bakerstreet | Alternate Universe

Sometimes it really hits Bucky hard. He doesn’t know as much about Steve as he might like. There are huge gaps of knowledge. Bucky hadn’t wanted to pry. Steve is open, but not forthcoming in a lot of ways. Who wants to trauma dump? Even to their best friend and sworn protector? Probably no one.

The thought of the blond having fledges does rub him the wrong way, making little digs. They’re completely unwarranted. As far as Bucky knows, Steve’s never gone there with anyone before. But Bucky doesn’t really know that much about Steve’s early days.

About his time as a human being. About the first years of his vampiric life.

The werewolf swallows hard.

“Maybe we clear out for awhile. Just to be safe? I’m not much for the country but I’m open for a change of scenery.”

"As much as I hate to just... abandon this, you're probably right." Between his own recent dosage and the upcoming full moon, things were going to be unpredictable, and if their very presence was going to be a danger to friends and neighbors, it was best if that presence was elsewhere for a while, "Can't just up and leave, though, that's suspicious, but can't tell anyone where we're actually going."

He took a deep breath even though he didn't need it, breathing in and letting it out again slowly in an attempt to keep from getting too wound up, "We can go to the cabin, tell Mrs. Lawrence," their di facto landlady, "that we're going up to the Catskills for the weekend or something." It wasn't entirely unheard of for them to take some time away, what with Steve's weak lungs and nearly-Victorian constitution needing to get out of the city now and again. It wasn't a great cover story, but it was one that people believed, which made it good enough.

“It’s a good time of year for odd jobs up there,” Bucky remarks, though he will be doing a lot less working over the next few days. Every single breath makes him want to itch. He hasn’t had a month as bad as this in a really long time. He isn’t even sure what to expect, though the vampire will be there. If anyone can keep Bucky in check, even in his moonskin, it’s Steve.

Most people don’t ask too many questions where they’re from. They learned better from an early age that knowing less is far better than knowing it all. Knowledge isn’t so much power as it is dangerous.

They’re all just trying to get by as easily as possible these days.

“I’ll let Cornelian know we’ll be out of the city for a little bit. I don’t want him sending work my way if there’s no one here to get his cards.”

They’ll need to go first think after dusk. Or Bucky won’t make it somewhere safely containable.

He nodded, "You can do that while I'm out." He knew Bucky wouldn't want to leave him unprotected for long, but between the lock on the bedroom door and the lock on the apartment itself, there wasn't much chance of anyone getting to him while Bucky ran a couple daytime errands.

"We'll have to go as soon as I'm up. Soon as the sun's down." He didn't like moving quite so soon after he'd woken up, but he still could, especially if it was important. He could even manage to wake up a little before true sundown if he forced it, but that would just be to give them time to finish packing and prepare before the sun was fully down and he could go outside.

This still felt like running away and he didn't like it, but he knew it was what they had to do, and he could be fine with it by the time they were leaving.

Strolling down dark streets with an arm over Steve’s shoulder is about as natural for Bucky as it gets. He dictates the pace, which is intentionally slow, methodical, and aims to eat up as much time as possible. Once they are back home, Steve will tuck himself away.

“Train? I can borrow a truck if you want,” Bucky says, stepping around the shine of light pooling out of a building. He prefers the shadows. He knows Steve does too. “Paulie owes me.” Owes him far more than the use of one of his trucks for a few days at that. Bucky’s a little light on funds to rent one any other way, and they don’t need a paper trail.

Steve was actually thankful for that arm across his shoulders, soaking in the warmth radiating off of Bucky as he so often did, comfortable in a way he rarely got.

At the question his mouth twisted a little, actually weighing that one out, finally ceding: "Normally I'd say train, but if you can cash in a favor with Paulie on short notice without him bitching too much, truck makes more sense." Namely: they wouldn't have to worry about how close to dawn it was getting before they arrived, since it was only a couple hours' drive to the cabin, while it was about double that by train.

"I can pack up before I crash out, make it easier to just pick up and leave once I'm awake again." He wasn't about to make Bucky pack up a bag for him if it wasn't necessary, even though he knew Bucky would do so without complaint, or mild, mostly-facetious complaining at most.

Oh, really, it would be much more like long suffering sighs and nominal muttering. Bucky is always happy to help Steve however the vampire might need. He takes his job as his bodyguard, and his friend, more seriously than anything else.

“Truck it is. Though I always do like dragging you around in a steamer trunk,” Bucky says with a mischievous grin. It’s more tooth than it should be. He hadn’t been joking about the shackles for this cycle. “Especially when we have to go up the steps from the platform. Good fun for us both.”

Despite his best efforts, they get home much too quickly. Bucky opens a can of beans to heat on the little stove by the window, jacket hung over the back of the chair. He sits on the sill, watching Steve putz around his little room, filling a small brown suitcase. Bucky intends to just throw some stuff in a rucksack and have done with it.

He likes the wrinkled chic look. And who the hell is he trying to impress anyway?

“Extra sweater,” he calls. It’s actually not for Steve. If the morning after a change is bad, something soft without a natural living body scent to it helps Bucky come down from being too amped up.

"A second one?" He asked, looking up from where he'd been re-folding a shirt so it would fit in the suitcase instead of the drawer, not that there was much of a size difference, but enough of one to bother him, and as much as he liked to think the stories about vampires and their obsessive-compulsive counting tendencies weren't true, there was clearly some kind of truth to them or the difference wouldn't bother him like it did.

The question was almost amused, but also just curious, because he knew if Bucky was suggesting the shackles, it meant the coming shift wasn't likely to be an easy one, and while he didn't fully know the reason that his clothes -or just him being close- helped level Bucky out again, he knew it did and had packed the sweater first, since it was bulky it went on the bottom, but he could also pack another one no problem.

“If you already got the good one, nah. Sorry if I shed on it.” It’s a little levity, though Bucky isn’t entirely kidding. He recrosses his arms over his chest, bare muscles flexing. It feels too hot in here. Could be that he’s right next to the stove. Could be the change. Could be Steve, already guessing his needs and being—

Not fair. Bucky won’t go there and he nips that thought right on off. He’ll stick with the twins if he needs that sort of comfort. They owe him for the interruption the night before anyway.

Inadvertently giving himself away, Bucky finds himself staring at the blond. He has to rub his forehead to try to hide it but he doubt he caught himself in time. Steve notices everything.

Steve— Guy doesn’t even have a pulse and he’s all Bucky can think about sometimes!

Maybe that’s why he fills the silence asking questions he doesn’t want the answers to? “So what you were saying about— Are there little Steves out in the world, running around Germany or France?”

"It'll wash." He replied, offhand even as he finished folding the shirt and settled it into place. Chances were good he'd add the second sweater anyway, on top of everything, just in case.

He caught it, but he also just chalked it up to unease with everything that was going on, including their half-baked plan to flee into the night at the first real sign of trouble. Which was something that was still nagging at Steve a little, reminding himself -not for the first time- that their friends and neighbors would actually be safer with them out of the picture for a few days.

He was still chewing that over when Bucky's question came and he blinked up, brow creased, gears turning but not connecting right away before realization dawned and he shook his head, "No, absolutely not. I'm not doing that to anyone."

There’s a relief in that. Bucky feels his breathing easing and he rests his head against the window sill. The air against his back isn’t all that helpful to cool him down, and he wonders if letting the beans fully heat up is a good idea. Laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling all night because he’s running extra warm doesn’t seem ideal when he’ll be the one driving them into the mountains the following evening.

“Why do you say that? I happen to know a pretty swell vampire.” One he has little intention to share. He’s got a good twenty more years worth of use in him before Steve will have to find another person to guard him during the day. Bucky intends not to move out of the other’s life until he absolutely must.

It’s funny how little he knows about Steve. The bits and pieces he’s gleaned over the years have been little more than incomplete scraps.

"You know one relatively abnormal vampire is what you know." He replied, returning to his packing, but continuing talking all the same, it wasn't like it was a secret, not really, it was just that they were both happy enough not to talk about it before -or Steve had been at any rate and Bucky hadn't pushed- though maybe he shouldn't have been quite so close-lipped about it if this was the result.

"How many other vampires have you met?" He shook his head, clarifying, "I'm not poking fun, I swear, I just need to know where to start explaining."

“You’re my first and only.” It sounds too sweet to say it that way, but Bucky isn’t known to pull his punches. Besides, Steve won’t read into it. The vampire never seems to and Bucky lets it be his own little confession from time to time.

The can starts to rattle in the pot and Bucky grabs the handle and a spoon off of the rack. Back to Steve, if only to stop his cursed staring, the werewolf shrugs.

“You don’t gotta explain a thing to me, pal. I have your six til the end of the line.”

He was glad that Bucky had turned away after that particular turn of phrase, because if he was still capable of blushing he definitely would have been, and had to remind himself that wasn't what Bucky had meant by it, and he shook himself to get back on track with: "Okay, so everything. Because I know I don't have to, but you asked," and besides that it seemed like Bucky knowing might save both their skins if things got worse, "The program was a success, but the product, me, was a failure."

He huffed a sigh, not because he needed to breathe, but because it was a punctuation, "I was always a sickly kid, ma was always looking for anything that would help, even after she passed I did the same, honestly figured Erskine was just another snake oil salesman, worst case it wouldn't work and I wouldn't be any worse off." He shook his head, adding the second sweater to the suitcase before snapping it closed and setting it aside, moving to lean against the doorjamb "Except his cure was vampire venom."

He shook his head, scrubbing a hand up over his face, "Most vampires they see humans as... livestock at best, and just a self-renewing food source at worst, and I don't know for sure which traits he was trying to improve upon with his transformation-via-science model, but preserving the subject's humanity apparently wasn't one of them."

Bucky literally wolfs down his food. Three spoonfuls is all it takes to finish the can, which leaves him scraping tin by the time Steve is finished talking, even with his mouth still full. It’s listening, though, astutely. His ears might not flick or swivel to capture Steve’s voice, but he is fully aligned with the vampire.

“Makes sense,” he says after he swallows. “Retta used to tell me I was just your emergency food supply. She said vampires don’t even like other vampires and anyone that can age are like cattle. Or rats. I just thought she was speaking off of folklore.”

Bucky gives up on any remaining food from the can and sets it, and the spoon inside of it, down.

“Carnelian says you’re special. The rare breed. I guess I didn’t realize he wasn’t just speaking like an old man magician. You really are something else.” His smile is genuine before it falters. “You think what he did to you he’s been trying to do to other people? Molly in trouble now…?”

Shit. He’d really wanted to get away for awhile. Lay low. Run in the grass. Eat some fresh rabbits. This sucks.

"I dunno." He replied, shaking his head, "I really don't. I wish I did, but whatever she and Slim got dosed with isn't venom, even if it was fresh it wouldn't alter my perceptions like that, vampires aren't, you know, toxic to each other." Except verbally and emotionally, but that was an entirely different problem.

Another heavy sigh, scrubbing a hand up over his face and through his hair, "I know I keep saying it, but he's supposed to be dead. I don't even know if he's trying to make better vampires anymore, maybe he moved on to something else and that's fucking terrifying." Partly because Steve didn't know how many other subjects there had been besides him, he only knew that he hadn't been the only one, and there was no telling if any of the others had sired anyone else, and how those fledges might differ from fledges of a traditionally sired vampire. There were too many variables and he didn't like it.

Scrunching up his face, Bucky closes the distance and kicks over a kitchen stool to sit in front of Steve. He’s always perching on something, always touching something. It’s more instinct than personality. This is his territory. He is spreading his scent. It also makes Steve taller when they talk like this, another instinctual nod of a former pack animal showing deference to a leader. Bucky leans forward, his hands on his knees.

“Can we back up like a dozen paces?” he asks, resisting the urge to bite at the inside of his lip in thought. “How did— So from my understanding, there’s a blood exchange that makes humans into vampires. The rest of us would just die from the same exchange. Is that guy a vampire? Because he smelled more like a corpse.”

The math isn’t mathing, but Bucky isn’t sure if it’s rude to just ask Steve how he came to be the way he was. All Bucky knows is he was an experiment. That there had been others like him. He’d just assumed the guy doing the experimenting was a vampire too.

“And there is no such thing in the human or fae world that has walking corpses, Steve.”

"He's not a vampire." He shook his head again, frustration rising again because he couldn't actually be sure of that, "At least not like any vampire I've ever heard of. But the transformation is... yeah, usually it's blood. That's the best way to make sure it actually takes, but it's the venom that actually causes the change."

He curled his lip just briefly, thumbing at the point of the fang that dropped down into place, just holding out the droplet there for Bucky to see, it was clear, barely pink like watered down blood, and while it was thicker than water, it wasn't quite as viscous as blood would be and he licked it away again a moment later, "So I wasn't bitten, I was just injected." Another head-shake, "I don't know if it was pure venom, but I doubt it, for one thing we don't actually produce a lot of it, and for another, undiluted it would probably kill a human instead of transforming them."

Or, more horrifyingly, would induce an immediate transformation, allowing them to be milked for maybe half again as much venom as had been used before they died, which was something he'd considered once or twice but tried not to think about, "So whatever he used was some kind of serum."

He worked his jaw for a moment, just turning over an equally horrifying possibility over in his mind, "If he was sick, cancer or something chronic, the experiment I was part of? It might have been finding out how to keep himself alive without actually transforming." He shook his head, "But that's... it's not how humans are supposed to work, you know? He'd still be dying just... forever."

This whole thing is fascinating. Old Cornelian had filled him in on a lot of lore. The mage really liked Bucky and had made it part of his personality to keep Bucky in the know about vampires once he had discovered who his part time employee hung around with. Bucky had never made much of a big deal about it. He had read the books the man recommended but they seemed more propaganda pieces. None of the pictures even looked like Steve.

And the venom? Well that’s new. He knew about it but he’d never seen it. On a human, that venom was supposed to induce pleasure, or at least acceptance. Eyebrows way up, Bucky had leaned in even that drop of venom was momentarily presented, oddly compelled to see if it really would kill him if he ingested it.

It’s like staring into the void. Or thinking about stepping in front of a train. Bucky doesn’t usually have those dark thoughts though. The wolf is going to be the death of him this cycle.

“Huh,” Bucky says, abruptly sitting back before he does anything else stupid. “It worked on you. It fixed you up. So it kind of makes sense that he would want to do it to himself. Jeez-us Steve. You’re not just forever dying are you?”

That minuscule amount definitely wouldn't kill him, probably wouldn't even make him sick, though it might numb his mouth for a while. Steve was also pretty sure the toxicity was exaggerated if only to keep vampires from trying to turn shapeshifters, or, more likely, to keep shapeshifters from trying to eat vampires, or to keep from being bitten themselves, but it wasn't like there was anyone he could really ask, so he kept those opinions to himself.

He shook his head at the question, "No, I transformed, I know that much. No heartbeat kind of gives that one away. He rubbed at his brow, "But if he's..." He shook his head again, "I don't know, on the cusp? In some kind of in-between? It shouldn't take much to either kill him or change him, but I don't like either option And I don't know for sure if that's what he's doing."

Talk about relief! The thought of poor Steve being incomplete, stuck in the middle, and in pain he never showed to him would have broken Bucky’s heart. Literally. He can deal with emotional turmoil, of wanting things he can never have, but knowing Steve lived (or unlived) each moment in agony would have been too much. The werewolf straightens out his right leg and knocks his foot against Steve’s ankle.

“Gotta confirm that you don’t smell rancid, but that might just be because you’re stuffing your socks with lavender or parsley or something.” Hey. He loves the smell of lavender and parsley. Very earthy. Very soapy. And both grow all around the cabin—

The werewolf groans.

“I know you don’t wanna leave, pal. And maybe the way I am this month, it might be better to stick around and pay your old friend a visit instead.” Killing isn’t something he likes to do.

But he’s done it. And he’ll do more of it. Whatever Steve needs.

He shook his head, "No, leaving's better. For both of us." He wasn't going to let Bucky be some kind of assassin for him, even if the doctor did deserve it. He was more concerned about the collateral damage that would result if they somehow managed to kill the man off without knowing what it was he was even doing.

A twitch of a smile, "And no, I'm not stuffing anything with lavender and parsley. For one thing you'd notice if that much lavender was missing." One of the few things that there was always an abundance of in the victory garden on the roof, if only because it attracted bees to help pollinate everything else.

He shifted his weight a little so that he could return that thump, "Besides that, fresh air will be good for the both of us, I think."

“You don’t have to breathe,” Bucky says with a grin, ignoring the tease about his nose. He takes his bloodhound attributes seriously anyway. One has to be good at many things to keep Steve safe, or so he tells himself, as if the vampire hadn’t been doing just fine on his own before they met up.

Bucky might have to ask a bit more about that in the future. Learning about Steve is his favorite pastime.

Back on his feet, Bucky washes up the spoon, sets it aside, and opens the wardrobe by the front door to yank out a rucksack. Steve is neat and clean. He folds his items like a gentleman. Bucky just crams.

“Want me to put any of your things in mine?” It’s a genuine question. It never quite occurs to him that Steve and wrinkles just don’t go together.

There was a small smile at that first comment, just shooting back: "Doesn't mean the fresh air won't be good for me, Buck." He pushed himself up from where he was leaning against the door frame as Bucky moved to wash up.

He shook his head at the question, "No, I got it." There was a moment's consideration before adding, "Should probably get the winter blanket out of the closet, though, in case the sun shades are fucked up again."

“It’s gonna smell like mothballs,” he warns, which is something Steve doesn’t need to worry himself over. Bucky is the only one that will suffer. “I’ll take it out tomorrow after I bring the truck around.” It will go in the back bed with their things.

Maybe he can lay it out on the grass once they get to the mountains? Bucky pauses in front of the wardrobe, lost in thought for a few moments.

Slowly, his head tilts to the left before he turns back around to Steve. “You going to be all right for a few days looking after me? Do you need me to pick anything else up tomorrow?”

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