#youxmove

“I did, you’re right. I know I did.” His head drops with the words, heavily exhaling through his nose. Not from the pain– a graze from a bullet stopped being something he actually worried about sometime in the last eight decades. Guilt.

He said– promised he would slow down, stop throwing himself into danger. In just the past month he’s racked up more burns, bruises, and worse, than he has since he ran around fighting aliens. It’s a side effect of chasing down every person or group looking to cause trouble that he could sniff out. There’s no shortage. He’s kept busy.

The TV is muted, he glances at the chyron for just a moment. 10 Year Anniversary of HYDRA Attack in DC. Every news source has looked similar for the last week.

“I’m just trying to help, Sharon.” He stands, walking past her towards the bathroom and the first aid kit he knows is under the sink. “I’ll take a break after I get this last guy, okay? Promise.”

“No one is going to want to go after the guy who sits behind a computer.” “They’re going to go after a guy who sits behind a computer if they want something in that computer.” The conversation between them felt like a lifetime ago. Winn being so sure that no one was going to want an analyst, but he was very wrong. As usual Sharon was right, and it was too late for him to tell that to her. 

It took him way too long to piece together moments of what brought him here, to the present. Winn was working alone that night, staying late to finish some research for Fury. He heard the footsteps, and quickly closed out of what he was doing. And then he heard the yelling to move away from the computer. They wanted to know what he was up to, and Winn couldn’t let that happen. So in a moment of bravery he deleted the files, turning around to a very angry enemy. The rest happened quickly, them deciding if they couldn’t get the computer they would take the next best thing. The person who had the information that was on it. 

He didn’t know who they worked for, they didn’t really say. Just used their fists to get what they wanted, and when they didn’t work they moved onto other means. Water soaked his shirt from various attempts of waterboarding to get him to talk. Bruises covered a good portion of his body, blood stains on his shirt from where their rings had cut into his skin. His face wasn’t much better, blood from various scratches, swelling around his eye that would bruise, amongst various other injuries. He wasn’t stupid, he knew that they were going to kill him either way, so it didn’t matter if he shared the intel. So he held out and hoped that eventually they would get bored. 

youxmove asked:

“What was Bucky like?”  (I needed to punch someone in the feels. Sorry Steve).

     It’s an inevitability, he supposes, that in sharing life details and the little things that made them them this would be a topic broached. He’d had so little to share from youth to semi-adulthood simply because he hadn’t lived it to the extent of those he grew up with. But he had lived. He’d witnessed horrors no child should have ever had to endure and it had only been up till now that he’d realized he’d been dancing around the worst of it. Glorifying the neighborhood he grew up in with the innocence of a child’s eyes. Cutting out the parts no one wants to remember left him with a narrow path of conversation.

     Bucky...

     Bucky had made up the majority of his best childhood memories. It was a disservice to avoid mentioning him but that part...that part he’d had to keep to himself. Guard it like something sacred. But she was earnest and something about her had always felt familiar enough. Disarming, charming, like he could confide in her in the late of night when he couldn’t sleep.

     “You want another beer? Hold on, lemme get one.” He needs the short walk to her fridge to compose himself, figure it out. Put the pieces back into place and decide if he should divulge the most personal of places.

     When he returns he sets her beer down on the coaster, cap already popped and resting against the rim of the glass and he sinks back, nursing his new one too.

     “He uh..” Deep breath, Steve. She’s safe. Her whole body’s turned, half curled up in her space on the couch and she’s got her head in the palm of a hand, elbow resting on the back of the couch and it sings at ease. Interested but comfortable. The corner of his lips twitches upwards as he glances at her, stares at the freshly polished natural color making her nail beds glimmer in the dull interior lighting.

     “Everyone thinks I’m...” That sounds arrogant and it tastes bad on the tip of his tongue and his lips purse briefly around it but he shakes his head and continues on. “But he... He was the one who dragged me up out of the dirt. Took care of me when my mother couldn’t. At my bedside when I was too sick to even sit up. You’d think...ha. You’d think he was born to it. Lookin’ after someone like me.”

     His fingers pace around the girth of the bottle and he takes another long gulp and likes the way it fizzles out into the taste of hops. He just wishes he could get a buzz.

     “And y’know...he was real popular. The pretty kind everyone wanted to be associated with, whip smart and never let anyone tell him he couldn’t do somethin’. I was always so amazed throughout the years that here he was, makin’ sure I was a part of whatever it was he was doing even if no one invited me. He never...” Steve has to clear his throat there’s something rising up that feels like a downward spiral into loss and he tosses back another quick mouthful.

     “He was the kinda guy that rooted for the underdog. He was a better man than even me. Probably the reason why I made it as long as I did if I’m honest. But he was huge nerd, always loved Howard Stark’s displays at the expo, always raving about the future n’ technology.” He grimaces, that bright goofy over-the-moon smile shot over his shoulder as Stark unveiled the hovercar.

     “Even when they made me Captain America, even when I outranked him without all that effort he had put into becoming Sergeant, even when everyone hailed me a hero for doing what I knew he’d do for me...all he did was stand beside me. That dynamic shift...any other man I knew would’ve resented me. Hated me, even. Bucky wasn’t that kinda guy. He’d be whatever you needed.” The bottle whines in his grip, a hairline fracture spreading where his fingers put pressure and he blinks, takes the last few gulps and sets it down on the table.

Well, starting off one of his multiversal visits with a faceplant onto a New York sidewalk was definitely a new one. If a bit expected given that he’d felt that increasingly-familiar chill down his spine while mid-jump on his board. Sure, he was maybe getting a little old for skateboarding and sure he might have been able to save himself but dressed in street clothes and not wanting to complicate further visits... he let himself eat it. Though he cushioned the fall best he could.

nsfw questions meme (still accepting) + @defectivexfragmented because of the same question

His words cause a faint hum, brown hues fluttering open before tilting her head upwards to look at him. A small smile tugs at her lips and she can’t help but curl her bare body against him even more. The agent turns her head, pressing a light kiss to his shoulder, then lays her head back down.

“You look peaceful…”

“Mmm...well I guess you just have that effect on me, Sharon.” His arm wrapped around her torso as she pressed her body close to his, and his hand moved up and down along her side, caressing her skin as the two got comfortable once again. “For the first time in my life that I can really remember, I don’t want to get out of this bed. I’d rather just stay here all day, even if things get a little less peaceful before too much longer. Really, anything to just...be here and nowhere else.”

He leaned forward, turning to his side and returning the kiss, though this one was to her cheek rather than her shoulder. “So, I have to ask...would you have been allowed to do this with me back when you were supposed to keep an eye on me for Fury? I want to know out of nothing more than curiosity, really, even though I get the feeling I may not like the answer.” Knowing Fury? The answer was probably no. Him and Sharon getting that close would have been far closer to Steve than Fury would have wanted her, regardless of the circumstances. But now, there were no such impositions, nor was there a professional barrier separating them, which Steve now clearly understood had been the reason she’d hesitated to let things go farther than they had back then.