bakerstreet | (no subject)

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[meme] texting

(no subject)

The Midnight Texting Meme

It's the middle of the night and you're trying to catch some z's — or brooding alone in the alleys, as one does — when your phone dings and suddenly a stranger or a friend is texting you. What could they possibly want at this hour? Is it important? Stupid? Are they drunk or maybe just needy? ~~Do they need help hiding a body???~~ Pick up your phone and find out!

Rules:

● Post with your character's name and canon on the subject line, indicate preferences as needed
● Tag others
● Have fun!

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You. Me. Kitchen. Five minutes.

That sounds vaguely ominous. Should I be worried?

Depends. Do you trust me?

( come on, buck. )

You know the answer to that.

Then stop pacing around up there and get down here.

I'm making coffee.

I thought I smelled something. Hard to recognize when it's not burnt.

( kidding. )

Ass.

[Also kidding!]

You need proper coffee to go with coffee cake and I'm feeling generous.

You're not kidding. I don't know what I did to deserve it, but you should clue me in so I make sure to do it more often.

I'm half kidding.

Oh? I'm tempted to keep you guessing.

Now that just sounds like a situation where we both lose.

I know my memory's still got holes but I don't recall you being this sassy. You're supposed to pick up my good habits, not my bad ones.

Maybe you just weren't paying attention.

( or maybe just a lot's changed since 1940. )

How do you know it wasn't you that picked up my bad habits?

I doubt that.

[So much. Too much, sometimes, but he's not going to mention it. Why bring the mood down?]

Because I was always a little more of a bad boy than you, duh.

[No Bucky, you were a flirt. There's a difference.]

What, picking back-alley fights and lying on enlistment forms weren't bad?

( we all know who the real rebel was. )

It all worked out, didn't it?

Just not the way I imagined.

Not the way either of us did.

[Which... treads dangerously close to waters that Bucky's not ready to revisit... Azzano, Italy, the alps, Siberia, all of it. He leans a hip against the counter, pinching the bridge of his nose, forcing down memories that are all too vivid.

That's the good thing about this century though: all of it doesn't translate to text messages.]

Coffee's almost ready.

( it doesn't translate to text, no, but steve can still interpret the silence between messages. he can still imagine bucky's face, probably mirroring his own look of contemplation and quiet pain.

the second text brings him back to the present. )

Be right down.

( and he does appear in the kitchen shortly after that, still wearing the worn-out t-shirt and loose cotton pants he wore to bed. he decided to skip his morning run today. he breathes in the warm, coffee-scented air. )

Smells good. ( a small smile appears on his lips. ) Not at all burnt.

[There's no need to reply; instead he busies himself with washing the few dishes (the coffee mill, a spoon) and pulling clean mugs out of a cabinet. There's a bakery box on the counter, from one of those few mom-and-pop places that have held out against the corporate engines of mass produced crap. It had been worth the trip.

When he enters, Steve will find Bucky using a towel to dry the now cleaned blade from the coffee mill. He's dressed in worn jeans and a long-sleeved tee, though the sleeves have been pushed up to the elbow and there are no gloves in sight. There's no point in hiding what he is from Steve's eyes.]

It's a lot easier to make it in a kitchen than over a camp stove. [His own smile is a little lopsided, but it always has been.] Didn't wake you, did I?

Edited (html self. seriously.) 2018-03-19 02:37 (UTC)

( in a perfect world, bucky wouldn't have to hide from anyone's eyes. but they know better than most how imperfect the world is, how harsh it can be. at least in the comfort of their own kitchen, bucky doesn't have to hide anything.

at least, steve hopes that's how he feels. )

Nah, ( he shakes his head. ) I was already awake. ( sleep hasn't been easy to come by since he woke up in the twenty-first century, but if he's honest, it's been a little easier lately. ) You gonna tell me what's got you feeling so generous?

[It’s a struggle and that’s no insult to Steve. A lot of Bucky’s issues are exactly that — his own. And there’s no help for it but to work through it. Time supposedly heals all wounds but there are moments where Bucky feels nothing but the weight of time, of a too-long life.

It’s combat fatigue or PTSD or whatever they’re calling it now, Bucky doesn’t even know. But he’ll deal with it, because that’s what soldiers do.]

I’m debating. [Because teasing Steve is still easy, still light and relaxed.] It’s kind of fun to watch you just wonder over it. You get all— [he gestures, an airy little circle of the hand] —mentally squirmy.

( his eyebrows arch, as if to say, so that's how it's gonna be? and then settle again. he blows out a breath that's part-laugh, averting his eyes to the counter. )

It's kind of comforting, in a way. ( he looks at bucky, and a smile hooks the corner of his mouth. ) Knowing you're still a jerk.

( sometimes, when it's just the two of them like this, he gets flashes of their old life in brooklyn, in bucky's cramped apartment. it happens as he reaches for a mug. but then the light catches on bucky's arm, glinting off the metal, and the vision's gone. )

[Oh, that's so how it's gonna be!]

Well, you know what they say. [That smile is met with a smirk and an all-encompassing gesture along the length of his body.] You shouldn't mess with perfection.

[Yep, he went there.

But there's still coffee and coffee cake and the quiet hours of too-early morning to share both with Steve. It's comfortable in a way that tugs at stray memories but also offers the opportunity for new ones.]

Tell me how it tastes, if I need to burn it a little more for you.

( one brow arches slightly. and if his eyes follow the sweep of bucky's hand, down his body and back up, it's completely involuntary.

he's still smiling as he raises his mug to his mouth. while there is something nostalgic about the smell of mediocre coffee, the kind that was only as good as you could find when you were scraping for pennies in the thirties or fighting in europe in the forties, he appreciates what he gets now. the warm, full-bodied smell, the bitter that's not too bitter as it hits his tongue. )

No, ( he says as he sets his mug back down, ) that's just right. Thanks.

Glad I meet your high standards.

[It's another tease, warm and relaxed and easy. Like there's not weight on both of their shoulders. Like there's not things they don't talk about. But right now there's some distance from all of that and Bucky—

He's okay with it. It's good to just share time. And space. And coffee. And—]

You almost made me forget. [He nudges that bakery box across the counter in Steve's direction.] And before you ask again, the reason is no reason at all. I just felt like it.

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