Chaos Incarnate

Yelena had gotten a tip about some of your stuff showing up at a mutual aid org in Midtown. The charming lady running the place recognized John’s uniform and coughed up a few details about your visit. Nothing significant, nothing except the bracelet.

The room was squat and long, a yellow cast to the lights, the faint dusty smell of a thrift store emanating from the racks of clothes and tables of microwaves, plates, desk fans…

“Was there a bracelet?” he asked, bracing for the answer. The woman was busy sifting through a box of donations that had just come in. He could tell her patience with him was wearing thin. “Small. Silver.”

“No, I don’t think so, honey,” she said, shaking her head absently. “I don’t think she brought in any jewelry.”

John wandered the aisles searching for pieces of you, a tiny flame of hope alive in his chest. If you didn’t give up the bracelet, then maybe…

Maybe what? Maybe you had donated it somewhere else. Maybe you had thrown it in the Hudson, maybe you had bent it into a little stick figure of him and then set that stick figure on fire and then when it didn’t burn up you mangled it under your boot. Maybe Bob would start picking up after himself in the common room and maybe Ava would stop jump-scaring people to entertain herself and maybe Bucky would stop giving him that glare, but the odds were the odds, and they were stacked against him.

These were the circular thoughts of a desperate man.

He had noticed you admiring the bracelet at a flea market months ago, one Bob had dragged everyone to because there was a vendor with a tent with wall-to-wall lava lamps, which he thought was the coolest thing imaginable in a city full of cool things.

“You have to admit,” you said, leaning over a small jewelry stand in the next tent over. “The lava lamps were good.”

John rested one hand on your waist, hovering. He did that a lot, especially when the relationship was still new, like he was constantly trying to convince himself that you were his and wanted him to touch you. “He does know it’s not real lava, right?”

Then, he noticed you looking at the bracelet. It was simple, silver, delicate, with a geometric design hammered into it. John plucked it off the display, bought it before you could tell him not to, and slid it onto your wrist as he pulled you into a lingering kiss outside the tent. It had started to mist, then rain, and he remembered the way the asphalt smelled, mingling with your shampoo as it reactivated in your damp hair. He remembered the way you leaned into him like there was no one else at the flea market, like Yelena wasn’t making soft gagging noises five feet away.

It was the best seventeen dollars he ever spent.

You only took that stupid bracelet off to shower. You liked to sleep on your side, John wrapped around your back, his nose in your neck, one arm clamped over your body, the metal of that bracelet growing warm against his wrist. Even at 200$ a plate gala events, it stayed with you. John loved it there. Unpretentious. Sturdy. Not a wedding ring, not yet, and not a cuff that closed, one that was always a little open.

He loved that day, when lava lamps were neat again and you kissed him with the whole city blanketed in vapor; it felt like a dream now, that day, veiled, strange, so perfect it didn’t seem like it could exist on this timeline, the one where he was standing at a donation table holding your favorite denim jacket, no trace of your scent on the fabric.

Yelena picked up your trail in Kinshasa, but John arrived there too late. Kenema. Blantyre. Nobody would talk to him. Maybe they had been warned, maybe they had been bribed. He didn’t think it was a coincidence Yelena’s tips kept coming from volunteer aid camps. He had learned not to show up to these operations in uniform, or else everyone looked at him like he was diseased. You left Africa, going north, to Beirut, then Kyiv. There, John found exactly one nurse who provided a description. It was helpful, sort of, but John was too late again.

You were gone. You were a ghost. It was like you could sense him coming, and your instinct never failed.

He wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

The dream started happening three months after you left.

It unfolded the same each time—John would find himself dazed, wandering the tower, remembering something he needed to tell you. He would stumble to your door, knock. When the door finally opened, Steve Rogers was there, filling the empty space, naked from the waist up.

“It’s not a good idea for you to be here,” Rogers would tell him, with the resigned air of a disappointed father.

“Let me see her—”

Then he would hear you, your voice echoing from deep inside the room.

“John? John?”

And he would wake up soaked in a cold sweat, headache brewing, convinced you were right there next to him, that the dreams were lying and you would be there, wrapped in the sheet, warm and inviting.

It was fitting, maybe, that the dream had visited him last night.

Thirteen months and twelve days, but who was counting? Florida. The Panhandle. A Category 5 hurricane had made landfall at Mexico Beach, then swung north and inland toward Panama City. The predicted downgrade never came, the devastation flattening pockets of the coast until the terrain looked like it had never been touched or settled by humans.

Yelena spotted you first.

The New Avengers had come in on a larger convoy--Humvees, amphibious vehicles, airboats. Humanitarian orgs, off duty EMS, and volunteers streamed in to help look for trapped survivors and to recover the deceased. The floodwater had only just started receding. The air was heavy, stale, like a sponge that needed to be wrung out. John was busy searching the surface of the water; it was eerie how calm everything had become, how still it was in the aftermath, houses reduced to matchsticks, cars wedged in trees, and now just the quiet and the stench and the crackle of walkie talkies.

“Walker.”

Yelena said his name so softly it was almost lost to the bump and slosh of the convoy tires and the chugging engines. She was facing inland, John out to sea, both of them clinging to the roof of an armored Humvee. Her hand clapped over his forearm, squeezing and squeezing until he swiveled around to see what the hell was so urgent.

“I’ve got one here!”

John’s heart burned up to his throat. Holy fucking shit. It was you. Different hair, no fancy Avengers uniform, overworked and bedraggled and dirty but unmistakably you.

You were wading out of a house with a collapsed roof, water to your waist as you sloshed down the steps, someone’s terrified, whimpering Rottweiler draped across your shoulders like a furry rucksack. Your head was pushed down from the weight of the dog on your neck, your hands clamped around its haunches and shoulders.

Yelena said something else, but he didn’t hear her; John didn’t think, he jumped in after you.

John waded up to you, fighting the detritus hidden beneath the floodwater, holding out his arms as your paths intersected. You didn’t look happy to see him. Not angry or stunned, just blank, like your brain had no way to reconcile what your eyes were insisting. The convoy kept going, rumbling on, leaving you there in the terrible, humid silence.

Maybe it was just right that he found you here, in the middle of another disaster. At least he hadn’t caused this one.

He didn’t know what to say; everything he practiced, everything he imagined, felt insane and trite.

Tell me what I have to do.

Tell me where you went.

Tell me everything that happened, don’t leave out a single minute.

Are you okay? Are you lonely? Is this killing you the way it’s killing me?

Do you still wake up and forget the bed will be empty?

Tell me there’s a chance. Tell me there’s a fucking chance, even if it’s in hell, I’ll go there, I’ll go there to get it.

He didn’t know what to say, so he made himself useful.

“Are there more inside?” he asked, still holding out his arms.

“I don’t know,” you said, shifting forward, ducking down, letting John wrestle the dog out of your grasp. “The x-code says two, I just found him. I should, maybe I shouldn’t--”

“Go.” John said, nodding his head toward the house, patting the dog’s butt as it started whimpering in his grasp. “I’ve got you, big fella.”

You offered him a whisper of a grateful smile. John called that good enough, and turned to follow the trail of the convoy, hugging the giant dog because he couldn’t hug you. “How did she get prettier? Lucky boy, getting rescued by her. Strong. Soft heart, though, that’s why she’s going back in for your buddy…” The dog whined again and licked his face. “Thanks. Let’s see if we can find your people. I’m a little lost, too, but we’ll stick together.”

John tracked you down again two hours later, back at the camp. You were at the makeshift gate, the perimeter, planting yourself in front of another Humvee that you weren’t interested in letting through. It was just you, your stained t-shirt, a tac vest and a leg holster against six and a half tons of armored vehicle. The sun was setting, orange and blazing over the water, a lone reminder that this could be a paradise.

One of the security personnel from Doctors Without Borders sidled up next to him, scratching his forearm nervously. John had worked side by side with the guy earlier; he was talkative but serious, with a friendly face. The man peering out of the Humvee was not so friendly. “Senator Wells. Surprised he showed his damn face. Just hope he doesn’t run her over.”

John tipped his head to the side with a wry smile, eyes never leaving the back of your head. “My money’s on her.”

The senator in question, dressed in the most ridiculous galoshes John had ever seen and a floppy fishing hat, exited the vehicle, storming up to you with the energy of a flustered customer demanding to see the manager.

“No thanks,” you were saying firmly, arms crossed. “We don’t need vultures like you circling. It’s dangerous here--tetanus, contaminated water, infections, industrial chemicals, downed power lines. You want your precious photo op? Roll up your sleeves, follow instructions, and do some actual work or pack up and get lost.”

Wells wasn’t budging, neither was his vehicle.

John sighed, clapped the other volunteer on the shoulder before leaving him behind to join you at the gate. He saw the expression on the senator’s face change as John approached. Recognition, then disgust.

Fine with me.

John positioned himself just behind you. “We got a problem here?”

“What’s worse than one disgraced Avenger? Two,” the senator sneered.

“What’s your deadlift like these days?” John asked, swinging toward you, ignoring him, leaning into you as much as you would allow. He sniffed, looking beyond Wells, sizing up the Humvee. “Five? Six?”

Tons. He meant tons.

He felt you smiling, then heard it in your reply. You never could resist a chance to troll sanctimonious pricks like Wells. “Please,” you scoffed, glancing at the truck. “I’m insulted."

John gave a belabored sigh. “I tend to do that.”

He shrugged, dusted off his gloves, strode by a mumbling, red-faced Wells, and crouched down in front of the Humvee’s bumper. Hooking his hands under the winch, he strained against the weight of it, flattening his back, driving through his heels, the wheels lurching as the mud lost suction and the truck started to lift.

“He’ll push that thing all the way to Tallahassee if you don’t stop him,” John heard you say. “Shit, I’ll help.”

Wells stormed back to the passenger side, scampering up the now much higher, diagonal step before throwing himself gracelessly inside, legs kicking. John let go with a grunt and the Humvee slammed down, spattering him in mud.

“You boys have a nice ride home,” John muttered, tapping his fist on the hood, then wiping off his gloves again as he joined you, the front lights of the truck silhouetting him against the darkening sky. And you, standing there in his shadow, gazed up at him with the strangest look.

“Show off,” you murmured, eyes darting down to your feet.

John tore off his sweat-damp beret, fussing with it, punching his fist into it, messing with his hair. Glancing. Waiting. Wanting. “The more things change…” he said softly.

You met his eye again, jaw set. You turned to leave. “Sure, John. But they do change.”

It was clumsy, it was reckless, but John couldn’t help himself, not after thirteen months of steady pain. He reached for you, hand closing around your right wrist, just insistent enough to slow you down, just hard enough to feel the rigid shape of something metal under your sleeve.

You both felt it.

John’s hand flexed around the bracelet.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please. Ten minutes, okay? I won’t ask again. I’ll forget I saw you. It’ll be like I was never here.”

He heard your slight intake of breath, like that outcome was the worst imaginable one.

“Ten minutes,” you said, taking back your arm, leading him through the camp and back to your current base of operations, which turned out to be a refurbished RV, simple, unmarked.

You let him inside. John had never felt more like he was the wrong size. Your shit was everywhere, remnants of a year without him, most of it impersonal, functional. Somehow all of it smelled like wet dogs. He wedged himself against the back of the driver’s cab, watching you go to a mini fridge to collect two cold beers. You opened them with your thumb, then passed him one.

No cheers, no clink, just you retreating across the RV, eyes narrowed, posture already rigid with defense.

“Who else is here?” you asked.

“Yelena, Bucky,” he said. “The others get in tomorrow.”

“How’s Bob?”

“Bob’s good. Not…not on the team yet, but we’re hopeful.”

“How…” Your voice was thin, scraped across a sharp feeling John knew way too well. It was lodged in your throat, the same place it resided in him. It roughed up every word whenever your name got mentioned, whenever he was forced to relive that night. “How are you?”

For half a second, he considered lying. It felt good to lift that truck in front of you, but now it was time for the grownups to talk. What was it all for--the sleepless nights, the regret, the anger management therapist and the new regular shrink and the late-night cigarettes with Yelena—if he was going to turn into a liar the second it really mattered?

He respected you too much to play the easy part. The tough guy. The broken soldier.

“Shitty.”

That caught you off-guard. Your eyes flew to him, a laugh suppressed against your wrist, against the bracelet, as you wiped a little spit of beer off your lip.

“You?” he asked, sparing you the task of pitying him.

“Busy.” You did that thing, that nervous thing, running your finger around the mouth of your beer bottle. It got hard for you to look at him again; he missed the pressure of your eyes. “But it’s hard to think too much if you keep moving.”

“Amen,” he said softly, taking a swig. “Olivia begged me to get a life I was swinging by the house so much…”

He didn’t mean it the way you took it, but you were standing up straighter all of the sudden, drawing your own conclusions, ones that dented a frustrated crease across your forehead. You caught yourself, though, fixing your expression before it became a larger tell.

“Not to—” John trailed off, snorting down at his boots, fidgeting. “For custody stuff,” he explained, scratching a dead mosquito out of his beard. “She’s actually…Well, she’s good. She’s getting married in a few months. New Years.”

You digested that with a softer bend to your lips, your shoulders lowering by degrees. “And you’re…you’re okay with that? You’re okay?”

“With that?” John laughed, hoarse, shaking his head. “Yeah, I’m okay with that.” His cold humor petered out, all the old protective wells running dry at once. You had caught up. You had bullshitted. “But I’m…” He cleared his throat, drove his toe into the floor, tried again. “I’m not fucking okay.”

“John—”

“My new anger management guy says I self-destruct as a form of control,” he said. “Maybe everything falls apart, but at least that’s familiar.”

“Anger management?” You pursed your lips, studying him. “Did Valentina set that up?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I did.”

“And I suppose you think that fixes everything.” Cold. Cold but fair.

It hung between you for a while, gathering power, gathering strength, the same dreadful darkness that had hung over you both the night your secrets came out, and he tore it all down.

“It felt like an ambush,” John blurted out, then flinched at how defensive he sounded. Too late. And anyway, that ten minutes was going by quick. “Wilson. Barnes. You. I know what their fists feel like knocking my head around. But you… that landed. That put me out cold. And I’m used to being the punching bag, but not with you. You never went for a cheap shot, so it felt like something changed.” He glanced at the clock display in the RV cab. “Six minutes left,” he said, wincing at the crack in his voice. “I’m sorry, but you know that, don’t you? I’m sorry I didn’t trust that it was love. I never do.” John looked at the clock again. “Five minutes. Can I just spend it looking at you?”

You closed your eyes, tears squeezing out at the seams. John opened his mouth to say more, but you cut him off.

“God, John. It wasn’t an ambush. I would never do that to you, you of all people. That was the worst year of my life,” you whispered, words breaking apart, the beginnings of a sob. “It was punishment enough, you know? The lab only chose me for that program because I knew Steve. He was right about the dangers, I was wrong, and I almost died for it. He’s not a happy memory, John.”

John started toward you from across the van, but you lifted your hands, warning him, holding him at bay. Fuck, he wanted to hold you, and now you were crying, crying because of him…

“You don’t have to—”

You cut him off again, slicing your hand through the air, insisting on his silence. “I should’ve told you, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. By the time it seemed important I didn’t want to lose you, I knew you would…would think I was trying to replace Steve or that I was some weird Captain America-chaser…” You heaved a dark laugh, holding your beer bottle with both hands between your thighs, gazing up at the ceiling. “But I’m not a liar. I’m not,” you added, gruff, swallowing around a visible thorn. “I didn’t fuck him. I never wanted him the way I wanted you.”

John didn’t try to butt in this time. He nodded, slowly, regarding his beer the way a man with no options regards a gun, and gave a single, humorless laugh. “Past tense.”

“I don’t know what I want,” you said, throwing up one hand in exasperation. “But I don’t want the man I left that night. I can’t…” A hitch in your breath, another round of tears hastily swallowed. “I can’t go through that again. I can’t hear you say those things about the—” You sputtered out, wiped your wrist across your mouth, the bracelet brushing your lips before you managed to get out the rest. “About the man I love.”

John put his beer down on a folding table heaped with gear. Immediately. He didn’t think, he jumped in after you. Two strides and he was across the van, not touching, not crowding, but so close he could finally smell your soap and shampoo above the reek of unwashed tac vests and waterlogged socks. It made his eyes heavy and his heart seize.

You swayed a little, leaning back against the plastic frame of the dining bench. Light from that alcove spilled across your leg, your shoes. In a show of grace he knew he didn’t deserve, your hand reached toward him, trembling, then flattened against his suit, smoothing up to his chest.

Your eyes fluttered shut. “Present tense.”

"God, I still...I still love you, too." John closed his hand over yours, keeping it there. “Three minutes.”

You touched his chin; he touched yours. He leaned down, slowly, afraid it was still just a dream, that it would end the minute his mouth reached yours.

“Better make it count, Walker.”

The kiss burned through him like lightning, shocking him back to life. He stepped closer, between your legs, both hands sliding along your jaw, cupping your face, every empty, wanting day in the tremor of his fingers as he held you. Three minutes wasn’t enough. With another chance do it right, three lifetimes weren’t enough.

Your taste was familiar, but the longing made it new. Even better, maybe, than the first time.

The first time. You had been squeezed together behind John’s shield, pinned down, bullets clanging off the steel as you literally put your heads together and tried to come up with a plan, a way out. Your eyes were startling up close. He remembered the ludicrous thought of how soft your hair was against his cheek. At least I’ll die with a beautiful woman in my arms.

“Fuck it. Fire back,” you finally told him, after six other harebrained ideas were floated and mutually shot down. “I’ll charge them.”

“No, too reckless, I’m down to my last clip--”

“Then you better make it count, Walker.” You had grabbed his face, smooshed your lips against his, and leaned back, laughing, breathless. “For luck.”

You didn’t die. John’s fire held them off just long enough for you to close the distance, cause chaos, and when his final clip was empty, he switched to the shield, flinging it on a curve, knocking out whoever was still on their feet. You caught the ricochet, maybe not with any finesse, but it was still impressive.

“Maybe you need one of your own,” he had said when you handed it back. It looks damn good on you.

You rolled your eyes and shook your head, then hitched your shoulder, cutting a look at the shield he was hooking onto his back. “They couldn’t make that thing any lighter for you?”

That kiss still on his mind, fresh on his lips, he had leaned down, cocky. “I thought women liked it heavy.”

In the RV, John pulled you into his body, your hips snug to his, your mouth slanting against his. He loved the way you kissed, desperate, hungry, like it was always the last time. You made a soft, sweet sound in your throat and it almost undid him, almost sent him clattering to his knees. His hands smoothed down your neck to your shoulders, outlining your sides, curling around your back. He had to make you feel it, how long he had been waiting, how much he never wanted to let go.

You broke the kiss gently, placing a softer, quicker kiss on his lips, leaning back to catch your breath.

“Come with me,” he said, husky, growling into another kiss. He needed more, because if you said no, if you rebuffed him, he wanted something to hold on to, a goodbye that didn’t fill him with needling shame. He nosed into your cheek, only stopping long enough to beg again. “Come back with me.”

“John, I can’t.” But you didn’t push him away. Your hands rested on his chest, absorbing his pulse. “Not yet. I…need time. And they need me here.”

I need you.

John sucked down a stuttering breath, inadequate to steady him.

“I need time,” you said again, and he knew that voice, the one that wasn’t just trying to make him feel better. Earnest. Afraid. He never trusted that it was love, but maybe this time…

“I’ll wait.” John closed his eyes, kissed your forehead; ten minutes had run down. “I’ll never stop waiting.”

John checked his cufflinks for the third time. He grimaced at his reflection, fixing his collar, adjusting his tie. There was something deeply depressing about attending a wedding with a platonic coworker; tenfold depressing when the bride was your ex-wife. He just couldn’t wait to field all the probing questions about his personal life, the one he had blown to smithereens with his usual deft touch.

There was a knock at his door. He called whatever was happening with his hair and his face and his suit good enough and twisted away from the mirror with a sigh. Yelena was in the hall, dressed in sweats, a Big Gulp in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other.

“That’s hardly black tie,” John said, horror clawing up his throat at the thought that he was now attending his ex-wife’s wedding completely fucking alone. Christ.

“What? The Big Gulp doesn’t do it for you?” she teased. “You should get going, you’re going to be late. Car’s downstairs.”

“You’re my date.” He smoothed a hand down his face. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“Can’t go,” she said, coughing pitifully into her Doritos. “Sick.”

“You’re pathetic, you know that?” John brushed past her, thundering down the corridor toward the common room, where Bob was sitting on the couch, crisscross apple sauce, a giant bowl of popcorn and his own Big Gulp on the coffee table, supplies to watch the ball drop. “Thought we were teammates.”

“We are,” Yelena whined, chasing after him.

“Hey, man. You look nice,” Bob called from the couch.

“Traitor,” John huffed at Yelena’s back as she skipped over to the couch to join Bob. “This is traitor behavior.”

“Relaaax, always so dramatic, Walker,” she sighed, shooing him off with her Doritos hand. “I called in backup.” She looked at her watch with a flick of her eyebrows and a supremely smug smile. “They should be here…” The elevator across the common room dinged, letting someone out. “Now.”

You had always been a heartstopper, gorgeous in your Avengers getup, gorgeous in jeans and a sweatshirt, gorgeous in nothing. But John felt like his feet might lift off the ground when you clicked out of the elevator in your silk dress and heels. You looked a little shy, like maybe he wouldn’t be pleased to see you, like maybe you had made him wait too long.

And the bracelet. You were wearing his bracelet, the one and only piece of jewelry adorning your body.

“Heard you needed a date.”

Bob started applauding before you were even in John’s arms. But that’s where you wound up, where you belonged.

“Don’t stay out too late, you crazy kids!” Yelena shouted from the couch.

John didn’t care about fucking up your makeup; he planted one on you, long and lingering, tongue rolling against yours until you shivered against his chest and whimpered into his mouth.

“I hope I’m not too late,” you said, wiping a smudge of lipstick off his chin.