Steve had spent a large portion of his adult life with an ear cocked for danger, even when asleep so the fact that he didn’t so much as stir when Bucky slipped out of the room was an indication of just how exhausted the man was. That and the fact that he was sleeping in an insanely uncomfortable chair that even Methuselah would having trouble sleeping in didn’t help either.
Whatever the case, the blond man slept on oblivious to Bucky’s late night creeping around the house. He also missed the subtle scratching of Natasha at his door. The two of them had a mutually agreeable situation. He hadn’t pressed charges when he’d caught her pilfering information out of his jail and she fed him interesting leads into the Russian’s less than legitimate business practices like the ‘protection’ detail Lukin had tried to pull six months before with the new comers to the city. It was a boom town and such things were to be expected perhaps but that didn’t mean Steve was going to sit on his ass and do nothing when people were being exploited in his jurisdiction. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had enough evidence to implicate Lukin in the scam and that stuck in his craw something fierce.
So when he had caught the beautiful Russian Natasha trying to lift information out of his secured files in the jail house, well, they had started a mutually satisfying agreement. Lukin assumed Natasha was sleeping with him and exploiting him for information which she then fed back to Lukin and Natasha brought him the real deal. At least, for the most part. It was kind of hard to trust a woman who’d garnered the name of the Black Widow in her home country before she had immigrated to the united states, supposedly under duress from the Czar himself.
Natasha had little problem with the locks on Steve’s door and she’d slipped inside and left a a single ruby dangle earring on the top of his dresser to let her know she wanted to meet with him. Steve slept through all of that.
What he couldn’t sleep through however was the jostling motion of Bucky shaking him awake. His eyes snapped open on full alert and the blond man was already reaching for his gun when he realized who it was that was waking him up. Bucky’s gesture for silence however had him pausing. The ‘what the hell’ look he gave the other man was unmistakable.
“A Russian? Lukin’s?” Out of habit, he glanced over at the dresser and spotted one of Natasha’s earrings laying there and breathed a sigh of relief. “No, it’s oaky. Gorgeous redhead? She uh…probably came to see me actually.” Steve rubbed at his face and grimaced to find nearly two days’ worth of stubble dotting his jawline.
“Christ, I need a shave,” he muttered under his breath and pushed himself to his feet. “Can you keep her occupied for a few minutes? Not really in a condition to sit down with a lady right now.” And even if the whole lovers thing hadn’t been a sham, Steve still would have wanted to clean up because you didn’t go wandering around with a woman if you were unkempt, it showed a lack of respect or regard. As though you thought them unworthy of putting your best foot forward.
Well. That just plain stumped the prostitute. She was there to see Steve? What was Steve doing associating with Russians-especially gorgeous, redheaded female ones? Steve didn’t strike Bucky as the kind of man who would have a clandestine lover, but then, Bucky hardly knew the man at all. Perhaps his conceptions of Steve as a good and virtuous man were all wrong.
“Uh, yeah. I’ll keep her company for a minute.” His question as to what the hell was going on remained unasked as he headed back downstairs. His remark that Steve looked good with a little stubble also went unvoiced.
When he went downstairs, Natasha sat there expectantly, as if everything in the damn world should’ve made sense now that he’d spoken to Steve. He flashed the woman an apologetic smile, sitting back down in his own seat. Bucky was relieved to find that his coffee was still warm, and took a grateful sip.
Conversation was uneasy at first, but they did manage to make small talk between sips of coffee.
A few minutes later, a freshly shaven Steve would climb down the rickety staircase and followed the smell of fresh brewed coffee into the kitchen where he found Bucky and Natasha engaged in polite conversation.
“Natasha, you’re a vision as always.” Smiling warmly, Steve accepted the redhead’s hand when she offered it.
“Steve, you’re looking well. I hope you don’t mind that I came by at such a late hour?” Natasha asked sweetly, as though it wasn’t highly inappropriate for a woman to show up at a man’s boarding house in the middle of the night.
“Of course not, I was just about to take a walk, will you join me?”
“I would love to.” She set her coffee cup down and offered a smile to Bucky. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Bucky.” With Steve politely pulling out her chair, she climbed gracefully to her feet and looped her arm through the sheriff’s. The pair’s body language was lacking the stiff formality of causal acquaintances and bespoke of something more intimate. A deeper friendship or perhaps they were in fact lovers?
Whatever the case, Steve escorted the beautiful woman outside and would return almost twenty minutes later alone. The blond man looked just a little chagrined when he walked in and found Bucky still in the kitchen. Making his way over to the stove, the sheriff poured himself a cup of coffee and went to sit down at the table across from Bucky.
“So, we need to talk. Lukin has found out you’re not longer at the cathouse.” He started without any preamble.
Bucky nodded solemnly. He had been expecting Lukin to find out sooner rather than later, hence his initial wariness at having met the Russian woman. Steve’s interactions with her were curious. Perhaps they were lovers after all. But Bucky felt it wasn’t his place to ask questions, to pry into the sheriff’s private life. Which was ironic, considering he’d been rifling through the man’s stuff earlier.
“So, Natasha is your source. She keeps you up to date on the Russians.”
"One of them, yes. I noticed one of his other informants at Kat's funeral today and got the feeling they were looking for you." He agreed quietly and took a sip from his coffee mug. The caffeine helped wipe away what cobwebs the cool night air hadn't managed to clear away as he'd walked Natasha back to her home.
"I've been trying to make something stick on Lukin since I came to town. I can't prove it but I think he had a hand in my predecessor's untimely demise.
He bit at his lip as he tried to decide whether to ask the question. "Did you know 'im? Your predecessor?" Ultimately, if this man was going to be letting him stay with him, was going to be helping him, he couldn't be afraid of getting to know him.
The blond man took another sip from his coffee mug as he mulled over Bucky's question for a moment. "Yes, I did. He was my commanding officer back in the war actually. He was a good man. When he started to suspect something wasn't right, he wrote to me." Colonel Phillips had been a good commander so Steve had left his life in New York to come out west in order to help his old commander only to arrive two days too late to help him. "As I said, I couldn't prove Lukin had a hand in it what happened to him but that's what my gut tells me."
With a frown, the prostitute nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss." He sighed, pouring himself a third cup of coffee. "Seems like we've both lost people who were important to us,” he stated carefully. His mind was back on that jewelry he’d found. He wanted to know who it belonged to, but couldn’t ask without admitting he’d been through Steve’s things, and that was the last thing he wanted to do right then.
"And I you. At least, I'm assuming you and Kat were close?" Steve asked carefully, silently hoping he wasn't accidentally stepping in it. He finished off his cup of coffee and went to fetch himself another cup as well. "Should I brew another pot? Mrs. Schuyler doesn't feed us if we miss dinner but she usually keeps some left overs in the pantry. I dunno about you but I'm famished. And...I think we need to have a talk about what we're going to do with you while we're at it."
“Yeah. We were real close.” Steve wasn’t stepping on any toes, but that didn’t mean Bucky was going to talk volumes about it.
He remembered when he first met Kat. He’d spent his first day in the cathouse fuming in his room, not leaving it even for meals despite his pangs of hunger. But then she had come to his room with a kind smile and a loaf of bread and he’d found it hard to be mad at her. His anger evaporated as they finished off the bread together. “I know our situation isn’t exactly ideal,” she had said, “but if we stick together, it’ll make it all bearable.”
“Nah, no more coffee,” he said in response to Steve’s suggestion. “Three cups is my limit, I’m afraid.” His eyes turned to the pantry and he realized just how hungry he was. The similarities between this and his first day at the cathouse couldn’t be ignored. In both cases, he was hungry, in a new, unfamiliar place, worried about people who had a vendetta against him. But in both cases, he also had people reaching out to him. Yes, he would accept the bread Steve extended to him. “Some food sounds good, though.”
Sympathy touched the blond man's face before he turned away to start cleaning the coffee grounds from the coffee pot. His landlady did not abide people making a mess in her kitchen at all, especially in the middle of the night.
"Alright, let's see what she left for us then." With easy familiarity indicating it wasn't the first time he'd raided the pantry at night, the sheriff found a covered basket containing some bread, cured ham and a block of cheese. There was also a couple of strudel wrapped up in a cheesecloth. Steve's stomach rumbled at the prospect of food and he carried the basket back out to the kitchen and set it down between them.
"Mrs. Schuyler's pastries are amazing." Touched by the gruff German's kindness, Steve started to lay out the fixings for their sandwiches.
What they had this time was better than a loaf of bread. He hadn’t eaten anything since that meager breakfast of biscuits and eggs, and it was all he could do not to pounce on the food like a hungry wolf. “Looks good,” he said, showing restraint as he took some of the bread.
Steve was so hungry he practically did pounce upon the food like a ravenous wolf. The sheriff wasted no time in splitting the bread down the middle so he could fold in slices of the cured ham and sharp tasting cheese. It was only after he'd finished one of the makeshift sandwiches and cleared it down with a sip of coffee that Steve broke the companionable silence that had fallen between them.
"So, what are your plans, Mr. Barnes? Would many people recognize you if you weren't errr....dressed up like a female?" What an awkward question to ask.
If he’d known the other man would attack the food like that, Bucky wouldn’t have been so worried about wolfing it down. Still, he felt the need to keep some kind of propriety. Especially given the other man’s lack of manners. Bucky knew what the man thought of him, and it became clearer with that awkwardly worded question. He felt the need to prove he could have class, too.
He shrugged. “Dunno. I figured I’d keep running and hiding till the Lukin situation’s taken care of, and then I’d be free to live my life.” He bit into his own sandwich, chewing over the question as he ate. “Lukin and his cronies. The people I worked for and with. Don’t think any of my customers would.”
Give the guy a break, he hadn't eaten in close to twenty-four hours. If there had been a lady present he would have eaten a little more decorously but as it was, he was famished.
"Well, are you planning on staying around town? If so, I'd say keeping a lot profile is the way to go for a while." In other words, no running around in dresses. "First things first, if you're going to stick around town, you're going to need gainful employment. I can put in a good word for you but if you've got some skills I can see who all is hiring."
“Yessir, I’m staying in town. Got nowhere else to go, so I figure I might as well.” He paused, trying to think of skills he had that weren’t of a carnal nature. “I can sew.” He always mended his own costumes when they got damaged. Some of his clients were rougher than others and didn’t show the same care for the garments that others did.
Whatever the case, the blond man slept on oblivious to Bucky’s late night creeping around the house. He also missed the subtle scratching of Natasha at his door. The two of them had a mutually agreeable situation. He hadn’t pressed charges when he’d caught her pilfering information out of his jail and she fed him interesting leads into the Russian’s less than legitimate business practices like the ‘protection’ detail Lukin had tried to pull six months before with the new comers to the city. It was a boom town and such things were to be expected perhaps but that didn’t mean Steve was going to sit on his ass and do nothing when people were being exploited in his jurisdiction. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had enough evidence to implicate Lukin in the scam and that stuck in his craw something fierce.
So when he had caught the beautiful Russian Natasha trying to lift information out of his secured files in the jail house, well, they had started a mutually satisfying agreement. Lukin assumed Natasha was sleeping with him and exploiting him for information which she then fed back to Lukin and Natasha brought him the real deal. At least, for the most part. It was kind of hard to trust a woman who’d garnered the name of the Black Widow in her home country before she had immigrated to the united states, supposedly under duress from the Czar himself.
Natasha had little problem with the locks on Steve’s door and she’d slipped inside and left a a single ruby dangle earring on the top of his dresser to let her know she wanted to meet with him. Steve slept through all of that.
What he couldn’t sleep through however was the jostling motion of Bucky shaking him awake. His eyes snapped open on full alert and the blond man was already reaching for his gun when he realized who it was that was waking him up. Bucky’s gesture for silence however had him pausing. The ‘what the hell’ look he gave the other man was unmistakable.
“A Russian? Lukin’s?” Out of habit, he glanced over at the dresser and spotted one of Natasha’s earrings laying there and breathed a sigh of relief. “No, it’s oaky. Gorgeous redhead? She uh…probably came to see me actually.” Steve rubbed at his face and grimaced to find nearly two days’ worth of stubble dotting his jawline.
“Christ, I need a shave,” he muttered under his breath and pushed himself to his feet. “Can you keep her occupied for a few minutes? Not really in a condition to sit down with a lady right now.” And even if the whole lovers thing hadn’t been a sham, Steve still would have wanted to clean up because you didn’t go wandering around with a woman if you were unkempt, it showed a lack of respect or regard. As though you thought them unworthy of putting your best foot forward.
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“Uh, yeah. I’ll keep her company for a minute.” His question as to what the hell was going on remained unasked as he headed back downstairs. His remark that Steve looked good with a little stubble also went unvoiced.
When he went downstairs, Natasha sat there expectantly, as if everything in the damn world should’ve made sense now that he’d spoken to Steve. He flashed the woman an apologetic smile, sitting back down in his own seat. Bucky was relieved to find that his coffee was still warm, and took a grateful sip.
Conversation was uneasy at first, but they did manage to make small talk between sips of coffee.
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“Natasha, you’re a vision as always.” Smiling warmly, Steve accepted the redhead’s hand when she offered it.
“Steve, you’re looking well. I hope you don’t mind that I came by at such a late hour?” Natasha asked sweetly, as though it wasn’t highly inappropriate for a woman to show up at a man’s boarding house in the middle of the night.
“Of course not, I was just about to take a walk, will you join me?”
“I would love to.” She set her coffee cup down and offered a smile to Bucky. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Bucky.” With Steve politely pulling out her chair, she climbed gracefully to her feet and looped her arm through the sheriff’s. The pair’s body language was lacking the stiff formality of causal acquaintances and bespoke of something more intimate. A deeper friendship or perhaps they were in fact lovers?
Whatever the case, Steve escorted the beautiful woman outside and would return almost twenty minutes later alone. The blond man looked just a little chagrined when he walked in and found Bucky still in the kitchen. Making his way over to the stove, the sheriff poured himself a cup of coffee and went to sit down at the table across from Bucky.
“So, we need to talk. Lukin has found out you’re not longer at the cathouse.” He started without any preamble.
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“So, Natasha is your source. She keeps you up to date on the Russians.”
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"I've been trying to make something stick on Lukin since I came to town. I can't prove it but I think he had a hand in my predecessor's untimely demise.
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He remembered when he first met Kat. He’d spent his first day in the cathouse fuming in his room, not leaving it even for meals despite his pangs of hunger. But then she had come to his room with a kind smile and a loaf of bread and he’d found it hard to be mad at her. His anger evaporated as they finished off the bread together. “I know our situation isn’t exactly ideal,” she had said, “but if we stick together, it’ll make it all bearable.”
“Nah, no more coffee,” he said in response to Steve’s suggestion. “Three cups is my limit, I’m afraid.” His eyes turned to the pantry and he realized just how hungry he was. The similarities between this and his first day at the cathouse couldn’t be ignored. In both cases, he was hungry, in a new, unfamiliar place, worried about people who had a vendetta against him. But in both cases, he also had people reaching out to him. Yes, he would accept the bread Steve extended to him. “Some food sounds good, though.”
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"Alright, let's see what she left for us then." With easy familiarity indicating it wasn't the first time he'd raided the pantry at night, the sheriff found a covered basket containing some bread, cured ham and a block of cheese. There was also a couple of strudel wrapped up in a cheesecloth. Steve's stomach rumbled at the prospect of food and he carried the basket back out to the kitchen and set it down between them.
"Mrs. Schuyler's pastries are amazing." Touched by the gruff German's kindness, Steve started to lay out the fixings for their sandwiches.
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"So, what are your plans, Mr. Barnes? Would many people recognize you if you weren't errr....dressed up like a female?" What an awkward question to ask.
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He shrugged. “Dunno. I figured I’d keep running and hiding till the Lukin situation’s taken care of, and then I’d be free to live my life.” He bit into his own sandwich, chewing over the question as he ate. “Lukin and his cronies. The people I worked for and with. Don’t think any of my customers would.”
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"Well, are you planning on staying around town? If so, I'd say keeping a lot profile is the way to go for a while." In other words, no running around in dresses. "First things first, if you're going to stick around town, you're going to need gainful employment. I can put in a good word for you but if you've got some skills I can see who all is hiring."
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