୭ ˚. requested ᵎᵎ

Sun. Sand. Silence.

A buzzard cries overhead. The team SUV is a silent, smoking corpse on the side of a sun-scorched desert road. There’s no signal. There’s no shade. And you’re pretty sure Alexei just drank radiator fluid.

“Okay,” Bucky mutters, standing with greasy hands on his hips, sweat beading on his brow. “Let me get this straight.”

He points, ticking off with his metal fingers.

“One—Walker swerved to hit a road lizard.”

“It was fast,” John defends. “Suspiciously fast.”

“Two—Alexei overinflated the spare tire until it exploded.”

Alexei shrugs. “I like when things pop.”

“And three—Yelena put sand in the gas tank because she thought it looked thirsty.”

Yelena, lying in the shade of a folded tarp, waves lazily. “In my defense, I was thirsty, and it felt like solidarity.”

Ava’s already lying back on the hood, sunglasses on, baking like a lizard. “Tell me again how we’re the elite team.”

Bob hands you half-melted trail mix with a grin. “Do you think Bucky’s gonna snap? I have twenty on ‘he digs a shallow grave by sundown.’”

Bucky rolls his eyes, pulls the band off his hair, and leans back under the hood with a muttered, “I survived the 40s for this.”

You stand there, sweat dripping down your spine, as someone cranks up the radio to static-ridden oldies. The smell of burned rubber fills the air. A desert road trip wasn’t supposed to be this dramatic.

But now it’s just you, a broken-down SUV, and the most unhinged team of unstable weirdos ever assembled—all relying on one tired man with a metal arm and zero patience.

Better help, or stay out of the blast radius.