#also this may be somewhat similar to the premise of a longer fic i am working on

[qqueenofhades]

Steggy + Old Guard AU? Also hi! So happy you're back! Hope you're good!

The sun won’t come up over the snowy mountains for almost another hour, and the rooftop is drenched in chilly violet shadows, the narrow cobbled street below still almost entirely black. Streetlamps burn in amber orbs that cast eerie halos, and Steve’s breath gusts in clouds of silver whenever he exhales. He’s been sitting up here for hours, keeping a sharp eye on the plaza below, and even the twin blessings of super-soldier serum and functional immortality don’t make it any less damn cold. He might break off little bits when he stands up.

Steve blows on his hands and shifts his position. This isn’t any worse than some of his more rugged escapades with the Howling Commandos, and at least a hot drink isn’t too far away. They’ve been in Sokovia for almost three weeks, tracking the elusive Baron Strucker and his rumored Hydra base, and the inland Balkans in January are not exactly a summer vacation. Indeed, far from it. Sokovia is a tiny ex-Soviet breakaway republic that sits in the shadow of the forbidding Rila Mountains, roughly equidistant from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Macedonia. Nobody informed Steve beforehand that the lowest temperature recorded here at this time of year was twenty-three below zero Fahrenheit.

He’s properly shivering by the time there’s a sound behind him, he turns, and sees Peggy, clad in fatigues, parka, beret, and boots, an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. She crosses the rooftop and sits down next to him, and Steve immediately scoots in, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. He presses his cold face to the back of her warm neck, and Peggy bites a yelp. “So that’s why you’re so pleased to see me,” she whispers, pulling the rifle off her back and holding it ready in her lap. Even a large and (self-servingly, but still) amorous lover cannot distract Margaret Carter from the mission. “Arse.”

Steve can’t deny it, so he shrugs. Then again, it’s been like this for almost seventy-five years, since his first death in 1945, when he crashed the plane into the ice and for some reason, entirely aside from the effects of Erskine’s serum, he didn’t die. Or rather he did, but then he woke up, and it’s happened several times since. Then there was Peggy’s first death-not-a-death in 1947, when the Zero Matter should have killed her – did kill her, actually, and then –

Just as Steve is about to enquire whether there are any other methods of keeping warm while they wait, there’s a sound on the street below. Sokovia’s old town is a picture-perfect Eastern European chocolate box, with red steeples and gingerbread houses, but it’s broken by shouting, dark sprinting figures, and a ruckus that shatters the predawn stillness. Steve leaps to his feet, ready to plunge off the roof and join the fray, but even with his enhanced reflexes, Peggy manages to be faster. She goes to one knee, slams the rifle against her shoulder, closes one eyes, sights down the barrel, and fires.

One of the dark figures turns a boneless somersault and hits the deck, as Peggy jacks out the spent cartridge and prepares to fire again. By that time Steve is already leaping, cold air whistling past his ears as he plunges past an elegant iron-work balcony and lands on the icy stones. A few frenzied minutes later, it’s all over, and as they both breathe hard and turn to each other, Steve and Bucky quickly assess that the other is still in one piece. Then another shadow swoops out of the chilly sky, lands, folds in his metal wings, and says, sounding a little miffed, “You guys know I had that covered, right?”

“Morning to you too.” Steve raises an eyebrow at Sam Wilson. He’s the youngest immortal of the team; he joined them in 1995, which means that Steve has now had to endure a full twenty-three years of his bickering foreplay with Bucky and arguments about whether to move the goddamn seat up. But at last they seem to be getting somewhere, because if they don’t sneak off and hook up in the dingy hotel bathroom after this, Steve will eat his entire Captain America uniform. Hilariously, Sam and Bucky steadfastly believe a) that they are being discreet and still totally acting like they hate each other, and b) that Steve and Peggy have no idea what is going on between them. Steve loves them both dearly, but no one ever said they were geniuses.

“You know,” Bucky shoots back at Sam. “If Zemo’s still looking for us, maybe you shouldn’t fly around in the open like a – ”

Sam rolls his eyes. “It’s called tactics. If we can draw him out, then – ”

Steve waits patiently for them to proceed through this stage. They’ve been after Helmut Zemo, the dangerous Sokovian leader of the Echo Scorpion paramilitary squad, who might have intel that can lead them to Strucker, and by the sounds of things, they argued the whole way. Then Peggy joins the party, not-so-clandestinely rolling her eyes. Living with three large immortal men who like to blow things up and repress their feelings like champions can be a call for a lot of that. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she barks, making Steve, Bucky, and Sam snap reflexively to attention. “Are we ready to go?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky says meekly. “Yes, we’re ready.”

With that, the team hurries up the street, staying low and keeping to the shadows. As they climb, Steve whispers pointedly to Bucky, “So how are things between you and Sam?”

“Fine.” Bucky determinedly keeps his eyes forward. It’s still sometimes miraculous that they have him back – after his first death in 1944 and the years he spent as the terrifying Winter Soldier, everything that Steve and Peggy went through to rescue and deprogram him, the fact that Steve can do anything so simple as tease him about a crush. “Why?”

“Mm. No reason.”

Steve must say this a little too angelically, because Bucky gives him some epic side-eye. “You’re a jerk,” he says, offering Steve a hand up the steep embankment. “Know that?”

“Punk.” Steve grips hold and lets Bucky lift him. He’s trying to say that it’s fine, that Bucky and Sam don’t have to hide, that he’s nothing but happy for them, and he hopes they feel safe enough to be together, whatever and however that may be. The four of them love each other in a way that literally transcends time and death, that will exist far beyond whatever they leave behind, whenever they finally do so. Their little immortal family out here in the world, doing their best to make it a better place, one day, one battle at a time. Always.

They reach the top of the street and look for a new route back to their safe house, where they can change clothes and get some strong coffee and continue the search for Strucker and Hydra. As Bucky marches ahead, clearly to save himself from any more probing questions about his relationship status, Peggy comes up next to Steve and slips her arm through his, with a look suggesting that she too has no objections to burning off post-battle adrenaline in a more intimate way. “They still think we’ve got no clue,” she says knowingly. “Don’t they?”

“Yeah.” Steve smiles at her, and she smiles back. “Let’s get going.”