apocalypsehowcomm | Log: February Catch-All

Entry tags:

Log: February Catch-All

Who: Steve Rogers & OTA!
When: Throughout February, depending on your event of choice
Where: Around ADI, the apartments, and Gloucester
Summary: February catch-all, including the fact that Steve's lost certain memories in Dogtown, been negatively affected by using Mjolnir again, and is available for some more specific shenanigans (Love Potion No. 9, Bumble Gum, Grave Matters fire). Or tag in with whatever you like, even if I don't mention it!
Warnings: Possible negative health effects from Mjolnir, investigating arson, emotional manipulation via chocolate, the bug candies at Bumble Gum (will note anything else in specific threads)

Frustration: Around ADI and the apartments
Tony is gone. He's vanished without a trace, without a word, and Steve wants to hold out hope that he's on some kind of personal (or even not-so-personal) mission. That he's following a lead, that he's gone underground. That he'll pop up and say something flippant over anyone's having worried, and that will be that.

That he's not gone, forever, all over again. That Steve hasn't lost him a second time.

But the days pass with no word, with no signal from his tracker. No Tony.

It doesn't stop Steve from doggedly looking for him. What else has he got to do in his spare time, right? He spends most free evenings combing the town, stopping into any shop that looks like it might interest Tony Stark in the least: mostly electronics, but some of the higher-end clothing shops and out-of-the-way bookshops as well. The longer Tony's been missing, the more frustrated he gets.

And it's not the only thing bothering him right now.

You might find him on his lunch break in ADI staring at an old compass with a black-and-white photo pasted inside. It's on the table in front of him while he eats a sandwich, frowning at it. He keeps fiddling with it in his pocket while he walks the halls, taking it out and then putting it away again. It comes out again at home sometimes, too; he'll leave it on a table and walk away, only to come back and pick it up and shove it frustratedly back into his pocket a few minutes later.

He doesn't know who she is. She's inside his compass, and he doesn't know why.

After he helps Winter with the pyramid, he has an off couple of days. That's all he can call it: off. It's this weird sense of deja vu, like, he's in his old body again, with achy joints and shitty blood pressure and stupid back pain. He's not sick, he's just… sore. Tired. Grouchy if you catch him at the wrong time or call him out on the way he rubs at his knuckles, his wrists, or teeters just a little when he stands up too fast.

Curiosity: Around ADI and Gloucester
There's plenty else going on to keep him occupied when he's not worrying about Tony or mysterious pictures that may or may not have been planted inside his personal things. His room isn't affected by the strange malaise that seems to be going around, but he does make several trips to Bumble Gum, first out of curiosity, then later to get samples with Cortana. He probably visits a time or two after that, browsing the strange confections, picking up a few more in case extra samples — or evidence — is needed later.

He's not a huge sweets guy, but he does like chocolate — enough to peer curiously at the boxes that appear in the break room before Valentine's Day, like he's trying to discern which is safest to try. If anyone else walks into the room, he glances up, almost like a deer in the headlights, and grins a little lopsidedly. "There're a lot of choices."

And when Grave Matters' workshop burns down, he wonders if it has anything to do with the way certain bars had a tendency to catch on fire a few months ago. If you happen to be wondering about the fire's origin, too, you might find him skulking around the premises.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I didn't have it at the time. It was a couple days before we went into Dogtown," Winter says. "So." He frowns at the pyramid, too. "Either it was two separate things to do with memory, or it's not the pyramid."

Steve blows out a slow breath, frowning. "Guess I'm about to make it more complicated, then."

Now he pushes the compass back into the middle of the table - and then past it, toward Winter.

"Do you know who she is?"

His heart is suddenly pounding; he's honestly not sure whether he wants the answer to be yes or no.

Winter looks between Steve and the compass a couple times. "You told me about her that time we were lost in Dogtown. Her name is Peggy. You knew her before, and I have complicated feelings about her." If Steve is asking him, though.... "You don't remember her?"

The feelings he has about that are... also complicated. Actually.

"I - did," Steve acknowledges slowly, because... he had, hadn't he? They'd been in Dogtown, and -

He does remember that. Or, rather, he remembers showing Winter the compass, now that he's been prompted. But that definitely makes him feel less good, not more. "No," he says quietly, practically staring a hole in the back of the compass as it sits open on the table, facing Winter. "No, I don't recognize her at all."

He glances up at Winter, finally. "You have complicated feelings about her?"

"I don't know what to call them," Winter warns. "But. Yes." He's thought about it since, and while he still can't put a name on it, he has found a parallel. "Before you got here. There was a girl named Meredith. She and Belova were kind of. Stepping out together?"

The words feels weird in his mouth, but they also feel like the right ones. Modern words like dating are stupid and also not really right for that situation. Yelena would hate to ever be called "dating".

He shakes his head. "I felt like this then, too. Like I wanted to punch each of them because of the other one. It was very confusing."

Steve considers that. It's admittedly not much to go on, but on the other hand, "It sounds like you felt... protective?" he hazards. It makes sense (to him, anyway): Bucky had always had a protective streak, among other things, or Steve would've been a grease spot on the sidewalk a century ago. Steve hadn't always liked it, when it came out on his behalf, but he'd seen it come out on others', too.

And he's seen Winter with Yelena. He can imagine it might feel like having a little sister to look after again. Just as easily as he can imagine Bucky feeling protective over him with relation to this woman, this - Peggy.

Well. That's a little harder to imagine, because he feels like Peggy is a complete stranger. He can't remember what things were like. Or if Bucky was like anything at all, with regard to her. That's still just as terrifying and unsettling as it was the first time he'd opened the compass and stared blankly at the image inside.

"I do know you were always trying to find me dates. 'Cause I was no good at finding them myself," he finally tries to explain, still with only half the story. "You always looked out for me. In a lot of ways. So maybe you, uh. Wanted to make sure I was good for her, and she was good for me?"

Winter looks dubious. He knows what protectiveness feels like. This was... pricklier. This makes him want to growl and duck his head at the same time, to stalk the people involved and make stupid threats about how she had better not just want him because he's big and strong now, because Steve deserves better than that-- but also to hide in the back of a mess tent with a flask of something bitter and not talk to anyone for the rest of his tour so he doesn't have to look at them smiling at each other like that.

The moment of memory leaves him blinking and even more confused than he was before.

"I don't think it was that," he finally says. "I mean. I am protective. That's my job. But I don't think it was just that." He shakes his head. "I don't know. I only have fragments. There's no damn context."

Steve had maybe expected Winter to agree with him. So when he doesn't, it's - well. Maybe it would be more of a surprise if he could remember Peggy, but even though he can't, it seems... odd.

"Oh," he says, softly, and where maybe he might have laughed a little, once, or protested, when Winter says it's his job (well, okay, he probably means literally, but Steve thinks Bucky had probably thought protecting Steve and his sisters was his job), but instead he's caught up in the pang of guilt-regret-loss when Winter says it was something else, but there's no context.

He suddenly wants to know what it is, desperately, but knows that he's the reason Winter's got the hole in his memory. Among other things.

"Got it. I - sorry," he says, a little awkwardly, which is not a great apology at all, considering what it's really for, but he also adds, "I don't. Want to assume, then. If it's not just that."

There is something niggling in the back of his head, though. It gets louder and louder and louder until Steve finally winces, feeling like an idiot, but admits, "I. Was sometimes kinda jealous? When you had a really good date and she paid you a lot of attention." And Steve would end up going home alone, or Bucky would catch his eye in a way that said he'd wanted Steve to stay out late instead.

Jesus. "I - I'm not saying it's that," he adds, quickly. God, he's such a heel. Of course Buck never would've felt that way. "I mean. I don't even know - was I stepping out with her?"

He wants to know, wants confirmation, but he also wants to sink through the floor right now.

"You have her picture in your compass, and you kept your compass for years," Winter says, a little irritably. "If you weren't stepping out with her, you absolutely wanted to."

And he's kind of annoyed that he's irritable about it. The woman is dead, he's pretty sure. There's no reason to be... irritable about it. It's stupid. But he is. And not just because he doesn't have all the pieces to explain what he's feeling.

But Steve gave him a new word, applied to... himself. The Bucky from before. So he chews on the word "jealous" for a moment. "When you were jealous," he begins slowly, "what did it feel like. Describe it."

Steve blinks. Describe it. How the hell do you describe a feeling?

"It's just - jealousy," he says, extremely unhelpfully, for a moment. But - look, even he knows that's not helpful.

So he tries. It's not something he particularly wants to do, but why should that stop him. Winter wants to know. So he tries.

"It's... ugly," he finally opens with, voice a little quiet. "It doesn't feel good. It's like - wanting?" He makes a face, but that's about the long and short of it, isn't it? "It's wanting something you can't have. It's... kind of bitter and angry and, yeah. Ugly."

He has no idea if that's helpful or not.

Well that... fits, he thinks. It fits the irritation, the mix of anger and sadness, the feeling in the stomach and the pull in two directions. The desire to punch someone but also avoid the hell out of them.

But if it comes from wanting--

"So he wanted you." Because he's absolutely sure he didn't want this Peggy person.

"What?" is Steve's very intelligent reply.

That - what?

"Are you sure - it might not -" Steve is admittedly feeling several things at once, which is why they all sort of get jumbled up trying to come out of his mouth at the same time. He stops, takes a breath, looks at Winter. Pictures Bucky in his mind. Lets himself picture Bucky, during the war. Remember him. Remember what he can remember, at least, which is... honestly kind of strange and out of context, too, given that there's apparently a giant Peggy-shaped hole in all of it.

Suddenly it seems only fair, somehow, given what Winter went through in HYDRA's hands.

"I thought he was just - maybe mad that I was getting so much attention," he finally says. "It was... it felt backwards." Given that Buck had always been the center of attention.

(He's not trying to correct Winter by any stretch of the imagination. Just explaining what he'd thought. Or thinks he'd thought, without Peggy in the picture.)

Winter shakes his head firmly. "No. You should have recognition. That was good. That it was in a war for being in danger was bad. I think. That was complicated too. But the attention was good. He never." He stops. This much he can claim as his own, he thinks. "I never. Really cared about attention. It was just her."

He hesitates again, chewing on what he's feeling. What he remembered. "He thought that you should have had that, too. That was bad that he felt that way. I don't know why he thought that. I don't think it was bad. If he wanted you he should have fucking said something."

Steve is really starting to feel a little like he's been cracked over the head with a vibranium two-by-four.

If he wanted you he should have fucking said something, Winter says, and -

And, well. Yeah. Maybe.

But.

"I never said anything," Steve says, voice so quiet he isn't even sure whether Winter can hear him (was meant to hear him) over the general clatter and chatter of the cafeteria.

But suddenly - suddenly he isn't sure they should be having this conversation here. Or, rather, he isn't sure he wants to keep having this conversation here.

He makes himself look up from the table, where his gaze has fallen, and over at Winter. Then he makes himself push up out of the chair and reach for Winter's arm, fingers closing around his wrist, tugging. "We should talk about this somewhere else. Quieter."

More private, he means.

Winter catches it anyway. He's watching Steve, how could he not? His brows come together, eyes going a little unfocused, trying to place that. Trying to guess where the Bucky person might have recognized want in Steve, but didn't.

He doesn't have enough. He doesn't have enough pieces to even guess. Hell, he doesn't know how to recognize want in himself, half the time, let alone a life he only has glimpses of.

When Steve takes his wrist, he refocuses again, frowning up at Steve, but after a beat of resisting, he gets up. "Okay."

Steve nods and tows Winter out of the break room and down the hall, into the first empty office he can find.

Of course, by the time they get there and he drops Winter's hand, he realizes that he has no idea what to even say next. What they should talk about. If they should even talk about it.

But he's already dragged Winter here. He can't say nothing.

"I - sorry," is what he says, first, running a hand over his face. He's not entirely sure what he's even apologizing for, it just - feels like maybe he should.

Well, maybe he has a little bit of an idea. "I don't want to tell you how you felt. I can only tell you what I thought it was about, but I know I - you know that kind of thing used to be illegal, right? Wanting, that way. If it was two men."

Maybe Winter doesn't remember that.

The touch isn't too bad, even. Winter lets him keep his wrist the whole way. Between his cautious experiments with the various women (and robots), their tumble in the Dogtown woods, and apparently the conversation, he's apparently decided Steve's hands on him are at least safe relatively. That's a good thing, he thinks.

"It isn't now," he says, putting aside whether or not he remembers it (he doesn't, though he... does remember a sense of disquiet and wariness around the Bucky person wanting). "There are many couples here that are only men or only women. Or woman and not-a-gendered person." He isn't sure what Rue actually is called, in that sense. "Is that why he didn't say anything." A pause, and he adds pointedly, "Why you didn't say anything."

"I don't know. About him," he says, because he doesn't want to tell Winter how he - how Bucky - might've felt. He doesn't know. They clearly never talked about it. "It wasn't on the table."

Well. "I wouldn't put it on the table. It would've ruined everything." And hadn't he already ruined enough? If he'd thought about it. If he'd let himself think about it. He might have wanted it. And Bucky - well. Aside from assuming he wouldn't want it... "I made your life hard enough already. If I decided I - I would've been me. About it."

He would've fought for it. And damn the consequences. He would've made them both miserable, he thinks, just for what he wanted, and Bucky would've borne the brunt of it. "I couldn't do that to him. You." He shrugs a little. "So I didn't even think about it." And he'd gotten pretty damn good at it, too, if he does say so himself.

Then he seems to realize something, and go a little pale. "I'm not - we don't. I'm not saying we have to do anything different."

Yeah, he'd like to about-face on this conversation right about now. He maybe tries to cover his big dumb face with one big dumb hand. "We don't have to talk about this." Ever. This was a mistake.

"Steve." There's the patented "you're being a moron, Steve" look that still crops up now and then. "You didn't have anything to do with my life being hard. Jesus."

He folds his arms with another frown, though. "What if I want to talk about it." He frowns more, maybe looking stubborn about it, and flat-out says, "I do love you. I know what that feels like, I worked it out just before you got here. It's not the same as loving Yelena or Kate. But it's there and I know that's what it is."

"Yeah, you must not remember that part yet, because I definitely did," Steve points out, because it's true.

But that's clearly not the crux of the conversation, here. The look certainly isn't nothing new, but the words are. Steve is admittedly having trouble processing them. Or maybe, by his own admission, just willfully trying not to process them as anything other than, "As a brother, then" he says, like he wasn't just the guy who said he can't tell Winter how he felt. How he feels. But Kate and Yelena are friends. He and Bucky were always more, even without anything else. So, "I always figured that's how - I mean. I love you, too, of course, I've always -"

Steve stops himself. Squeezes his eyes closed for a moment. "We've always been complicated. Close. Closer than we should've been, maybe." Steve had always needed Bucky in a way he's not proud of, but was too selfish to do anything about. "I don't want that to confuse you."

He feels like he's teetering on the edge of a cliff, and he honestly isn't sure whether Winter's going to push him over or pull him back. Or which one he wants him to do.

Winter stares at him with a difficult expression to read, everything subtle and complicated. Frustrated, maybe. A little lost. Whatever it is, it's not particularly happy. "I don't know what my feelings are. Not all of them. And I'm not him. Not anymore. I'm me and I made me and I'm still making me."

He's still not sure he's quite to person yet, but even he can tell he's getting there. And his feelings are all confused, but putting the words want and jealousy onto parts of them help a little.

"But some things," he continues, voice verging on stubborn again. "Some things are still there. I think that might be one of those things. You don't have to like it. But that doesn't stop it from being true." It's not like he can do anything about it, so Steve won't have to deal with that. He still doesn't like to be touched in most situations. But that doesn't make the feeling go away, either.

Steve isn't particularly happy, either. He knows he's not handling this very well. He hates dragging things out into the light and actually talking about them - he and Bucky never did. (Never had to? Never did.)

But he also brought Winter here to talk and frankly, it's very least he owes this man, to help him figure things out. Whatever it means.

But he still feels exposed in a way he doesn't like. And, deep down, at least a little scared.

But he lets Winter talk, lets him get it out there. Doesn't interrupt. Honestly, is quiet for a long moment after, trying to just. Figure out what to say.

Well. The truth, right? He's always honest. "I didn't say I didn't like it."

But, "I don't know what to do with it." He doesn't have the answer. He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't just know what the best course is, like he so often does. He's adrift. "I don't know what you want to do with it," he adds, quietly, a moment later. "If you want to do something with it."

It's almost a question, as horrible as he feels for putting this all on Winter. But Steve was good with just never letting himself think about it for the rest of his life. Winter seems to be thinking about it. And Steve can't just decide, like he normally would. He feels somehow like that would be the worst thing he could ever do to this man, because he's... done it before? He'd been planning to stay in the past, after returning the stones - and now he isn't sure about that plan at all. It doesn't seem important anymore.

Edited (lol went to a meeting and realized I ought to tweak that last bit a tad! ) 2023-03-22 18:38 (UTC)

Okay. Okay, he's not... not liking it. That's something. That stressor can go away. Unfortunately, that leaves half a dozen others.

Winter looks away, not from discomfort, but in his habitual manner of not looking directly at people, and frowns. "I don't know. I'm not. I don't touch people that much. Belova, some. Kate and Cortana, a little. But not a lot. So I'm not going to. The idea of. It just." He doesn't even really know how to say it, so it just comes in starts and stops. He's only halfway certain what he's talking about. The things he's seen couples do, those aren't-- for him.

He finally says, looking both more frustrated and more lost all at once, "I don't know if I can."

Well, now Steve's frowning too, because, "I don't see what that has to do with anything," he says, quite simply. "Loving someone doesn't just - go away because you don't touch. Or even if you don't want to."

Like - yeah. Of course he misses being close to his best friend. They used to touch all the time, even if it was just dumb slaps on the back or jamming elbows into ribs or shoulder bumps or arms slung over necks. Yes. He misses it.

It doesn't change anything about what he feels. Whatever the fuck it is he feels, which is twisted and convoluted and something he's not sure whether to truly drag into the light and untangle or keep stuffed in a dark corner.

But he does know, "If it's just about touching - that's never what I, uh. Thought it should be like." Whoever Winter loves, he shouldn't be afraid that they won't feel the same way if he doesn't want to be physically close. If they don't - then they're not for him.

Winter unfolds his arms to swat at the notion. "I know. I love Belova and Kate and maybe Cortana, too. That doesn't go away. It won't with you, either. You're still here." If touching were necessary, Steve would be gone by now, and yet here he is, having this supremely weird conversation.

Except. "What about wanting. That kind. Does that go away if I can't hug or kiss or--" He stalls out a moment. Then rallies with, "Or the stuff that used to be illegal?"

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