam would not steal one like we would.

They’ll get a cab, I don’t know. Uber. Something. 

They will take forever. HYDRA will know that we are coming. They will move the math thing. The algorithm.

“We need to move now, without them,” Bucky says. 

Steve hesitates, but then nods. “They’ll understand, and we need to move. The enemy will figure out these two are missing, or might find what we left of Rumlow in Sitwell’s apartment. They’ll know we’re coming.”

“Who’s Rumlow and what did you leave of him?”

Bucky tunes out the response. It’s one thing to know that Steve doesn’t approve, and another thing to hear it in Steve’s voice or in the words he chooses to describe what happened. 

The important thing right now is to get the algorithm so they can know what HYDRA’s future targets are. In part to protect those future targets, and in part to consider recruiting them to the cause. If HYDRA’s got as significant a foothold in the government as to have Secretary of Defense and a chunk of S.H.I.E.L.D., then they might need to go public with the threat. 

How will we leave a message for Beautiful Sam? So that he and the redhead know where we went and that we will be back for them?

They’ll wait.

We could set fire to the field.

“We’re not torching the field, love.”

Clint side-eyes him. “What even goes on in there, with the two of you?”

Bucky shrugs. “We can’t just drop a note in the field and hope they find it. I’m assuming they’ll wait for us to come back for them.”

Clint laughs. “I’ve already told Natasha that we’re moving on.”

Bucky blinks. “Thought we were on radio silence on the comms.”

“Only until we met up. When she gets here, she’ll turn on her comm and get my message.”

“Works for me. Let’s get this show on the road.”

In the air.

Whatever.

Notes:

Content warning for Steve’s dismayed assessment of the events of the last chapter. I’d call it canon-typical gore response, maybe.

Chapter 15: Haunted house

Notes:

Thanks for your patience, folks. We’re having my dad’s funeral today, but I got here so early I have time to post a chapter.

STEVE

— Camp Lehigh, New Jersey: Just after dawn, 09 May 2012 —

“It all looks so familiar…” Steve says as the team makes its way among the buildings. 

Almost everything is exactly where he remembers it being, and he can almost imagine it was just yesterday he was a scrawny recruit struggling to keep up with the rest of the soldiers in training. Philips had wanted someone else for the serum, he knew. Erskine had not budged. Steve was his pick and that was that. 

“It all looks so abandoned,” Bucky mutters in apparent disagreement. “Buildings in disrepair, no flag on the flagpole, grass is definitely going without its regulation haircut. Couple of wasp nests in the eaves, too. No vehicles.”

Steve nods. “And that building is new.” He points to the building in question. “Shouldn’t be there, either, per regulations.”

Regulations can easily have changed when the base was decommissioned, he knows. And the base has definitely been decommissioned. That he knows of, the SSR shifted into S.H.I.E.L.D., and S.H.I.E.L.D. can easily have put up new buildings without regard for the old systems in place.

And HYDRA could have taken over at any point. But if they did take over this base, they’ve either moved on or they've hidden their operations underground. HYDRA always liked to build underground.

Bucky saves him the trouble of bringing the shield around to smash the lock on the building’s door, instead simply grabbing and pulling it loose with enhanced strength that is either from Venom or from Zola. 

Steve doesn’t recall Bucky doing anything that would have pointed to enhancements in the War, unless it was simply a matter of surviving whatever Zola had done to him. By all of the Howlies’ accounts, he was an exceptional marksman before they were captured, so that can’t have been an enhancement… unless they were lying to protect Bucky from scientific scrutiny.

And he’d survived the fall from the train, somehow. Bruce had said that he should think of Venom as the vehicle through which Bucky had survived to be here, now. But by the same token, doesn’t he owe Zola some of that goodwill, too, for experimenting on him with serums to the point that he survived the fall?

Steve refuses to do it. He won’t spare even a single kind thought for that man. If he died of brain cancer in ‘72 like Stark’s historical records say he did, then good riddance. 

“Lotta cobwebs for a new building, Rogers,” Stark says, lighting their way forward with a glowing palm.

“Newer,” Steve corrects himself. “New to me, anyway.”

“Blegh,” Clint says behind him. “Oh gross, it got in my mouth.” He spits several times.

Bucky is quiet in the back of the group, neither complaining nor talking to Venom—at least that Steve can hear. For all he knows, Bucky’s having a whole conversation in his mind.

There’s a lot of history in this building, as it turns out. The walls are lined with portraits of the founding members, including a portrait for Bucky, back before the long hair and snug leather jacket and five o’clock shadow. 

And Steve would linger on these portraits, would soak up the images of the people he was surrounded by just weeks ago by his personal timeline. Peggy, Howard, Philips. 

Bucky.

But the first three had recruited Zola, and the fourth had been killed by Zola, one way or another. Steve still doesn’t see how anyone who knew Bucky could have worked with Zola, or how they could put Bucky’s portrait there as an honorary founding member while knowing that Zola was working alongside them.

It’s a betrayal that still bites deeply, but one Steve pushes aside to better focus on the situation at hand. He can be bitter and disappointed later. Now, he has to find some algorithm in this base, hopefully incomplete and transportable.

“These computers are ancient,” Stark says, pushing a button in the back of one of them and waiting for it to power on. “Doesn’t mean they can’t be useful for networking to some extent. It’ll depend on what’s inside them.”

“Um, not to diss your glowing palms, or anything, but if there’s power to the building,” Clint says, “can we at least turn on some lights?”

Bucky flips the lightswitch, only for the bulbs overhead to shatter and go dark once more. “Guess not,” he says. 

“This place is worse than a haunted house,” Clint mutters.

“Is that because it’s empty, or because you suspect it’s not?” Tony asks.

Clint shrugs. “Bit of both. There’s a breeze by this bookshelf.”

He points to a bit of cobweb that is dancing as though caught in a gentle wind. 

“Then let’s move it and see what’s behind there,” Steve says.

“I bet it’s spiders,” Clint says. “A whole cluster of them.”

“A nightmare of spiders,” Bucky says with a grin. “Our kind of party.”

Steve and Bucky haul the bookshelf away, leaning it up against another of the empty shelves to the side. And behind the shelf, there’s an official S.H.I.E.L.D. elevator, which looks relatively clean compared to the rest of the building, even if it’s seen better days.

“Yeah, we’ll skip the vivisection this time, sweetheart.”

Steve wishes he knew the circumstances behind that, mostly so he can be angry at the right people for doing that to Bucky. 

“Stark, are you good up here, or coming down with us?”

“Coming down,” he says. “There’s nothing worthwhile up here. These are decoys at most.”

 

---

 

“Okay, now these aren’t decoys,” Tony says as they get off the elevator. “Listen to that hum. This is where all the power’s going. These machines are working hard.”

But what are they working on , Steve wonders. There aren’t any monitors lit up, though there are several monitors in the vast open space, most of them in a cluster around what looks like a workstation of some sort. He’s seen some of Tony’s workstations, and Fury’s control post on the helicarrier. This is clearly a precursor to those. 

And it’s dust-free.

“I know, sweetheart,” Bucky murmurs. “I know.”

“You know what?” Tony asks before Steve has a chance to. “If you know something about all this, now’s the time to spill, Bucky Bear.”

“Just confirming with V that this is the same setup as in one of the bases we torched decades ago.” Bucky shrugs. “That one had a lot more people manning the stations. They were delicious.”

Steve keeps his words to himself, rather than get into it now. There simply has to be a different way to feed Venom. Something else the alien can eat. How did it survive before it met Bucky, anyway? It can’t have lived off humans before it came to Earth.

“That’s so gross,” Tony complains.

“Takes all kinds,” Clint says with a shrug. “I’m going to let Banner know we’re downstairs.”

Steve nods and comes to stand near one of the dark monitors while Clint busies himself with the comms relay, moving around the room looking for reception. 

“Желаниe,” one of the speakers blasts out at ear-splitting volume. “Pжавый!”

And Venom is racing across Bucky’s whole body like a tidal wave, the transformation almost so quick that Steve doesn’t catch it while he’s holding his ears against the sheer volume of the foreign words.

“That will not work!”

“Семнадцать!”

Venom howls angrily and punches a fist in the direction of the speaker, a tentacle shooting out from their hand and impaling the device, releasing a shower of sparks. 

“Whoa ugly!” Tony yells, staring at Venom.

“So the monster is still attached to my creation,” says a voice Steve knows and hates out of a much closer speaker. Zola, but mechanized somehow, like he’s speaking on a voice recording. “A parasite marring my success.”

The monitor nearest him flickers to life, the gray static becoming a black background with green lettering that forms a face he’d like nothing better than to punch.

“Zola,” Steve growls. 

“Parasite?!” Venom sends another tentacle through the face on the monitor, snarling the whole time.

“Venom, stand down!” Steve yells. “Please,” he adds.

“So you seek to control this thing, do you?” Zola says from a different monitor. “I wonder how the legacy of Captain America would hold up if the public knew how many deaths this creature has caused, above and beyond the deaths that came at the hands of the Fist of HYDRA.”

“Not control,” Steve grits out. “Work with. And Bucky was never your ‘fist,’ not willingly.”

There’s a wet-sounding confirmation murmur from just beyond his shoulder, but Steve pays Venom no mind.

The other monitors around the workstation crackle to life, showing scrolling lists of names, dozens of newspaper clippings of unsolved murders, image after image of Bucky with his metal arm fully on display lurking on rooftops and blowing up cars, strangling people, shooting people execution-style.

“The Winter Soldier enjoyed his work, before the Lake Kemijärvi mission,” Zola continues. “So prolific.”

“He didn’t have a choice,” Steve insists. “He couldn’t have had a choice, or he wouldn’t have worked for you. Bucky hates HYDRA and always has!”

The slideshows on the monitors continue, never repeating that Steve can see. 

“Oh, but we can be very convincing.”

The monitor displays shift to show a room illuminated by yellow lights in cages and bright surgical lights over a hulking metal chair, in which Bucky is restrained while some kind of clunky metal contraption fires electricity into his face. There’s no sound, but Steve doesn’t have to imagine the sounds of Bucky screaming—he remembers Bucky’s scream as he fell from the train. Like it was yesterday.

Steve’s fingernails would be drawing blood from his palms if he wasn’t wearing gloves as part of his uniform. As it is, he thinks he can hear a molar crack and makes a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. It’s not easy.

“Your Bucky was a docile lamb after our careful ministrations. Time and time again, we persuaded him to accept a mission, while you rested lazily in the ice. And he always returned home to us, eager for more work.”

They had him until ‘68, Bucky’d said. Twenty-three years. They had him, they tortured him, for twenty-three years.

Zola laughs in the monitor. “Quite industrious was our Soldier. Truly, he was the Fist—”

“Shut up!” Steve yells.

“We are indebted to you for abandoning him.”

Steve smashes a fist into the monitor, but Zola’s face merely appears in another, even brighter green than before.

“No one ever mentioned your tem—”

The monitors go dead and Zola’s voice cuts off mid-word. 

Steve looks around and finds Clint with a plug in his hand looking fed up. 

“First rule of dealing with computers, Cap,” Clint says. “Don’t feed the trolls.”

TONY

— Camp Lehigh, New Jersey: An hour after sunup, 09 May 2012 —

He’s got most of the algorithm copied over onto an external USB port in his armor, safely quarantined from the rest of his armor and from JARVIS. No way does he want his armor compromised by a vicious little freak like this Zola character. 

It doesn’t seem complete yet, and there are lots of comments in the code delineating places where bugs need to be fixed for the code to run successfully and integrate into a targeting system on what Tony can only assume to be a helicarrier. 

He’s seen the gist of what Zola’s dishing out, a glance here and there, and the man-turned-computer is right—the Soldier, or Fist of HYDRA, or whatever, had been prolific, for sure. But he’s also caught a quick look at what it must have taken to get him to cooperate, and that speaks for itself. 

Electrocuted through the face every time they needed him to kill for them? And that many kills? It’s amazing he’s even got a brain left at all in there, and not just a bunch of scorched soup in his skull.

And oof, Zola’s getting in a lot of verbal punches, and it’s hardly a surprise to Tony when Stevorino finally snaps and delivers one of his own. 

It is a surprise when Barton just up and unplugs the workstation, though. So much for getting the last bits of the algorithm off of there. 

Tony slides the USB drive into its compartment in his armor for safekeeping and goes to inspect the computer banks that must house this computerized Zola. It’s not a sleekly efficient setup, but for the ‘70s, it would have been state of the art. 

He wonders if that’s really Zola in the mainframes or just an approximation of his knowledge. JARVIS is a fully crafted artificial intelligence, a being created from scratch and programmed with a personality that Tony remembers from the actual Jarvis he knew growing up. That’s not the same thing as JARVIS actually being Jarvis just trapped in a machine. 

How did Zola put his consciousness into a machine, if that’s what he actually did? 

And with ‘70s technology, no less. Though HYDRA hadn’t been limited to the technology of the time if they’d made that cybernetic arm Buckyboo’s attached to. 

Tony has no sooner opened his mouth to remark on that when the whole room shakes apart in a fiery eruption. His armor will keep him safe, if a bit toasty, but the others—

He watches through the sensors for as long as he can, fully expecting to see some screaming, burning team members, but instead, the last thing his sensors pick up before shutting down is a curtain of black goo shooting out like a parachute to envelop those team members.

 

---

 

When his sensors come back online, it’s completely dark, and very, very hot. 

“JARVIS, what happened there?”

“There appears to have been a missile strike on this building, Sir.”

So all that taunting was just to take up time until someone could launch a missile at them. Well fuck. He’d thought Zola was taunting Spangles for the sheer joy of watching him get mad about it, or maybe as a self-defense mechanism to keep him focused on the terminal and not on all those banks of memory that actually housed him. 

But there wasn’t any self-defense at all if he knew there was a missile coming and hadn’t tried to escape somehow. 

But self-sacrifice? From a HYDRA shithead? Nah. Tony isn’t buying that. There has to be another copy somewhere or something. That’s the only way someone like Zola would have allowed anything to happen to this setup. Anyone so concerned with death that they put themselves into a machine in order to survive brain cancer is not someone who’s going to give up the ghost for the sake of anything.

“Can we dig ourselves out?” Tony asks. “Or would that just make a bigger mess for the others?”

“I was unable to ascertain the outcome of our newest colleague’s survival strategy,” JARVIS admits. “It would be prudent to wait for Hulk to act and so, to avoid shifting further debris onto the others.”

There’s a pause. Then: “Also, the armor’s articulation appears to be compromised.”

Great. Joints fused together at least a little. So they’re staying put. 

Well, given Barnes’s love of blowing shit up, he’s bound to have something up his shiny leather sleeve to bust out in case he gets caught up in his own demolitions. It might actually all be fine.

 

HULK

— Camp Lehigh, New Jersey: An hour after sunup, 09 May 2012 —

Hulk ignore how hot the concrete slabs are, how the pieces of the base shimmer and smolder, how far down Hulk need to dig to finally find the red and gold crab-man friend. Hulk just know to dig and to dig. To dig until Hulk find the layer of broken building that has the red and gold crab-man friend inside it.

Hulk pick up the red and gold crab-man friend and tear off the face plate. There is no need for Hulk to roar into the armor this time—the red and gold crab-man friend inside the armor is awake, breathing, saying “no kisses.”

Hulk grin, wide. 

“Could use a little help getting out of this armor, though, Mean Green. Some of it’s fused together.”

Hulk pry the red and gold crab-man friend’s crab parts into pieces, careful not to pinch the friend inside. And finally, Hulk have the crab-man friend finally out of the crab parts and in only the soft black undersuit.

“I’m going to go make sure the prisoners are still where we left them, Big Guy. You okay to dig out the other three?”

“Hulk dig!” 

And Hulk does dig, but first Hulk roar at the broken building. 

Hulk oldest friend, Venom, roar back, and Hulk move over a bit to dig there. There is a puny “here” coming from the Hulk friend with the metal dinner plate, and Hulk lift up another slab of concrete, and another, before Hulk see the charred metal of the dinner plate.

Hulk arrow friend sleep in other Hulk friend arms, and Hulk friend Venom slick and shiny and black, but also drip and sizzle like oil on hot grill.

Venom send up a tentacle, wrap around Hulk wrist, and pull just like Hulk helping to stand up. 

“Thanks, pal,” Venom say. “We owe you one now.”

“Hulk save friends,” Hulk say. “Hulk not only smash.”

“Knew you had it in you. Bucky says you are not just anger, but protection, too.”

Yes! Bucky and Venom know Hulk so well. Hulk only ever try to protect. Puny Banner or other puny humans, it all the same—Hulk want to protect.

“Be extra careful with Tater Tot, here,” Venom say while passing Hulk arrow friend up. “Hit his head on debris going down.”

Hulk cradle Hulk arrow friend—Tater Tot, so funny, haha—and carry him to the quinjet while Venom help Hulk friend with the metal dinner plate up out of the debris.

“Thanks, Venom,” Hulk dinner plate friend say. “I don’t know what you did, but thanks.”

“We are impervious to fire. It is an adaptation we are proud of. We became an umbrella to deflect the flames and heat.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that was possible.”

“We would not let the Pal be burned. We would not let Tater Tot be burned. The asshole has to fend for himself, though.”

“I heard that!” Hulk crab-man friend call out from the quinjet.

Hulk friends pick up the crab-man’s crab parts and bring the red and gold crab parts to the quinjet. Hulk go back to get the last of the crab parts, and then listen hard for the voice of puny Banner deep inside. Puny Banner want to give medical attention to Hulk arrow friend, and the quinjet too small for Hulk comfort, anyway.

Hulk let go of control and fade back into puny Banner’s mind. 

“Goodbye Hulk!” Venom say as Hulk leave. 

“Goodbye, Venom,” Hulk make puny Banner say. 

Bruce blinks, wipes at his eyes, and then ducks into the quinjet for his glasses, left on the control panels. 

First things, first, Clint needs attention. Then? He needs a change of clothes. Good thing he packed a go bag. 

Chapter 16: We have ways of making you talk

Notes:

Oh hey, a warning might be necessary for this chapter. See endnote for that.

TONY

— Camp Lehigh, New Jersey: Early in the morning, 09 May 2012 —

“Venom saved your life, Steve!” Bucky yells. “They saved Clint’s life! You thanked them.”

“I don’t see why my thanking Venom for saving our lives means Venom is free to eat Sitwell all of the sudden,” Capsicle says. 

And that, of course, had been loads of fun to watch. Tony only threw up the one time, but he can do without the reminder of what he’d witnessed, splashed red and bloody all over the grass just outside of the quinjet. No, he’ll just sit here inside the quinjet and let the two super soldiers argue it out.

It’s not like there’s a body out there that needs picking up. One good rain’ll hide all the evidence that a human being was decapitated with one bite, torn asunder, and then crammed into that glistening toothy maw like it was a hotdog eating contest and Sitwell was a certified kosher beef frank.

“That adaptation is hard on us, Steve. Hard on both of us. Do you see these burns?”

Tony assumes that there are some gestures that go along with that question. Because yes, Bucky looks like a toasted marshmallow in some places, including the ooze. 

“I do, but—”

“No. No buts. Venom can’t heal me without some fuel in the tank. I’m all outta fuel, Steve. Used it up keeping our asses from getting barbecued by a fucking missile. They were outta fuel, too. Used it up the same way. You want me to let them suffer when there’s a meal sitting right there? A meal that could patch Venom up and ease their burns? I won’t do it. Think of it as alien first aid.”

There’s a patch of silence after that, and Tony wonders if Mom and Dad have stopped fighting or if the Man with a Plan is just coming up with the next argument.

“Think we should say something?” Clint asks. 

“I’d advise against it,” Bruce says. “This has been building for a while. Steve needs to know.”

“There has to be another way,” Steve says, and it might be Tony’s imagination, but a lot of the fight has gone out of his tone of voice. 

“There isn’t. Venom has needs. I meet those needs by supplying dinner, or I’m on the menu myself. I can handle that if I have the resources for it. In case you missed it, I eat a lot. All the time. So that I have the resources I need to survive Venom’s hunger. And—”

“You said they weren’t hurting you.”

“I said there were risks involved. I also said they were worth it.”

Speaking of risks, Tony wonders how long this is going to take. Because there could always be a second missile on the way, and he doesn’t want to be chilling out in this woolen undersuit when it hits. He considers poking his head out there to ask them to hurry it up, but there’s the bloody grass and he doesn’t want to see that.

“If Venom doesn’t eat other people, they eat you,” Rogers says so softly that only the quinjet ramp being down allows Tony to hear him at all.

“That’s the deal. Yes. God, do you think I became a hitman because I love violence or something?”

“Of course not.”

“I know what I’m good at, Steve. And I know how I can make the world a better place. It involves taking out the trash. And paying my taxes.”

“Weird flex,” Clint mutters. 

Tony shrugs. “Lots of people try to get out of paying taxes. Just means he’s a civically minded cannibal assassin.”

Bruce smiles at that. “Oh, he’s very concerned about the education system and public services in general. You should hear him rant about the lack of funding for public libraries.”

“So now you know,” Bucky says into the silence out there, “will you let me do what I’m good at?”

“You want to eat Pierce, too?”

“He’s HYDRA scum, of course I do. But he has information we need, first. And I’ve got ways of making him talk.”

“It had better not involve biting his ear off,” Steve warns. 

“Oh, Stevie. Your interrogation methods leave much to be desired.”

There’s an indignant squawk of protest out there. “I had you hold him out over the roof and everything. Sitwell was terrified.”

“Yeah, and that kind of thing works on people like Sitwell. This other guy? We’re doing it my way.”

“You can’t just eat the Secretary of Defense, Bucky. He’s important. We need to turn him over for justice. Unmaimed.”

Buckster laughs. “Oh, I won’t touch a hair on his head.”

Why does Tony not like the sound of that? 

Spangles pops into the quinjet only long enough to drag Pierce out of it, hauling the man to his feet and ignoring the glower as he guides Pierce down the ramp and off into the distance. 

Tony can appreciate the distance. That means in theory that he won’t hear more than the occasional scream during what’s bound to be an incredibly unpleasant but somehow not physically harmful interrogation. Of course, it’s far enough in the distance that Tony can see it out of the quinjet’s windows, so that somewhat defeats the purpose, if that purpose had been to avoid an audience.

Something tells him that avoiding an audience is not high up on Blockbuckster’s priority list, though. 

So far, they just seem to be talking at Pierce, and maybe a little at each other. But while Pierce does flinch away from Bucky pulling the gag out of his mouth—hell, Tony would flinch, too, since the hand he uses is burned up and nasty looking—the man still somehow manages to look dignified. 

And then there’s some kind of sticky looking glob flowing out of Bucky’s hand and onto Pierce’s lapel, which darkens under the glob and then absorbs the glob like there hadn’t been anything there. 

But under that suit, there are bulges and lumps like something is burrowing around through Pierce’s torso, his arms, his legs, just all over. And wherever the glob goes, it leaves some kind of emptiness in its wake. Pierce’s suit goes from a perfectly respectable fit to something downright baggy on his frame, though it’s hard to tell with the man on his knees with his arms still zip-tied behind him, puking onto the overgrown grass.

Tony can’t make out Capsicle’s expression, but the arms thrown up in the air definitely point to exasperated outrage. Clearly this was not abiding by the spirit of the promise not to touch a hair on Pierce’s head.

Bucky, though, just stands there with his arms crossed, looking at Pierce and not Stevedore, for several minutes, until Pierce is finally lying on his side in his own vomit looking like a shadow of his former imperious self. 

Then he extends a hand and a tentacle rises up from Pierce’s torso, makes contact with Barnstormer’s hand, and serves as a bridge that the glob of black goo crosses to rejoin its original host. 

Because that has to be what happened just now. Venom jumped ship, sucked up all of the nutrients in Pierce’s body, and then returned to Bucky. Maybe the alien sucked up all the intel along with the rest. Tony sure hopes so, because Rogers has to carry Pierce back to the quinjet and the man who gets set down in the cargo hold is like if a man could become a shriveled up prune of a man. 

But he’s still breathing, weakly, and groaning. Specifically, he’s groaning “no, no, get it out” while trembling and crying a little, but Tony’s not going to think about that.

Instead, he’s going to congratulate Bucky on his skin care regimen, because all that’s left of the previously hideous burns are the faintest pinkish hues of a light sunburn.

BUCKY

— Quinjet near an empty field near Washington D.C.: Still morning, 09 May 2012 —

“I can’t believe you did that,” Steve mutters.

“What, kept my promise? The man’s got a full head of hair.”

We upset the Pal! Venom wails. There are sickening waves of unease and distress rocking their shared mindspace as Venom carries on.

He’ll get over it, V.

What if he doesn’t?

He’ll get over it.

“You know what I mean, Buck.”

“Alien first aid,” Bucky says. “You wanted him alive to be brought to justice, and if they prosecute him quickly enough, he’ll live to see the inside of a prison cell.”

“He needs a hospital bed,” Steve says. “Forget a prison cell.”

Bucky shrugs. “Whichever he ends up with, it’s better than he deserves. That’s the HYDRA Supreme you’re attempting to coddle. Highest ranking rat on this side of the ocean.”

“What, they’re making up ranks now?” Steve asks. 

“It’s the least of what they’re up to.”

“And now you know what they’re up to.”

He shrugs again. “Venom bonded with him. Tossed his brain like ransacking a filing cabinet, picking out all the juicy bits.”

Bucky grins, ignoring how that pulls at a bit of lightly burned skin along his cheekbones. 

“And?”

“And we know all about Project Insight now, including where the other helicarriers are being built and the plans for how they’re going to hijack Fury’s model. Plus a lot of other bases. If we act fast, we can clear out the whole Eastern Seaboard before they scatter.”

Steve stares at him, and if Bucky’s not reading into things too much, there might be a hint of Steve getting to be okay with what just happened. 

You are reading into it. The Pal still looks disappointed. We upset him!

Shush. I’ll talk him around.

Venom curls up tighter behind his pancreas and whimpers.

“You learned all of that from a few minutes of— Whatever it was Venom was doing?”

“Our interrogation methods actually work, unlike most of them out there. If they know something, then Venom knows it, too.”

Steve nods. “And if Venom knows it, you do.”

Bucky see-saws his hand. “Eh. Venom and I have a few boundaries left. They’re ancient and well traveled, so I probably couldn’t process everything they know. But I’m human and a little unpredictable still, so they don’t always understand me. We share, though. Communicate.”

Steve looks off to the side, where Bruce is trying to get some IV nutrients into the now un-zip-tied Pierce. 

“Serves him right, I say,” Bucky mutters. 

“No one deserves to suffer like that, Buck.”

“Agree to disagree.”

What Pierce deserves is a slow, painful death, in any case. And he’ll probably get one if Bruce can patch him up enough to survive a few more hours. He might end up in a coma in a hospital, maybe reliving Venom’s little “visit” until he does die.

Steve’s quiet for a long moment while Clint sets the quinjet down near Natasha and Sam.

“Whoa,” Sam says as he boards the quinjet and gets a good look at Pierce. “Is that Sitwell?”

“Sitwell’s a puddle of blood and bile back in New Jersey,” Stark says. “This is—”

“Pierce?” Natasha asks, her eyes wide with belated recognition. “He looked so robust when I last saw him.”

Bucky nods with a grin. “He was definitely robust, yes. Like a fine dry-roasted coffee.”

Sam gets settled into the seat next to him while Natasha moves up to copilot with Clint. “And I guess you slurped him up just like a frappuccino, right?”

Bucky laughs. “V did some excellent work, yeah. It’s not often they leave enough behind to live off of.”

“That was mild alien possession?” Stark asks. The man still looks pale, but that might be due to the contrast between his skin and the black undersuit he’s wearing. “How are you still standing?”

We are sitting, Venom supplies. 

“You know, I think Zola must have injected me with cockroach DNA or something back in that factory. I crawl away from pretty much anything.”

“What about the co-ed? Janice or Jessica or whatever. Did she get the cockroach DNA, too?” Stark asks. “Because she’s lasted a hell of a lot longer than this guy did.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Jennifer got a head start by eating several heads back in Philly, and Trust doesn’t want to eat her alive. But the chocolate isn’t going to do the trick forever. Trust needs to eat, and a lot. They’re still growing.”

“Why would you make another one of those things in the first place?” Stark asks. 

He is not in his shell. We can eat him!

“No,” Bucky says, “we’re not eating him.”

He glares at Stark. “But keep talking. I might change my mind.”

“Buck.” Steve shifts in his seat next to them. “It is a valid question, even if it’s rudely worded.”

Bucky sighs. “Got tired of being one of a kind. Wanted to nurture the next generation. Condom broke. Take your pick.”

They don’t need to know if they’re going to be rude about it. He’s not about to share their long discussions about whether this was the right thing to do, or the right time to do it, or whether they even could do it. And he’s definitely not about to share with them Venom’s insecurities about having been considered a loser their whole life until they met him and their shared desire to do better for their offshoot.

“Condom broke? Oh, gross, it’s like that, is it?”

Eat him!

No. He’s just trying to get a rise out of us, V.

“It’s very much like that, and I didn’t find it to be gross.” Bruce, apparently finished with Pierce, takes the seat next to Stark. “As for Jennifer, I’ve asked JARVIS to run some comparisons of the chemical compounds found in human brain matter and chocolate, looking for a match. He should have something for me to start working on by the time we’re back in the tower.”

“Well that’s great news!” Steve says. “There may not be a better way yet, but Bruce is working on one. You won’t have to eat people anymore, Buck.”

We like to eat people, though. 

I know. We won’t be stopping any time soon. There’s a whole HYDRA buffet waiting for us.

In the meantime, he promised Venom he’d eat M&Ms for breakfast, and it’s definitely high time for breakfast.

 

NATASHA

— Stark Tower, New York City: Mid-morning, 09 May 2012 —

It rankles that her part of last night’s mission didn’t go anywhere beyond a run-in with the Air Force and a warning for the three of them. But they got what they wanted in some ways. Stark had seen the blueprints for the wing pack briefly, and had seen images of the wings in operation. Apparently, that’s enough for him to make them “even better” in his workshop.

Natasha can’t wait to see the red and gold version, if that color scheme isn’t considered proprietary to Iron Man armor. 

In the meantime, while Stark goes to work in the workshop and Bruce goes to work in the lab, the rest of them gather to go over the details of what Barnes learned from Pierce. 

Pierce himself is in the medical wing getting the attention of a whole team of onsite medics trying to finish the stabilizing work Bruce had begun on the quinjet. The prognosis is that he’ll live, but not happily. All he seems able to say for himself is a plea that they “get it out” and a bit of moaning.

And as far as interrogation techniques go, whatever Barnes had done seems to have garnered lots of information, and with specific details that Natasha almost doesn’t trust. That kind of specific detail is the sign of a lie, misdirection, something, but it all adds up and every aerial scan they pull from the satellites reveals exactly what Barnes seems to think they’ll find. 

“And you pulled all of this directly from his mind?” she asks, thumbing through files on her tablet. 

“Venom did. Passwords and everything.” He shrugs and eats another spoonful of M&Ms from the gallon bag he started on the quinjet. “Say what you will about the ethics, it gets results.”

Natasha shakes her head. “When they start caring about the ethics, I will.”

What it is, is impressive. Maybe not the part where he bit Rumlow’s head off, and maybe not the part where he ate Sitwell head first. But on the whole, very impressive. Especially when she figures in the whole part where the building they were in was struck by a missile and they walked away because of Venom.

“We’re better than they are,” Rogers says. “We need to care about the ethics.”

“But we also need to do something about these HYDRA bases, and all the files we have access to now, right?” Wilson asks. “However we got the intel, it’s solid.”

Rogers nods. “That’s true. And we will act on this. After we sleep and decompress.”

“Way ahead of you, Cap,” Clint says with a lift of his coffee carafe. “Liquid sleep, right here. I’m right as rain.”

“I’ll take him to the medical wing,” Natasha volunteers, getting to her feet. “You do need to be checked out, Clint.”

“Banner already went at my eyes with a flashlight, ‘Tasha. I’m fine.”

“Still, it’s better safe than sorry.” She gives him a look that says “go with it” and pulls him to his feet. 

And he probably is fine, because he correctly interprets her look and lets himself be pulled. Not only that, but he waits until they’re probably out of super soldier earshot before asking her what’s wrong.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says. “I want more details, though. Tell me everything.”

If she couldn’t be there to participate, couldn’t observe with her own senses what all happened, then Clint’s report is the next best thing. And he’ll tell her without leaving out the “grossest” bits or complaining about cannibalism from the self-avowed cannibal.

“Why the interest?” Clint asks after giving her a properly detailed report of the bits he remembers. “You already got the confirmation you needed about your Winter Soldier theories.”

“We now know of three different types of alien, Clint. The kind that look entirely human, the kind that look like crusty space bugs, and the kind that look like a glob of goo.” Natasha shrugs. “How could I not want to know everything I might need to know if something goes wrong?”

“You mean in the ‘help our ailing alien coworker’ way, and not the ‘if they turn on us I’ll strangle him with my thighs’ way, right?” he asks. “Because if they turned on us and you got within range, I’m willing to bet Barnes would just eat you.”

Natasha sighs. “Yes, Clint. I mean in case we need to help them out.”

“Hey, it had to be asked. You have a pattern of behavior, ‘Tasha. And you don’t like backstabbers.”

“You weren’t a backstabber, Clint. You were mind-controlled. You didn’t have any more choice in the matter than the Soldier did, if that electric chair Zola showed you is any indication.”

She knows Clint still feels horrible about what he did for Loki, even after helping get rid of Loki and undo the damage that could be undone. But it really was something he had no control over. It wasn’t like what Natasha did for the Red Room all those years earlier. She’d been manipulated and had felt helpless against the system she was caught in, but it hadn’t been direct control.

Of course, she got herself out, Clint would be the first to remind her. She hadn’t needed to be pulled from the Red Room kicking and fighting, hadn’t needed any concussive maneuvers to free herself. But still. 

It’s just one more thing she has in common with him, which is the way she’d prefer he think of it.

And it’s something they might have in common with Barnes, the erstwhile Winter Soldier and current host to an alien lifeform.

Funny how life works.

Notes:

Content Warning: There’s mention of vomiting in this chapter, and also an alien interrogation technique that could be disturbing to read. Tony’s disturbed, anyway.

Chapter 17: Reconciliation

STEVE

— Stark Tower, New York City: Just after lunch, 09 May 2012 —

He catches up to Bucky as his friend heads for the elevator with a bottle of chocolate milk in each hand.

“Buck, hey,” he says. “Do you have some time to talk?”

“If it’s about your disapproval in any way, then no.” Bucky elbows the “up” arrow. “Otherwise, I’m all ears.”

Steve bites back a statement of conditional approval. Bucky just said point blank that he doesn’t want to hear anything along the lines of “I know you had to eat them, but I don’t like it.” Instead, he joins Bucky on the elevator and makes sure they’re alone in the carriage before talking. 

“What Zola showed me, the things he said.” Steve pauses. “I had no idea. I still don’t have any idea. And I… I want to know. I want to know everything.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says with a little laugh. “It’s a lot of shit to wade through, and I wanted to kind of spread it out, but Zola tipped my hand.”

Steve feels like he’s on even ground here, despite still not knowing what all Zola did the first time he got his hands on Bucky. Bucky’d never wanted to talk about the events that led up to Steve finding him strapped to that table, and Steve had respected that. The others said he’d been taken to the research area a whole month before Steve arrived, though.

So yeah. Steve hadn’t really asked, he’d just hinted at wanting to support him. But if he makes that mistake again, he’ll never forgive himself. And if Bucky is willing to talk, then… Steve will shut up and listen. 

First it’s time to give Jennifer and Trust a visit, though, because that’s where Bucky leads him. Jennifer is looking alright, though extremely tired. She looks nothing at all like Pierce, though, and if the trash can full of chocolate wrappers is any indication, she’s been doing her due diligence when it comes to trying to keep Trust fed and healthy.

“Do you ever get tired of chocolate?” Steve asks Bucky later, in the room Pepper has set aside for him. “You have to eat a lot of it.”

Bucky pulls a bottle of chocolate syrup from the cabinet over his sink and tops up his chocolate milk, screwing the cap on and shaking it to combine everything. 

“I don’t mind the chocolate,” he says. “There’s a lot of variety out there. So it doesn’t have to be boring.”

“I guess,” Steve says. 

He hasn’t really explored the world of chocolate that’s available in the future. All he knows is that it was rare to have it when he was growing up and then there were chocolate rations in the Army. More chocolate than he’d ever had before, and more consistently. 

“Oh, Steve. You haven’t even seen the kinds of chocolate that are available these days. From all over the world. Sometimes we take a job somewhere just so we can stock up on local chocolates.”

Steve doesn’t ask what kind of job. He’s not here to discuss that part of things. 

“Anyway, even if it was all one kind of chocolate,” Bucky continues, “all the time, for days and months and years on end, I still wouldn’t mind it.”

“And why is that?” Steve asks. “Just because Venom needs it, or do you really like it that much?”

“I love to eat, Steve. It’s not exactly novel at this point, but it’s a privilege to be able to do it.”

Bucky gestures to the sofa and takes a seat in the chair, himself. “I used to get fed through an IV, nutrients and sugars and things I needed to sustain me at the bare minimum level of effectiveness.” He shrugs. “Sometimes, before a strenuous mission, there’d be a— Kind of like a milkshake, but gross.”

“But why?”

“Limits healing, is my guess. Without enough calories to actually heal properly, I’d stay nice and broken for them. Docile.”

Steve’s mind returns to the monitors in Camp Lehigh’s HYDRA bunker, the images of Bucky screaming in the chair with the contraption against his face. How long would it take to heal from something like that? Something that would probably kill him if not for whatever Zola had given him.

“I can’t believe you’d ever be docile for HYDRA, no matter what Zola said.”

“You’d be surprised. It’s hard to resist when you can’t remember what you’re resisting.” Bucky studies him over the bottle of chocolate milk. “That’s what that chair and halo are for. They wipe away memories and implant new ones. Make it hard to figure anything out. Confuse everything. Muddle it up.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s HYDRA. And yes, it hurt like a bitch. And it worked. I didn’t know my name until… When was it, love? Right, Ukraine, ‘69.” Bucky shrugs. “Only a year or so after freedom, but still a long time.”

Steve makes his hands relax instead of balling into fists. “And then you remembered, after a year.”

“Remembered my name? No. Then we found the Winter Soldier file and read it. What I remembered, vaguely, was a sense of loss, like I had someone really close to me and then forgot them.”

“Me.”

“You. You’re the long lost pal,” Bucky says. “Venom swore to help me find you, and honestly, they’ve been just as interested in finding you as I have been.”

“Really?”

Steve can’t imagine why Venom would have been interested at all, except maybe as a way to soothe Bucky’s sense of loss. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Bucky’s loss is Venom’s loss and vice versa. Maybe he really is the capital-P Pal.

If so, he’s been kind of a disapproving jerk. But he can’t approve of eating people’s heads simply because it’s his long lost best friend who’s doing it.

“You probably don’t want to hear it,” Bucky says, “but Venom and I are bonded. Venom is all throughout me and is a part of me. And I am a part of Venom.”

Steve frowns. “But you separated earlier. Venom left you and went to Pierce.”

“What we did to Pierce, that’s what happens when there isn’t a real bond. That’s more… stripping someone for parts. Venom and I are so tightly bonded that even physical distance can’t fully pull us apart anymore.”

Steve can hear what Bucky’s not outright saying, that they are a package deal. He can’t have just Bucky, can’t pretend that Venom isn’t there, can’t approve of one of them without approving of the other. 

And he can either accept that—and accept Venom as they are—or he can cut his losses and lose this one connection to the time before, to his life before the ice.

That’s a lot to process, and while he doesn’t feel like there’s a time crunch, he does feel rotten for dragging this out so long. But dang it, Bucky’s changed so much. Is the original even still there? Or did HYDRA “wipe” that man away and replace him with someone who would willingly support an alien eating people?

“You might be wondering what the Russian words were that Zola had on the speakers,” Bucky says, rescuing Steve from having to respond to the other.

And yes, that had been on Steve’s list of questions to ask. Venom had taken over so fast, had told Zola that “that” wouldn’t work… but what was “that” in the first place?

Steve nods. 

“There’s a series of words that are programmed into my head, courtesy of HYDRA. They probably can’t do much now, because I have Venom with me, but we don’t take chances.”

“The activation phrase,” Steve says. “The one from the bell tower that you mentioned.”

“Close. That was just the greeting. The words Zola used, they can shift me into the Winter Soldier mindset, especially paired with the electricity from the halo. That’s the bit that comes down on my face,” he adds.

“It sounds like something out of a science fiction book. Like one of the ones you used to read.”

Bucky laughs. “Maybe you and Wade should meet up,” he says. “He can tell you all about how we’re all just characters in stories.”

“I would like to meet him,” Steve says.

“You wouldn’t like him. He’s worse than I am when it comes to assassinations. He doesn’t vet most of his targets.”

Meaning, Steve guesses, some of Wade’s targets aren’t considered to be trash by Bucky’s standards. Maybe it’s better that he not meet Wade.

“Does Wade know about Venom?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Wade wants to have V’s babies. It’s not going to happen.”

“Because he doesn’t vet his targets?”

“Because he’s batshit insane. Wade thinks everything is a story, that we’re all just a bunch of words someone posts online somewhere. That we’re based off of comic books and movies and…” Bucky shakes his head. “Wade’s a freak, like us. But not a suitable host or progenitor.”

“I don’t think you’re a freak, Bucky.”

“It’s a term of endearment. You’re a freak, too. Enhanced, science project, all that. Bruce is a freak, I’m a freak, you’re a freak. Whoever the guy with the magic hammer is, he’s a freak.”

“Thor. He’s Asgardian.”

Bucky stares, probably listening to Venom explain what that means. Then: “Well, when he’s on Earth, he’s a freak.”

“And Tony?” Steve asks, tapping his chest where the arc reactor would be.

“Stark’s an asshole, is what he is. But— No, we’re not eating him. He’s making ‘beautiful’ Sam’s wings, remember? That’s what I thought.”

“Venom really likes Sam.”

Bucky sighs. “From the very first sniff, yes. Let me tell you all about how that went.”

 

VENOM

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late afternoon, 09 May 2012 —

The Pal is listening to everything and not disapproving of them! The Pal is laughing at their host’s stories, at the descriptions of their antics.

I’m pretty sure Steve still doesn’t approve of the heads thing, Bucky reminds them. But he’s keeping it to himself, at least.

The Pal would not hide anything from them. Not when they are sharing stories and memories. Not when they are being so open about what Bucky does not remember from before. Not when the Pal is telling them all about the fight with the man with the red face.

That is an image that has been in their host’s mind from nearly the beginning, a human ripping off his face to reveal a bright red skull underneath, and that shorter, fatter human with the briefcase, plus lots of fire and yelling. 

They thought for sure it was a nightmare, because Bucky’s mind produces all sorts of fantastical things while he sleeps, and they have never yet encountered anything on this planet that can slough off its face and have a red skull left behind. 

But the man with the briefcase is definitely the green face in the monitor before Tater Tot unplugged the terminal. So there was another freak in the world, a long time ago, and that freak is long gone now. 

For the better from the way the Pal is telling it. Picked up the Tesseract and was zapped away into space. 

And then the plane, the Valkyrie, loaded with so many bombs and ready to drop them all. The Arctic, so cold, all the water. Better than fires, but they have been frozen in glaciers for eons, and it is not exactly somewhere they would like to return.

“So there I am with this chocolate fondue fountain and a mound of fruit—kiwis, Steve, they had kiwis!—when I look for the news and find out there’s a whole hive of Chitauri roaches climbing all over my city.”

We were going to watch some porn, Venom reminds him. Later. But we did not.

“We’ll get to that, love, promise,” Bucky says. “We’ve been busy with other stuff.”

“What did they say?” the Pal asks. 

Do not tell him! The Pal will go back to disapproving. Porn is something many humans disapprove of, even if there is more of it being made every day.

What, and keep secrets?

Is the Pal okay with porn? They cannot get a good sense of the answer from their delectable Bucky, but there is a sense of playfulness, so maybe it will be okay.

…alright. Tell him, then.

“One of the things we like to do is unwind after a hit. Usually with a bit of porn to set the mood. Blue movies.” Their host shrugs, not seeming to care that the Pal’s cheeks are flushing bright pink. “We skipped it this time, trying to get up here from Jamaica before you vanished again.”

“Oh.” The Pal does not look disapproving. The Pal looks… curious?

“Nothing too out there,” Bucky reassures him. “We don’t even watch the whole thing. Mostly it’s background noise for our own thing.”

“So you… You and Venom are…” The Pal takes a moment to find his words. “You’re together that way, too.”

There is a bit of curiosity from their host, now, too. And a little bit of heat.

Do you want help?  

Sometimes there is only a small spark of interest no matter how the humans on the screen thrust and writhe, and they enjoy nurturing that spark into a flame that they can act on. Maybe this is one of those times, even without the porn.

No. Emphatically no.  

So this is not one of those times, then. They wonder why there is that bit of heat, in that case. Bucky is still a mystery sometimes.

“It’s not just Stark taking a joke seriously,” the Pal says. 

“Nope. V and I are very compatible. Even for sexy times.”

There is silence in the room now, and not a soft, comfortable silence. It is a silence that needs to be filled. 

They consider how best to fill it. But of course, Bucky already has it covered.

“Did you ever wonder, Steve? About us?”

The Pal flushes even more pinkly than before.

“I figured I didn’t have a chance, so why wonder,” the Pal says. “I mean, I was so… and you were…”

So what? The Pal was so what? Bucky was what? Come on, Pal, finish your sentences!

Bucky laughs, and then stops. “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you, Steve. V’s just really confused is all.”

“Did you wonder?” the Pal asks after a moment.

Wonder what? What is the question?

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “And not just after. I don’t remember a lot from before the War, but I remember wondering.”

Venom gives Bucky’s mind a quick toss, looking for clues. This conversation is like Swiss cheese, they complain. So many holes, so little cheese.

You’re the one who brought up porn, V. 

This is all about porn?

I’ll explain later.

He had better. If he does not, they will pester him until he does. 

“So, what about now?” Bucky asks. “Not now at this very moment or anything, but now that we’re both alive at the same time in the same place.”

“I’ve, um, never…” the Pal trails off. 

Never what?

“Not even with the USO girls. Though they teased me enough.”

“Not a problem. We’re still getting to know each other again. Don’t see why there should be a hurry. I’m not going anywhere.”

The Pal nods. “And I’m not scheduled to crash any more planes.”

“Yeah, you better not be.” Bucky stands up and holds a hand out toward the Pal, helps the Pal stand as well. They hug. “So it’s a deal.”

“A deal,” the Pal agrees. “And what about Sam?”

Bucky shrugs but does not loosen his grip on the Pal. “Something tells me Venom blew our chances when they popped his toothpaste all over the bathroom counter.”

The Pal laughs. “Want to see how his wings are coming along?”

Yes! Tell him yes, we do.

Finally, something that makes sense.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, taking a step back. “And after that, how about we get a few pizzas?”

Notes:

What’s this? A budding romance? Granted, there's still a lot to discuss, but at least they're wondering on the page, haha!

Chapter 18: Sharing is caring

JENNIFER

— Stark Tower, New York City: Dinner, 09 May 2012 —

She can’t believe how famished she is. This is her second heaping plate of food, and she’s been snacking on chocolates all day long, after a huge lunch.

She also can’t believe she’s eating with the Avengers, including actual Captain America and in the flesh Black Widow. It’s pretty impressive that Tony Stark is there, too. Rumor had it that he almost never sat down and ate a proper meal because he was too busy inventing things.

Jennifer doesn’t know much about the others around the table. She’d never heard of Hawkeye before the news, and while she knew there was a Hulk, she had no idea he wasn’t always a hulk. And Sam she doesn’t know much about, either. 

But on the whole, it feels like she’s the guest at a star-studded gala or something, even though she knows it’s just dinner for them. And what a dinner it is. Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, gravy all over everything, peas and corn, dinner rolls, even a big salad to balance everything out a bit. 

And here she is, pigging out in front of people.

You need the calories. Eat another potato. With gravy.

I’ve already eaten more than my share. I don’t want to look bad in front of everyone.

You will look much worse if you do not eat enough. Look at my progenitor. He eats very well.

And it’s true. Jimmy—or Bucky, as they are calling him—is on his third plate of food, this one mostly potatoes. He’s probably eaten the better part of one of the roasts on the table, too, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Where will it all go? I don’t have a big stomach.

I will absorb what your stomach cannot.

Oh. Okay. I guess.

Jennifer eats another potato. With gravy.

And now some carrots. And then get more meat.

She sighs and follows the directions. 

“How are you holding up, kiddo?”

It’s the first time the conversation has been directed her way, but everyone looks at her. 

Jennifer looks at Jimmy. “I’m just so hungry. Trust says they can absorb what I can’t, so keep eating. I don’t mean to eat so much.”

He shrugs. “I’ll second that. It’s not heads, but it helps.”

“Still doesn’t make any sense,” Tony mutters. “Absorb it all where?”

She doesn’t know the answer, and she suspects the question was rhetorical anyway.

“How did your mission go?” she asks after a few more carrots and another slice of roast. “Last night.”

They’re all looking at her again. This time she can see the secrets in their expressions. They don’t want her to know about that, but no one is saying so. Maybe Jimmy will tell her anyway.

Jimmy shrugs again. “Pretty well, all told. Did you drop out of the summer session? Or did the professor agree to let you participate long distance?”

Oh, so she isn’t supposed to be asking about the mission, then. Or he wouldn’t have changed the subject like that. 

“I told him I had mono and was contagious still, but still wanted to do the class. He said we could try it, but if I was too tired, I could drop it and take it next semester.”

“You ever thought about transferring to a different school?”

What? No. Of course not. She has great friends, and she likes her professors, and she was hoping to go back to her apartment soon. If she drops the class and doesn’t answer the landline her parents insisted on her having, then how will she convince her parents that she’s still a good student? 

They have a watch on the apartment, Trust says. It is not safe to return there. They also suspect you host a symbiote. 

I do host a symbiote, though.

But you are not a permanent host. When you leave this tower, I will stay with my progenitor.

In Lady Scrumptious?

Or in one of these other humans at the table. Who are waiting for your answer.

“Sorry,” Jennifer says, shifting her focus to Jimmy and the rest. “Trust says the apartment is dangerous. Could I just live somewhere else? Move?”

Jimmy sighs. “It's not just the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes who will be watching for you, Jen.”

“Hey! We’re not all assholes!”

Jimmy continues as if no one had said anything. “There’s an international terrorist organization that’s infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and they will want you very badly.”

“Because of Trust,” she says.

“Partly. And because you’re connected to me.”

“Who did you kill to get on their bad list?”

He laughs. “Every single one of them I’ve ever met.”

“Except Pierce,” Captain America says.

“He’s dead. It’s just going to take a while to kick in.” Jimmy looks back at her. “They had your grandmother killed back in the ‘70s. Your grandfather and I have been on a crusade to wipe them out.”

“There’s no way you’re over fifty.”

There’s some muted laughter around the table.

“ That’s your takeaway?” Tony asks.

That’s not the only takeaway, but it’s the only one she feels like she can wrap her mind around right now. Jimmy is not really Jimmy, but he’s still Jimmy to her. And he’s a hitman. But he’s going after terrorists, so that makes it okay. Kind of. And her grandpa is actually involved in everything. And that means Uncle Jason is, too. But not her parents. They can’t know. 

My progenitor is definitely older than fifty, Trust tells her. And there’s a wash of humor that accompanies that statement.

How old is he?

Ninety-five. Maybe ninety-six. I do not understand human birthdays.  

“How are you that old? Is it Venom?”

Will she live that long, too?

“Kind of. It’s complicated.”

Eat another potato.

She eats another potato. 

“Jennifer, after we eat, I want to show you what can happen to you if you stay bonded to Trust and don’t find it in yourself to eat what a symbiote needs. Okay?”

She nods, but she has a bad feeling about it.

He doesn’t want us to be bonded, does he?

If you do not have the stomach for us eating people, then no. We will both suffer, and you will die.  

I really like having you in my head. It feels really safe, and you’re like a friend who doesn’t have to go home at the end of the day.

Except that Trust does have to be with the rabbit at the end of the day.

Ask about the next mission. I want to be there.

How do you know there’s another mission?

The enemy moves quickly. So we must strike quickly to catch them before they disappear again.

She wonders how many people Jimmy and Venom had to eat last night. She doesn’t want to go fight people or eat them, even if they’re terrorists. She doesn’t know how to fight!

You do, though. My progenitor taught you.  

For emergencies. For self defense. Not to go up against armed terrorists with a team of superheroes!

Ask.

“Um, Trust wants to know about the next mission?”

“Little beyond your scope right now, Jennifer. Why don’t you drop Trust off in Lady Scrumptious after we visit the medical wing, and I’ll bring the rabbit to our meeting?”

Ask if the red one will be my battle host.

The red one?

Her hair. It is red.  

“Trust wants to know if you’ll be their battle host, Natasha.”

NATASHA 

— Stark Tower, New York City: After dinner, 09 May 2012 —

Natasha stares at the third chocolate bar on the conference table in front of her. She knows it’s possible to eat that one, too, but she’s already feeling a little queasy from just the first two.

She can’t believe she agreed to do this. It’s just for the mission, just for a short while, a matter of hours. And there’s bound to be plenty of… heads… to keep Trust in good shape. 

But the girl has only had Trust for a few days and started out with plenty of heads from the STRIKE team. And lots of chocolate. And she looks noticeably worse for the wear after that short time—eyes a little sunken, cheeks flushed with a low grade fever. Eagerly listless, as if moving around a lot sapped her energy, but she also couldn’t stand being still.

And Natasha saw the natural progression’s end results in Pierce. A barely breathing cadaver of a man, skeletal looking, with multiple organs failing. 

“Having second thoughts?” Clint asks from her right. “‘Cause you can back out. Send the rabbit back to Jennifer.”

“Not so much second thoughts,” she says, and she doesn’t think it’s a lie. “Just not used to eating this way. It’s delicious, but I’m feeling a bit queasy. It’s so rich.”

“That’s because we buy the best,” Barnes says, entering the conference room with a white and brown rabbit in his arms. 

It’s an incongruous look, him dressed in inky black leathers and holding a fluffball of a rabbit. A bunny, complete with twitchy nose and cotton ball tail.

“You still in?” Barnes asks.

She nods and unwraps the third chocolate bar. “What is it like?” 

Barnes hesitates, or at least takes his time answering. Then: “It’s kind of cold at first, like an IV line pushing something chill through your veins. Then it’s a flash of warmth, and you’ll run hot while you’re carrying them. It’s not a dangerous fever, but you’ll definitely have a fever.”

That doesn’t sound too bad.

“Then you’ll have a… like a communal space in your mind, where you both communicate. You’ll still have your thoughts, and you might overhear their thoughts, but it’s not constant communication the whole time.”

“So I’ll have some privacy,” she says.

“Not much of it, but Trust is pretty good at keeping to themself instead of snooping. Taught them good symbiote habits, not the pushy eavesdropping habits Venom has.”

He laughs. 

“Sorry, sorry. You’ve never eavesdropped in your life,” he says with a grin.

Barnes sets the rabbit on the table and has a seat. The rabbit just sits there, and then flops onto its side to be petted. 

“So are we doing this? You can still say no thanks,” Barnes assures her. “No one’s feelings will be hurt.”

Natasha nods and shoves the chocolate bar into her mouth. 

“So is this rabbit used to getting heads instead of carrots or what?” Clint asks. “Because that thing looks healthy, and the girl doesn’t.”

“Lady Scrumptious is used to being occupied for a few hours at a time. And Trust is… hungry. But trying to keep their appetite from causing much damage.”

“So a rabbit caught on, and Jennifer didn’t?”

“Trust has never bonded with anything truly sentient before. They’re getting the hang of it, still.”

Natasha swallows the last bit of chocolate and takes a deep breath. This is it, then. The team is ready to move out once she gets inhabited by a glob of alien goo. 

“No time like the present,” she says, and extends a welcoming hand toward the rabbit. “I’m ready, Trust.”

The rabbit flinches slightly, and the fur on its side darkens before a maroon strand of vine-like tentacles reaches out toward her hand, quivering in the air and joined by a few more tentacles. 

They’re cold to the touch, but not slimy. She’d been concerned about slime, considering Venom’s saliva and the wet appearance of their tentacles. But for all they look wet, Trust is dry like a snake as their tentacles twine around her fingers and slowly sink into her palm. 

And it is cold, like Barnes had said, but the flash of heat is almost immediate and radiates out from her hand to the rest of her, all the way down to her toes.

I am Trust.

“I’m Natasha,” she says.

Let’s go eat some heads.

 

---

 

My progenitor approaches.

Natasha is unsurprised to find Barnes sliding into the copilot’s seat beside her, and only because she was warned. The man moves so quietly.

“How are you doing?”

Natasha considers the question, and her many potential answers. 

How is she doing, exactly? She’s feeling hungry, but those might be Trust’s feelings seeping into that strange shared area between them. She isn’t feeling queasy anymore, though. Trust took care of that somehow.

I gave your stomach a poke and settled it, Trust says. You were feeling nervous, and I soothed your anxiety.

So much for privacy, Natasha thinks, trying to include the humor in it so that Trust does not feel stung by the thought.

You wish to discuss alone?

Not necessarily. You’re welcome here.

There is a flood of thankfulness rushing through her mind, but no words.

Why do you call him that? Your progenitor. You’re a symbiote. Surely Venom is your progenitor and Barnes is merely the carrier?

There is no merely. I am an offshoot carefully and cooperatively selected and then nourished and trained by both of my progenitors, Trust says. I share many adaptations with Venom, but also inherited a greater understanding of my surroundings from Bucky. 

Venom isn’t aware of their surroundings?

Not if they are uninteresting surroundings.

“They’ve got a lot to say, don’t they?”

Natasha nods and pulls her focus back to a different conversation. “I suppose I’m doing really well,” she says, “to answer your first question. And yes, when we talk, there’s a lot to say.”

“Any concerns? Questions?”

She shrugs. “Concerns, no. I understand that there will be decapitations of the sharp teeth variety, and that I may transform into a towering maroon monster to perform these decapitations.”

“Maroon and pink. Trust is coming into their own.”

“I didn’t see any pink. Maybe I’ll see some in Maine.”

“It’s likely. So no concerns, but what’s the question?”

Natasha frames her question carefully. “When I fight, will I be fighting, or will Trust be fighting? Will I be aware of what’s happening, if Trust is the one fighting?”

Barnes nods. “You and Trust will need to work it out. I suspect that they will aid you rather than take over. We raised a respectful symbiote, unlike the grabby space bug I’ve got.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. 

“Alright, alright, you’re the most polite symbiote to ever bond with anything.” Barnes grins, as she’s noticed he always does when apologizing for teasing his symbiote. “But yeah, you’ll be aware the whole time. That’s how we trained Trust. It’s what we prefer. I don’t ever want to lose time again.”

“Jennifer doesn’t remember how she got on the train to New York, though. I asked her.”

“That was different—Jennifer was and still is a civilian with a civilian’s sensibilities. Trust didn’t want to frighten her.”

That is true. Jennifer would not have enjoyed eating the heads, or tearing apart the bodies. Jennifer would not have found joy and freedom in racing across the rooftops. Jennifer needed protection. You do not.

“It’s true, they’re capable of taking over and directing us like meat puppets,” Barnes says. “And that’s terrifying for someone like me, and maybe also for someone like you. Trust knows enough about their surroundings to pretend to be human for short periods of time, and Venom… Well, they’ve never cared enough to bother.”

But I will not need to perform this control operation with you, Natasha. Unless you are incapacitated and need to stay low.

“My hope is that Trust wouldn’t puppetmaster you around unless it was incredibly important not to show themself and you weren’t up for the task.”

“That’s what they just said,” Natasha says. “If I were ‘incapacitated and needed to stay low.’”

“You’re in good hands. I taught them well. And if this works out the way I hope it does, you might not want to part ways.”

Natasha thinks back to Pierce. And to Jennifer, how much weaker she looked today than yesterday. 

You will not be stripped for parts like the pierced one, and you will eat nutritious heads and many other delicious snacks. Jennifer would not.

“If the whole ‘wasting away’ thing is avoidable,” Natasha allows, “I could see making this work longer term, sure.”

“Bruce is working on something,” Barnes says. “I trust him. He’ll get the supplement made and we’ll test it out. In the meantime, if Trust eats well tonight, you’ll be good for at least a few days, maybe a whole week. Especially if you go for the chocolate.”

Natasha frowns. Jennifer started out with the heads, and she didn’t last nearly a week.

You can trust my progenitor. He would not lie to you about something as important as this. He would not mislead you.

I’m important to him?

You are my host. Temporarily, as of now. But maybe more than that in the time to come. Any good progenitor wants the best for their offshoots.

Well, as long as I’m the best. Natasha grins.

You are delicious tasting, and strong. You have the bloodlust necessary to sustain us both. And you have the ethical awareness to keep my hunger in check.

Meaning I won’t let you eat innocents.

Meaning you will not allow innocents to be harmed. Especially if that means that any who would harm them are consumed.

She blinks. She’s not sure she’s fully on board with eating just anyone’s head. A mugger in an alley doesn’t need to be eaten, just stopped.

A mugger in an alley is stopped permanently if their head is eaten.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Natasha says, and then realizes that she said it aloud. “Sorry, I meant to think that.”

“It happens all the time,” Barnes says. “I’ve half given up keeping track of what I think or say.”

Natasha decides that she will do no such thing. Her thoughts should be her own, not shared out to the general public because she forgot to keep her mouth shut. 

Your thoughts are strong ones. You are a good host. And a good pilot. We are nearly there!

There is a hungry rumble rolling through her whole body with a strength that surprises her. So much for keeping things contained to a shared community space. 

“They’re so hungry,” she murmurs. “Do I need to eat another chocolate bar before we arrive?”

Barnes checks the coordinates and shakes his head. “We’re so close they can taste them. That’s all.”

Chapter 19: Curbstomp battle

Notes:

Would you look at that, here’s another chapter that has a content warning in the end notes.

CLINT

— Above a HYDRA bunker, Rural Maine: A little before midnight, 09 May 2012 —

It looks like they’re expected. The base in the near distance is alive with the lights from headlamps scurrying back and forth like termites fleeing a rampaging numbat as each member of the personnel tries to accomplish some task or other as part of the evacuation. 

Clint’s still in the quinjet because someone’s got to land the thing and Natasha didn’t want to miss out again, but he could swear he hears the barked orders and the panicked yells of supervisors in the otherwise quiet night. Not word for word or anything, just the general hubbub and commotion.

Stark and Wilson took off almost as soon as the base was in sight, lit up as part of the evacuation. Barnes and Natasha were next off the quinjet, leaping out into the night and presumably transforming or something before hitting the ground. Clint couldn’t see them in the dark, but he didn’t hear a splat, either. 

Cap only waited a moment or two longer to jump ship himself, and Clint can’t help but feel sorry for the man’s knees, landing like that. Super soldier or not, someone needs to teach that man to take care of his body. 

And Clint himself? Well, he’d rather park the quinjet, set up cloaking and security so their ride doesn’t get detected and stolen, and then make a dash for the action than jump out of the quinjet while it’s in the air, so he’s not complaining about being the last one out.

And once he is out, he can hear the screams and firefight going on at the base just a couple hundred feet away through the forest. He can also see broken limbs on the trees from where some kind of bear went berserk—or where Venom and Trust likely landed and scrambled toward the action. Those claw marks run deep into the bark. 

Clint reaches the clearing the bunker is situated in and shimmies up a choice tree, perching in the branches before readying his bow and nocking an arrow. His job, mainly, is to pick off anyone who manages to get out of the pitched battle going on near and probably inside the bunker itself, and so he settles in to wait. 

So far, the HYDRA mooks seem to be of the mindset that the best defense is a good offense, so they’re trying to shoot Stark and Wilson out of the air and getting picked off by repulsor blasts or the occasional gunfire from Wilson. And Cap is also taking them out here and there, smashing his shield into them and otherwise brawling.

But while the fliers are keeping the HYDRA agents contained in the area and Cap is plowing into them from one side, Venom is… Well, Venom is just plain demolishing everything in their path. And unfortunately for HYDRA, that looks a lot like scooping up a HYDRA operative and using that operative as a club to swat several others down before biting the guy’s head off and grabbing another.

Natasha, Clint is for some reason pleased to see, is not covered entirely in alien goo. She’s still recognizable as herself, even if she is also brawling rather than using any of her usual finesse. She’s flinging herself at them headlong and with wild abandon, heedless of the bullets coming her way. And that’s actually working out for her because she’s now wearing some kind of vest over her usual uniform, and it’s absorbing the bullets.

Trust, he realizes after a moment. She’s wearing Trust like a bulletproof vest and pants, and—

Oh, there’s an escapee from the melee. 

Clint casually puts an arrow in the guy’s gut. If he’s lucky, he’ll manage to die before one of the aliens bites his head off. Clint doesn’t much care one way or the other tonight. On the one hand, gross. On the other hand, Natasha needs for her alien to eat well or she’s on the menu, so it doesn’t matter how gross it is. Clint is on the side of “let’s not let Natasha die a wretched shriveling death by alien,” and everybody else can be a menu item to support that goal as far as Clint is concerned.

He still can’t believe she agreed to play host to one of them, though. Especially if these particular aliens can take over like Venom does. But Trust isn’t doing that. Trust is just slinging tentacles around to bash HYDRA agents into trees, the ground, other HYDRA agents, and all that. And protecting Natasha from bullets. 

And occasionally tearing a head off of someone’s shoulders like a scoop of ice cream dropped from the cone onto the floor. He kind of hopes they don’t waste that. How long is a severed head good for before it goes stale? He has no idea. 

There’s a second wave of termites fleeing the mound, then, and the acrid smell of tear gas as the termites try to fight their way out to freedom. The flash grenades are like fireworks in the smoke that results from the tear gas, and they illuminate two now-hulking figures with way too many limbs, moving way too fast in the darkness, leaping from trees and landing on unsuspecting HYDRA agents only to savagely bite their heads off. 

So Trust has taken over now that there’s tear gas. That’s probably for the best. He wonders how Cap is doing, only to spot Wilson swooping down to grab Cap’s extended arm and lift him beyond the dense roil of the tear gas. They land on top of the bunker while Stark continues to send repulsor blasts into the smoke like spotlights at a rave.

Clint shoots another escapee, this time in the shoulder and then the thigh, and draws another arrow. 

The screams are dying down in the smoke-filled clearing, mostly because the HYDRA operatives trapped in there have seemed to realize that screaming only blasts their location to the two ravenous monsters busily picking over the fallen and biting off whatever heads they find. 

Stark joins Wilson and Cap on top of the bunker, apparently having run out of targets. 

But the two still engaged with the enemy haven’t run out. At least, they’re still moving around in the smoke, both of them larger than life and silhouetted in the smoke by the headlamps of various fallen HYDRA mooks. 

“Outstanding!” Venom roars. “Now let’s make sure the bunker is empty, and then peel and eat these guys like shrimp.”

Clint might never eat another shrimp in his life if that particular image doesn’t leave his brain soon. 

And apparently there are no others left in the base, because the two aliens make short work of the scattered bodies, including the two Clint shot, and then Venom declares it’s time to blow the bunker up.

“Wait, wait, don’t just blow shit up,” Stark calls out. “There are computers in there. Probably a whole mainframe, or at least a couple of servers. We can get information off of them.”

There’s some grumbling, from the sounds of it, and Trust deposits Natasha on top of the bunker while Stark and Venom head inside, one to set up demolitions, and the other to try to salvage the technology.

Clint takes the opportunity to get down out of the tree, collect his discarded arrows, and get the quinjet up and ready to pick the team up off the bunker’s roof. Because this is just one base, and the night is young. They’ve got five solid targets, and can probably hit three of them tonight at the rate they’re going. 

 

EVAN HOFFIELD

— HYDRA base outside of Atlanta, GA: So late at night it’s actually morning, 10 May 2012 —

This was a bad night to clock in.

Evan pulls his right leg into the cupboard alongside his left, like the little girl in Jurassic Park, and for almost exactly the same reason.

The thing hunting his coworkers throughout the base isn’t a velociraptor. But it might as well be. He got a decent look at it before the emergency alarm blared and he’d had the self-preservation instincts to run away from the towering black monstrosity with the sharp teeth biting heads off left and right. 

Like hell he’s picking up a weapon and heading toward it. He’s not an idiot. Let someone else be dinner.

The irony of hiding in the base kitchen to avoid becoming dinner is not lost on him, either. But everyone else was running into the literal maws of death or running out the exits to be mowed down by Iron Man and Captain America, and no one thought to hide in the kitchen. 

Evan figures if he can be small enough and quiet enough, he might survive. And so far, that’s working out okay for him. He’s small enough to cram himself inside of this kitchen cabinet, and he’s quiet enough that all he hears is his heartbeat thudding in his ears as he ever so quietly panics. 

Join HYDRA when you graduate high school, his parents had said. Our family is HYDRA elite, they’d said. HYDRA is like a country club that will kill you if you don’t join up, they’d said. 

So he’d joined up. 

Join HYDRA and climb the ranks, they’d said. It’s easy, they’d said. You won’t even have to fight, they’d said. You can work on computer science at the local community college and apply that to your real job with HYDRA.

So he’d enrolled in the community college and he was learning all about relational databases and SQL queries, the better to pull up information from the HYDRA databases when someone needed to know something.

He’d wanted to be in theater. He was good at acting. He had acted like he belonged with HYDRA, like he wanted to be with HYDRA. He’d hailed HYDRA with the best of them.

And now he is acting like he’s not afraid, even though he’s fucking terrified, because the aliens on the news might have gotten defeated by the Avengers, but the Avengers somehow have a pet monster on their roster, and that’s worse than aliens.

There’s a thump against the kitchen door, and he channels that little girl from Jurassic Park—what was her name? Leslie? Ellie? Emma? Whatever her name was, she hid in the cupboard and the raptor didn’t catch her.

A horrible long moment of silence almost lulls him into a sense of calm, but then there’s gunshots and screaming, followed by the empty click of a gun that’s just plain shot its last bullet. 

Evan shuts his eyes in the darkness of the cupboard, though he knows it won’t help him any. 

This is the third base that’s been hit in one night according to the reports that came in earlier in the night. No one from the first two bases lived to send an all-clear message though, so the last reports read like the freaking mines of Moria—the end comes soon, drums in the deep, they are coming.

Yeah, the whole lot. 

The drums in the deep in this case are the roars of the monster with all the teeth and the snake-like red tongue. Definitely not the Hulk. The Hulk is green and doesn’t bite people’s heads off. Has normal teeth. Normal tongue. No claws. 

The kitchen door opens, and either your life doesn’t really flash before your eyes when you’re about to die, or he’s not actually about to die, because he’s stuck very firmly in the present moment.

There’s a clatter of pans as someone—hopefully not something—approaches and bumps into the skillets and things dangling from the hanging pot rack.

When the clatter dies down, it’s due to the whole rack and all its pans being ripped from the ceiling and thrown across the kitchen, accompanied by a woman’s low growl.

Evan swallows. The monster he’d seen biting off heads was definitely a male monster. It had looked like overly muscled comic book heroes, if overly muscled comic book heroes had tentacles coming out of their backs.

But this sounds too animalistic to be a human woman’s growl, for all that it somehow does sound like a woman growling. 

Do the Avengers have a second pet monster?

He’s starting to feel less like he’s in Jurassic Park and more like he’s in Alien. And he’s probably not the hero of this story, because however much he’s just been acting a part instead of being genuine about the HYDRA thing, the part he’s been acting is the HYDRA thing. And however much it can be like a social club full of connections and carefully hidden prestige, he can’t deny that the whole “rule the world from the shadows” thing has something of an evil element to it.

Evan suspects, pretty strongly, that he’s cannon fodder, a redshirt, a henchman. Expendable even in the story of his own life. 

He’s either going to die with his head bitten off, or he’s going to die of fright tucked away in this cupboard.

And after the prowling footsteps of the potential second monster make a full round of the kitchen, he’s starting to think he’ll make it. But then the entire countertop is ripped up like the hood of a car being popped to check the engine, only he’s the engine in this case, and the goal is definitely not to repair anything.

This is a new monster, he thinks as he’s plucked screaming up out of the topless cupboard and held aloft by a maroon tentacle. 

A bright pink tongue darts out to lick his face.

He’s going to die. 

This monster is like if a comic book heroine were to be dipped in reddish-brown goo, and was impossibly tall and strong, and had huge teeth, and so many of them, and a jaw that could open 180 degrees, and—

 

STEVE

— Waffle House, Atlanta, GA: A few hours before dawn, 10 May 2012 —

It’s not shawarma, but it’s close. 

Steve’s gone for chicken and waffles, which apparently go well together and aren’t just a weird hybrid of dinner and breakfast. It’s crispy, sweet, savory, and filling without being all that greasy. Plus, it comes with a big glass of orange juice, which he hasn’t had in a long time. 

The others all have some variation on eggs and pancakes with greasy breakfast meats and lots of syrup. And honestly, those meals look pretty good, too. He’s almost surprised that Bucky didn’t go for anything with chocolate in it, though after eating his half of essentially three bunkers full of HYDRA agents, maybe the surprise would be if he did go for chocolate. 

Three bases. It’s not the full five Bucky picked out as critical to hit, but it’s a solid night’s work, and it’s built up an appetite. While they technically have time to hit another base before dawn, and while they don’t have to stop there, he has to be a leader for this team. And that means calling it in before anyone gets sloppy from lack of sleep or hunger. 

They don’t win any points for effort if someone is injured and has to sit out future raids. Or worse, if any of them take a bullet to the head.

And based on the three bases they did hit, it would be a bullet and not an energy beam. In their work tonight, they encountered rifles and other traditional firearms, but none of the Tesseract weapons. Though he does know better than to think that means there won’t be Tesseract weapons in future raids. It was just good not to encounter them tonight. 

It’s a comfort knowing that those hit with the Tesseract weapons aren’t vaporized outright, but not knowing where they get transported, or when, that’s still concerning. Does everyone go to the same place and time? What percentage of them go somewhere they can breathe, considering there are other planets with life on them and all that empty space in between?

Steve rubs at an eye and then sheepishly puts his hand back down when Sam looks at him. He shouldn’t be rubbing his eyes, even if they do still sting from the tear gas. Sam had washed his eyes out in the quinjet after that first bunker, but he’d been fighting blinded by tears for a while there. The second base had also tried tear gas, but the quinjet was stocked with goggles, so he’d been prepared. 

It’s at least not the mustard gas from the War.

“Eyes still bothering you, Steve?” Bucky asks around a bite of pancake.

“A little, yeah.”

“My eyes aren’t, for once,” Tony says. “It was too dark to see all the ooey gooey bits. I vote we only go after HYDRA bases when it’s dark out.”

Bucky laughs. “Speaking of,” he says, “are we trying to pick off the last two, or not?”

“Not,” Steve says. “We need to be rested and fed, so we don’t make mistakes.”

“This isn’t restful refueling?” Natasha asks.

Is she eager to set Trust loose among another scramble of panicked HYDRA operatives, or is she just teasing him? It’s hard to tell, but Steve decides she’s teasing him, mostly so that he doesn’t have to consider whether having a symbiote bonded to you might be addicting.

Natasha had certainly been enjoying the raids this evening, though. He’d caught peals of laughter here and there from both Venom and Natasha. Not Trust. Trust was oddly quiet compared to Venom. Not as much growling and snarling, and no laughter. Natasha had made up for Trust’s reserve, though, by being more boisterous than usual. Almost joyful.

And Steve has no idea how many people were eaten tonight. He’d lost count in the first raid and hadn’t bothered to try keeping track in the second and third. But the two symbiotes had left only a smattering of gas masks—apparently they make the heads less “tender”—and perhaps a few limbs behind. All the organs were eaten, and all the heads.

Should make it pretty difficult to ID what remains there are. 

He doesn’t love it—far from that. But without this massive meal, Jennifer and maybe also Natasha could face a horrible wasting shriveling death. And potentially, so could Bucky, even if he’s got the knack of living with a symbiote after so many years. 

If he has to choose between Bucky’s safety and the lives of HYDRA agents, he knows what he’ll choose. Same for the rest of the team, and same for the innocent civilian hiding out in the tower until all this blows over.

“V wants to know why you don’t drop us off at the fourth base on the way back to the tower,” Bucky says, busily shoveling a bit of scrambled egg onto his last piece of toast. “It’s a solid enough idea.”

Steve shakes his head. “We’re a team, and we operate as a team. Plus, it’s starting to get light out. I don’t think you want the potential media coverage.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see the headlines now,” Sam says. “Especially since the world doesn’t know about the actual enemy we were going after tonight.”

“They’ll know soon,” Natasha says. “Nick was going to do a selective data dump; leak all the HYDRA personnel files Barnes pointed out, burn the STRIKE teams, and ambush them at the Triskelion.”

“Is that wise?” Steve finishes his orange juice. “Do we want the whole world to know at this point? It might cause a panic.”

She shrugs. “HYDRA wants to be in the dark. Why let them have their way when we can shine the light on them?”

“It might cause them to pull back even further into the shadows,” Steve says. “How good would Pierce’s intel be at that point?”

“Fair to good,” Bucky says. “It’s hard to dismantle a construction project as major as a helicarrier, so they’ll be waiting for us. And HYDRA may move its smaller operations into new areas, but we can always still clear and destroy existing bases.”

Clint yawns. “And you can always do the mind reading thing to new people, get the newest intel.”

“And possibly be fed false information if I pick the brain of the wrong person.” Bucky grimaces. “There’s risks to that maneuver. If someone believes a lie strongly enough, it reads as the truth. Especially if they have no idea it’s a lie.”

“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Steve says.

In the meantime, he’s surrounded with a solid team, he’s got Bucky at his side, and they’re going after HYDRA. It’s… kind of like old times.

Just with aliens.

Notes:

Content Warning: Definitely some canon-typical cannibalism in here, including a bit from the perspective of one of the cannibalized. And violence, of course, but with a chapter title like “curbstomp battle,” that’s to be expected.

Chapter 20: Epilogue: Holiday Special

Notes:

Skipping quite a lot of time here, sort of like we did with the posting schedule. Larry was slated to wrap up this epilogue, and that OC wrestled with me mercilessly for months. I never did get him to cooperate, but I want this wrapped up neatly all the same, so I’m posting the epilogue without Larry, haha! Happy holidays to everyone. ^_^

NATASHA

— Stark Tower, New York City: Afternoon, 20 December 2012 —

“So, are you excited to fly back to Phoenix for the holiday, Jennifer?” Natasha asks, leaning casually against the reception desk while there’s a lag between visitors. “Weather’s bound to be better.”

Jennifer makes a face, but only briefly. It’s a flicker of unhappiness only, quickly replaced by the pleasant neutrality of her receptionist face. Over the last few months, since Pepper got her the job handling the tower’s Information and Welcome services between classes, Jennifer has really gotten the hang of maintaining that face regardless of who she’s on the phone with or who is pestering her about various aspects of what has been renamed Avengers Tower.

She supposes after knowing “Jimmy” for so long, managing to look pleasantly knowledgeable while not letting actual secrets out would be easy. Plus, no commute to work, since she lives in the tower. 

She does not wish to visit her parents, Trust murmurs into her mind. They would disapprove.

“I might not go home after all,” Jennifer finally says. “I don’t want to hear all about how I shouldn’t have transferred here to CUNY Queens just because Jimmy got a new job and moved. And I can’t tell them about… you know. What really happened.”

Her parents wish that she would become educated in Phoenix.

“They’ll probably miss you if you don’t go,” Barnes says. “They nag you because they care.”

Jennifer sighs. “Why don’t you come, too, Jimmy? And Natasha. There isn’t a mission. You wouldn’t miss out.”

Barnes gives Jennifer a fond smile. “No can do, kiddo. The team might not have a mission, but I’ve got a job coming up. Boxing day. Gonna be delicious.”

“Ugh. Uncle Jason is too busy to come, my grandpa isn’t coming because he likes the Bahamas too much to leave, so it’ll just be my parents and me and all the nagging in the world.”

Natasha wishes she could commiserate, but her family—Clint and the other Avengers—is all right here and she’s looking forward to spending some more time with them. Wilson opted to stay in the City over traveling back to spend time with his family in Louisiana at the end of the year. The rest of them don’t have anyone but each other.

And she wouldn’t want to spend her first Christmas with Trust trying to act normal around Jennifer’s parents.

It is my first time observing the conifer corpse and all of the wrapped boxes from outside of the ornaments. Trust floods her midsection with vicarious flutters of excitement. It will be a milestone.

I still can’t believe you used to fit inside of a Christmas ornament, Natasha thinks. 

Trust has spent the occasional night with Lady Scrumptious in the past six months, especially as they were navigating their bond, and the symbiote is roughly the size of a grapefruit now. Both Venom and Barnes seem very pleased with Trust’s development, both in size and coloration. But for all the doting parents those two seem to be, they didn’t exactly take any childhood photos of Trust in the ornaments. 

Natasha does wish she could have seen that.

It was a risk my progenitors could not take. Trust sends her images of a stack of tabloids with decked out Christmas trees on their covers. The implication of leaked photos drifts across their shared mindspace.

I get that. I just think you’d have been a cute little goo baby.

Trust preens under the affection.

“Something tells me they’ll nag even more if you don’t pay them a visit,” Natasha says. “But the ticket is refundable, so you can visit some other time.”

“It’s Spring Break,” Barnes says. “Not ‘breaking springs.’”

Natasha joins Jennifer in grinning. She half thinks Venom persistently mangles things like that as a way of playing a game with Barnes. Trust doesn’t do that as often.

My progenitor taught me well, Trust says proudly. 

Natasha has to agree. Her symbiote generates much less chaos than Barnes’s, and is more content to stick to the phenethylamine tablets between raiding HYDRA bases and A.I.M. facilities, as well.

It isn’t that Natasha has anything against biting off heads, but she can’t help but imagine that somewhere, someday, there will be an instance where someone is amenable to switching sides rather than being devoured, and she likes the notion that Trust would actually allow that to happen. Trust wants to think the best of people. Venom just wants to eat them.

After all, Trust says. You yourself switched sides. If you had not been given the opportunity, where would I be?

 

JENNIFER

— Stark Tower, New York City: Just before dinner, 20 December 2012 —

Jennifer stuffs the last of her socks around the edges of her luggage and then sits back on her heels. That’s all her clothes for the trip, her presents for her parents and siblings, even her trusty pocket knife that has to go in checked luggage. 

She wishes she could bring Trust along for the trip, too. Dr Banner has worked out how to go without heads, so she wouldn’t start wasting away like she did at first, before the supplements were in production. 

But if there’s an Avengers-level emergency over the holiday, Natasha will need to have Trust with her so the symbiote can continue to learn and won’t feel left out—Trust is still growing, after all. So Trust can’t be most of the way across the country stuck in Phoenix with a stuffy pair of non-black-market lawyers and their children, eating tamales instead of craniums. 

Jennifer still packs her bottle of phenethylamine tablets, just in case she happens to run into some other symbiote on the trip. She won’t, she knows. There are only the two of them, Venom and Trust. But it pays to be prepared. 

That’s something she’s learned very well over the last several months. She’s got a go bag that’s her carryon luggage, and she’ll put her weapons back in it when she arrives home. In the meantime, it’s a lot of chocolate and a change of clothes, a book, and the phone she has all the Avengers programmed into in case HYDRA comes for her. 

Because that’s still technically a possibility, even after all these months of Jimmy and the others going after them. Maybe it’s an even bigger possibility because of that.

There was a huge data dump about five or six months ago from the S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes. So many terrorists hiding in S.H.I.E.L.D., she’d thought that must surely be all of them. But Jimmy says that was just the main branch. That there are other moles in other places, and even some leftovers in S.H.I.E.L.D. that will scurry away over the next few months to hide in other organizations. So it does still pay to be prepared.

And Jennifer’s been training with Natasha and Jimmy to get even better at self-defense, and she might not be able to take on a STRIKE team or anything, but it’s not very likely there would be an actual STRIKE team coming for her. All the STRIKE teams were disbanded and taken into custody for being HYDRA after the data dump.

“Miss Bonhomme,” JARVIS says into her room, “the team is assembling for dinner.”

“Thanks, JARVIS.”

She’s glad she gets to live here in the tower and interact with the team, instead of living in a dorm and interacting with people who still think that all alien life comes in two flavors—ugly upright bugs or Fabio with a magic hammer and streaming red cape. Alien life comes in all sorts of flavors, she knows, and her favorite is the glob of well meaning goo.

She’s going to miss Venom and Trust while she travels. And Jimmy, Natasha, and the rest of them, too. And not just because Captain America offered to help her study for the history exam while catching up on everything he missed.

 

BUCKY

— Stark Tower, New York City: Bedtime, 20 December 2012 —

“Are you excited to put the tree up tomorrow?” Bucky asks as he spills a trio of phenethylamine tablets into his hand.

“Technically, it’s already up,” Steve says from the bathroom, where he’s also getting ready for bed.

…The Pal can be a little shit, sometimes.

Yeah he can.

Bucky downs the tablets with the last of his hot chocolate. Three at night, three in the morning, and they can make it work. Venom and Trust still want the hunt, but they can live off the supplements. 

And blah blah, Avengers don’t go on serial killer sprees cleaning up the dregs of society, blah blah.

And yeah, the tree itself is upright in the stand with plenty of water and a tree skirt around the base. So what? It’s just a tree at this point. It hasn’t become a Christmas tree yet. It doesn’t have lights, for one thing, or tinsel, or anything like that. And it doesn’t have any ornaments. 

It is a naked conifer corpse in the living room, but real. Not the plastic facsimile of a conifer corpse.

Venom always did prefer getting a real tree. And so had Steve, when Bucky’d laid out the options for their first joint Christmas tree in the future.

“‘Already up,’” Bucky repeats. “Just for that, you have to put the lights on that thing by yourself.”

“Thought you were going to show me how,” Steve says, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist and planting a kiss at the side of his neck.

It’s about as far as Steve’s willing to go at this point in their romantic journey. A kiss here and there, hugs, cuddling at night. It’s mild stuff compared to what Bucky’s used to getting up to with Venom, but Bucky doesn’t hold it against him. 

When you’ve seen and heard what Venom’s capable of accomplishing during sexy times, it can be hard to really relax around them during intimate moments if you’re not up to the challenge of replicating those sexy times. 

So Bucky soaks up Steve’s affection accordingly, knowing that it’s all Steve feels comfortable with right now.

I still do not understand, Venom murmurs from the vicinity of his spleen. Why does the Pal not want to be filled up near to bursting and all the rest? You love knot play.

Steve’s never done any of that, Bucky explains for the hundredth time. It’s intimidating. You’re intimidating. Probably only Wade would be okay to get on that ride right after seeing it in action for the first time—you can do things most people don’t think are possible.  

You like it.

Fuck, I love it. You can shut me up all night long and we’ll go again in the morning. But Steve’s skittish. 

We should not have demonstrated.  

Venom sounds borderline mournful, which is the opposite of how Bucky wants them to feel about the kinds of possibilities that open up—sometimes literally—when your lover is a stretchy, globby tentacle alien.

But still, that is an understatement. He and Venom had shown off one night and Steve had clammed right up, like one of those deep sea tube worms that unfurl into bright red fans only to zip back inside at the first hint of crabs around the lava vent. 

We have all the time in the world to explore things with Steve, Bucky reassures them. It’s not like it’s too late or anything.

And it isn’t. Steve’s already comfortable accepting a tentacle or two holding him close at night. That’s more of Venom than any of his other bedpartners over the decades have gotten a taste of, with the exception of Wade. 

Bucky sees it as a good sign, anyway. Steve is laying a sturdy foundation with them both, not rushing ahead with Bucky in a way that leaves Venom out of the mix. Because Venom is not an extra on set—they’re a member of the main cast.

Would Bucky like to speed ahead and gobble Steve down like the champion deep throater he is? Hell yes. Is he happier to wait until Steve is on board with more of a dual-action blow job complete with alien slime? Also yes.

So sure, it’s not sexy times, not yet. But baby steps to extraterrestrial knot play. 

“Thinking deep thoughts, or just gossiping with Venom?” Steve murmurs into his ear. 

“Technically, they’re very deep thoughts,” Bucky says. “I am a bottomless ocean of desire, a deep well. I contain multitudes. Or something.”

Steve laughs. “So, you’re thinking about sex again?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Bucky says. He gives Steve a playful bump. “What about you?”

After a moment of thought, Steve runs his fingers along the vivisection scars on Bucky’s chest, the I-shape with its abbreviated upper left bar. It’s something Steve does sometimes, usually while they’re cuddling and not when they’re just standing back to front and holding each other. 

“I guess I was wondering about these again,” Steve says softly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Why are you keeping them if Venom can heal them? You don’t have to prove to anyone that you’re a survivor. You’re here, in the future, and that’s proof enough.”

I have asked that before, too. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, answering them both at once. “I kind of like my scars. All of them. They’re like a roadmap of where I’ve been. If I ever lose my memories again…”

You will not. I will remind you. I know all of your memories and will give them back to you.

Bucky turns around to face Steve and gives him a kiss. “V says I don’t need to worry about that, but I still do. So that’s why. Is it a problem?”

Is Steve weirded out by his scars and not just by the prospect of Venom’s eagerly amorous overtures?

“No,” Steve says. “It’s not a problem. I wish none of that had happened to you, Buck. But I see you through your scars. They don’t get in the way. If they’re a part of you, then they’re a part of you.”

 

SAM

— Stark Tower, New York City: Mid-morning, 21 December 2012 —

He’s never waited this long to deck out a Christmas tree. It must be some kind of Depression era thing, a holdover from when the trees were half dead and dry before you brought them in and you only had a few days tops before they became a fire hazard and would burn down the whole tenement if you looked at them sideways or approached them with tinsel. 

This tree is very much not a fire hazard, though, with a pot full of water to rest in and easily a couple of weeks of life left in it. And he heard all about Trust’s natal Christmas tree—plastic and up for over two years with more ornaments than an actual tree’s branches could have supported.

So if this is a holdover, it’s Steve’s holdover, not Bucky’s.

There’s certainly enough stuff in this living room around the tree to make an actual Christmas tree out of it, though. So that part of the Depression era didn’t carry forward. There are enough lights to set even a well-watered tree on fire, and many boxes of ornaments stacked around the tree. Plus baggies of ornament hooks.

Sam watches as Natasha picks through the boxes of ornaments and examines them one by one. They’re… actually really nice ornaments. Blown glass, not mass manufactured. Some look like planets and other spherical objects. Others are little animals or abstract shapes. Some are stained glass. One is a pickle.

Not a single piece of plastic that he can see. 

He had kind of figured Bucky for a collector of cheap plastic ornaments and gaudy glittery crap to go on his Christmas trees, but the man has a very specific, very expensive taste in ornaments.

Sam wonders how many of these are salvaged from the apartment in Philly that got smashed up by the STRIKE teams and how many are replacements for those that couldn’t be salvaged. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these things even fit on the tree and how many have to stay in their boxes.

“You want to do the lights, Sam?” Steve asks as he joins Sam and Natasha in the living room of the super soldier suite, wearing the ugly Christmas sweater they’d agreed would be the uniform for decorating a Christmas tree. 

“No!” Bucky calls from the bedroom, where he’s still getting ready for entertaining company. “Say ‘no,’ Sam! Stevie has to do it because he was a little bitch last night!”

Steve laughs but doesn’t argue. Instead, he merely reaches for the first set of lights and starts in on getting the topmost part of the tree strung up with them. 

Sam doesn’t want to know. He’s walked in on no fewer than three different negotiations being had between Bucky and Steve for what is or is not acceptable or desired bedroom behavior, and if Steve was “a little bitch,” Sam is going to purposely not think about what that actually means.

Bucky comes in from the bedroom a minute later, pulling down his own ugly sweater featuring dinosaurs with Santa hats over his bare chest. Sam politely doesn’t look too closely at that bare chest during the brief window it’s available. 

For one, Bucky and Steve are an item and Sam doesn’t want to disturb that—whether Steve is getting better about Venom or not. For another, the vivisection scar running down Bucky’s abs isn’t something to ogle, even if Sam still doesn’t know how he survived getting that scar.

As far as Sam is concerned, he had his chance with Bucky and he blew it. Chance over. Venom might still be interested in Sam and think he’s beautiful, but Bucky is trying to woo Steve, and he can’t afford to get distracted by a third party in the running. 

And Sam doesn’t want to be part of a love square between Steve, Bucky, Venom and himself.

The last negotiation Sam had had the misfortune of overhearing was Bucky insisting that it wouldn’t be damaging at all if Steve “wore him like a glove” and “praised him for every squirm,” and Steve insisting that his hands were too big for that now. 

And if that’s the kind of thing Bucky’s into, maybe it’s best that Sam lost his chance to get with him. There’s a limit to what Sam can manage, after all, and Bucky’s been spoiled rotten by a very, very obliging alien slime creature for more years than Sam’s been alive. What does Sam even have to offer?

 

VENOM

— Stark Tower, New York City: Late morning, 21 December 2012 —

Finally, Tater Tot has joined them and the ornaments can go onto the conifer corpse at long last. They are surrounded by some of their favorite people—though not all of their favorite people. 

Bruce is with the asshole who is not always a mecha warrior, and they are doing things that researchers do, but not the objectionable things. Only the good things. That is okay. It is not ideal that Bruce has returned to being a researcher, but because he is still a freak about it and is making the phenethylamine supplements for them, Venom has decided that Bruce can do this without objection.

The asshole is not making supplements for symbiotes, but he is keeping Bruce company, like a dog watching over a high-strung cheetah companion if the dog was as neurotic as the cheetah. They make a good team, Bruce and the asshole. Each of them messed up in his own way.

And Wade is not here, either—but they will be seeing Wade again in just a few days! There is a job Jason found for them in the Bahamas that they are taking together, like a vacation, to celebrate another year in the business. HRS, LLC. is still in business, after all. And when they take jobs from Jason, they can eat and eat and eat all of the heads. On Avengers business, they only get to eat the HYDRA heads.

Wade will want to know all about the gooey deliciousness tucked inside the crunchy shells that have been so many HYDRA bases, and they will want to know what Wade has been up to in the past half a year or so. 

There will be cuddles, too. That will be fun. Their Bucky always sleeps so soundly when Wade is chattering, and Wade can see their voice so they can talk all night while Bucky sleeps. Wade has the funniest stories about comic books and fanfiction. And they can tell Wade all about Trust now. Wade is the one who told them about mpreg, after all, and got them thinking about offshoots and being a progenitor. He will be happy to know they did that.

Yes, it will be good. 

Especially since they can eat so many targets at this buffet that is a party or party that is a buffet. So many delicious snacks at a meeting of different cartels. They cannot wait to crash that party and slurp up the buffet.

“Your turn, Clint,” the redhead tells Tater Tot. 

She holds out a Jupiter ornament and Tater Tot backs away with his hands up.

“I better not. You hang my ornaments, ‘Tasha. I’m a klutz. I’ll just drop them and make a mess.”

“Clint,” she says, pressing the ornament into his hands. “You agreed to help hang ornaments, so you’re going to help hang ornaments.”

Tater Tot looks at Bucky with a worried grimace, but cradles the Jupiter ornament carefully. “That was before I knew they were fucking heirlooms. I thought they’d be plastic Santas or something.”

“We do not believe in Santa,” they say, putting more of the twisted metal bits into the ornaments to be hung on the tree. They have a dozen more in this box to be hung up. “We believe in Jupiter, though. Planets are real.”

Tater Tot tentatively hooks the curved metal bit onto the tree, holding a hand under the Jupiter ornament to make sure it does not tumble off onto the floor. 

For a klutz, Tater Tot is very careful. 

Clint’s just afraid you’ll slap him if he breaks one of these, love.

I would not slap him. That would just break more.

“Alright, Trust,” Bucky says. “Which one do you want to put on there?”

Their offshoot pokes out a head on a tendril from the redhead’s shoulder and then reaches for the pickle.

Oh. I wanted to put the pickle on the tree.

It’s their first Christmas putting ornaments up instead of living inside the ornaments. Give them this, V.

This is part of being a progenitor they were not looking forward to, giving things up that they want just so that another can be happy. But they are making sacrifices for the next generation, anyway. Like having Tater Tot there with them. Tater Tot is a special person to the redhead, and the redhead is their offshoot’s host. So Tater Tot belongs in the family. 

And now they are giving up their pickle ornament.

The big tree in the common room still needs a pickle. You can add a pickle to that tree.

Oh! That is a bigger tree, so it can support a bigger pickle. Okay, that is okay. 

Thought so. There is a smile on Bucky’s face and one in his thoughts as well.

Patronizing. Well two can play that game.

Did you send Larry his pears? 

Every year for Larry’s gift, they buy a box of pears, and one of the pears is wrapped up in gold foil. It is better than nuts. They used to get Larry nuts but now that Larry is so old, he is avoiding nuts. 

He’s in the Bahamas. I figured we’d take a day to make a trip out to his resort and deliver them ourselves.

Oh. 

Thought you wanted to show off, say hi in person. Having second thoughts?

No! I want to see Larry. We have not seen Larry in too long.

Alright then. Bust up a drug cartel with Wade, hand deliver some pears, say hi to Larry, come back up here to Steve in time for the new year. It’ll be good. 

Yes. Yes, it will be good. 

Notes:

Let me know what kinds of things you'd like to see the series address, and I'll store them up and let them percolate through my brain until they ooze out into ficlets, haha! Can't guarantee anything, but I'd love to hear your wish list. ^_^

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of Losers in Love