apocalypsehowcomm | August Catch-all

Who: Bucky Barnes (AKA the dude who doesn't have a proper name right now) and OPEN
When: August catch-all
Where: ADI headquarters, ADI apartments, around town
Summary: Just working, training, and being quietly creepy
Warnings: Internalized depersonalization

I. Patrols - ADI headquarters, ADI apartments

Working security is not entirely mindless, but it's close. Patrol around the outside of the ADI building complex, patrol through the buildings, prod the occasional air vent in the ceiling or panels in the wall just in case there's someone hiding in there, then repeat. It's familiar. It's comfortable. It's not quite mindless, but it's close enough to let him settle into diffuse focus where he doesn't have to worry about lack of orders and going home to not having anything to do there, either.

He's not averse to company on the job, but he's not... exactly chatty.

Sometimes he gets restless and repeats the process around the ADI apartment complex, too. Spot him at night, whether shortly after dinner or in the small hours of the morning, walking at a regular pace around the apartment complex fence, eyes alert but tired. He might be more chatty now-- maybe, a little-- looking over anyone who approaches and nodding in greeting.

II. Keeping or Offering an Edge - ADI headquarters

A lot of his spare time is spent in the target range and training rooms at ADI headquarters. Patrols are easy, but they don't keep you sharp. And he needs to keep sharp, especially as he's found his strength and speed... a little lacking, around here. So he can't depend on it without maintenance. Plus, maintenance helps with the pain from the arm.

So he maintains. Strength exercises, shadowboxing, practicing his aim with guns, flipping and throwing knives.

And if he sees anyone in either room looking lost or clearly struggling, he drifts over. Clasps his hands behind his back and ducks his head. "I can help train," he offers.

III. Exploration - Around town

He doesn't want to be taken by surprise by any path he'll be asked to take for ADI or for a person who needs rescued or killed, or ever be unaware of ambush points, so he does a lot of exploring around town, too. Poking his nose into shops, prowling around suburbs and apartment complexes, and looking up at trees in the park. He doesn't ever sit down in a restaurant or on a bench, but he loiters outside the former and watches the latter like he expects them to bite him, though someone could possibly convince him to try either one.

More than once he gets the cops called on him, because he does most of his wandering around in his full mask and goggles, face comfortably obscured. It helps him feel stronger, for some reason, and it means he doesn't have to deal with making eye contact or controlling his expression. Fellow ADI transplants might find him staring in stony silence at a well-meaning police officer stammering through a warning to stop hanging around residential areas.

Wanna help out?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

None of the first reasons apply to him, and he's been watching in ways that don't involve eating food prepared by people he doesn't know. But if she's going in, then he's going in, because he's not letting people poison her or shoot her in the back when he could stop it.

She's his team. Somewhere in the past few days, that's settled into his brain. She's his team and deserves his support.

So after a beat of hesitation, he finally nods, and unhooks the mask from around his ears and jaw, as well, to hook onto his belt.

She'll take it as a win. Some of the tension unspools from the set of her shoulders, visible only in its disappearance, as he removes the mask. She trusts, as she always has, that he won't harm her without reason, without being ordered, but she is accustomed enough to more volatile and meaninglessly violent men that it's a relief to be able to see his face, even if he shows little in the way of expression.

She leads the way into the little restaurant, and, noting the sign indicating that they should seat themselves, leads the way to a small table near the back, with clear lines to the exit and the door leading to the staff area, and a good view of the rest of the room. It's a four top, and she takes one of the seats set perpendicular to the room, leaving him the option of putting his back to the wall, of keeping an eye on anyone moving into or out of or through the space.

Nudging at boundaries is one thing. She doesn't need to poke him with a sharp stick.

"Is there anything you can't be around?"

He does, in fact, take the seat with his back to the wall, and most of his attention is clearly on the rest of the room, as if he half-expects an attack now that he's not on his feet.

"No." What does that even mean, can't be around. He can be around anything, can't he? He wouldn't be very useful if he broke down because he was near something. Maybe he understood the question wrong. She's his team; it's safe enough to ask questions, he thinks. "Is there for you?"

"No," she replies. "Nothing like that. We were all tested extensively - it wouldn't do for a girl to get sick and be unable to perform unexpectedly. And now I can eat anything I want."

There's a small cafe menu on the table, and she scans it idly - she doesn't quite have his laser focus, but to him, at least, it should be clear that she's also keeping a watchful eye out for trouble beneath her casual demeanor.

"Have you had mocha yet?"

Tested. Sick. Eat anything she wants.

She means allergies. Christ, he's not even sure how he knows that, but he knows that.

"I can eat anything, too," he promises. "But I have not had mocha." He does in fact know what it is, but he hasn't had it. He hasn't had coffee yet, period. It seems wasteful to drink a stimulant when the dosage will be too low to affect him.

"It's very good. I'll get us both one so you can try it."

She doesn't do anything so conspicuous as look around at the other patrons - she just evaluates her mental map and judges them isolated enough to keep from being overheard when she lowers her voice to add, "You don't have to drink it if you don't want, but it will look strange if you have nothing."

He knows this. Which is why he makes a vaguely annoyed noise. "That is why I don't normally come into places like this." He's here for Yelena, not in an attempt to fit in. Fitting in is not what he's doing today.

Not what he's been doing much of since he got here, honestly. Not what he's been doing for as long as he has proper memories.

But. "I will drink. If it's very good." A pause. "What is it?"

"Chocolate and espresso, in warm frothy milk," Yelena replies, hands sketching the shape of a large mug as she speaks. "It's good for keeping awake, but mostly it is just delicious."

Luxuries were not, generally speaking, allowed to the Red Room's operatives if they weren't in service of a particular cover. She's been making up for lost time.

The waitress serving the cafe finishes up with another table, and angles towards them.

She worries about him fitting in, so he will show her that he can. Without the mask and goggles, with the metal arm hidden under jacket and glove and fingers laced together on the table, he can slide the careful non-expression into something friendly and harmless in its place. "Ma'am," he says, which he doesn't remember learning as proper slang, but it does get him an amused look out of the waitress, so he counts it as good enough.

"Afternoon, you two. What can I get ya?"

Yelena's own cheerful smile masks the twinge of relief she feels when he slides on that harmless mask - and the sharper twinge of mingled regret an anger beneath. Is that a reflection of who he had been before the monsters of HYDRA and the Red Room had sunk their talons into him, body and soul? Or the product of simple mimicry, someone seen and heard somewhere over the course of his fractured life?

"Two large mochas," she says. "And a turkey sandwich, cut in two."

For sharing, she hopes. If not, they'll have leftovers. This particular café is generous with their portions.

Looking politely relieved at people who know what they want, the waitress asks, "Any sides with that?"

"How about the onion rings," he suggests. He'd seen someone else eating them, and while he's not sure he'll eat them, he's sure Yelena will enjoy something fried and greasy to counter-balance the healthy sandwich. Ordering lunch when trying to fit in is surprisingly easy, compared to picking something out at the cafeteria at ADI. Weird.

"I'll get that right in for ya," the waitress says with a smile, and trots off.

He looks back at Yelena, not quite eye contact, and raises his brows. See? He's fine. She doesn't need to worry about him. (He's not fine. He just knows how to fake it.)

He's not fine. She can tell the difference between being fine, and pulling on a mask, has felt it from the inside far too often to be easily fooled.

But that isn't something to point out in public - isn't, she thinks, something that really needs to be pointed out at all at this particular juncture - and so she crinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out at him briefly.

It's very mature.

It's also very cute, actually. He tilts his head at her, and the friendly mask of the almost-smile lingers a beat before settling back into his usual non-expression. "I apparently have experience ordering food in a cafe," he allows. So clearly that means it's an allowed activity.

And, he has to admit, the probability of a poisoning scheme at a cute little restaurant like this is pretty low. He'll still inspect the food when it gets here, and taste it first, though. Just in case.

August Catch-all

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