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“Nat!” Clint yelled, bursting into the common area from one of the hallways. “Natasha! Bucky! Tony, even! Someone!”
Steve looked up from where he was slicing bell peppers in the kitchen with surprise. “Clint?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Clint skidded to a stop as Steve put down the knife and approached him. He grinned and held out his hand. “Look!” he said. He opened his fingers to reveal a shiny, gold-colored ring with markings around the outside of the band.
Steve looked closer. “Is that… Bilbo’s ring?” he asked, confused. He thought it matched the description of the ring in The Hobbit, which he and Bucky had read to each other when they were younger. That had been years ago, though (over seventy, in fact) so he wasn’t sure.
“Yeah, I found it on the sidewalk outside the building!” Clint said gleefully. “Wait, how do you know who Bilbo is?”
“The Hobbit was published in 1937,” Steve replied, looking up at him. “When our neighbor moved, she gave Bucky and me most of her books, including a copy of that. We wore the cover off, we read it so much. I had no idea it was still popular, though. Can I see this?” Clint nodded, and Steve picked up the ring from Clint’s hand to study it.
“Dude, it’s only one of the most successful movie franchises of all time! They only finished making the Hobbit movies, like, last year sometime. It’s got a huge fandom.”
“How can it be ‘the most successful of all time’ if they just finished the movies?” Steve asked, curious, holding the ring up to the light.
“Because the Lord of the Rings movies are so popular,” Clint responded. “Hey, that solves this week’s movie debate. No one will turn down marathoning those.”
Steve turned his attention away from the ring and focused on Clint. “The Lord of the Rings?”
“Yeah, the… Wait, how has no one told you about this yet? They’re the sequel trilogy to The Hobbit. They came out in… JARVIS, when was the Lord of the Rings trilogy released?”
“The books The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were both published in 1954, followed by The Return of the King in 1955. The films of the same names were released in 2001, 2002, and 2003, respectively.”
“Thanks, JARVIS,” Clint responded, turning back to Steve. “So the sequels came after your time, then. I don’t know how good the books are, I’ve only read The Hobbit, but if they’re anything like that you’d probably love them.”
Steve was staring at him. “There’s more books? With more hobbits and dwarves and elves? And Gandalf? Tolkien actually wrote a sequel?”
Clint grinned. “Yeah, there’s more. I had no idea you were such a fan, Steve.”
“Our neighbor bought The Hobbit new and read it once. There wasn’t a single dog-eared page when she gave it to me and Bucky, and the cover fell off after a year of our owning it. I’m pretty sure the word ‘fan’ is an understatement.”
Clint laughed. “Well, how about you go break the good news to your boyfriend, and I’ll get Tony to find you guys copies of all four books. When you’ve finished them we can watch the movies… eighteen hours of hobbits and dwarves and elves. That’ll be one hell of a marathon.”
Clint took the ring back from Steve and turned to walk down the hallway to Tony’s lab. Steve called after him.
“You said you found the ring on the sidewalk? Like, it was just laying there?”
“Yeah,” said Clint, turning back to him. “Why?”
“Isn’t that how Bilbo got the ring? He just found it lying on the ground in Gollum’s cave?”
The archer stared at him for a moment, then looked to the ring laying in his palm. “Shit,” Steve heard him murmur. Steve laughed.
*^*^*^*
“There’s more?!”
Bucky jumped off the couch in his and Steve’s living room area, where he had been sitting when Steve delivered the news. Steve laughed at the incredulous look on his face.
“Quit laughing, Steve! Promise me this isn’t some mean joke Natasha put you up to? Tolkein actually wrote more books?”
“Yes, Bucky! A whole trilogy about hobbits and elves and dwarves and Bilbo’s ring! Clint said he would get Tony to find all four books for us, and when we were done reading them he’d show us the movies.”
“…There’s movies too?!”
*^*^*^*
The next day, Tony walked into the common area where Steve and Bucky were sitting on the couch, and dropped a heavy cardboard box onto the coffee table.
“Here you go, you nerds,” he said, raising an eyebrow at the way they scrambled for the box. Bucky got to it first, and, pulling a knife from Gandalf-knows-where, ripped through the packing tape. With a gentleness that starkly contrasted his enthusiasm of a few moments ago, he pulled out a copy of The Hobbit. He looked closely at it, running his fingers over the cover. Steve smiled softly and placed his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky thumbed the pages and brought the book close to his face, breathing in its scent with closed eyes.
“Oh my god, you’re a book nerd,” Tony commented with a grin. “Seriously?”
“Seriously, Stark,” Bucky replied as he opened his eyes. He gently turned the cover, already devouring the words on the pages within.
Steve laughed. “Bucky, there are three more books here. You wanna look at them before you start that one?”
“In a minute,” came the murmured reply of a man already lost deep within a fictional world. He drew his legs up onto the couch and curled into Steve’s side, seemingly subconciously. Steve laughed again, pulling him close as he reached into the box and brought out the remaining three books. Bucky raised his eyes from the page he was on to watch as Steve spread them across his lap, fingers brushing over each one with a small smile.
“You too, Cap?” asked Clint from the other side of the room. Steve looked up at him.
“Not so much as Bucky, but yeah. We both read a lot growing up, whatever we could get our hands on. We had one tiny, warped bookcase; it and just about everything on it came from our neighbor.”
“We stole some before we left school, too,” Bucky piped up. “What did we have… Charles Dickens, right? I think I remember you reading A Chrismas Carol a lot.”
“You mean, you stole some. And yeah, I did. I think I could relate to Tiny Tim a lot, or something,” Steve laughed. “What else was there? We owned some Sherlock Holmes, didn’t we?”
“I think so, or at least some kind of mystery books,” Bucky replied. “And didn’t I take Pride and Prejudice from my sister when I moved out?”
“That’s right; I had forgotten about that! You were really attached to that book. I remember her asking you if you knew where it was, and you straight up lied to her and said you had no idea while hiding it up your shirt.”
“I’m pretty sure I have Mr. Darcy to thank for me turning out to be gay,” Bucky commented.
“If you were attracted to the book character, you should see the movie,” announced Natasha, coming into the room and plopping down on the couch next to Bucky.
“They made a movie out of that, too?” he asked, looking at her with wide eyes. She grinned.
“Several, in fact. I’m talking about the one with Colin Firth. It’s six hours long, but well worth it.”
Bucky sat up, pulling away from Steve, and leaned his head against the back of the couch. “Is there anything that hasn’t been turned into a film?”
“Nope,” Tony answered. “Every single book ever written has been made into a movie, tv show, or play in the seventy years you two weren’t with us.”
“He’s not actually far off,” said Clint.
Shaking his head, Bucky leaned over Steve and picked up The Fellowship of the Ring. He looked it over the same way he had The Hobbit; stroking the cover, thumbing the pages, breathing in its smell.
Clint smirked at him. “Bucky, you either look like you want to have sex with that book, or like it’s your baby and you need to protect it from the world. Possibly both.”
Bucky glared at him over the book pages.
“Actually, he looks like Gollum,” Natasha chimed in. “Seriously, Barnes, all you need to do is whisper, ‘My Precious’ and you’d be the spitting image of him.” Bucky turned his glare on her.
“I think I’m going to continue admiring these books upstairs, where no one will laugh at me and I can actually enjoy them. Steve, care to join me?” Bucky stood, clutching the two books he was holding to his chest, and looked down at Steve.
“I’m pretty sure that’s code for ‘keep me company while I’m reading so I don’t cry as much when Thorin dies,’” Steve replied, getting to his feet. Bucky kicked him in the shin. “Ow!”
“I did not cry, Steve.”
“No, that’s right, you were just allergic to something floating through the room. Something that, oddly enough, didn’t seem to bother me. Ow! Quit that!”
“Then quit making fun of me, you punk.”
“Not in your wildest dreams.”
“…”
“Ow!”
Bickering, laughing, and shoving at each other good-naturedly, the two of them made their way into the elevator, leaving the rest of the room pondering the fact that Barnes and Noble, or so they had taken to calling them, were actual book nerds.
A moment’s silence passed.
“So who’s going to introduce them to Harry Potter?” asked Clint.
*^*^*^*
Two days later, when Bucky was halfway through The Two Towers and Steve had just started Fellowship, another box of books appeared on their kitchen table. In it were copies of A Christmas Carol, Pride and Prejudice, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and the Harry Potter series. Tucked inside the first book’s cover were gift cards to Amazon and Ikea, along with a note that said:
"You’re going to need a bookshelf. Or two. Or three. However many you nerds think you’ll need, it’s on me. Buy yourselves some more books while you’re at it."
It didn’t have to be signed for them to know who it was from. They reciprocated the gesture in the best way they could – Steve, by baking three dozen of the cookies that Tony ate by the handful (receiving a “Shit, Rogers! These are great cookies, but we don’t all have a super metabolism, you know!” in return), and Bucky by staying an extra hour after Tony had finished the regular matinence on his arm, letting him poke and prod and talk about upgrades to his heart’s content.
*^*^*^*
The Friday after Bucky and Steve had received their first four books, the Avengers settled in to marathon the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. Sam, Thor, and Pepper all couldn’t make it – Sam, because he was spending the weekend with his family; Thor, because of buisness on Asgard (trying to rebuild a kingdom after it had been wrecked from the inside out was a daunting task, as it turned out); and Pepper, because she was on the other side of the globe scheduling interviews for all of them – so it was only Bucky, Steve, Clint, Natasha, Bruce, and Tony in the Tower. A small crowd compared to usual.
They all spread out in the common area's comfortable couches and chairs, armed with a variety of caffinated drinks and sugary snack foods, warm blankets, pillows, and cuddle buddies. As Bucky and Steve were the only ones who hadn’t seen the movies yet, they got the the couch with the best view, centered in front of the television. Natasha and Clint sat on the smaller couch to their right, and Bruce and Tony on the one to their left.
There was snickering and shushing from various people in the room as everyone made themselves comfortable. The opening scene to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey began to play, and Bucky tucked himself into Steve’s side underneath the blankets, leaning his head on his shoulder. Steve pulled him close, and they kissed once, soft, innocent, and chaste, before settling in and focusing their attention on the film.
*^*^*^*
Pepper arrived back at the Tower at noon on Saturday to find everyone passed out on various items of furniture, surrounded by empty soda cans and food wrappers, the end credits to Return of the King playing on the television. She sighed. Walking out of the room, she wondered if the consequences of blowing an airhorn into the room of superheroes would be worth the hilarity of the security footage. Probably not. It was a fun thought to entertain, though.
*^*^*^*
“Ugh… Pepper? What time is it?”
“One in the afternoon, sleepyhead.”
“Ugh. Welcome back, by the way. Steve…why did we think marathoning eighteen hours worth of film in one night was a smart thing to do?”
“Mmm… no clue. For the record, it was your idea.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was Clint’s.”
“Yeah, but you went along with it.”
“So did you.”
“True. I’m never listening to one of your’s or Clint’s ideas again.”
“Smart move.”
“You’re all idiots,” Pepper commented with a smile as she moved to wake Tony and Bruce.
“Love you too, Pepper.”