apocalypsehowcomm | Stuff [OTA]

Who: Winter (Bucky Barnes) and OPEN
When: September catch-all
Where: Various, see prompts
Summary: What Winter gets up to in September
Warnings:

I. Movie(s) - his apartment, close CR only

In the end, Winter chickens out on setting up another outdoor projected watch party for the movies he wants to watch. Instead, he invites people to his apartment sporadically, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in pairs. He always has food and cocoa for them while they watch The Wizard of Oz or Buck Privates or Snow White, all movies that apparently came out during the time he was supposedly living in New York being a normal person.

He watches each one with dedication, hoping for... something. He's not really sure what.

Buck Privates makes him laugh, at least, startling even himself-- even if it's also kind of uncomfortable. He remembers more flashes of the war during that one than he does the movie.

II. Weeding - in town, OTA

The lamb plants sprouted in one place: he and Yelena rooted them out, burned the remains, and salted the ground where they'd sprouted. Now he's prowling the town making sure there aren't any more around. Find him poking his nose into alleys around Thing of Beauty, haunting warehouses near the one they'd cleaned out, and glaring at the fences around Dogtown as if suspecting the things to be in there, lurking, waiting to spread outside the confines of the weird places.

III. Lost - Dogtown, OTA

Winter is... not great at simply drifting along and not thinking. He is not great at being careless. So when he dives in after some stupid kids late one afternoon, he finds himself soon hopelessly lost. He isn't afraid... but he is frustrated and that apparently counts as enough to keep him turning around on himself for hours. He misses dinner. He misses curfew.

Someone might have to come in after him and lead him out, or else let him stumble out whenever the woods simply get bored of him, in the middle of the night.

IV. Passtimes - around town, OTA

Even when not "weeding", Winter patrols the city on his days off, because he can't not work even when he's not on call at ADI. His patrols are, often, more of an amble than a stalk, hands tucked into his coat pockets and gaze roving around to interesting and familiar things about town rather than fixed and open to take in as much as possible at once.

He sits on benches in the (non-Dogwood) park and reads out loud to himself from whatever book he's working on that day. He checks the local papers on streetcorners (those he doesn't read out loud). He buys a milkshake at a little drive-through and looks surprised at how good it is. He looks for any sign that there might be an event related to swing dancing anywhere in town, and is largely disappointed at the lack.

A friend passing by might get offered a sip of his milkshake. A stranger paying any attention to the newspaper stand might get his newspaper offered to them, even if he isn't finished with it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Winter blinks at Martin's surprise, then holds up his hands as if trying to look non-threatening. It doesn't help a whole lot, given his whole vibe is kind of threatening when he's on the job. But at least Martin's familiar with his vibe, and hopefully won't take it badly.

"There were more sheep plants," he explains. "I've been making sure the problem's been taken care of. And no more start growing."

Martin is Very familar with the vibe, and honestly, this is probably the least threatening he's ever seen him (barring that bit where he was terrified on a train). Honestly, the admission that he's here to deal with the plants gives him a sigh of relief. He has no doubt Winter would be far more effective than him at dealing with them, after all.

"Oh thank goodness- not, not for them, I-I mean for you. Dealing with them. I, I had also heard they were here and I really didn't know how I was going to handle that but I knew someone had to, you know? Glad uh, glad it's you. Found any today?"

"Not today. Belova and I torched the only batch I've seen so far," he admits. He's just being cautious, really. Paranoid, even. But these are some of his least favorite things, and also one of the easiest to do something about. "Salted the ground there, too."

He might have a couple little baggies of salt in some of his pockets, and surreptitiously sprinkles them anywhere he thinks might grow sheep-plants.

"Okay, that's-- it makes sense maybe a couple of them, you know, got out somehow, but we don't need any more of those." He shudders just a moment in thinking about them, or where they might have been hiding. But actually, that brings up another question.

"Do you know-- I mean, why they're showing up now? Were they here and we just didn't know it?" That's a worse thing to think about, frankly, because then who knows how many are just around in places. "Has anyone checked the warehouse? Where they were, uhm, before."

"They're plants. They come from seeds. Maybe someone dropped them and it's just been enough time for them to start sprouting. Or maybe someone is sowing them." He doesn't know which one. He's hoping it's just the former, though if it's the latter then at least once they find (and shoot) who it is, it'll stop. "We went to the warehouse yesterday, too. It's clean. ADI did a good job there last year."

“Is it— is it seeds, though? They didn’t burn like plants, last time, they had like… skin.” Can skin grow from seeds? Was it all an elaborate illusion? Those phone cases had certainly seemed real, during the points he could touch them and he had his head in the right place. But y’know, bygones. “We never really did figure out how they showed up. Or how they, er… propagated? So hopefully this is just… some kind of, uhm, a-accident?”

He doubts it’s an accident, but hey. Small scale is better than bigger in cases like this.

"Well, we know that guy from the store grew them," Winter points out. "Because someone else made him. Maybe he grew them from seeds. Maybe from bulbs. Maybe from bones, for all I know. But seeds seem as likely as anything else."

"No, I mean, yeah, it's-- that's what I mean." Jeez, he did not say proper words, and he shakes his head as if trying to clear it. "I just-- got worried! So. Glad you're looking into it. And also glad you're looking, uh, pretty good yourself. I hadn't seen you in a while."

"Have you been busy?" Winter's admittedly pretty easy to find. He does almost the same things every day. Of course, those same things don't intersect with Martin very often.

He looks Martin over briefly. "You look okay, too."

Martin has that tendancy to harrow at his boyfriend for overworking himself, and then simultaneously just totally forget that life exists outside of that. It's a problem bred from years of having nothing but work in his social life. Oh well.

He does smile at the acknowledgement though, giving a little chuckle if only to fill a bit of noise. "Well, I guess so. It's just been, you know... it just keeps being stuff, one after another and all that. Not all bad stuff, but just... stuff. Hah. This is probably a sign I should get out a little more."

"Maybe you should," Winter agrees, looking stern. "It isn't good to be isolated, Martin." This is not, weirdly, something that's been told to him. Winter actually does seek out people, even if just to sit quietly among them.

Honestly, it's not something he's expecting to hear. Martin blinks once or twice in response, like he's surprised that someone would say that to him. But not everyone knows his past, and he keeps it that way, frankly, so-- well, it makes sense someone wouldn't know. Thankfully for his composure, he shakes it off quickly.

"Oh, I-- I mean, I don't think I'm too isolated. I've got Jon, o-of course, and I'm seeing people you know, a-at work, so... not really alone, kind of." He sounds more awkward about this than he should, and he's not even really sure why. Maybe it's just the feeling of getting caught, somehow.

"And you've got Steve, he lives there," Winter agrees. "But I was never alone with HYDRA. Unless it was a solo mission. It's not. The same, I think." He's started to recognize the feeling of being lonely. And he hates it.

"Of, of course-- he's really sweet." Not that Martin needs to tell Winter anything about Steve, considering the everything. He does give a little smile as he gets himself a bit back into sorts though.

"No, I imagine it was, uhm-- not a lot of privacy. But it, uh, it's not really the same. There needs to have been people to feel really lonely. Something to mourn. You know?"

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