bakerstreet | MACHINES CANNOT LOVE

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[meme] shipping

MACHINES CANNOT LOVE

The Teach Me How to Love Meme

No matter how straightforward it may seem, the human emotion of "love," especially true, unconditional love, is complex and often hard to understand. All that forgiveness, all that dedication, all that light in the dark - how can one person have all that inside of them? You don't understand that, possibly because you're not a human. You're a calculating robot, an alien with a completely different frame of reference, or an artificially created being told only to feel certain ways. If you are a human, however, that doesn't necessarily clue you in to all the secrets of affection. Cold, uncaring assassins, brutal warriors, ruthless womanizers and maneaters, or the just plain broken can often feel like robots among their own kind.

But you want that to change. You have a stirring in your chest for someone and you want to know what love is so you can make them happy. This is the first time you've ever wanted to do so and be so unselfish. Hopefully, they can be a good teacher and help you open up, getting you both closer...

...or you could end up with someone as inexperienced as you. Well, there is something to be said about learning together.

Comment with your character, preferences, and what side you'll be playing (learning, teaching, whatever you'd like).
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[DUUUUUUDE. That would be fun! Also I just realized today I never replied to our other one. The notification disappeared so I thought I'd taken care of it. I'll be hitting that soon now that I realized]

[[If you would like to continue, I'm up for it! Otherwise, we could like handwave a little bit and bank the CR for another thread with them later? I'm cool either way. Also, lmk if this works for you. Taking slight liberties for the meme, but I can always edit as needed.]

It starts, as is sometimes the case, not in a bar or an alleyway, but at a farmer's market. In a city and a place about which Vrenille knows exactly nothing (except that it seems sorta...gray), where he doesn't even seem to speak the same language as half the people, and where all the money in his coin pouch buys him precisely nothing but strange looks. That's where it starts.

It starts with a glance, with what he's sure must be a chance meeting of eyes from a man who's too guarded, a little scruffy, a little too rough. He's got an edge like a razor, Vrenille thinks, though the jacket and the cap and the way he seems to crunch into them almost manage to disguise it. He feels it from the moment he lays eyes on him: it's like a knife cut in the world, all risk and threat and danger on one side...and on the other? On the other, some kind of ghost maybe, a bond to a past that that razor line couldn't quite manage to slice away. He sees it flash in his eyes as he talks to a fruit vendor--like he wants to be with the world but he doesn't quite know how to be.

He's exactly the wrong kind of man, and Vrenille knows it. He knows it, and yet he goes ahead anyway. Maybe he's just feeling self-destructive, given the totally shit day he's having. Or maybe there's a draw that's way more ineffable.

His heart's in his throat when he speaks to him, and that...well, it never happens. He's a master at keeping "professional" distance. He dissimulates--it's a job skill. But then he usually doesn't go playing with fire this way. He usually doesn't feel quite so nakedly exposed. He's usually not in some strange foreign world, either.

He's not even sure that they'll speak the same language at first, so when he discovers that they do it's too unexpected. It's crazy that he just asks him: "Take me somewhere?" It's too plaintive, a request and an offer all at once, there's not even any artistry in it. And he's pretty sure they both find it crazy when the man actually does. Vrenille isn't sure that either of them know what in the hell for.

Mostly what he knows is that now he's standing here in this slightly scruffy room with this slightly scruffy man. He's knows that he's dressed in a way that can't quite pass for local. He knows he doesn't know where he is, and he doesn't have any money that's worth a damn. He knows he doesn't have anyplace he can go, and it's probably going to be cold tonight, and he doesn't know a single damn person, probably in this whole world. He knows that the air feels tight, like there's some kind of energy--a current, a live-wire--and he's not even certain whether the man he's with might try to kill him.

He's usually so smooth with words, so good with people, but the strangeness of the whole situation leaves him completely disarmed; he's not even sure what he should say. He wonders if maybe the jump between worlds has made him lose something of his mind. He fishes around and in the absence of anything better, he settles on the most simply honest opening: "This is a little unusual for me."

Bucky recognizes people like this from a mile off. He's not entirely sure what it is that makes them stand out like they have a blaring white light on them, but it's something. Bucky can scan a crowd and find the people who feel like they don't belong. Maybe because like souls attract one another. Or maybe it's just years of being an assassin that has him primed to read people from a mile off. People who feel uncomfortable often are also the ones who look the most suspicious.

But this man? Bucky isn't sure why he let's him approach--and make no mistake: he allowed that. He seems foreign in a way that has Bucky thinking about secret documents and other universes. But at the same time he speaks English and appears to understand the basis of interactions. So it's a puzzle. But not one Bucky is all that interested in solving.

That isn't why he brings him back. He barely says anything about it, but the gesture isn't a new one for him. He sometimes would do this. Occasionally for a companion, more often to protect someone from something.

Making amends for a life that has no hope of redemption.

This falls into the latter camp, he feels. The man looks lost and profoundly alone. Bucky sympathizes. And his apartment might not be anything special, but it was secure. Bucky moves to the bed and grabs a blanket and pillow off of it, laying them both on the floor for him to sleep on, then goes to see if there's anything for him to cook.

"Not unusual for me," he says as he pulls out some vegetables and begins to make a thin soup. "I can let you stay a day. Maybe two or three but that's it. You can have the mattress. Don't touch any of my stuff. Especially the weapons. Got it?"

He doesn't say thanks, doesn't manage the casual social ease that's his norm. His eyebrows rise slightly. What is usual for you, he wonders. But he doesn't ask.

Instead, his eyes sweep the room again--the mattress on the floor, the little kitchen area along the far wall. And he thinks right, weapons.... Because he's armed himself, though he's disguised it with a glamour--a simple little illusion to make the pistol at his hip and the wand-like scepter he carries disappear. It was the very first thing he did, the moment he realized that no one in this city seems to carry weapons in the open. So now they look like two more belt pouches (who wears belt pouches, seriously?), and he wonders what this man will do should he discover that they're not.

Outwardly, he simply nods. To show he understands. But the truth is he doesn't understand at all: there's been no mention of an exchange--any exchange--no sign of some mutual benefit. People don't just bring strangers home for two or three days without a word of question and get nothing for it. He doesn't even think that in a mercenary or cynical way, merely that everyone has motivations. If they're not physical or material, then they're emotional; they're something about meaning. Whether it's understood or not, there's something behind every choice. Here though, there's a keyword missing: the this that's usual (or not) for each of them. Whatever that "this" is, Vrenille's pretty sure that it doesn't quite mean the self-same thing for both of them.

"What's your name?" he asks, stepping closer to the kitchen, coming up alongside him, just by his left shoulder. (He hasn't seen the metal arm yet.) And, "Let me help?" Because he's not bad at this--slicing vegetables, making a little food go a long way.

Bucky hates this question. It's always the first they ask and he always knows to expect it, but he's never quite sure how to answer. He can't say 'Bucky'. He doesn't feel like Bucky yet. Not really. But 'Asset' isn't a name nor is 'Winter Soldier'. He doesn't like making something up, either. He never remembers it for very long. So he's got a handful of options, really. None of them fantastic, but they're options. Bucky looks over at this strange man and makes a choice.

"Barnes. Just call me Barnes."

At the request, Bucky doesn't even hesitate. It's stupid to turn down help and he's getting hungry so this will get food made faster. He hands over some of the vegetables that he hates cutting (onions and mushrooms) and grabs another knife for him to use. He doesn't ask for his name in return, though. Bucky doesn't really care. Chances are they won't be around each other long enough for them to need to use it.

"I have some bread and cheese, too. It's not much, but it is fine enough." He'd meant to get more but he's low on cash and not entirely sure what to do in order to fix it. All of his skills involve death and he's definitely not in that business anymore.

Besides, being poor is familiar to him. Even if it does leave him in this crummy apartment with a half-empty fridge and a growling stomach. He dumps in some of the carrots he was working on to stop himself from picking at them. Then he goes for the stock and spices he's made last far longer than he expected to. He bends over the pot and remembers a woman with dark hair doing the same and telling him that it might be thin, but with a little love, it will still taste like they're eating a banquet.

"Where are you headed to?" He talks just to stop his thoughts on this particular track. "Didn't seem like you knew the area well. First time?"

If he was more on his game, he probably would have phrased it differently: what should I call you instead of what's your name--a subtle enough difference, but sometimes not an insignificant one. The fact that he missed it, that he can sense how a name turns out to be less natural for this man to give than the offer of his aid... Get your damn head in the game, man. Something's going on here.

"I'm Vrenille," he says, because even if he hasn't been asked there's still something in the exchange that matters. It's like a base social unit, the giving and receiving of names; they've got to start somewhere. He's got to start somewhere if he's going to get his feet under him again.

So he starts here, with the fleeting moment when their eyes meet as Barnes passes him the knife, and Vrenille really looks at him, not searchingly or desperately or timidly or even like he wants anything from him. He just looks at him like he's really willing to see him, willing to meet him on some common ground somewhere. It doesn't linger long enough to become invasive or imposing; anyway, he's got a task to be getting on with.

Vrenille cuts vegetables like someone who's been taught properly, like by an actual chef. It's in the way he tucks the fingers of his guide hand, the way he holds the knife. He makes quick work of the prep, sliding the cutting board towards his companion as he finishes so he can add the rest to the pot. This part, at least, is comfortingly familiar to him, like the part he plays in preparing nightly guild meals at home.

But even if he's been used to eating well lately, he also can remember years of having barely enough to get by, of making due with offal and a lot of other things he could only get because no one else wanted them. So he appreciates this, what Barnes is doing. "I'm sure it'll be great, whatever it is." He even manages a playful, "I mean, it's not sawdust in the bread right?"

While Barnes cooks, he goes to the sink, washes the used utensils there. "Yeah, I kinda gave that away, didn't I? Man, I wish to all the gods that I knew...

"Let's say that I banged my head, lost my memory." He didn't, of course, and he's not trying to pretend otherwise, he's just offering a hypothetical scenario to domesticate the incredulity he expects will follow what he's going to ask next: "Where am I exactly? What city is this?"

The sawdust comment cuts through seventy years and puts Bucky right back to the 20's when his mother would ask that of the stores they went shopping at. It was a real question then and his mother always could tell, somehow. She'd tried to teach him, but he'd been too young and too distracted to really care. Bucky could remember, then, Steve next to him. His mother was at work and so he was around a lot. Bucky loved it. Loved grabbing his hand and dragging him off to the back of the store where he could grab a muffin without anyone seeing. Steve hated that.

"No sawdust," he says with a small smirk. He's getting used to having flashes of memories strike him at odd times, but they usually aren't so pleasant. That one was more than welcome, though.

He watches Vrenille cut and files away the fact that he's handy in the kitchen. Bucky's own cuts are good, but not chef-quality. Just practiced and quick; he knows his way with a knife, but not really for food.

"I know something about lost memories," he admits, instantly sympathizing, even if he's not entirely sure that's the story with his new guest. "You're in Romania, right now. Bucharest. It's a good enough place for keeping your head down and blending in with a crowd. If you can blend, at least." The subtext loudly saying this was something Vrenille needed to work on. "If you have dollars, they can go a little further here, too. I don't know where you came from, before. But you'll probably want to get cash if you want to stay around. More if you want to leave."

He goes to the fridge and pulls out the bread and cheese, cutting up both for them to snack on while the soup cooks up. A wedge on the half-stale end disappears into his mouth quick.

"Do you know which way you're going? Sticking around? Heading somewhere else?"

It's crazy how far that little smirk goes for him, how it reminds him of something about himself. It's not because of the bread or the sawdust, though he clearly remembers the baker who came to Ebonhawke from Divinity's Reach and the scandal that he brought with him, thinking he would swindle the "ignorant yokels" of the stronghold only to find himself run out of town by an armed mob with a lot more savvy than he bargained for. (He also remembers how he felt hungry enough at the time to wonder whether adding sawdust to the horsebread he ate would bulk it up so he could feel full; he tried it once, but it only made him feel vaguely sick.)

No, the thing about the smirk that really strikes him is that he did that. Just by talking, just by paying attention to the man, just by following some ineffable gut sense of what to say. And it feels good. It feels good to know that even in this place, as lost and disoriented as he is, he still has this one compass point, his true north. It makes him feel a little more steady, so he steers himself by it, uses it to orient himself.

"I've got coin. Where I'm from it'd be enough to get me by a fair while if I was careful. Didn't seem to buy much but strange looks here. I've never heard of Bucharest though or Ro- what'd you call it? Rominia?

"As for blending," he breathes a little dry laugh because yeah, he knows, he knows. "I'll have to work on that. I wouldn't know where to go if I left here though, so I guess I'm here until I figure it out."

He breaks a corner off a piece of bread and chews it slowly, thinking. He knows better than to ask directly about his host's lost memories--not yet, not yet--but there's a bridge that could be built there, maybe. He signposts it in his mind.

"You're not from here, are you?" There have been a few signs, but just for one: "You speak more than just their tongue."

Bucky's eyes shift abruptly over to the man he's allowed into his space. It's not personal although there's nothing to the sharpness of it that would give that fact away. Bucky's just not used to people seeing things like that about himself. Too used to being a ghost, it's almost suspicious when someone can pick up a fact he hasn't voluntarily given away. It immediately makes him wary of the possibility of his safety being infiltrated; he'd been a good spy, back in the day. He knows others exist that can pull the same clever tricks.

It takes a little bit for him to do more than stare. To someone untrained in perception, it might look as though he were simply watching Vrenille. But what he is actually doing is reclassifying. Looking at their interactions and thinking over all their conversations, trying to see if there was something he missed. Applying the film of a spy to his perceptions, making connections he hadn't before and seeing if they make sense.

Finally, he stands down and smirks once more. Vrenille is no spy. Or if he is, he's not a concerning one.

"No. I'm from America. Sort of." He doesn't really feel like Bucky so it feels odd to lay claim to a childhood and a past he doesn't quite remember. One that doesn't feel much more real than a vivid dream. "I spent a lot of time in Russia, too. But I move around a lot. I had...work that kept me busy. Didn't let me stay still for very long."

The soup starts to bubble and Bucky stirs it a little, sipping a bit to test the spices. With a face, he adds more of one and then goes back to the refrigerator to pull out a pack of celery to quickly chop and toss in.

"What are you thinking of for next steps?" Bucky doesn't like talking about the past too much, so this is as good a segue off of it as any. "Anyplace you're trying to get to? I can help a little. Find people who don't ask questions."

Vrenille feels the scrutiny. He doesn't catch the meaning per se, but on some level he understands: the less he stands before the man like a wobbly-legged fawn, and the more he regains his bearings and lets Barnes see what he's really about, the more the man is going to have to expand and shift all his first impressions of him.

Inevitably, that process of evaluation and reevaluation will be true on both sides, just a matter of getting to know each other, getting to know aptitudes and reactions. Being watched, for Vrenille, certainly isn't what he'd consider a problem.

"I used to dream of traveling when I was a kid. My best friend and I--we used to cook up all kinda schemes. When I finally tried it years later, it didn't turn out so much like I'd thought." As he speaks, he watches his companion move, watches his hands, the lines of care and tension around his eyes, his mouth. But especially his hands.

"All I really want is to go home." It's painfully, unguardedly honest, and the words deflate him a little. "I'm not sure just how to do that though." And he's not sure how much he ought to say, how much he can get away with before he rests too heavy a weight on the tenuous net of this man's hospitality and it simply breaks.

He gives a thoughtful pause. Well, anyway, this much he can say: "I don't think someone who won't ask questions's really what I need though."

Bucky's whole demeanor shifts at the mention of a best friend who got Vrenille dreaming of bigger things. He doesn't look at him, just clenches his jaw to make the muscle pop out; he's got a sour taste in his mouth, suddenly, so he sips the soup and decides that it's moving along just fine. The pause allows him to push down any memories that threatened to come up, now. He's not ready. Not right now. He can't be distracted.

"I know how that feels," he admits. He cuts some more cheese and bread to make it more of an offering for them both to pick on. This will be their source of protein and carbs for the evening, so they might as well finish both off. Bucky can figure out more food in the morning. "I want to go back home, too. I'm just not sure where mine is. So at least you have that goin' for you..."

They seem to have more in common than Bucky would have expected at first glance. It's disarming, in a way. But also unspeakably sad. Bucky wouldn't wish his life on anyone. But he's learning that it's a great deal more common tan he expected it would be.

"What would you need? To find your way back? Or...to find your next stop? I don't know what I can do, but I might be able to point you."

Admittedly that is not a reaction that Vrenille is expecting--it hadn't occurred to him that there might be a commonality between them on the topic of childhood friends and the moment of tension makes him reschool his thoughts, shuffle the cards in his conceptual deck about Barnes into a newly arranged order, a few new items getting prioritized near the top.

It strikes him that he really does have something to offer this man. It's not something he can look at straight on right now. All he can do is catch it fleetingly from the corner of his eye, try and follow it until he gets a better sense of its whole shape. For now, all he knows is that it's there, like a wild thing hidden in the branches. He can't touch it, but he can feel it like a current that runs through the room.

His world-displacement predicament notwithstanding, however, Vrenille doesn't think his own situation now is such a sad one. Maybe it was according to a lot of people, but not now. And if that can be true for him, he thinks it can be true for damn near anyone.

Two or three days, he thinks. I've got two or three days to convince him that I'm worth keeping around. It's something, he thinks, that will be for both their sake.

So for now, he doesn't ask after Barnes's home. That, clearly, would be far too raw and far too soon.

"Let's say mostly what I need is some serious suspension of disbelief." He gives a wry smile, sort of private and a little bit vulnerable, and then he lets himself go ahead and probably sound like a crazy person. It's a pure leap of faith, like saying I trust you, I believe in you, here: "You get much in the way of magic around here?"

That wasn't an answer that he was expecting. Bucky narrows his eyes a little, not in suspicion but in a vague, confused way he wasn't entirely used to feeling. Magic? He remembers some guys with top hats at Coney Island who would pull quarters out from ears and do tricks with cards. Steve would like them and Bucky would stop him from paying even a red cent for their parlor tricks. But he doesn't think Vrenille means that sort of magic.

"I've heard stories." Not false. Everyone knows about Thor and his hammer. And there's a lot of other tales of special powers and abilities that don't come from a serum. People with mutations that let them do incredible things. And in Hydra, he'd heard even worse stories. Experiments that seemed like magic to outsiders, but he'd known the horrors that created it.

"Not many. I've...seen things I can't always explain. I don't know how ready I've ever been to call it magic, though."

The soup boils and Bucky ignores it, still watching Vrenille. He can see the expression on the other's face and recognizes it as one he's worn himself. Especially when someone's gotten a look at his arm, somehow. It's an expression of waiting. Of hoping things will go one way and expecting them to go another. Taking a leap without any guarantee of something to catch you.

Bucky stops his critical gaze and goes to get two bowls to divide the soup into.

"If it can clean up this kitchen without me needing to, I'd be pleased to see it." He doesn't look at Vrenille to hopefully let him feel less inspected. "What about you? And...where you came from?"

When you come from a world where magic is literally omnipresent and has been your entire life, you don't really think about other worlds simply not having any. It's like air--you just sort of assume that it exists. It must exist, even if people don't know how to use it.

Nonetheless, the moment that he arrived here, Vrenille realized that the whole place--its atmosphere--just feels different. There's a different hum to its energy. It was enough to make him careful, and what Barnes tells him now only seems to confirm that his caution has been well-founded.

And yet in spite of that, in spite of the scrutiny, he feels as though the man understands him in quite a singular way, a way that most people he'd run into on the streets here could never achieve. Having approached him the way he did--"against," as it were, his "better judgement"--having ended up here in this little apartment that's his home...Vrenille doesn't think that's fate. He thinks that's something like a sixth sense which guided him even when his reasoning brain failed. He thinks that his better judgment turned out to be doing precisely the thing that on the surface his rational mind would have told him to avoid, and he thinks he'd damn well better continue to trust its lead.

"Dunno about cleaning the kitchen--at home we'd have the little golem do it. Or me. Here I think you just get me, but I do a pretty good job," he smiles. Just now, he thinks, the idea of doing something familiar like cleaning the kitchen doesn't feel like a chore. It feels like a comfort, and momentarily that gives him a relief from the trepidation of what he's about to say.

"The golem though, that's magitech. Most gadgets I can think of are powered by magitech. Actually, most of what I know is powered by magic in one way or other. Where I come from it's sort of like...light--it's a part of everything, the life energy of the world itself."

He watches his companion closely, studies his features to gauge how he'll react even if their eyes don't ever meet as he speaks. His mouth feels dry and his throat tight. He casts a last glance over that proverbial cliff he's walked himself up to and just leaps. Either Barnes will be there to catch him or he won't.

"I'm pretty sure that world isn't this one."

Oh. Alright. That makes everything make a whole Hell more sense, actually.

Bucky keeps doling out the soup as Vrenille talks, not making any sort of indication that he's surprised or upset by what he's hearing. And he's really not. He's heard more outrageous stories that were true and he's heard more sane-sounding stories that ended up being fantasies. The idea that Vrenille is from another world that has magic? Well, that would explain him standing in a market like he'd never seen anything like it.

The bowls get put on the table and Bucky moves the bread and cheese over before grabbing two beers. He sits down in his chair and starts drinking his beer in the silence that follows the end of Vrenille's explanation. For awhile it seems as though he's not going to react at all.

But then he's sliding his jacket off his shoulders and draping it over the back of his chair. His gloves come off next, silver arm and hand now revealed.

"If anyone would know what it's like, being in a world that you don't recognize anymore... Well. I actually have a few people you can talk to, but one is definitely me." He finally looks at Vrenille and he doesn't smile but his face is decidedly softer.

"How did you get here, then?" He stiffens just a little as his mind starts down the only path it feels comfortable on, now. "Did anyone come with you? Or...were you running from something?"

'When will the fight be?' is what he's asking. Because there was always a fight. Just a matter of time.

"Do you have any idea how you'd get back? If you're even planning to get back..."

It's several long seconds before Vrenille even moves. Honestly at first he's not at all sure what's happening.

The jacket coming off, and the glove....

He's wondered about that glove practically since he walked in, the puzzle it's presented having edged his thoughts through their whole conversation. A glove that's hiding something--that's what he figured. Hiding or protecting. A disfigurement perhaps. He never imagined the real reason.

He never imagined the reaction his confession would get him either, and it takes his mind a few moments to catch up, maybe more than a few moments to really process--there's all the questions being put to him colliding with ones he instantly wants to pose, and for a minute it's like he's back in that market square all over again because he's not even sure what he's doing as he steps over to the table and, rather than sitting down to eat, reaches out to place one hand on his companion's metal "skin."

It's far too bold. He realizes at once, but by that point he's already taken the plunge. His fingertips trace over the metal knuckles, a soft, light touch that ventures up as far as the wrist. The arm doesn't thrum with magical energy, at least not of any kind that Vrenille can perceive. He couldn't say what energy it has, if any at all. It's not alive, but it's not inert either; it's...just completely foreign.

His hand is still resting on the metal as he looks down searchingly into Barnes' eyes. It doesn't take more than the span of a breath for Vrenille to decide that he'll hide nothing, let this man simply see right through him, because he hurled himself off that cliff and Barnes was right here and he made the landing safe. The metal arm, to him, is just a part of that safety. His fingers are shaking when he finally steps back and sinks heavily into his chair.

"Lyssa's tits, I was not expecting that," he lets out a long exhale of relief, picking up the bottle that's been set at his spot and sparing it only a glance before he tilts it back drains nearly half in a long, slow draught. (He gives it a passingly interested look before he puts it down though because it's different than any ale he's had before.)

"Okay, right," questions have been posed. He needs to give some explanation. "Short answer: pretty much, I fell through a rift. There's a longer answer that's got some dead dragons and a cult, an exploding bloodstone, a rogue god, but...save it?" That's just his suggestion; he can give the longer version later. "They didn't come with me anyway.

"These rifts, they're all unstable, y'know? And things do pass through 'em, but mostly it's things that are displaced from around our world. I've never heard of anything like this." But then how would he have heard, especially if this is a one-way trip? The idea fills him with dread.

"How I get back...?" He shakes his head, his eyes tracking away, to focus on a random square of floor. His complete lack of an answer leaves a bereft, desperate feeling that he knows he has to keep at bay. So he returns his gaze to his companion instead, taking comfort in the blue of his eyes and the little worry lines etched into his skin; to anchor himself, he reads in them a sense of focus and purpose amidst a vast sea of uncertainty.

"I'm not sure I know how, but I've got to. My guild, my best friend... I've got to."

To keep himself from spinning out on the uncertainty, he watches Barnes' reaction to it all. He doesn't know about his sense that there's always going to be a fight--he doesn't have the context for it. Right now, he doesn't know very much at all. He does want to though. You didn't come from another world, he thinks. That's not why you don't recognize this one. There's something else. Something about this arm... It's too much at once though. Too much of everything. He needs to shift the gears back down, just go slow. Smaller steps, one thing at a time.

This is the first time anyone has touched his arm like it's anything more than a weapon. It sucks the air out of him as he watches Vrenille's fingertips tracing over the well-made joints and plates. He doesn't feel the touch so much as senses it; the arm wasn't meant to have actual feeling, but it has the sensation of pressure and temperature. That means that this searching computes to Bucky's mind as 'light warmth'. It's not unwelcome and he isn't about to stop him.

He nods to the suggestion of tabling the long story. There's no way he'll make sense out of it, even taking dragons and cults for granted. There's more backstory that this will need otherwise the story will devolve into a series of questions and he's pretty sure neither of them have the energy for an interrogation, tonight. It hasn't escaped Bucky's notice either that Vrenille is cautious in what he says and doesn't say. He's skirting subjects that he knows Bucky likely doesn't want to talk about. It's a kindness.

Bucky's unused to being on the receiving end of kindness.

"I can understand that..." He digs into his soup and it's fine. Would have been better with some more vegetables and maybe a source of protein. He really needs to get some more money. "I spent most of my life looking after my best friend. I can understand that need to get back, no matter what."

The irony hits him hard, reminding Bucky why he tries to keep Steve off his mind. Even now when he's actively running and hiding from his best friend, he wants to find him and protect him. That lifelong connection is pulling right under his ribs, trying to drag him back to the one person in the world that he can trust without hesitation.

But then again, Bucky's eyes look over to Vrenille. And maybe that exclusive group is going to have a second member, eventually.

"There's got to be people on this planet that understand what happened to you. I heard some rumblings from London and New York about possible magic. Never investigated it because..." Because he'd never been forced to, "never really came up. But that might be at least a place for you to start."

He pulls off some bread and dips it into his soup, wondering if that will be an improvement.

"It helps. Having a next step. Makes it feel like you're following a plan. Better than just wandering aimless..."

The long drink of beer on his still-empty stomach goes freely to Vrenille's head, and combined with the relief of secrets let out into the open, he finds a kind of natural ease that he's usually much slower to share. His professional face goes one way, this entire encounter with Barnes is taking him in another. He can't bring himself to see it as a problem though. His gut is telling him that the man he's breaking bread with is the kind with whom you throw your lot in when the stakes are at their highest, so that's what he's done. Now it's all just about letting it ride.

He tears pieces off his bread, lets it soak up the soup, and eats like it's the best meal he's had in a week, because he understands that food is just about the most valuable thing in the world when you're down on your luck, and this is a damn sight better than some of the stuff he used to eat years ago. He can see where it's a bit on the meager side though. Maybe in the coming days he'll be able to help with that.

"I'm usually more the follow someone else's plan than make my own kinda guy, I gotta admit. And I don't know where London or New York are, but...well, if you can explain the currency here to me, I'd wager I can get us some money." He pauses, thinks again, "Mmn, unless I can exchange this stuff for anything." He pulls a coin purse off his belt and sets it down on the table top between them without bothering to open it.

Inside, if Bucky cares to look, are a variety of coins minted in an antique style, all stamped with letters and symbols in a strange foreign alphabet: copper, silver, and gold. Quite real copper, silver, and gold if the appearance tells right. "Probably just the raw metal, I'd guess. Dunno if it's worth much here.

"Anyway, there's other ways too. Long as you're willing to let me stick with you, I suppose I reckon we're in this together--whatever 'this' is."

Even, he thinks, if "this" is just "three hots and a cot," as the saying goes. But even then it would never really be just that--it would be the companionship, the conversation, the way sitting down to eat with someone changes things, brings people closer together by tiny degrees. Already he feels that they're something more than strangers. He's the kind of person to whom that means a lot.

"And," he gestures towards Barnes with his spoon between bites, "I wanna hear about your best friend. I'll tell you about mine. He's kinda a difficult little S.O.B., but man I love him." It brings this fond smile and a sense of comfort to him just thinking about the man in question, and he's hoping that maybe for Barnes it will be a topic that can do the same. "I'd do anything in the world for that guy, and sometimes I think that he's keen to make me prove it."

"HAH!" Bucky falls back in his chair, feeling more like himself than he had in ages. All because now he can bitch about Steve. Who knew that was the thing that could cross ages and planets: piece of shit best friends who can't just take care of themselves for a goddamn second. "Let me tell you about my best friend. Holy shit. This little 90 pound nothing gets it into his head one day that he's gonna join the army! Nevermind that nearly every winter we call a priest for him as he runs a 103 degree fever from flu! No, this guy with bad lungs, a bad heart, a bad ear, and a bad attitude goes around the whole damn city, trying to get someone to let him enlist. And then he fucking gets it!"

Bucky gets up and grabs two bottles of beer to replace Vrenille's nearly empty one and his own soon-to-be emptied one. He gestures with the neck, shaking his in a way that meant it was probably going to explode a little. Yeah. Join the club, pal.

"But you love him. You haveta love him because that's just how you're built. Right?" His accent is back, subtle but there as Bucky finally gets the reigns once more. It's relaxing in a way he hasn't been since the moment he was told they were sliding across a rope, onto a train.

For the first time in seventy years, he laughs openly, shaking his head.

"Difficult little bastards that we love and try to save from themselves. If we're lucky, sometimes we even succeed." He holds out his bottle for a toast and then swallows the rest of it down in one long sip. He can't get drunk so this is really just for the camaraderie.

"Tell me about your Steve. That was mine. Is mine." His frown comes back, all because he can't decide on a damned tense. "Was mine." He shrugs off the lapse and distracts himself with opening the combustible bottle.

"What about yours?"

It's amazing how easily everything changes, like the gears just all align and everything slots right into place, and suddenly they're talking like it's the most natural thing in the world, walls dropping away, and they might as well be two old friends reminiscing over drinks together. Even if Vrenille doesn't know precisely how long it's been since Barnes has relaxed like this, he can see the profound effect of the change it brings to him, and he feels it in his bones what he says you haveta love him because that's just how you're built.

"From the marrow out," he agrees, toasting to the notion because that's how it is for him.

He's trying to picture Steve from the description, but it's piecemeal for now--without a mention of the serum or the transformation, he's still picturing a man who's tiny, who has remained sickly all his life...who might not even be alive now, the way that Barnes checks and then rechecks himself on verb tense, so he'll need to handle that delicate terrain with care.

"My Steve's name is Hakkyuu. He probably wasn't much more'n 90 pounds either for a lotta years. Not so sickly though, just small. He's kinda like a really loud firework squeezed into this small package." Talking about him makes Vrenille's eyes light up, brings this helplessly fond smile to his face.

"Place we grew up, city called Ebonhawke. It's this stronghold built out against a mountain. City at war. By the time Hakkyuu and I were born, it had been under siege near two and a half centuries--enemy army camped right outside the city walls, just beyond reach of our trebuchets. Every now and then they'd manage to lob some kinda bomb in, destroy a building here or there, that sorta thing.

"Hakkyuu never knew his parents, never knew what happened to 'em either. That's just how it was sometimes. Mine I knew were dead, left my uncle to raise me, then he died too. Hakkyuu and I met when we were 'round twelve. We were all each other had in the world. We lived on the streets, slept in ruined buildings." It's strange that he almost seems to remember it fondly, but then maybe it's not so strange at all, because it's not the conditions he's thinking of, it's the companionship.

"When we were sixteen, the whole world fell apart. This elder dragon, Kralkatorrik, woke up, flew right across Ascalon, barely missed the city itself. The whole landscape, every living thing in its path changed. They became these crystalline monsters--the Branded, we call 'em. And all they wanna do is kill.

"It was chaos. I think Ebonhawke nearly fell. And I couldn't find Hakkyuu anywhere. Everyone said he was dead." He shakes his head here, takes a long drink of his beer to cover the parts of the story he's not ready to tell--the way that Hakkyuu had materialized again, seemingly out of nowhere, days later. The way that he had changed, all the pigment drained from him and these strange amethyst eyes the color of Branded crystal. Everyone said he was Branded, and Vrenille, scared half out of his head and rattled by shock and trauma, had believed it.

"Turns out the tenacious little bastard wasn't dead. Y'know, I wrote him off. I got nothing to do but own that. Nearly ten years I didn't see him. Lotta things changed. And then there I am in a bar one night, and he just walks through the door." He snorts a huff of dry laughter. "It was not an easy reunion. He nearly punched me in the teeth. And, y'know, since he'd basically become a trained assassin, I reckon that probably woulda hurt." He grins.

"We're good now though. It took some work, but I'd say we're closer now'n when we were kids."

"Christ..." Halfway through the story, Bucky had stopped moving. His beer is suspended in motion toward his mouth, paused as all of his attention directed at Vrenille. With just a few changes, this could be the story of him and Steve. Not perfect--after all, he was the one who became a trained assassin. And they definitely weren't closer now than when they were kids. Possibly because Bucky hadn't stopped running long enough to have a real conversation with him. Right now, he's not sure what had scared him more about that talk: that Steve might just turn and walk away from him or that he would open his arms and accept him. "Christ," he repeats, this time at himself. What a fucking mess he was.

"That...could have been my story," he admits quietly. Vrenille has told him so much and he's offered so little in return. Bucky's not used to someone being around that wants to hear the truth. He's absolutely not used to being comfortable around someone enough to even consider telling the truth to. But then there was this strange man.

Bucky looks at him appraisingly. Like he couldn't kill him easily with one metal hand if things went south. He's just so used to being on his guard that he's nearly forgotten what it was like to have even one of his walls down. And now nearly all of them had crumbled. Nearly. Enough that he could say something in return.

"I was your Hakkyuu, in the end part. We were close. So close. Then there was a fight... Steve thought I was dead." Bucky raises his hand and flexes the plates in his arm, letting them make that damned whirring noise. "I wish I had been dead. But...years passed. Lots of years. And now I'm back but..."

He sighs and gets up to go and refill their bowls with the soup. It's so thin that they could probably drink the whole thing and still be hungry. He plops some of the softened vegetables down for both of them and takes his time with it. For some reason, he doesn't want to look at someone right now. Least of all someone who's presence he's beginning to enjoy.

"Your Hakkyuu is braver than me, it seems. At least he had the guts to go and punch you. I ran to the other side of the world."

"Don't sell yourself short," Vrenille watches Barnes fill the bowls and return to his seat, murmuring "Thanks" as the second serving is set down in front of him.

"He may have nearly punched me first, but then he pretty much bee-lined as far from me as he could get and just...hid. We'd probably never've gotten past that if it wasn't for this one really stubborn little plant--er, sylvari. You probably don't have those here--sentient humanoid plant-people?" Also probably not the most important point to focus on at the moment. "Anyway, it took someone who was gonna stick his damn nose in where it didn't belong and just keep the two of us banging heads 'til we cracked before we managed to come together again."

Much as Vrenille obviously loves the stubborn little plant in question, he also knows at once that Barnes is going to be looking for parallels, making extrapolations, because even if the man has told him comparatively little, he can see that the story he's sharing matters, that it makes a difference for him to share it, and he feels the knit of it weaving the two of them together as he does. Vrenille's never had reason to wonder if he could do for someone else what Kyinnlen--his tale's stubborn sylvari--had done for him and Hakkyuu. Now though, the question just presents itself.

But then Steve isn't here, of course, which rather changes the terrain of the whole thing: if Vrenille is going to be something for Barnes, it's got to be something else--something bespoke, not a recast from a ready-made mold. Does he want that--to suss out the need, open himself to its demands? The answer is surprisingly simple, barely a question at all: of course.

It's not a transactional matter like bartering goods for services. It's that in the midst of the royal clusterfuck that the universe has seen fit to make of his life by dropping him into some random world through an anomalous rip in space-time, it has also seen fit to give him Barnes: one supremely bad roll of the dice followed by one that's better than he had any right to expect. When that kind of chance happens, even if it's messy and complicated and maybe hurts sometimes, you don't hold back. Every now and then, people come into your life in a big way; because it's rare, experience has taught him to value and embrace it.

So he watches Barnes with warm blue eyes, extends his right hand across the table towards Barnes' left, a motion of his fingers requesting that the metal hand be extended to him--for a further examination, perhaps, but also simply for contact. He doesn't need to be told about Barnes' assassin training to know that arm could probably crush the bones in his hand or snap his neck with minimal effort, yet he invites its touch anyway without hesitating, because it's not about the arm for him; it's about the man.

"It must've hurt, this." Somehow even the soft whir of the mechanism seems a testimony to it. "And I'm guessing that it wasn't so much your idea."

Vrenille's touch is something Bucky is getting comfortable with, now. He likes the warmth of it, even when he can only get a vague impression of it from the plates in his hand. This is something human that he'd lost over the years; people could touch one another and want nothing more than to just feel them. No pain. No control. Just the simple expression of one person reaching out for another and taking what they can get. It's something he hadn't known he'd missed until Vrenille starts giving it to him without even a hesitation.

Bucky's hand shifts over his, not holding it but pressing down to make sure the gesture reads as intentional. He's growing to understand that these small movements for Vrenille can open up entire worlds of meaning that Bucky never even knew he was revealing. But it's nice. No one's heard his story from him. This is almost a test drive of what he'd say to someone else. Maybe even to Steve, one day.

One day.

"It wasn't, no." He looks down at his hand and arm. It's just as alien now as it was when it was first installed. Like something malignant and intrusive that took the place of something else. Something better. Sometimes Bucky wants to rip the damn thing off entirely and learn to work with one arm. He's still not sure why he hasn't other than the fact that the circuts would be tricky. Probably.

"I was...found. There was an accident on a job with Steve. He tried to save me, but I fell. Shoulda died." Oftentimes wishes he had. "It took off my arm and I thought that was it. But people found me and gave me this arm and a whole lot of other things.... Nothing I'm fond of, 'course. But. It is what it is."

It takes nothing for him to switch hands with his spoon to continue eating. The other one stays on top of Vrenille's.

"It's couldn't argue. I was....out of it. Stayed out of it for awhile. Till after it was done. Now it's just... there. Doesn't hurt anymore. But yeah. Not my choice at all."

Vrenille holds onto that hand, palm to palm, flesh to metal, so that his fingertips brush the underside of Barnes' wrist, running along the lines of the plates, feeling the smoothly machined edges, the frictionless way they seem to move. He touches it like he would any limb, like it makes no odds with him whether it's metal or organic. He just treats it all the same because however it came to be there, the metal is now simply his arm, a part of him.

All that notwithstanding, prosthetic limbs are rare in his world, and he doesn't know of any like this one. The spirit of what was done, however--the way that Barnes seems to have been made into something like a test subject, an object for the whims and disposal of others--that, for Vrenille, has an easy comparison: Inquest. It sounds, in fact, almost like textbook Inquest. And the association puts enough flesh on the story's bones for him to understand, to sketch an outline of the acres and acres of suffering, the pain he must have endured, the dehumanizing disregard, being treated like a thing.

That Barnes is alive and sane at all speaks to a strength of character that he doubts the man even gives himself full credit for.

"And that's how you ended up here." Half a world away from the home you're not sure how to find anymore, with a memory you've maybe only half pieced back together from however out of it you were. It's what he tallies up and reads between the lines of everything that Barnes has told him. He knows so much about the man now that it's strange to think he still only knows his last name.

"You know, Barnes, if I was a betting man, I'd wager that the next time you see Steve, it's not gonna be 'cause he wants to punch you. And even if it is, it won't be because he misses you any less. You survived. I ain't even heard half of it all yet and I already know that's a helluva feat."

Bucky doesn't feel like a survivor. He feels threadbare. Or as threadbare as he could ever be, given that he's never been able to shake being a soldier. His goal isn't to survive, though. It's to make amends. However he can, even if it's one person at a time. One life to replace all the ones he's taken. It could very well take the rest of his own life to do it, but that doesn't sound so bad to him. Not like he really deserves a life of leisure and relaxation, anyway.

He doesn't feel Vrenille's fingers as such, but he can feel the moving pressure. It's soothing in an odd way Bucky can't explain. It's like someone is doing maintenance and actually caring for what they touch and what they break in the process. No one ever had before which makes the whole thing novel in a very pleasant way. His own fingers duplicate the gesture. It's just as soothing and nice on the other side as well.

"You're right. But Christ, I wish he'd let me go." Bucky stopped eating and just leaned forward over his bowl. "He wants someone who doesn't exist anymore. Ya know? I barely even remember all of our past. He's going to find me and he's going to miserable and disappointed. I'd rather he hit me and move on."

His thumb curls around Vrenille's as he talks about Steve. He used to do the same thing with him, once upon a time. Out on a fire escape, looking at the sun. Pretending they weren't when they both knew they were.

"Enough with my sob story." He looks up at Vrenille with a smile. "I swear, it doesn't get much better. Maybe yours does, though?"

MACHINES CANNOT LOVE

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