FIC: Once Upon A Tide: Ten Years Later [MCU (Captain America), Steve x Peggy x Bucky & Their Kids]
"Mom, what’s for dinner?" Bucky heard, distantly, beyond the sound of the entire ocean in his ears.
"I don’t know, you’ll have to ask your dad."
"Dad, what’s for dinner?"
"Your other dad, honey."
"Where is he?"
"Over there."
"Right. Has he moved from that spot at all today?"
"Go ahead and bring him a towel, he’s been lazy enough for one day."
Bucky lifted his fins to wave at them, but made no move to get up out of the water or open his eyes. Moments later, footsteps came splashing in his direction.
"Dad?"
"Hm?"
"Dinner?"
"Is it done already?"
"Ha ha. Please feed me before mom and pop try to cook and give us all food poisoning."
"I heard that!" Steve shouted from back on the beach.
"You should really learn to whisper, sweetheart," Bucky said, and opened his eyes. She - like her little sister - had been compensating for the superhuman senses they’d inherited from Steve all their lives, though. And sure enough...
"Nah," Eleanor said, and shouted back over her shoulder: "You were supposed to!"
Laughing, Bucky submerged fully one last time, sat up, stretched, and made for the beach. "For that, I’ll roast you a chicken just the way you like."
"Hey! I heard that!" Steve hollered.
"Good!"
"Stop turning my children against me, you jerk!"
"It’s not stealing if you gave them to me!" Bucky singsonged.
Eleanor threw a beach towel at his head. "I like Mom better than both of you."
Peggy whooped.
"Combined."
"Awww," Bucky and Steve said in tandem.
But Bucky dragged himself the rest of the way out of the water with a smile, and dried his hair feeling supremely content, the mellow, early-evening sunlight slanting down on him. He had to give Howard one thing: he may not have the sense god gave him, or enough discretion for Bucky to trust him with a secret his children had known since they were four years old, or any discernable pattern to which of his inventions would work and which would blow off another limb, but if he offered you something money could buy, he delivered only the best.
"Go spend your vacation time on my private beach on a tropical island," he’d told Peggy and Steve - and he’d sent them straight to paradise. He’d also offered chef and maid service to go with it, so Bucky would have these weeks off from his ‘job’ too, but that, they’d declined. The complete solitude of the villa was far more valuable.
Once dry enough for the change, Bucky wrapped the towel around his waist, waited for his tail to turn into legs, and went up the beach to the house. Peggy, who was playing cards with Steve on the porch, whistled at him when he passed, the towel held in place with his right hand. He grinned and put a little extra swing in his step. He got a pair of pants and a shirt from the bedroom and peeled the waterproof sleeve from his left arm. Sighing blissfully, he flexed his hand and elbow. The mechanics didn’t get stiff from being confined in inflexible rubber all day, but there was enough artificial and phantom sensation in his arm to make him feel like they did anyway.
Back in the kitchen, Eleanor was already busily collecting ingredients to prepare the chicken.
"Where’s your sister?" Bucky asked.
Eleanor shrugged. "Close, I guess. There shouldn’t be more than ten minutes of air left in her tank by now."
Bucky frowned. "You left her to go diving alone?"
"No, I just came back early. She said there was something she wanted to do without me."
"When?"
"Dunno, an hour ago?"
Bucky turned on his heel and marched outside.
"We don’t drown that easily, dad!" Eleanor called after him defensively. "We’re not amateurs!"
"Honey," Bucky said to Peggy. "Can you see Pearl?"
He meant, obviously, ‘please dislodge your mind from its proper place in the time-space-probability continuum for a moment and use the precognition-like portion of your powers, courtesy of the side-effects of temporal-dimensional travel on your puny mortal form, to tell me our youngest hasn’t died while we weren’t looking’. Instead, she cocked her head to the side and pointed behind him.
Bucky whirled around. There was Pearl, coming toward them across the beach with her flippers in one hand and... a fishing net in the other?
"What the hell?" Steve said.
When she saw she had their attention, Pearl waved and jogged the rest of the way, grinning hugely. "Dad, look what I found!"
Eleanor appeared in the doorway, and Steve at Bucky’s shoulder. Pearl bounded up the porch steps and dropped the net at Bucky’s feet.
"Oh, gross!" Eleanor yelped, backing away. "Pearl, you didn’t!"
"Is that - ?" Steve asked with a note of alarm.
Pearl beamed. "Dinner!"
"Oh, god," Peggy half-groaned, half-laughed.
Bucky stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, from his daughter to the massive crab she’d brought home. Then, slowly, he knelt and untangled the net. "Did you..."
"Caught and killed it with my bare hands," Pearl said proudly. "Like a real merman’s daughter. And they aren’t nearly as scary as my teacher made them out to be way back when, so I conquered my fear too. Two birds with one stone!"
And Bucky was thrown back in time to a time when killing things seemed like the most natural thing in the world - all the way back, to sweet, cold water, fitting in his mother’s lap, little sisters flashing through the water alongside him, a mouth-wateringly delicious fish he knew in the dark and by its sound and smell but would forget the human name of for years on end because once upon a time some memories just didn’t matter.
Back when children like himself were still an option, Bucky had dreamt of moments like this.
He shot his daughter a dazzling grin which she returned tenfold, and then looked over his shoulder at Steve and Peggy, smiling helplessly. "Do you see what you did? You gave that kid to me. You even named her after me."
"You can’t prove that," they chorused, an old refrain.
"Pearl is a very popular name," Steve said.
"On both sides of the pond," Peggy added.
"Does this mean we’re not having chicken?" Eleanor asked, eyeing Pearl’s catch with no small amount of dejection and trepidation.
"You’re not going to serve that raw, are you?" Peggy asked.
"Well, if you people insist on disrespecting my culture, you’re not getting any. More for me and Pearl!" Bucky said cheerfully, and scooped up the crab. "Holy cow, what a beast. It’s a good thing you’re so strong, or I worry what it would’ve done to you."
"I killed it real quick, I promise. I didn’t want it to, you know..."
"That’s good, sweetheart. That’s real good. Where did you find this thing, anyway?"
"Oh, I had to swim around for ages!"
Pearl followed him into the kitchen and helped him prepare her catch, chattering animatedly all the while.
("Did you tell dad coconut crabs are land animals?" Eleanor teased later that evening, while they were doing the dishes. There was no bite in it, though; after lots of procrastination, she’d taken one bite and practically inhaled her portion.
"Shut up," Pearl said. "So am I. It fits.")
Hook, Line, and Sinker (WORK IN PROGRESS)
The lives and loves of Bucky Barnes, shapeshifting merman.
Guppy Love
Bucky can’t sing or swim, except that he totally can. It’s complicated.
aka the one where Bucky Barnes is a merman and the greatest tragedy in a child’s life is not being able to go swimming with your friends // Steve x Bucky
Lots of Fish in the Sea
Chapter: Bucky and Steve
Chapter: Bucky and Peggy
Chapter: Bucky and Steve and Peggy
Chapter: Steve and Peggy
Chapter: Bucky
Hydra had Bucky on a lab table for god knows how long and never discovered his secret. Cue Agent Carter walking in on it pretty much the moment he and Steve make it back to camp.
aka the one where Bucky Barnes is a merman and once you’ve lived through your single worst nightmare, ‘chasing tail’ puns are a close second // Steve x Peggy x Bucky
Plankton
Canon-divergent AU branching off from the more or less canon-compliant Hook, Line, and Sinker. Steve walks away from the wreckage of the Valkyrie and returns home in time to propose to Peggy on V-E day, and some fifteen years later, the Winter Soldier's handlers make the grave mistake of sending Bucky Barnes after his best guy and girl's young children.
It's all domestic fluff and hurt/comfort and suburban absurdity from there. :D The mermaid thing may or may not be relevant or even visibly present in any given installment. Fics with "fish" theme titles contain overt mermaid stuff, fics with "bird" themed titles don't.
Heaven
A man may take himself out of the war, and the war out of himself, but what does he put back in?
Early Birds
They have a lot of options. Not least of which: going back to sleep while the grown-ups do their thing.
The Christmas Cookie Caper
What's a brainwashed assassin turned suburban dad supposed to do to keep his homemade baked goods safe around here?
Once Upon A Tide
Once Upon A Tide...
Ten Years Later
“Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away, there lived a fisherman, a fisherwoman, and a merman...” // standalone / sidestory
aka the one where Bucky Barnes is a shapeshifting merman, and his children are deeply unimpressed with the lack of imagination that goes into their bedtime stories. The alternative is... unfortunate, though.