riverviewlogs | [OPEN] shattered glass and black holes

Entry tags:

[OPEN] shattered glass and black holes

who: Bucky Barnes and YOU
what: Open catch-all for the rest of the month
when: Any time after the 20th
where: Around
warnings: Fighting atm, possible description of acid rain effects.

[I. Acid Rain]
[Bucky is on his way back to the housing complex when the stormclouds gather ominous in the sky. He pauses in the street to look up, frowning, noting the strange green tinge - and then the sky opens up and lets loose. Storms are one thing, but when he feels the exposed skin of his hand and cheeks starts to blister, he scowls harder, moving the shield off his back to use as a makeshift umbrella. It's wide enough to keep him mostly covered.

At least until he spots someone uncovered in the street. If you're trying to get to shelter, Bucky will tug you under the shield and start ushering you both to hide under the nearest concrete awning.] You don't want to let this shit touch your skin.

[II. Just Another Day at the Office]
[Bucky has been serving as a Squad Captain of Search and Rescue for over a month by now, and he's an obvious choice to head up one of the protection teams heading out into the woods to keep the payloads and their deliverymen safe. The hazmat suits they've been provided with are unattractive, but protective enough for the moment. Bucky is fully geared up, wearing his Cap suit underneath that and the extra layer of his Perimeter Guard jacket. The cowl is down for visibility's sake, but he's not exactly stealthy, carrying a large red, white and blue shield.

Thank god the rain seems to have no effect on metals. The vibranium of the shield is holding up perfectly.

The vehicle carrying the other team and their canisters of compound trundles ahead at a slow pace due to the fallen trees in the path. Bucky clicks on his radio headset, following on a cherry red Indian motorcycle that thankfully also seems fine in the rain, even if he might have to replace the leather of his seat later.] Spread out a bit but keep the truck in sight. We want to intercept these things before they become an issue for the payload carriers.

[III. Floor 5, Blackouts]
[Several months into living in Riverview, something Bucky's roommates might have noticed about him is that he's never seemed quite settled. His bed, desk, and general area are all immaculately clean and mostly devoid of personal items. Whatever he's accrued here besides clothes, he keeps in a locked box under his bed. Maybe it makes sense, then, that he's at the kitchen table one evening with a takeout container of cold fried rice, browsing classified ads on his phone. Buildings for sale and rent, different types of housing. Nothing is set in stone, but he's casting out feelers.

Of course, in the middle of his late dinner is about when the power flickers off with a crackle, and Bucky throws his chopsticks down on the table, cursing out loud.] Fuck. Again? [He huffs out a breath and gets up from the table to go dig in one of the kitchen drawers. If he hears one of his floormates come in, he'll say,] Hey, do we have any candles?

[IV. Gym, Blackouts]
[Bucky's gym of choice near the housing building is small, and generally does whatever it can to attract people to pay to use it. During a particularly long blackout, someone had the bright idea to fill it with battery-powered LED lamps (in safe places, not too close to the equipment or where they might be knocked down) and make a whole 'rustic' thing out of it. Apparently at least one person is fine working out in low lighting.

Bucky's on the pommel horse, running through a difficult acrobatics routine. Strength training is important, but as he gets older (and as he's gotten heavier), so is maintaining his flexibility. The shield is leaning against the wall nearby, lit by a steady LED lamp; he'll add it to the routine later, practice his return angles and throws.

The mats are open, though, if you'd like to invite him to spar in the poor light conditions. It could be good training.]

[V. Wildcard]
[Either toss a prompt at me or hit me up on plurk at

nekky for a custom prompt!]

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[He smiles wryly as he watches lightning crackle down her arms. It's not that jarring, to learn for certain that she has powers; he's guessing it's some kind of metahuman thing rather than magic, though. Honestly, better that way. He's really growing to dislike magic and magic-users.] I can imagine. Will that stay formed if you stop holding it? [Roundabout way of asking if she'll have use of two hands if she keeps it up.]

I got a deck of cards somewhere and some cold cuts in the fridge that probably need eatin'. We could pass the time til the power comes back on.

Yeah. [She smiles and lets the orb of light drift from her fingertips, hovering, though still moving with her.] Most of the small stuff is easy enough. It's big things I have trouble controlling.

[She looks a little sheepish, but she shrugs her shoulders and moves over to the table.] Cold cuts and cards sounds like a grand time to me. As long as you don't mind losing.

[Ava's teasing him a little. But, to be fair you don't spend as much time as she has in the soup kitchens and shelters and other places of forgotten people without getting good at cards. And, well. Cheating at cards, for that matter.]

That's usually the way. Do you use them much? [He's a little curious, but he keeps his tone conversational, neutral. Bucky digs out cheese and meat and lettuce from the dark fridge and starts making a tray of sandwiches, figuring he'll use up what's left and any of his roommates passing through can eat something too.

He snorts.] Someone's confident in their poker face. I used to clean out Nick Fury in our games back during the war, I wouldn't count me out. [They only played for chocolate and cigarettes, but Nick would find himself several Hershey's bars poorer. Speaking of which... When he brings the sandwiches and a deck of cards to the table, he also brings a bag of fun-size candy bars, dumping it in the middle to sort into two piles.] Gotta have something to bet with.

Sometimes? I mean, in a fight, sure. My body's basically a generator, I'm constantly producing energy. [There's a beat and she shrugs her shoulders, but she doesn't sound overly pleased about it, a little self-conscious. But it's good, nice being able to do something useful with it.

She hums thoughtfully as he mentions cleaning out Nick Fury.] Guess we'll see. I learned from the Vets at the soup kitchen in Brooklyn. The guys would play for extra food, pocket change, cigarettes- won a sleeping bag once, though I'm pretty sure to this day he still tells anyone within earshot I stole it. I got pretty good at it. The art was being good enough to come out ahead and pretending to be bad enough they'd still play. My best friend Sana would always get worried whenever I lost a hand, but cards weren't her game.

[At the surface, it sounds bad. And she's not unaware of it- normally she'd be a little cagey at first, because she hates the pity, the judgement, the way people look at her. But you can hear it in the way she talks- the tone of her voice, that edge of mirth and the curve of a smile- the truth is that the three years she spent as a semi-homeless Brooklyn orphan were the ones that actually felt like her life. She'd had freedom and choice and if she slept on a sleeping bag laid out on plywood and cinderblocks in the basement of what had once been a YMCA gym room? It was worth it.]

Chocolate? It'll do. Crunch bars are of course worth double, because they're better.

[He hums his acknowledgement there, but he doesn't press the issue of her powers. She seems a little self-conscious about it, and this is supposed to be downtime anyway, just passing some time during a blackout.

It's actually kind of nice, just hanging around and doing something relatively normal. It reminds him of the war, playing cards between missions, taking each other's candy. He sorts out the mini bars into two even piles to start with, then starts shuffling the deck of cards.

As for that little insight into her recent past, she gets no judgement from Bucky. Times can be tough.] Yeah, you gotta lose a few hands to get 'em complacent enough to make risky bets. [He agrees with a little laugh.] During the war, we always played for candy and cigarettes, instant coffee, pinup pictures, alcohol, whatever we had on us that made life a little more pleasant. 'Course, I didn't strictly need to get good at cards to make my life easier. I was good at acquiring things.

[Snort.] Alright, if crunch bars are worth double, peanut bars are worth half.

[When she doesn't focus on controlling it, her power changes her, so she's all light and energy and she hates it, can't help but be ashamed. There's guilt to it, too. Because the very thing that gave her these powers killed someone, and there's that old strain of how hard it is to be the one that survives.

She knows how dangerous she is. She's talked to Tony about it, mostly because back home he'd been trying to help, and she's trying her best, but she could use the assistance. She'd tell Bucky because she thinks he'd understand what it's like to be so very aware of that threat, but he's easy to be around. She hasn't had that since Sana, not really, so she can't help but cherish it.

But he talks about getting them complacent and she grins, a little bit impish. There's how he says acquiring things, and well, she's guilty of that too. She has a dufflebag half-full of high-tech spy gear she'd lifted from SHIELD before she was fourteen.] Mm. Not the only one. I used to always get my hands on cupcakes for Sana's birthday.

[There's an amused touch of a laugh and she nods in agreement.] Only fair, really.

[Bucky just has experience with people who have powers, who might not always have the tightest control. Toro had been really good with his powers but still occasionally set something on fire without meaning to. It's always seemed difficult to deal with from an outside perspective. Used to be he would have loved having superpowers of his own, but these days, he's just glad he doesn't. His body count would have been much higher.

He deals out hands with a practiced ease, shoulders relaxed, an almost mischievous smile on his face.] Birthdays get a pass on things like that, you ask me. I should tell you the story of how Toro blew our cover to get me a birthday cake one year. I still give him shit about it.

[She watches as he deals the cards, a smile that pulls at her lips and quiet hum of agreement. To be honest, she was something of a street rat and stealing had been more of a survival skill than anything. Never anything big; she tried to keep a low profile, to never be worth remembering in whispers that might find their way back to SHIELD.]

That's definitely the sort of story you can't bring up and not tell.

[There's a lift of an eyebrow, curiosity as she eyes her cards. Not bad, but, well. It'll probably take a few tricks. Cheating's fair when chocolate's on the table.]

[At this point, Bucky is going to cheat just to see how well she can cheat. It's all for fun and chocolate anyway, after all.]

The Invaders were undercover in Nazi-occupied Poland at the time, an information gathering op. Four of us, at least, I can't remember if Namor was there or not, he was always harder to hide. It was my... eighteenth? So about 1943. [He glances over his hand appraisingly as he talks.] Toro asked the matron of the place we were stayin' to bake and decorate a birthday cake for me, but- get this. She worked for the Nazis and he'd given her my name. I walk in, Steve starts freakin' out about our cover, and Master Man and Warrior Woman bust down the door not a minute later. It was a hell of a birthday.

[He'll find out that she's pretty good at it. Fast hands and nimble fingers, good at using the conversation to distract, but cautious enough to not be too overt. Although, with nothing but fun and chocolate on the line, she might push a bit further.

She laughs softly at the story, smiling in amusement.] Sounds like it. Must have been a hell of a night.

I've actually never had a birthday cake? [She sounds a little shy as she says it.] Sana would put a candle on a cupcake or a cookie or whatever we could get our hands on, but cakes were usually outside of what she could bribe or beg for. But for my eighteenth I got a motorcycle and went with Natasha to the Amazon where we spent the majority of the next three days getting shot at.

[And yet she's grinning like that maybe constitutes the best birthday ever.]

[Well, if she's this good, he doesn't feel bad about showing off a little too. His poker face is impeccable, and he's not above cheating himself. It's more fun than the game itself, honestly, seeing what she'll do next, how she'll react to his own little cheats. With just chocolate on the line, there are no hard feelings.]

Nothin' better than shooting at Nazis on your eighteenth. [He used to love the excitement, honestly. The mission.] Except maybe a motorcycle and three days of gettin' shot at.

When's your birthday, anyway?

[She has a pretty good poker face herself; her slips are calculated to give him something to read that she can use when the stakes are high. Not that she necessarily thinks he'll fall for it, but manipulating tells is always a fun game. And it's one that distracts from what her hands are doing. But it's all friendly. No hard feelings unless he sticks her with all the peanut bars, anyway.

She smiles in agreement; she likes the excitement herself. A fight and a goal, being good at something, and the general idea of stopping people that are hurting others. It's a pretty good feeling.]

October 11th.

[She's not a big birthday person, but she likes James enough to tell him the truth.]

[October 11th. He's going to file that away for future reference, because the fact that she's never had a birthday cake seems like a travesty. Even Bucky had a birthday cake or two when sugar and butter and all the good things were rationed during the war.]

March 20th. [He offers the tidbit about himself in return, not wanting to let on too much of the vague plans forming in his head.]

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[OPEN] shattered glass and black holes

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