fannishliss

title: Have a Nice Trip -- See you in the Fall
author:

fannishliss
rating: PG
pairings: Brotherly Winchesters; Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
spoilers: sometime after the events of SPN s9 and CA:TWS.
3278 words

summary: Sam and Dean are squatting in a little cabin in Ontario, when a sudden snowstorm brings unexpected guests.

thanks to

amber1960 for the prompt. I've always wanted to write a Canadian shack! :) Thanks also to

hells_half_acre for sharing some details about her ACTUAL Canadian Cottage, to help me flesh out my ideas about the location. I hope you don't mind Sam, Dean, Bucky and Steve squatting in your cottage; they tried not to leave a mess and they put the couch cushions back. :)

====

Dean was at the stove, stirring the Dinty Moore’s, when a knock at the door disturbed the stillness of the little cabin.

Sam looked up from the couch, where he was writing notes on his laptop. They’d had intermittent cell connections in Ontario, and right here, right now, they were in a dead zone. With the sky lowering heavily and the first flakes falling, they had sought shelter, and the little cabin was cozy — a civilized refuge surrounded by wilderness.

But as per usual, the Winchesters were squatters, so they weren’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of anyone coming knocking.

Dean moved away from the stove and in six or seven steps, he had his pearl-handled Colt 1911 ready. He nodded to Sam, who had also retrieved his own handgun from the pocket of his coat which hung near the door.

Sam cautiously answered the knocking keeping his face neutral, gun in the hand hidden from view.

The swiftly falling snow swirled around two men — big, dressed in motorcycle gear. The one in front smiled, sheepish. The one in back looked down and to the side, his dark hair a curtain that partially obscured his face.

“Hi,” the first guy said. He was a clean cut dude, short blond hair, bright blue eyes. “I’m afraid this storm took us by surprise. I hate to bother you, but we really shouldn’t try to go any farther on the bike.”

The snow was really coming down, and Sam could see the Harley parked near the Impala. Only a cold hearted bastard would send these guys on their way. Sam wasn’t getting the all-clear from his gut reactions — not at all. There was tension all over these guys. It wasn’t exactly threatening, just — a little bit tense. Whatever, Sam and Dean could take care of themselves.

Sam signaled the go ahead, and Dean concealed his weapon.   Sam moved back and opened the door a little wider, returning his own gun smoothly to his coat pocket as he did so.

The two men stepped inside, pausing at the mat to stomp and take off their jackets. The dark-haired guy held his left arm a little oddly, and while his friend made open, cheery faces of gratitude, his own expressions were closed off and dark.

“I’m Steve, and this is Bucky — we’re taking a road trip,” the cheerier guy said.

“What a coincidence, so are we,” Dean said with his fake enthusiasm.

Dean’s mood was all over the map since the cure; his jones for blood was slowly getting better, but still hadn’t leveled out. Twice since the supposed cure, his demonic nature had reasserted itself, though it was far more easily overcome than it had been at first. Sam had taken Dean north in the hopes of sighting a good lake monster, or maybe even Bigfoot, but nothing (no pun intended) had surfaced.

“I’m Sam, and this is my brother Dean. We were just about to have a little supper,” Sam said. “We have enough to share.” Dean frowned a little, but reached for the can opener and added another batch of stew to the pot.

“That’s really kind of you,” Steve said.

“Thanks,” Bucky said, abruptly.

Sam and Dean traded a glance, which Steve caught. His face tightened, as if he wondered whether there would be a problem. Sam blushed and said, “You’re very welcome. Any port in a storm, right?”

Bucky nodded, and Steve smiled, tightly.

Dean blinked slowly at Steve and went back to stirring the stew.

“We have some good bread out in our saddlebags. Bucky, could you…”

Bucky was already out the door.

Steve looked after him and turned back to Sam and Dean, casting about for words. “Listen, thanks for letting us…”

“Hey,” Dean interrupted, gesturing with his wooden spoon. “No worries, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve said, and Bucky reappeared, a plastic grocery bag in his hand which he extended to Sam. Snowflakes stood out like diamonds, melting against his hair.

Sam unpacked the bag onto the counter: half a dozen apples, a big hunk of cheddar cheese, two artisanal looking salamis, and three loaves of brown bread, plus a pint jar of spiced apple butter that had already been opened.

“We passed a roadside stand yesterday, and everything there was delicious,” Steve said, smiling.

“It looks fantastic,” Sam said. “We always have survival amounts of beef stew in the trunk of our car.”

“Among other things,” Dean muttered.

Steve looked up, eyebrows raised.

Sam added, “Spaghetti, canned sauce, peanut butter…”

“Beer,” Dean added. “And whiskey in medicinal quantities.”

“We don’t drink,” Steve said apologetically.

“More for us,” Dean smiled with tight lips.

Steve nodded, and it was awkward. The cabin was small. Everyone was standing. At least the little table had four chairs.

“Why don’t you guys sit down,” Sam said, huffing. “Can I get you some water? coffee?”

“Yes, please, I’d love a cup of coffee,” Steve said, “if it’s not too much trouble?”   He sat down at the table, and Bucky sat down next to him, choosing the chair with the best view of the door.

“Coffee’s never too much trouble,” Sam said. They’d already located the french press in the first inventory of the kitchen. Sam set water on to boil.

“Tea, please,” Bucky said.

“Black, green, or Earl Grey?” Sam said. Sam always traveled with his own supply of tea; coffee sometimes seemed like too much trouble.

“Black,” Bucky said, then added, “sugar?”

“Sure,” Sam said. Steve smiled at Bucky, such a sweet and private smile that Sam had to look away.

By the time Sam had made coffee and tea for Steve and Bucky, Dean had toasted slices of bread and ladled the soup into bowls.

“So, road trip?” Steve said.

“Sometimes you just need to clear your head; I guess you know the feeling,” Sam said.

“Absolutely,” Steve said. “Beautiful country up here; didn’t expect snow so early in the season.”

“Always expect the unexpected,” Dean muttered sagely, leaving Steve to nod and Bucky to just keep methodically eating stew.

Dean had cut up two of the apples for dessert. Sam savored their clean, crisp taste. He sipped from his tea, keeping company with their guests, but Dean was still drinking beer.

“Where were you guys headed?” Sam asked, as everyone finished their meals.

“West,” Bucky said.

“Nowhere special,” Steve amended. “You?”

“We travel a lot; we’re all over the map,” Sam said.

“Business or pleasure?” Steve asked.

“Both, as often as we can manage it,” Dean said, with that leering little smirk that always made Sam want to slap him. If Sam read Steve right, it gave Steve the same effect.

“Pleasure,” Bucky said. “Endless road, wide open land, big sky.”

Steve nodded, “pretty much sums it up.”

Bucky suddenly stood, which made Dean flinch.

“I’ll get the dishes,” he announced.

“Thanks,” Sam said. Dean shrugged, opening another beer. He hadn’t started in solo on the whiskey, which Sam counted as a win.

“I’ll wash, you dry,” said Steve and joined his friend at the sink.

Bucky wore a leather glove on his left hand. There was something about his left arm, almost like it was not a part of him — but it had a full range of motion — so Sam was left wondering what Bucky was hiding.

Steve and Bucky rapidly took care of the little chore as though they’d stood together working side by side like that forever. They clearly weren’t brothers— they looked even less alike than Sam and Dean did — so, even though they weren’t wearing rings, Sam pegged them as involved.

There was a little shelf of paperbacks. Sam agreed with the taste of whoever owned the cabin, and pulled out an Agatha Christie, settling in a sunken armchair near the woodstove, which was putting out plenty of heat for the tiny cabin.

Dean stayed at the table, brooding over yet another beer, and plugged in his earbuds, listening to something on his phone that Sam wasn’t privy to. In the last year, he’d finally been pulled kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

Steve went through the books, examining each one with a critical eye. He finally settled on an H. G. Wells anthology. He offered several books to Bucky, who shook his head at each until Steve offered Frankenstein, then, slowly, he took it and began to read.

The cabin was warm and the atmosphere was pleasant enough, even though it was crowded with four big men, not completely at ease with one another.

As the hours slipped by the snow didn’t let up. No one showed any interest in falling asleep, until Sam finally began to yawn.

“So, as you can see, there’s just the bed and the couch. Do you want to draw straws?”

“No, no,” Steve said. “We’re just fine…”

“We’ll take the couch,” Bucky said, and he looked at Steve. “Right?”

“Right, Buck,” Steve said. So much was going unsaid between the two of them that Sam fairly burned with curiosity.

“Well,” Sam said, “this place has hot water — but I wouldn’t count on it lasting for all of us, so… military showers?”

“Sure,” Steve said, which went for Bucky too.

Sam got ready for bed and took the side farthest from the door. The sheets were maybe just slightly musty, but compared to most of the squats he’d seen, it was practically the Ritz.

With Dean at the table, and Steve and Bucky reading on the couch, the place felt populated, safe. Sam fell asleep in a few heartbeats.

Something woke him up. It was Dean and Bucky, coming back in from outside. Dean had a loose grin, the kind that made Sam mentally slap his forehead, but he just tried to pretend he hadn’t woken up.

“Bucky? What?” Steve said, and in an instant, Steve was on his feet and in Dean’s face. Whoa, the guy was big, maybe broader in the shoulders than Sam was himself these days. Wow. And he was angry.

“Dude, step back,” Dean said, his face empty and cold.

“Don’t touch Bucky,” Steve said emphatically.

“Don’t you think that should be his call?” Dean leered, squaring off. He was ready for a fight, the last thing any of them needed in this situation.

Sam sat up in horror. Bucky was looking a little disheveled. Had Dean… really? Oh no.

“I am so sorry,” Sam said, “about my brother. He can be so inappropriate.”

“We went outside for a smoke. Okay?” Bucky said.

Steve shook himself, shooting a look at Dean, then at Sam. Sam just raised his eyebrows helplessly.   If Bucky’s heart was still beating in his chest, and Dean hadn’t torn out his throat, or whatever, it was a good day in Sam’s book.

“Look, I know who you are,” Steve said, and the air in the cabin seemed to go to ice.

“Threat level minimal,” Bucky said, in his emotionless tones. His stance, though, had opened out, and Sam could see by the way he held himself that he knew how to fight. A strange whirring sound came from Bucky’s mysterious left arm.

“What are you, the mandroid?” Dean snarked, and Steve’s fists clenched, holding back.

Sam could see the mayhem playing out in his head: Dean provoking Steve until he threw a punch, Dean’s eyes going black, lashing out with whatever blade he almost certainly had on his person (despite Sam’s diligence), and Bucky losing his shit in whatever spectacular manner had Steve watching Bucky like a hawk every moment.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Sam said, face as open and sincere as he could make it.

“Sam and Dean Winchester, wanted on multiple counts of murder, aggravated theft, and grave desecration,” Steve spat.

“Nobody’s forcing you to bunk with us,” Dean said lazily.

“If we told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe us,” Sam said, a little desperate.

“Try me,” Steve said.

“We’re Hunters. We hunt supernatural entities, the kind that kill people. Yeah, we leave a trail of bodies, but we’re not the ones doing the killing.”

“Not usually,” Dean said. “Not as such.”

Steve flexed his jaw, but he appeared to relax a little. “I — I appreciate your honesty,” he said.

“What?” Sam said, genuinely flummoxed.

“Stephen Strange filled me in on Hunters, how you take up the slack in the supernatural realm since Hydra helped decimate the Men of Letters — but you guys are both, isn’t that right?” Steve said.

“What?” Dean said.

“I’m sorry, we have you at a disadvantage,” Steve said. He straightened up again. “I’m Steve Rogers, and this is Bucky Barnes. I’m Captain America.”

“Holy shit,” Dean said, and fanboy-flailed himself back into his seat at the table. “You — oh, god damn. I hit on Bucky Barnes.”

“You did?” Bucky asked.

“Is that so?” Steve growled.

“Dean!” Sam complained.

“I really want to buy you guys a drink,” Dean said.

“No point,” Steve said sadly.

“Vodka,” Bucky said, “enough of it, hits me a little.”

“I have vodka,” Dean said.

Sam didn’t bother to protest when Dean pushed back out into the cold and returned with “medicinal quantities” of vodka — two big bottles of Stolichnaya and an even bigger one of something despicable.

Sam was sipping cautiously. Dean pouring Stoli was an invitation to the world’s ugliest hangover. They didn’t even have any limes. Bucky was throwing back tumblers and Steve was aghast, but didn’t seem to object.

“So I got made into a Knight of Hell without really knowing what I was getting myself into,” Dean was saying. “But I’m getting better.”

“That’s too bad,” Steve sympathized, “to be made into something you don’t want to be.”

“Like, you look at your hands, and it kills you to think what they’ve done,” Sam said. Dean nodded gravely.

“You gotta take what you’re dealt and move forward,” Steve said, “as best you can.”

“HYDRA controlled me as a weapon,” Bucky said. “But I’m also getting better.”   Steve clapped him on the upper arm and nodded, and Bucky smiled a little, which made Steve beam.

“We ganked some undead Nazi necromancers a while back,” Dean grinned. “Good times.”

“Vashe zdorov'ya!” Bucky cheered, lifting his tumbler.

Everyone drank, even Steve; each one knew how it felt to be in over their heads, but somehow they’d all clawed their way to shore.

“So,” Sam said, a few drinks in. “The Avengers … know about Hunters?”

“Jarvis knows everything,” Steve said. “Iron Man’s AI? And I have a photographic memory. So I recognized you guys right away from the FBI’s most wanted.”

“Sammy?” Dean said. “I thought we were dead?”

“We are,” Sam said, with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Steve said. “Jarvis keeps a really complete archive. You guys have been in the number one spot three times in the last ten years, so forgive me if I remembered your faces even though you supposedly ‘died’ more than once.”

“We did die,” Dean objected.

“It just doesn’t stick,” Sam complained.

“It’s not all bad, not dying,” Bucky said. “It beats not being alive.”

Steve actually bit his lip, and he couldn’t help but reach for Bucky’s hand, who took it unselfconsciously.

“Please,” Sam said quietly. “Be yourselves.”

“Trying,” Bucky said, and Steve coughed suspiciously. Dean pushed his untouched tumbler toward him with four fingers of vodka in it, and he threw it back like water.

“So, you know Stephen Strange?” Sam fished. Sam had added several of Strange’s monographs to the Bunker library. Even Castiel had been intrigued by Strange’s theories on the interdimensional transmission of ethereal energy under the nomenclature of poltergeist, demonic possession, and angelic grace.

Steve shook his head. “Not well. He’s mostly holed up in his ‘Sanctum Sanctorum.’ We really could have used him in the fight against Loki, but the Avengers Initiative was just getting off the ground at that point.”

“Winchester rule number one: we stay the hell out of Gotham. Do not pass go, skip the two hundred bucks.”

Sam had never bothered to question the rule. There was too much going on in New York City, and way, way too many non-standard humanish folks there to deal with it. Let the Winchesters stick to the back roads, doing what they do best.

“Do not build a hotel on Boardwalk,” Dean was muttering.

“Dude, it’s Atlantic City,” Sam corrected him in an undertone.

“Coney Island,” Bucky said, and a beautiful smile broke across his face like the sun. “Remember, Steve?”

“Yeah, Buck, I sure do,” Steve said. He hadn’t let go of Bucky’s hand, and he was squeezing it for all he was worth.

Eventually, Sam tried to rehydrate with several tall glasses of water, and collapsed back into bed.

When the cabin filled with early morning light, the snow was still falling. The Impala was buried under soft mounds of snow, and Steve’s Harley couldn’t even be seen. Steve and Bucky had pulled the cushions off the couch, and were curled around each other on the floor, tightly spooned together. Bucky was the big spoon, pressed against Steve’s back, holding him close. Sam peed and went back to sleep, trying not to disturb Dean, who’d joined him in the bed at some point.

When Sam opened his eyes again, Dean was making coffee, and Bucky and Steve had restored the cushions to the couch. Sam had a slight headache, but it could have been worse, and Steve and Bucky were fine, despite the ludicrous amount of vodka they’d consumed.

Steve was telling Dean in a low voice about the exploits of the Howling Commandoes taking out Hydra bases. Every time Bucky chipped in, Steve looked ready to cheer. Sam hadn’t known Dean was so well-versed on World War II, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Dean had a mind like a steel trap when it came to things he cared about knowing.

After a day, they’d eaten most of their food, and Steve volunteered to make a supply run on foot. Sam wanted to protest, but Bucky shrugged, and Dean now had absolute faith in Captain America. Steve came back a few hours later with a pack full of food, and a nice bottle of Johnny Walker for Dean, who blushed and was very well-pleased.

When the snow finally melted off the road, the four men parted with reluctance.

“Good luck finding Bigfoot,” Steve offered as Bucky climbed on behind him.

“Where will you guys go next?” Sam asked.

“West,” Bucky repeated, just as Steve said, “Due south — and then west.”

“Good luck,” Dean said, sincerely.

“Thanks, you too,” Steve answered. The Harley roared into life, and the two best friends soon faded from view.

“Did that really happen?” Sam asked.

“Yup?” Dean said.

“I kind of hate to leave this cabin now,” Sam said.

“We’ll always have this little Canadian shack,” Dean said with a cheesy smile, but Sam didn’t punch him.

They’d soon wiped away every trace they’d ever been there, and like Steve and Bucky, they hit the road.