fic: I set fire to my maps (Captain America; Bucky/Natasha; adult)
I set fire to my maps
Captain America; Bucky/Natasha; adult; 3,575 words
In which Natasha's road trip of self-discovery intersects too frequently with the Winter Soldier's for it to be coincidence.
Title & cut-text from "Vagabond" by David Shumate. Or read it at AO3.
~*~
I set fire to my maps
Natasha's had many names and many lives, but she's only had to rebuild from the ground up twice before, and the first time, when she was recruited as a child by the Red Room (recruited: such a ridiculously neutral word for what they did to her) was hardly her own choice. The second time, choosing to take Clint's offer and come in from the cold, was hard in different ways, but she'd handled it--the second guessing and the dirty looks, the gossip and the backbiting, the agents who didn't want to work with her and didn't trust her when they did--and come out of it stronger and better.
Now, she testifies in front of Congress, her face on every TV screen from Washington to Mumbai, and then she walks away from Steve and Sam in that cemetery, intent on finding out who she is without SHIELD or the KGB or anyone else telling her who to be.
Being on her own is easier than she expects to be, but it's harder than it used to be to slip her skin. She cuts her hair short and dyes it black and spends a couple of weeks in New York, haunting hookah lounges and after hours poetry readings. Ninety percent of the poetry is terrible and she hates the smell of smoke in her clothes and in her hair (especially the way it reeks when she washes it out).
She tries Brooklyn instead, pizza under the bridge and waffles at a diner, served with fair trade coffee and local produce and honey. She tries to imagine Steve here, and thinks it would fit him better than it does her, but she tries it on for size anyway. She takes a trip to Brighton Beach, listens to little old ladies speak her mother tongue, and wonders if, in a different life, this is where she'd have ended up.
It doesn't feel like where she belongs right now.
She jogs in Prospect Park, and only carries two knives and her garrote, and the only time she comes close to using them is when she spots the Winter Soldier on a park bench. He's feeding the pigeons, though, looks like just another homeless vet instead of the force of destruction she knows him to be, whatever Steve wants to think.
He doesn't move when she runs past him, just raises his paper Starbucks cup in salute.
Natasha flies out of JFK that evening.
*
Natasha's hair is burgundy and in that annoying growing-out but too short to do anything with stage which makes her think about cutting all off again. She could wear a wig until it's a better length, but she's free of wigs and disguises if she chooses to be now, and she doesn't have to deal with her scalp prickling with sweat and pins if she doesn't want to. (She doesn't want to.)
She's ordering lunch at a food truck in Vancouver when she notices him standing off to the side, his eyes wide as he stares into his plastic container. He picks up another handful of fries and shoves them into his mouth and lets out a strangled hum. Other people start moving away from him, but Natasha meets his gaze. She remembers the shock of being able to order food she wanted for herself, not what was expected for whoever she was supposed to be at the moment, not what was nutritious or filling or cheap, if she was on the government's dime.
She doesn't think even the Winter Soldier would abandon a carton of seafood poutine to kill her, so she says, "Is it good? I've wanted to try it since I saw it on Food Network."
The Winter Soldier nods once and makes another ecstatic little sound. She tries not to find it cute, because he's cute the way a big cat or a poisonous snake is.
The man behind the counter hands her the food she ordered, she shoves a handful of napkins into her pocket, and then she goes to stand beside the Winter Soldier. He raises his eyebrows and then gives her a shy half-smile when she shrugs. He looks like Steve's Bucky then, just a kid from Brooklyn in over his head.
"Don't worry," he says. "I wouldn't kill you before you got to taste that."
She pins him with a glare. "Was that a joke?"
It's his turn to shrug. "It's good stuff. And I don't want to kill you."
She looks him over closely. He doesn't appear to have a gun, but that doesn't mean anything. She can imagine how many knives he's carrying.
"I'll just go," he says, a little sadly. "Enjoy your poutine."
She waits until he's gone before she tastes it, and she lets herself moan out loud at how good it is, an explosion of rich flavor on her tongue.
She calls Steve the next day. She's already in San Francisco, on a layover to Singapore. "He was in Vancouver yesterday afternoon," she says.
"Vancouver," Steve says, like he can't believe it.
"He ate poutine."
"From that truck we saw on Food Network?" Sam asks.
"Yup."
"Was it as good as it looked?"
"Better."
Steve interrupts with, "Guys, can we focus here for a second?"
"But the poutine was really good, Steve." She laughs. "He sounded like he was enjoying it."
"Good," Steve answers after a long pause. "Good."
*
Natasha's a blonde bombshell on the dance floor in Barcelona, in more ways than one. She's here at Nick's request, rooting out a neuroscientist who worked for HYDRA and has moved on to AIM. No one else has been able to get close since the debacle in DC, but Salazar enjoys the nightlife and slipped his bodyguards. According to their intel, he's no gentleman, but he prefers blondes.
She's about to get in his car with him to go back to his hotel room when she sees moonlight glance off metal. She stumbles and says, "Go on ahead. I'll be right there. I have to fix my heel."
She makes a show of it, and doesn't startle when an arm snakes out of the darkness to wrap around her waist and pull her around a corner just as Salazar's car explodes. With him in it.
She doesn't turn her head. His breath smells like beer and his body is as solid as a wall behind her. "Thanks, I guess," she whispers.
"We should go dancing sometime," he says.
The non-sequitur throws her a little. "What?"
"I think I used to be good at it," he says, "before."
He's gone before she can answer. She takes a deep breath and heads back to her hotel. She's on a flight to Buenos Ares the next morning, her ears still ringing from Nick's incredulous rant about her lack of subtlety with Salazar.
"It wasn't me," she'd said.
"Oh?"
"It was our elusive friend. And he chose to let me know it."
"Huh."
"Yeah."
"Keep me posted."
"Of course."
"And let Rogers know."
"He's my next call."
Steve sounded hopeful, and told her he and Sam were headed to Vienna. Natasha wished them well, but she doubts they're going to find the Winter Soldier there.
*
Natasha's hair is a lovely chestnut with caramel highlights, cut in a wavy bob that doesn't require much work, and she's annoyed with herself for giving into the urge to see the Degas collection at the Musée d'Orsay. She knows she was never a ballerina, but those false memories were appended to an honest desire to dance when she was very young. She doesn't remember much from before the Red Room took her, but the rustle of tulle and the yearning for pink toe shoes seems like it's always been there.
"You're graceful enough to have been a dancer," he says from a couple of feet behind her left shoulder.
"You don't strike me as the type to enjoy the ballet," she answers, her fingers tightening on the map of the museum in her hand.
"No, I always liked the burlesque better." His mouth curves in a half-grin.
"Of course," she answers lightly. When she turns to face him, he offers her his arm and she takes it. It's firm beneath her fingers and his jacket, but still flesh and blood. "And no doubt you liked pinups more than portraiture."
"Art was always more Steve's thing," he says with a shrug. "He liked Cézanne a lot."
"That wasn't in the Smithsonian exhibit."
"No. I remember. He went to art school, but even before that, he always took art books out of the library. Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Caravaggio." He laughs softly. "Sounded like roll call on Mulberry Street."
"You should let him know you're here. He'd come."
He looks away. "I know."
"And that's a problem?"
"You know it is, and you know why."
She bites back a sigh. Men and their stupid attempts at useless nobility. She lets a smidge of annoyance show on her face, but not enough to scare him away. "I think you should let him be the judge of that, but okay."
They tour the museum arm in arm, and Natasha makes and discards a dozen plans and another half dozen backup plans and by the time they're sitting in a small café ordering pastries, she's wondering if she should cut and run or invite him back to her hotel room.
"I'm not the same guy he knew," he says, picking up the conversation from earlier as if no time has passed. He stares at a spot beyond her left shoulder, but she doesn't think he's seeing Paris in the distance. "I don't think I can be again." He takes a sip of coffee. "I remember too much after and not enough before."
"Do you think he's the same as he was before?"
He makes a dismissive noise. "He's Steve." As if his Steve-ness somehow outweighs everything else that's happened to him. Then again, maybe to the Winter Soldier--to Bucky, and maybe she can start thinking of him that way--it has.
She gives him a small smile, pleased with having figured it out. "And to him, you're Bucky, and you always will be. Regardless of this," she flicks a hand to indicate his long, unkempt hair, his untrimmed beard, and the faded gray hoodie hiding his metal arm, "fashion disaster thing you've got going on."
"Why, Miss Romanoff, I'm surprised you'll let yourself be seen with me."
"You wanted to go dancing, didn't you?" He nods. "Clean yourself up and meet me here at eleven." She hands him a matchbook and walks away. She can feel his gaze heavy and itchy between her shoulder blades, but she doesn't look back.
*
He meets her out front at ten forty-five, clean-shaven and hair pulled back into an artfully disheveled ponytail. He's replaced his hoodie with a sharp leather jacket and he's wearing a matching leather glove on his left hand. It's warm against her back when he guides her into the club.
They stand at the bar for a quick drink before she leads him onto the dance floor. It's packed tight with people and he stays pressed up against her, the lines around his mouth are tight, his lips pressed into a flat line. She runs her hands up his chest and around the back of his neck and tugs his ear down closer to her lips.
"This management of this place launders money for HYDRA," she says, and she can feel the tension leach out of him. His whole body relaxes, his hips and shoulders loosening until he's moving with her to the beat. For the first time, she can imagine him wowing the girls in Brooklyn with his dancing back in the forties, and for the first time, she thinks of him as Bucky without any qualification. For a brief moment, she lets herself wonder what he'd be like between her thighs.
But business comes first, especially when it involves the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier hunting HYDRA operatives. The money men in the back room have no idea what's hit them when she and Bucky burst in. Their hired muscle isn't up to snuff, and the night ends with Interpol raiding the club and finding eight HYDRA agents trussed up in the office while Natasha and Bucky slip out the back, riding the adrenaline high and laughing. He looks a little stunned, like it's something he's suddenly remembered how to do, and he sounds a little like a startled seal, but it's good. Better than good.
She waits until they're out of range of the sirens and flashing lights before she shoves him up against a wall and kisses him. He makes a startled noise into her mouth and his whole body seizes up for a second and she wonders if she's made a huge mistake and misread him completely, but then he kisses her back, his tongue slick and sinuous against hers.
"Hotel room," he says when she lets him up for air.
She has a room at the Le Grand that she checked into but hasn't been using, so it should be safe enough to take him there. What the hell, she thinks. There are worse ways to go.
They manage to restrain themselves in the elevator but once the door to the room swings shut, he's pressing her up against it, his mouth hard and hot over hers. She wraps her legs around his hips and helps him shrug out of his jacket and yank off his gloves. His flesh hand is warm against her skin and the metal hand is barely cooler, though it has a weirdly smooth, segmented texture.
He shoves the straps of her dress down and unhooks her bra with a surprised laugh. "Didn't know I knew how to do that," he murmurs against the curve of her breast, his breath a warm soft laugh against her skin. She runs a sympathetic hand through his hair, and then tightens her fingers in it when he sucks her nipple into his mouth. She arches into it, heat flashing through her, and he does it again and again, switching from one to the other until she's aching and needy.
"Bed," she commands breathlessly, and he walks over and drops her down onto it.
They both strip quickly, clothes tossed in a pile beside the bed, and then he kneels over her, kissing her thoroughly. His fingers find the scar on her shoulder, healed to an angry pink. He presses his lips to it and whispers, "Sorry." He freezes for a moment and then slips down the bed, to find the scar on her belly. "I'm sorry," he says again.
She laughs ruefully. "What's a few bullets between friends?"
He kisses it gently. "I thought you were familiar. Not just from DC. Once I was on my own, I mean."
"That's why you followed me."
"I didn't." He presses another kiss to her belly. "Not that first time, in Brooklyn. I was there because it was supposed to be where I was from. But I didn't--It didn't look like even the brief flashes I remembered."
"And Vancouver?"
"You guys kept talking about the seafood poutine. I didn't even know what poutine was, but it sounded delicious."
"You were listening to us." She should have known.
"Even though I couldn't see him, I needed to make sure Steve was all right. That you and Sam were taking care of him."
"He'd be better if you stopped running away."
He hums noncommittally and returns to kissing his way across her belly. She wonders vaguely how often he's talked about Steve while in bed with other people, but then he's sliding down between her thighs and she stops thinking about Steve altogether. She remembers the last time she wrapped her legs around his neck. He probably remembers it too, but there's no hesitation in him as he shoulders her knees apart. He sucks in a surprised breath and then exhales against her slick cunt, and something inside her tightens with desire. He looks up, then, meets her gaze before looking away shyly, his metal hand smooth against her skin.
"Can I?" he asks, his voice rough and low.
She thinks about making a joke, about telling him that if she didn't want to, she'd have already snapped his neck (or, in deference to Steve, choked him out). She remembers those first few months of being free, of the sudden flood of choices she was allowed to make and how dizzying it was. How it was so easy to choose the wrong thing, without anyone there to explain the right one.
"Yes," she answers simply. "Please."
He's slow at first, and a little clumsy, like this is something else he's relearning (like laughing, like dancing, like being a person), and she's getting ready to fake it and tap him out when he gets into the groove and suddenly she can't breathe because heat is flooding her veins and whole body is desperately aching with the need to come. She digs her fingers into his hair and lets her body have its way, thrusting hard against his mouth until she gets what she wants. It bursts through her like fireworks, and she lets out a half-choked moan of pleasure. She keeps him where she needs him until she's done, and then he looks up at her with a pleased grin, his face slick and smug. She tugs him up so she can kiss him, and she rolls them over while she's at it.
"Stay there," she says when she climbs off him on unsteady legs to get a condom out of her purse.
"Yes, ma'am."
He holds himself very still when she rolls the condom on, but his breathing is accelerated and his lower lip is caught between his teeth like he's afraid to let out a sound. When she sinks down onto him, she lets out a pleased breath and rolls her hips. His hands hover at her waist until she grabs them puts them on her hips. She cups her breasts and arches her back, chasing her own pleasure as much as giving him his, and he moans softly when she clenches around him. She likes that sound, so she does it again, watching him watch her through heavy-lidded eyes.
She rides him hard, the bed strong enough to support them without squeaking, and his fingers dig into her skin as he gets close.
"Natasha," he gasps. "Natasha. Oh." He comes with a surprised moan, but he stays hard inside her. She wonders if it's the serum and makes a vague note to ask as she guides his fingers to her clit so she can come again, this time with a triumphant shout that startles a laugh out of him.
She collapses onto the bed when she's done, and after he gets rid of the condom, he lies beside her, his left arm pressing lightly against her right. They lie quietly for a while, and then her phone rings.
"It's Steve," she says before she answers. "Hi," she says, "before you ask, yes, Paris was us."
"Us?" he asks. The hope in his voice makes something in her chest ache. She thinks it's probably her heart.
"Yeah," she says. "Hold on."
She hands the phone to Bucky. The look he gives her is just as heartbreaking as the sound of Steve's voice, but he takes the phone and says, "Hey, Steve. It's me."
She moves to get up off the bed, but Bucky curls his fingers around her wrist and gives her a pleading look, so she curls up next to him and lets him take whatever comfort he can. It's not her strong suit, but there's a first time for everything.
After a few minutes of breathless conversation, he hands the phone back to her. She pretends not to see the tears on his cheeks, and sits up with her back to him to give him some privacy.
"It's really him," Steve says happily. He sounds like he might be crying, too.
"Yeah."
"Come home, Natasha. And bring him with you."
She pauses for a moment and maybe she's a little choked up too, but she'll never let them see it. "Okay," she says. "We will."
She hangs up and drops the phone onto the bed. "Come on," she says. "We're going home, but there are a couple of things I need to do first."
"Okay," he says, threading his fingers through hers and giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
*
When Natasha steps off the plane in New York, her hair is red, the closest it's been to her natural color in years.
Bucky walks beside her, alternately tense and diffident, until they spot Steve and Sam at the gate. Steve sweeps them both into his arms and there are the requisite tears and kisses and hugs. Steve mouths "Thank you," at her over the curve of Bucky's shoulder, and when they turn, still hugging, Bucky does the same. Sam drapes an arm across her shoulders and presses a kiss to her temple.
"How was your trip?" he asks with a bright grin.
"It was fun," she says. "Ate some good food, made a new friend--"
"Beat up some HYDRA agents," Bucky interrupts.
"Beat up some HYDRA agents," she repeats, smiling. "But it's nice to be home."
"Yeah," Bucky says, "it is."
end
~*~
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~*~
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Captain America; Bucky/Natasha; adult; 3,575 words
In which Natasha's road trip of self-discovery intersects too frequently with the Winter Soldier's for it to be coincidence.
Title & cut-text from "Vagabond" by David Shumate. Or read it at AO3.
~*~
I set fire to my maps
Natasha's had many names and many lives, but she's only had to rebuild from the ground up twice before, and the first time, when she was recruited as a child by the Red Room (recruited: such a ridiculously neutral word for what they did to her) was hardly her own choice. The second time, choosing to take Clint's offer and come in from the cold, was hard in different ways, but she'd handled it--the second guessing and the dirty looks, the gossip and the backbiting, the agents who didn't want to work with her and didn't trust her when they did--and come out of it stronger and better.
Now, she testifies in front of Congress, her face on every TV screen from Washington to Mumbai, and then she walks away from Steve and Sam in that cemetery, intent on finding out who she is without SHIELD or the KGB or anyone else telling her who to be.
Being on her own is easier than she expects to be, but it's harder than it used to be to slip her skin. She cuts her hair short and dyes it black and spends a couple of weeks in New York, haunting hookah lounges and after hours poetry readings. Ninety percent of the poetry is terrible and she hates the smell of smoke in her clothes and in her hair (especially the way it reeks when she washes it out).
She tries Brooklyn instead, pizza under the bridge and waffles at a diner, served with fair trade coffee and local produce and honey. She tries to imagine Steve here, and thinks it would fit him better than it does her, but she tries it on for size anyway. She takes a trip to Brighton Beach, listens to little old ladies speak her mother tongue, and wonders if, in a different life, this is where she'd have ended up.
It doesn't feel like where she belongs right now.
She jogs in Prospect Park, and only carries two knives and her garrote, and the only time she comes close to using them is when she spots the Winter Soldier on a park bench. He's feeding the pigeons, though, looks like just another homeless vet instead of the force of destruction she knows him to be, whatever Steve wants to think.
He doesn't move when she runs past him, just raises his paper Starbucks cup in salute.
Natasha flies out of JFK that evening.
*
Natasha's hair is burgundy and in that annoying growing-out but too short to do anything with stage which makes her think about cutting all off again. She could wear a wig until it's a better length, but she's free of wigs and disguises if she chooses to be now, and she doesn't have to deal with her scalp prickling with sweat and pins if she doesn't want to. (She doesn't want to.)
She's ordering lunch at a food truck in Vancouver when she notices him standing off to the side, his eyes wide as he stares into his plastic container. He picks up another handful of fries and shoves them into his mouth and lets out a strangled hum. Other people start moving away from him, but Natasha meets his gaze. She remembers the shock of being able to order food she wanted for herself, not what was expected for whoever she was supposed to be at the moment, not what was nutritious or filling or cheap, if she was on the government's dime.
She doesn't think even the Winter Soldier would abandon a carton of seafood poutine to kill her, so she says, "Is it good? I've wanted to try it since I saw it on Food Network."
The Winter Soldier nods once and makes another ecstatic little sound. She tries not to find it cute, because he's cute the way a big cat or a poisonous snake is.
The man behind the counter hands her the food she ordered, she shoves a handful of napkins into her pocket, and then she goes to stand beside the Winter Soldier. He raises his eyebrows and then gives her a shy half-smile when she shrugs. He looks like Steve's Bucky then, just a kid from Brooklyn in over his head.
"Don't worry," he says. "I wouldn't kill you before you got to taste that."
She pins him with a glare. "Was that a joke?"
It's his turn to shrug. "It's good stuff. And I don't want to kill you."
She looks him over closely. He doesn't appear to have a gun, but that doesn't mean anything. She can imagine how many knives he's carrying.
"I'll just go," he says, a little sadly. "Enjoy your poutine."
She waits until he's gone before she tastes it, and she lets herself moan out loud at how good it is, an explosion of rich flavor on her tongue.
She calls Steve the next day. She's already in San Francisco, on a layover to Singapore. "He was in Vancouver yesterday afternoon," she says.
"Vancouver," Steve says, like he can't believe it.
"He ate poutine."
"From that truck we saw on Food Network?" Sam asks.
"Yup."
"Was it as good as it looked?"
"Better."
Steve interrupts with, "Guys, can we focus here for a second?"
"But the poutine was really good, Steve." She laughs. "He sounded like he was enjoying it."
"Good," Steve answers after a long pause. "Good."
*
Natasha's a blonde bombshell on the dance floor in Barcelona, in more ways than one. She's here at Nick's request, rooting out a neuroscientist who worked for HYDRA and has moved on to AIM. No one else has been able to get close since the debacle in DC, but Salazar enjoys the nightlife and slipped his bodyguards. According to their intel, he's no gentleman, but he prefers blondes.
She's about to get in his car with him to go back to his hotel room when she sees moonlight glance off metal. She stumbles and says, "Go on ahead. I'll be right there. I have to fix my heel."
She makes a show of it, and doesn't startle when an arm snakes out of the darkness to wrap around her waist and pull her around a corner just as Salazar's car explodes. With him in it.
She doesn't turn her head. His breath smells like beer and his body is as solid as a wall behind her. "Thanks, I guess," she whispers.
"We should go dancing sometime," he says.
The non-sequitur throws her a little. "What?"
"I think I used to be good at it," he says, "before."
He's gone before she can answer. She takes a deep breath and heads back to her hotel. She's on a flight to Buenos Ares the next morning, her ears still ringing from Nick's incredulous rant about her lack of subtlety with Salazar.
"It wasn't me," she'd said.
"Oh?"
"It was our elusive friend. And he chose to let me know it."
"Huh."
"Yeah."
"Keep me posted."
"Of course."
"And let Rogers know."
"He's my next call."
Steve sounded hopeful, and told her he and Sam were headed to Vienna. Natasha wished them well, but she doubts they're going to find the Winter Soldier there.
*
Natasha's hair is a lovely chestnut with caramel highlights, cut in a wavy bob that doesn't require much work, and she's annoyed with herself for giving into the urge to see the Degas collection at the Musée d'Orsay. She knows she was never a ballerina, but those false memories were appended to an honest desire to dance when she was very young. She doesn't remember much from before the Red Room took her, but the rustle of tulle and the yearning for pink toe shoes seems like it's always been there.
"You're graceful enough to have been a dancer," he says from a couple of feet behind her left shoulder.
"You don't strike me as the type to enjoy the ballet," she answers, her fingers tightening on the map of the museum in her hand.
"No, I always liked the burlesque better." His mouth curves in a half-grin.
"Of course," she answers lightly. When she turns to face him, he offers her his arm and she takes it. It's firm beneath her fingers and his jacket, but still flesh and blood. "And no doubt you liked pinups more than portraiture."
"Art was always more Steve's thing," he says with a shrug. "He liked Cézanne a lot."
"That wasn't in the Smithsonian exhibit."
"No. I remember. He went to art school, but even before that, he always took art books out of the library. Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Caravaggio." He laughs softly. "Sounded like roll call on Mulberry Street."
"You should let him know you're here. He'd come."
He looks away. "I know."
"And that's a problem?"
"You know it is, and you know why."
She bites back a sigh. Men and their stupid attempts at useless nobility. She lets a smidge of annoyance show on her face, but not enough to scare him away. "I think you should let him be the judge of that, but okay."
They tour the museum arm in arm, and Natasha makes and discards a dozen plans and another half dozen backup plans and by the time they're sitting in a small café ordering pastries, she's wondering if she should cut and run or invite him back to her hotel room.
"I'm not the same guy he knew," he says, picking up the conversation from earlier as if no time has passed. He stares at a spot beyond her left shoulder, but she doesn't think he's seeing Paris in the distance. "I don't think I can be again." He takes a sip of coffee. "I remember too much after and not enough before."
"Do you think he's the same as he was before?"
He makes a dismissive noise. "He's Steve." As if his Steve-ness somehow outweighs everything else that's happened to him. Then again, maybe to the Winter Soldier--to Bucky, and maybe she can start thinking of him that way--it has.
She gives him a small smile, pleased with having figured it out. "And to him, you're Bucky, and you always will be. Regardless of this," she flicks a hand to indicate his long, unkempt hair, his untrimmed beard, and the faded gray hoodie hiding his metal arm, "fashion disaster thing you've got going on."
"Why, Miss Romanoff, I'm surprised you'll let yourself be seen with me."
"You wanted to go dancing, didn't you?" He nods. "Clean yourself up and meet me here at eleven." She hands him a matchbook and walks away. She can feel his gaze heavy and itchy between her shoulder blades, but she doesn't look back.
*
He meets her out front at ten forty-five, clean-shaven and hair pulled back into an artfully disheveled ponytail. He's replaced his hoodie with a sharp leather jacket and he's wearing a matching leather glove on his left hand. It's warm against her back when he guides her into the club.
They stand at the bar for a quick drink before she leads him onto the dance floor. It's packed tight with people and he stays pressed up against her, the lines around his mouth are tight, his lips pressed into a flat line. She runs her hands up his chest and around the back of his neck and tugs his ear down closer to her lips.
"This management of this place launders money for HYDRA," she says, and she can feel the tension leach out of him. His whole body relaxes, his hips and shoulders loosening until he's moving with her to the beat. For the first time, she can imagine him wowing the girls in Brooklyn with his dancing back in the forties, and for the first time, she thinks of him as Bucky without any qualification. For a brief moment, she lets herself wonder what he'd be like between her thighs.
But business comes first, especially when it involves the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier hunting HYDRA operatives. The money men in the back room have no idea what's hit them when she and Bucky burst in. Their hired muscle isn't up to snuff, and the night ends with Interpol raiding the club and finding eight HYDRA agents trussed up in the office while Natasha and Bucky slip out the back, riding the adrenaline high and laughing. He looks a little stunned, like it's something he's suddenly remembered how to do, and he sounds a little like a startled seal, but it's good. Better than good.
She waits until they're out of range of the sirens and flashing lights before she shoves him up against a wall and kisses him. He makes a startled noise into her mouth and his whole body seizes up for a second and she wonders if she's made a huge mistake and misread him completely, but then he kisses her back, his tongue slick and sinuous against hers.
"Hotel room," he says when she lets him up for air.
She has a room at the Le Grand that she checked into but hasn't been using, so it should be safe enough to take him there. What the hell, she thinks. There are worse ways to go.
They manage to restrain themselves in the elevator but once the door to the room swings shut, he's pressing her up against it, his mouth hard and hot over hers. She wraps her legs around his hips and helps him shrug out of his jacket and yank off his gloves. His flesh hand is warm against her skin and the metal hand is barely cooler, though it has a weirdly smooth, segmented texture.
He shoves the straps of her dress down and unhooks her bra with a surprised laugh. "Didn't know I knew how to do that," he murmurs against the curve of her breast, his breath a warm soft laugh against her skin. She runs a sympathetic hand through his hair, and then tightens her fingers in it when he sucks her nipple into his mouth. She arches into it, heat flashing through her, and he does it again and again, switching from one to the other until she's aching and needy.
"Bed," she commands breathlessly, and he walks over and drops her down onto it.
They both strip quickly, clothes tossed in a pile beside the bed, and then he kneels over her, kissing her thoroughly. His fingers find the scar on her shoulder, healed to an angry pink. He presses his lips to it and whispers, "Sorry." He freezes for a moment and then slips down the bed, to find the scar on her belly. "I'm sorry," he says again.
She laughs ruefully. "What's a few bullets between friends?"
He kisses it gently. "I thought you were familiar. Not just from DC. Once I was on my own, I mean."
"That's why you followed me."
"I didn't." He presses another kiss to her belly. "Not that first time, in Brooklyn. I was there because it was supposed to be where I was from. But I didn't--It didn't look like even the brief flashes I remembered."
"And Vancouver?"
"You guys kept talking about the seafood poutine. I didn't even know what poutine was, but it sounded delicious."
"You were listening to us." She should have known.
"Even though I couldn't see him, I needed to make sure Steve was all right. That you and Sam were taking care of him."
"He'd be better if you stopped running away."
He hums noncommittally and returns to kissing his way across her belly. She wonders vaguely how often he's talked about Steve while in bed with other people, but then he's sliding down between her thighs and she stops thinking about Steve altogether. She remembers the last time she wrapped her legs around his neck. He probably remembers it too, but there's no hesitation in him as he shoulders her knees apart. He sucks in a surprised breath and then exhales against her slick cunt, and something inside her tightens with desire. He looks up, then, meets her gaze before looking away shyly, his metal hand smooth against her skin.
"Can I?" he asks, his voice rough and low.
She thinks about making a joke, about telling him that if she didn't want to, she'd have already snapped his neck (or, in deference to Steve, choked him out). She remembers those first few months of being free, of the sudden flood of choices she was allowed to make and how dizzying it was. How it was so easy to choose the wrong thing, without anyone there to explain the right one.
"Yes," she answers simply. "Please."
He's slow at first, and a little clumsy, like this is something else he's relearning (like laughing, like dancing, like being a person), and she's getting ready to fake it and tap him out when he gets into the groove and suddenly she can't breathe because heat is flooding her veins and whole body is desperately aching with the need to come. She digs her fingers into his hair and lets her body have its way, thrusting hard against his mouth until she gets what she wants. It bursts through her like fireworks, and she lets out a half-choked moan of pleasure. She keeps him where she needs him until she's done, and then he looks up at her with a pleased grin, his face slick and smug. She tugs him up so she can kiss him, and she rolls them over while she's at it.
"Stay there," she says when she climbs off him on unsteady legs to get a condom out of her purse.
"Yes, ma'am."
He holds himself very still when she rolls the condom on, but his breathing is accelerated and his lower lip is caught between his teeth like he's afraid to let out a sound. When she sinks down onto him, she lets out a pleased breath and rolls her hips. His hands hover at her waist until she grabs them puts them on her hips. She cups her breasts and arches her back, chasing her own pleasure as much as giving him his, and he moans softly when she clenches around him. She likes that sound, so she does it again, watching him watch her through heavy-lidded eyes.
She rides him hard, the bed strong enough to support them without squeaking, and his fingers dig into her skin as he gets close.
"Natasha," he gasps. "Natasha. Oh." He comes with a surprised moan, but he stays hard inside her. She wonders if it's the serum and makes a vague note to ask as she guides his fingers to her clit so she can come again, this time with a triumphant shout that startles a laugh out of him.
She collapses onto the bed when she's done, and after he gets rid of the condom, he lies beside her, his left arm pressing lightly against her right. They lie quietly for a while, and then her phone rings.
"It's Steve," she says before she answers. "Hi," she says, "before you ask, yes, Paris was us."
"Us?" he asks. The hope in his voice makes something in her chest ache. She thinks it's probably her heart.
"Yeah," she says. "Hold on."
She hands the phone to Bucky. The look he gives her is just as heartbreaking as the sound of Steve's voice, but he takes the phone and says, "Hey, Steve. It's me."
She moves to get up off the bed, but Bucky curls his fingers around her wrist and gives her a pleading look, so she curls up next to him and lets him take whatever comfort he can. It's not her strong suit, but there's a first time for everything.
After a few minutes of breathless conversation, he hands the phone back to her. She pretends not to see the tears on his cheeks, and sits up with her back to him to give him some privacy.
"It's really him," Steve says happily. He sounds like he might be crying, too.
"Yeah."
"Come home, Natasha. And bring him with you."
She pauses for a moment and maybe she's a little choked up too, but she'll never let them see it. "Okay," she says. "We will."
She hangs up and drops the phone onto the bed. "Come on," she says. "We're going home, but there are a couple of things I need to do first."
"Okay," he says, threading his fingers through hers and giving her hand a gentle squeeze.
*
When Natasha steps off the plane in New York, her hair is red, the closest it's been to her natural color in years.
Bucky walks beside her, alternately tense and diffident, until they spot Steve and Sam at the gate. Steve sweeps them both into his arms and there are the requisite tears and kisses and hugs. Steve mouths "Thank you," at her over the curve of Bucky's shoulder, and when they turn, still hugging, Bucky does the same. Sam drapes an arm across her shoulders and presses a kiss to her temple.
"How was your trip?" he asks with a bright grin.
"It was fun," she says. "Ate some good food, made a new friend--"
"Beat up some HYDRA agents," Bucky interrupts.
"Beat up some HYDRA agents," she repeats, smiling. "But it's nice to be home."
"Yeah," Bucky says, "it is."
end
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