Moving Day
It was the end of spring and the cusp of summer, and Bucky was wandering around a big, empty Avengers Tower.
Pretty much everything important or essential had already been shipped out to their new headquarters in Esopus, upstate New York. A second shipment was scheduled in the next couple of months, but for now, enough had been cleared out that the normally homey, cluttered Tower looked like a ghost town.
Bucky wandered around his and Steve's floor, peeking into rooms, looking on in soft disquiet at the empty walls and floors and ceilings. He could still see dents in the carpet where Steve's bedposts had been. There was the side table, where Steve kept his Bible. There was his dresser. There was the corner where he always kept the shield.
In another room, Bucky could see where his own bed had been, and the chair in the corner, and the bookshelf where he kept his copies of Tarzan and Lord of the Rings. There was a small stain on the carpet in one corner. They never had been able to wash that out.
The living room was empty. The kitchen counters were bare. Even the fridge was gone. They'd eaten everything they could, until it was nearly empty, and packed the few remaining leftovers in a little cooler that sat by the door.
He stepped into the elevator and pushed a button. If he wanted to, he could have asked JARVIS—who was back in the mainframe of the Tower where he belonged, after Vision had helped to resurrect him—but Bucky didn't feel like talking today.
The doors wooshed open, and he was on the Common Floor. It still looked slightly battered, from that battle with Ultron's clones after an unfortunate dinner party. All of the glass had been cleaned up, but there were boards over the windows that had been smashed, and still some dents and scorch marks in the walls.
The couches—where, a long time ago, he'd battled Steve with nerf guns and wrestled him to the floor; where the team had brainstormed charities he could attend and things he could do to give back; where more recently, Pietro had sat and tormented everybody with dumb jokes—were gone.
The glass coffee table—where he'd stood in alarm, just before meeting Thor, and for the first time, someone had shaken his metal hand without fear—was gone.
The dining table—where they'd gathered every Saturday for team breakfast, laughing and sharing stories; where he'd told Natasha she wouldn't break people just because she was made of steel—was gone.
The bar built into the wall was bare. The kitchen was bare. The gym was all empty faux wood floors and mirror walls.
He even went downstairs and poked his head into Tony's lab, finding it empty. All the equipment had already been moved, and Tony himself was nowhere to be seen. The metal floor didn't leave telling marks like carpet, but he did recognize where the workbench had been; he'd sat there plenty of times, while Tony repaired his arm, and rambled on and on about things he could just barely follow.
But the end of the tour found him on the Common Floor again, staring out the wide windows, as the sun set over the familiar skyline of Manhattan.
Bucky heard the steady footsteps before the voice.
"There you are." Steve had a small bag of belongings on his shoulder, the cooler under his arm, and a tentative smile on his face. "You okay?"
Bucky managed to smile. Steve would always make him feel better, just by being there, no matter what was banging around in his head. "Yeah. Just..." He leaned on the window, soaking in the glow of all the little lights. "Taking one last look."
Steve sighed—the one that went in a little puff through his nose—and said nothing. He just clasped Bucky's shoulder, shook it gently, and stared out the window with him.
They stayed there, in companionable silence, for a little bit, watching the sun go down in the distance. When Steve finally spoke, it was just above a whisper.
"Lotta people out there, huh?"
Bucky nodded. "Lots. Jus' runnin' around, livin' their own lives."
"And the Tower is right in the middle of it." Steve sighed. "Not saying it's likely, necessarily, but if anyone ever comes for us..." He tipped his head down at the streets below, pressed his lips into a line, and didn't say anything more.
"I know." Bucky looked up. "An' if we gotta move to protect em', I will. No question." He gave a single laugh through his nose, and a smirk twitched up the side of his face as he looked around the empty Common Room. "Jus' gonna miss this place."
Steve smiled. "Good memories?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
Good memories. It was incredible to say that. In a mind still coping with seventy years of brainwashing and torture, good memories were a precious currency—and he'd hold on to all the ones he could get.
Nobody knew that better than Steve. At the same time, nobody was more willing to give him a hard time than Steve. So it really wasn't a surprise when a big fist punched his shoulder and Steve grinned, "But hey—you can still make new ones."
Bucky snorted, finally grinning with his whole face. "Yeah, yeah, I know." He pushed away from the window and started walking, hands shoved in his pockets in mock-haughtiness. "Somethin' stupid's bound to happen with this team around."
"Exactly!" he cried in earnest, and it made Bucky laugh.
Avengers Tower didn't mean the same to Steve as it did to him—and, he decided, that was okay. For Steve, it was a place to live and work and be close to their team, and it was that. But to Bucky, it was more—it was the first place he'd ever been accepted into a new family in this strange, upside-down future.
But that was all right. He may not be in the building, but like Steve said, he'd still be around that team who welcomed him in. It was a family growing all the time, and if this was the end of a chapter, and the beginning of a new one, he was all here for it.
He couldn't help but recall the fuzzy echoes of a conversation he'd had, seventy-odd years ago and in a different world:
"Where are we goin'?"
"To the future!"
And as he took the cooler from under Steve's arm and stepped into the elevator with him, the last light of the sun dipping below the horizon in the distance, Bucky couldn't help but feel they were going to the future once again.
He didn't have to wait long before "something stupid" happened. This time, it was sorta Steve's fault.
Tony had been bragging about the new headquarters almost as long as he'd been working on it. Everybody had groaned and rolled their eyes at him, of course, but there was a secret understanding that it was just his way of showing what he'd do for the people he cared about. And when the new HQ was finally unveiled, well—suddenly the bragging seemed justified.
Avengers HQ was massive. It was comprised of two buildings—a boxish one to the south, and a crescent-shaped one to the north—connected by a covered walking path, a sky bridge, and an underground shuttle in case of emergencies.
The South Building, nicknamed Combat, was re-purposed from an abandoned Stark Industries warehouse. It housed the holographic training decks, the Quinjet hangar, and office space for the hundred-odd experts that Tony hired to do their grunt work.
Called by the official books A.R.E.S.—Avengers Research, Equipment, and Support—and called by Clint Barton "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reheated leftovers"—because that's what they were—this motley crew of lower-level ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (no one ostensibly dead, like Phil Coulson and Nick Fury, for obvious reasons), along with old friends like Dr. Eric Selvig and Dr. Helen Cho, made up the backbone of the Avengers' efforts, and kept eyes and ears out for planetary threats even when the core team could not.
The North Building, meanwhile, was custom built for the occasion. Nicknamed the Commons, it perched just on a beautiful view of the Hudson River, and housed the comfy living spaces, a few conference rooms, a huge gym, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and Tony's lab.
That last bit was the current source of consternation.
"You put your lab in the Commons?" This, evidently, had not been cleared with Steve, and it was causing him no small amount of angst.
Tony, on the other hand, was perfectly willing to argue on this point in front of all the other Avengers. "Well excuse me if I want to live close to my work!"
Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. "Tony. We discussed this. Anything potentially dangerous goes in Combat—"
"Think of my work ethic!"
"Think of the safety hazards!"
So they kept on arguing, as was their wont, right in the middle of the Common Room in front of god and everybody. The response was as you'd expect. Pietro bristled like a cornered animal, Wanda hung on his arm, Vision floated fretfully nearby—and Bucky and Natasha were playing cards.
"Kalashnikov." Bucky held a hand of four cards, and he tossed them down smugly on the glass coffee table.
"Kalashnikov." Natasha set her hand down with a smack and tossed her hair.
"What?" He threw his hands up in exasperation. "Why didn't you put 'em down earlier?"
"I was going for the golden."
Bucky grumbled something he was glad Steve couldn't hear and took his cards back. They both shuffled their hands, laid them out face-down, and took a card blind from one another. Silently praying as hard as he could, Bucky flipped his card around...
Four of spades.
He banged his head on the table. Natasha leaned back and laughed.
Bucky dragged his head up sullenly and flicked the card out of his fingers. "One."
Natasha turned her card around to reveal an ace. "Four."
He kept grumbling under his breath as he gathered up everything except the discard pile and began to shuffle them together.
"You'll be dead in the next round." Natasha perched her chin daintily on the backs of her fingers.
Bucky snorted. "We'll see about that."
She sneered, a playful version of her Black Widow Look, and he shot back his Winter Soldier Glare.
"Um..." said Vision.
Two assassins turned their heads. Vision looked worried, Pietro looked tense, and Wanda was basically hiding behind her brother.
"Should we," Vision asked slowly, "be concerned?"
"What?" asked Bucky, before he remembered that the ambient white noise was actually two arguing voices.
Oh. Oh. Darn, this couldn't be easy on the newbies. It was hard enough, adjusting to the ins and outs of life in this team—and life in general, in Vision's case—but it was the end of a long day and a big change in residence, and now the two main "leaders", the cornerstones of the group, were at each other's throats. That couldn't be good for the nerves.
"Nah, nah, it's okay." Bucky leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially for added effect. "They do this all the time. It'll be done in a minute."
"Try to think of it as free entertainment." Natasha's almost motherly smile devolved into a smirk. "Or don't. Up to you."
That seemed to work. They didn't look completely calm yet—the twins especially—but were pacified enough to sit back and watch the show.
Steve and Tony, of course, were still going at it.
"Imagine I have an idea in the middle of the night that will save the whole planet from alien invasion." Tony talked with his hands when he got excited, and this was one of those times. "You can't expect a man to hop on a shuttle to the next building over! I might forget it by then!"
"I'm willing to risk that," Steve said tersely, "if it means you don't blow up the building while we're sleeping."
"To save the world?!"
"Fellas, fellas." Clint—ostensibly retired, but who'd come down from upstate and lent his truck to help with moving—popped up between them and slung his arms over their shoulders. He had a little trouble with Steve, considering the man was a tall, broad-shouldered super soldier, but Tony, who was perfectly short enough for Clint to reach, just looked disgruntled.
"I think we all know what the compromise is here." Clint shut his eyes, took a breath, and paused for dramatic effect. "Tony's not allowed to have a lab."
Tony looked insulted. "Hey!"
Steve's lips twitched, and he snorted through his nose.
Tony continued to wave his arms, but the tension was gone. "Why do I have to take the fall for everything?!"
"Okay, okay." Steve, in a better mood already, waved a hand to pacify him. "You can keep it in the Commons."
"Wasn't looking for your permission," said Tony, raising his chin, "but thank you."
"On the condition," Steve said, looking very much like he would like to grind his teeth, "that we don't have any more explosions."
"Aw, don't get your spangled panties in a twist," said Tony (and Steve's eye twitched hilariously). "I promise, any and all damages will be paid for, in full, by yours truly."
"You..." Steve couldn't even form words. "You own the building. You'd be paying for them anyway."
"Eh, potato, potahto." Tony threw his arms out wide. "Who wants to see their new rooms!"
Steve did the Captain Sigh, but his protests were drowned out in the cheers from the rest of the room, and—with an indulgent smile—he went along with it.
A few weeks passed. The argument was forgotten. Bucky was reading a book in the sunlight of the Common Room, while Wanda wrote something in a journal, Vision meditated a foot off the floor, and Pietro made a sandwich nearby.
BOOOM. The floor shook under their feet. Wanda squeaked, and Vision nearly fell over.
Smoke billowed out of Stark's wing, and fire alarms began to blare.
"Toooonyyyyy!" roared a distant Steve.
Bucky took a deep breath of smoky air and let it out with a smile. "Ah. Just like home."
A/N: Welcome to Everyday in Esopus, a collection of one-shots around everyone's least favorite Avengers home base! Glad to have you on board.
Before we get started, let's talk headcanons. The HQ. It's boring. It looked promising in Age of Ultron, became grey and nondescript in Civil War, and was basically just a big empty warehouse with windows by Endgame. Snores-ville. The whole point of this fic is to make it Not That, and also to share the scripts and ideas I've had banging around that don't have any other home yet.
Attentive readers might notice I've combined a) the backup workforce seen in AoU, b) the two-building setup from Ant-Man, and c) a heck-ton of my own headcanons about Tony's extravagance to get the HQ you see in this story. Why? Because I do what I want, and if I have to set a story in something besides Avengers Tower, I'm darn gonna make it interesting.
Trust me, the following chapters will be shorter (and happier!) than this one. Updates might be sporadic, but I'll try to get one out each week if possible. I'm tentatively opening requests for this series, so if you have a good one-shot idea for life in the HQ, drop a line in the reviews! I might just get inspired and write it.
The card game Bucky and Natasha are playing is Kalashnikov, created by Life of Boris on Youtube! Feel free to look up his video explaining it. I figured it was on-brand for the Russian Assassin Buddies.
Reviews are coolers. Tbc...