|
  |
Up on the rooftop of the Avengers mansion, Steve has gathered a few items. It's been a while since he's made a fire outside of a fireplace, but a little gasoline and some tinder and FOOMPH: contained blaze in a metal drum set raised up on bricks. It's nearing sunset and as such, the glow isn't bright nor will it be when the night truly descends. Balmy air drifts by and he sets up camp in a folding chair alongside a collection of items: multiple toasting sticks with dual prongs, a stack of Hershey bars about six inches in height, three bags of large puffed marshmallows, and three boxes of Graham crackers.
Because he's going to have s'mores, dammit.
He takes a long swing of his beer from the glass bottle and then sets it aside before sticking a marshmallow on one of the toasting sticks. Over the contained heat of the fire it goes and he leans back with a quiet sigh.
In the attic of the Avengers mansion, which is only an attic in the most loose of terms being under the roof, nestlings are largely gone. Whatever happened to the Bucklings? San Marino is under alert, no doubt, and Bucky gallivanting off in Asgard has not eased the discovery of the lost ones. No sign of Orel, concerning. Matvei, deeply alarming. Lazar, horrifying.
Adam and Kyr amount to a somewhat stable pairing, but not precisely stable. Evgeniy and Nikita make their long absences under the summer sun away from the Mansion. Volya, the most stable, doesn't live there most of the time anyways. Thus have only the remnants remained, Matvei on occasion, and Adam and Kyr, the second and third prisoners of SHIELD taken from Quebec a year ago. How things turn, how things change.
Nightfall comes late to New York, no way around that. Sunset might be when they finally stir. Or rather, they… land on the damn roof. Adjacent buildings in New York on Fifth Avenue are cheek by jowl, so this is not impossible. Adam rolls from the impact and comes up in a springing motion, swiveling to put his back to the wall. Kyr sails down in an impact louder by some, and rises into a deadly strike, prepared to knock down the nearest threat. A stick.
It goes flying over the fire before it can cause any threat to Adam, several feet away.
Steve's Buckling senses tingle. The first arrival warrants a glance away from the low flames within the steel drum — the second arrival is enough to make him sit up in his chair and look away from the puffed confection beginning to go golden at its outermost edges.
And there goes the stick, clattering away across the rooftop and leaving a broken smear of half-melted marshmallow in its wake. No rescuing that one. Both hands are upheld, empty of any object that could be identified as threat, and he sighs slowly. Patiently.
"«Good evening, boys,»" he says quietly in passable Russian. "«I am making food. There is nothing to fear.»"
The mayhem is precise, a surgical strike applied in accordance with precepts of being overwhelming and never permitting an advantage to pass without seizing it to the fullest. Such works well in the field of battle and the boxing ring, the game of life and the Game of Life. Let no man reach the end without a car spattered in the plastic pins of his melted enemies, their plastic heads stricken underfoot where they may beleaguer all players not fit to stand with the greatest heroes and horrors of the Soviet Union. Adam is left still in a somewhat defensive position, prepared to tear down anyone that rapels in his direction. To the great sorrow of any combatant, there is no attack staged in response, no threat present. No counterstrike. All senses scream to press the advantage, churning like wolves around a bear, looking for that opening.
It would be easier, seven to one. Eight to one, if the half-cyborg were considered. He is not. Kyr utters nearly no sound, his shoulders rolling, muscle slipping smooth under the flesh scored by no evident wounds save those inflicted by being young, cocky, and murderous when called for. A cold kind of death, the sort where the abyss stares back with dark, cold eyes that look long from the shadows.
The marshmallow might be flaming at this point in its bubbling wreckage. He flexes his fingers.
«You have the appliances for food.» Adam at least wasn't raised in a box.
The marshmallow on its forlorn and lost stick is most definitely caught ablaze and slowly melting into charred remains on the rooftop. Saddest day.
Steve's eyes slide from Kyr and his feline readiness over to Adam by the wall. He nods and then lowers his hands to rest upon his thighs. Jeans are warm but not too warm and the t-shirt in white must have been relegated to workouts, given the way it hangs loosely along some seams. They haven't yet made much standard fashion able resist the accelerated motions and strength of the super-soldiers. He's comfortable, at least.
"«Yes. That was a stick — fork,»" the Captain amends after a second of consideration. "«The white food is…»" Uh oh, what is the word for 'marshmallow' in Russian? "«The white food is sugar brought together. You toast it over the fire, it gets crispy.»" He then points to the Graham cracker box and pile of Hershey bars. "«When it is how you want it, you put it between chocolate and cracker and eat. They are very tasty.»"
Poor squishy bit of spun sugar now reduced to charcoal slag and dirt, depending on whether any other avengers delight in scrubbing the place from top to bottom and back again. The tidy state of the household is no doubt rendered difficult by assassins haunting the wings.
Adam and Kyr both look alarmingly similar in dress, jeans and a Henley, colours barely different. They could blend in well enough with most of their cohort in age, sort of the point really. Hell, one bleaches his hair blond, he might give a passing resemblance to Steve somewhat. Of course, wear a mask and that becomes altogether easy. Adam is the first to move, while Kyr holds that frozen position, ready to explode into motion. Neither of them are brothers in the classic sense; different mothers, at the very least. But they act like it, exchanging positions, Adam superimposing himself as a point of protection shielding the younger Buckling from the prying eyes of their dread enemy. Or the man who personifies all they were taught to bring down and slay. Seeing them even in the ruddy dying light of the day constitutes a rare situation, doubly because they almost never stand out in the open the way they do now. Not unless on a mission, and mission Viet Nam ended that ambition.
«Poison.» Kyr spits it out. He crosses his arms over his broad chest, muscles flexing, the spitting image made slightly harder and fainter by time as Bucky back in 1942.
"«I would not eat them if they were poison,»" replies the Captain calmly to Kyr in particular. His attention shifts back to Adam, now closer still and interposed before the younger Buckling. "«You are welcome to have one if you like. I am going to get another stick and put another sugar-bundle on it»" Yes, sugar-bundle, close enough to marshmallow to pass. "«I am not going to hurt either of you.»"
That being said, Steve just does these things. He reaches down slowly to pick up another toasting stick as well as another marshmallow. The movements are fluid and yet modulated, easy enough to predict by someone trained to watch physical tells on the human frame. Let the Bucklings observe how it's done: onto the dual prongs and then over the glow of the contained fire once more.
Adam opens his mouth to say something. Then refuses to do so, as the silence descends over him and refuses to commit to any statement that would otherwise require a vocal response or cues. He closes his hand and opens it, a voluntary gesture. They are too much the mold of their progenitor; they do not move idly or act idly, even when given free reign to do so. In a year Bucky has attained total freedom from his programming on that front. They have not. Not these two, anyways. The jury is out for those so traumatized by their experience, they cracked along other planes.
Kyr eyes the bag questionably. He cocks his head a degree, no more than that, affording what amounts to a speculative look. If there's any powder to be found in that bag, he full well swats it down and shows zero complaint about doing so, even if Steve protects it. The pair of them are otherwise watching the bear of a man fish for toasted salmon a la marshmallow.
The super-soldier scoots his sneaker-shod feet a little, all the better to lean back into the folding chair. Metal and wicker-woven plastic creaks in mild dismay; all that muscle does come with appreciative bulk and weight, lacking any real fat as he does. A rotation of the marshmallow keeps it evenly toasting at a steady pace.
Steve gives the two Bucklings a speculative look after letting them observe the process and adds, "«Here, try one.»" He first shows a bare hand, rotating it to showcase back and palm, before reaching into the marshmallow bag. Taking up one of the white confections, he then holds it out with a small smile. There's no lingering eye contact or excessively cajoling motions of the offered sweet. If it gets swatted away, oh well. At least he can say he tried.
Kyr is having little of it, inching forward at a very slow rate. With Adam screening him, the approach can be said to be particularly cautious, measured in a kind of wary uncertainty that ends in snapping teeth and threats, no doubt. Make of that what he will, Steve is still treated with immense caution that usually serves mines and detonated devices with a nuclear payload. It pays to be cautious, after all, rather than risking life, limb, and shadow. All this for a bit of sugar on a stick.
Adam doesn't sit. He never really cares to in the company of strangers, even if Steve is a quasi-stranger causing him ethical fits most days. He takes the finished product, not so much the stick, because burning it to death on the first try might be a sad showing for someone offering food. All the same, he waits until something is dumped in his palm and then without care for the heat, it's handed to Kyr to speculatively stare at, squash flat in his hand and… oh dear.
The marshmallow offered initially is slowly redacted and instead, after observing that the two Bucklings are interested if not ready to flush like a covey of quails, Steve does hand off one of the completed s'mores to Adam. First dessert goes to the guest, after all. They get to watch the assembly — chocolate on both sides of the toasted-over 'mallow, of course — and then the outer layering of cracker halves.
But the squish? Steve's brows lift and he barely stifles a laugh by turning it into a little cough. "«They can be messy,»" he says as evenly as he can manage. Oh good lord. Bucky's going to make the best face when Uncle Steve tells him what happened to the first s'more.
So much for the squashed mess. Kyr looks at the sticky mire between his fingers and looks absolutely revolted. He flexes his fingers and watches the gooey mass stretch between them, trying to pull his fingers back together. Not something of which he is content to settle with, he claws and scrubs at the goo. That only makes the marshmallow wreckage worse, causing him to go to the wall, where he tries to rub it off that way. The look of a cat absolutely furious at the situation wouldn't hold a candle to that narrow-eyed glare devoid of much humanity except death incarnate.
For that reason, Adam goes very, very still.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time that the Captain's been eyeballed for the Reaper. It's impressive regardless, the amount of ire he's been fixed with — the original of the Bucklings has never given him half of this intensity, not even after that one time where Steve successfully fleeced his entire wardrobe from him in poker and left him to sleep in his blanket alone back in the war. He sighs slowly and keeps up his air of polite sangfroid.
"«Would you like me to get you a wet washcloth? The dessert can be sticky sometimes.»" No fast movements, no questionable tone, just a simple inquiry.
Squashing his hand against the wall, Kyr claws off the substance akin to spider silk and glue bit by bit, without losing the top layer of his skin. He utters increasingly furious sounds as he claws out chunks of the stone without ripping his skin open. If only the cracks are superficial. They are not. Property damage by removing the unwanted substance probably satisfies no one, but he finally stalks away to alleviate his problems in the pool, washing off the remnants and clawing up the tiling a bit. Still, that works.
Adam turns a clear eye on Steve, content enough to speak to English. "These smell odd. They are not good." He does, however, take a very slow, deliberate I told you so kind of bite.
Steve makes a mental note to let Tony know about the damages to the property; it'll be the alternative explanation to "Buckling encountering tensile strength of s'mores fixings" that will prove more difficult to communicate. Checking the pool drainage system is also on his to-do this within the next day. Gummy sugar might do a number on the intake valves.
"But they taste good," the blond replies to Adam, brave enough to dare a nibble of the offered s'more. Finally — finally, the man gets to making his own multi-layered handful of madness: two 'mallows rather than one, double layering of chocolate, and Graham cracker on the longer proportion rather than broken in half. Not a square sandwich, but instead more like a sub of fire-toasted and melty goodness. Mmm. He makes a content little sound through his mouthful.