Summary:Harper Lee “Harley” Barton had always been the hunter, but when the tables are turned on her, Harper must put aside her natural instinct of protecting her family through distance by coming out of the shadows and admitting the truth. Will she survive the challenges that lie ahead of her? Or will she fall prey to her own darkness once more?
The equipment Bucky ordered comes in a shiny metal box that reminds him of the time the Wakandans offered him a new arm, a new war. But this time, Bucky isn’t fighting a war. He’s not even fighting. He’s observing. He’s setting up the binoculars near the window. He’s fine-tuning the microphones to an earpiece and a recording device. He’s making sure the motion sensors properly record movement and register in his computer.
It’s oddly reminiscent of some jobs he used to do for HYDRA. Although he wishes he could erase that part of his life, the time he spent observing and collecting data prove useful to him now.
The day outside is gloomy. The clouds seem to mock him, closing him into a space he’s been forced into anyway.
Bucky clucks his tongue.
“Has there been any dreams again?”
He turns to face his psychologist. She sits with a frown nettling her face, leg bent over the other, the tip of her shiny black boot white and apotropaic for Bucky.
“No,” he answers. Not since her. Not since Meatball.
“Are you having any sort of dream?” she asks, eyes briefly falling to her notepad duteously spread on her knee.
Bucky bites the inside of his cheek. Yes, he wants to say. So many. Of her and her big eyes and the way her smell seems to linger in the hall even after she’s left. Dreams of following her down a long, empty hallway, of pining her against a wall and watching the way her skin flushes, glows, under his stare.
“Not really,” he opts for, determining that confessing dreams of stalking a neighbor would not earn him points with both his psychologist and the government.
“Sam told me you ordered surveillance equipment?” she continues, chin in her palm.
Of course, Sam would not completely believe Bucky.
“There’s this neighbor,” Bucky starts, hands on his knees. “I don’t know who lives there. Honestly, all I’ve seen is their animals. And they’re being neglected. Left for days unattended. I sometimes see through the living room door that there’s no food.”
The doctor nods, writes, hums.
“Do you feel like that’s a good hobby to have, Mr. Barnes?” God, he hates when she calls him that.
“Animal rescue?” he tries, tone faking innocence.
She snorts. She sees right through his ruse. “Stalking.”
Bucky jerks ever the slightest. “It’s not that,” he groans. “It’s mostly… I feel useful, and I feel like I’m partaking in something good for once,” he sighs.
“Rescuing animals,” she says, writing something down in that little stupid fucking notepad.
“Yes,” he grits between his teeth. “I’m not waiting to kill someone,” he retorts, and immediately regrets it.
“Is that what you think I think of you?”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Sometimes.”
She smiles slowly. “I am only here to help you.” She readjusts in her seat. “And if you are constantly thinking that I’m here to undermine you, then this relationship won’t work. We won’t be able to move forward.”
He nods, biting back some remarks he should really keep to himself.
She stares at him for a few moments, then down at her watch. “Our hour is over, Mr. Barnes.” She settles back in her seat, scribbling some notes down. “Until next week.”
Bucky all but storms out of her office, past the receptionist who wishes him well, and out into the gloomy New York air. The office is a few blocks away from his condo, and he uses the time walking to keep his mind from conjuring images of strangling that woman to death.
When he gets to the back door of the complex, he notices a familiar figure coming his way. He schools his features into something more homely, warm, and magnetic. He tries to conjure the womanizer he was in the forties, but something about this girl, Elora, doesn’t make him want to be that: a jerk. He wants to be good to her. He knows he can be good to her.
“Hey,” he says.
She squints as she approaches him, and when she recognizes him, her face lights up. “Oh, hey!” She smiles and Bucky swears she’s the most beautiful creature on Earth. “James! Or Bucky.” She has a backpack on, the color of rust.
“It’s just Bucky,” he says, smiling, leaning a shoulder against the wall. She watches his nonchalance, and Bucky thinks he spies a moment of attraction flitting across her face. “Where you headed? Lost Meatball again?”
She chuckles, pushing hair behind her ears. Adorable. “No,” she says with a shy smile, crossing her arms across her chest. “Sorry about that. Or, I guess, thank you.”
Bucky nods with a faint smile.
“I’m just headed to that… apartment I told you about?” She’s acting cold, restrained now, as if she’s either afraid of him or afraid of what he’s going to say about her little jaunts next door.
“Still on that animal rescue mission?” he asks humorously.
That seems to dispel the tension in her shoulders, and she laughs. “Yeah, I’m going to feed them actually.”
Bucky nods, pushing from the wall. He can see the sparkle in her eyes as she assesses him. He knows she finds him attractive. He’s seen himself in the mirror a few times.
“Mind if I join?”
Her mouth parts and it’s the most adorable view Bucky has ever had.
“Really?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he answers, lifting a shoulder. “Always wanted to be the good guy.”
She laughs, unaware of the way Bucky stares at her with both hunger and longing.
“Alright, cowboy, let’s go!”
They walk across the street, and Bucky notices how Elora walks with her head high, not cowering and nervous. She’s done this before. She walks up to the basement sliding door of the aforementioned apartment and waits for Bucky to step beside her. From under the canopy of the upstairs balcony, her face is shadowed, cool, and she lifts a daring eyebrow to Bucky.
“So, what, do you know where the key is?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at the busy boulevard. “Or a barrette?”
She scoffs. Then she puts a finger to the knob and pushes, the door sliding open. Bucky smiles, holding laughter, and gives her an impressed raise of his brows.
“A woman with many talents,” Elora mumbles as she climbs in.
Once inside, Bucky closes the sliding door, and puts a hand to his mouth. It smells like excretion and rotting food. Or corpses. He wishes beyond anything that there are no dead animals here.
Elora behaves as if she lives here, bending down and retrieving food from her backpack. When she opens the bag, a few little kittens come stumbling into the messy, dirty living room. Bucky stands there, watching Elora crouched on the stained yellow carpet as she takes out cans of wet cat food.
“The dogs are in cages in the back room,” she says, jerking her chin towards the back of the apartment, and Bucky understands that as his cue to move. She hands him a bag of dog food, and when he takes it out of her hand, his finger brushes hers and fire licks up his palm. He tries not to fidget, or flinch away, but he’s wearing gloves, as always, to keep others from ogling his metal arm, and now he wishes more than anything that his flesh could have touched hers.
She doesn’t say anything about the touch. The gloves. She just shoves the bag into his hands and motions him to action.
He takes the dog food bag across the apartment, noticing the dirt stains on the kitchen floor, the mountain of rotting, dirty dishes in the sink, and that the walls are decaying.
The dogs, three pitbulls, are indeed in cages in what should have been the guestroom. Bucky holds back a gag. Some of the dogs have been left in their filth, and it stinks up the room. His heart squeezes at the sight of the animals laying down in tiny cages, their big bodies constrained to such a small enclosure. The dogs are looking at him, but none move. It as if they’re used to this: someone, anyone, not a master or friend, coming in and just feeding them.
“Heartless, right?”
Bucky turns and Elora stands in the doorway with a grey cat nestled in her arms.
“We should call someone,” Bucky says, opening the dog food bag, the dogs’ heads snapping up to attention.
“I’ve called animal health, rescue centers, even the police,” she adds. Then she shrugs. “They’ve all claimed insubstantial evidence. If I send pictures, they’re going to arrest me for B&E.”
Bucky nods, carefully opening the cage of the first dog.
“They don’t bite,” Elora says. “So, yeah, I come here sometimes and rescue some and send them to centers for neglected animals. Every time I come back, though, there’s more.”
Bucky groans, his heart burning, his head imagining scenarios of beating whoever puts these animals into such dire situations. Heartless fucker.
Bucky fills the first bowl and leaves the cage open. “We should take this one,” he says. “At least today. And tomorrow, we can come get the other one.”
Elora walks out and comes back in as Bucky is feeding the second dog. She hands Bucky a leash. “Feel free. She’s a female, by the way. I named her Claudia.”
Bucky snorts, closing the second cage on the other dog, heart wrenching as he sees the way the animal gobbles down food. How long have they been without food?
They feed the third dog, noticing burn marks on its haunches, and then leash up Claudia. She has difficulty walking, limping, her front paw badly injured from God knows what. Bucky follows Elora through the apartment, where she shows him the entire, disgusting situation. Bunnies in a cage with barely anything to do but sleep in their defecation. Birds in a cage left covered by a black, heavy cloak. More and more and endless kittens and adult cats. Bucky lets a few of the adult ones out of the back door, maybe to freedom or better homes, who knows.
As they walk across the street, Bucky helping Claudia along, the man can’t help but feel proud of Elora. His Elora. This incredible girl that risks her neck every time she walks into that apartment.
“Don’t ever go in there alone, ever again,” Bucky says as they near the parking of their complex.
She turns and frowns up at this man that she barely knows but appreciates. “Why?”
Bucky shakes his head, shakes the feeling from his bones, this feeling that wants to protect her from the world. He needs to bide his time. “Who knows when the owner can come back,” he answers. “They could be dangerous.”
She smiles, rolls her eyes, a behavior he will have to correct. “I can handle myself.”
Bucky’s shoulders tense. “I mean it,” he says, forcing himself not to grit his teeth. “You have me now. Use that.”
She smiles again, all teeth and cheeks and giddy innocence. “Sure,” she pipes up. “Now let’s get to my car and get these babies to a rescue.”
Bucky was on his third brownie when Lana returned to the kitchen. She shot him a narrowed-eyed look before joining him at the island where he was - allegedly - putting said brownies on a plate.
She glanced into the container, at the plate, and up to the brownie he quickly stuffed in his mouth.
“What?” he murmured, attempting to not spray her with crumbs.
“Seriously? Three brownies?”
He felt the heat hit his cheeks but couldn’t help but grin and try not to choke as he swallowed. “They’re delicious, dollface.”
She shook her head and slapped his hand when he reached for a fourth. “You’re cut off! Leave some for everyone else.”
“But,printesa,” he whined, curling his arms around her waist and pinning her to the countertop when she turned away to finish plating. He nuzzled her neck, leaving little nips and pressing kisses beneath her ear.
Her hands slowed to a stop, hovering over the counter as her breath hitched and her pulse began to pound.
Bucky managed to contain his smile, just barely, by rubbing his cheek gently on hers. He blew against her ear and tugged the lobe with his teeth before whispering, “Just one more, baby girl?”
She whimpered and turned her head to look at him with dangerous, dark violet eyes. “James…”
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Summary: Bucky Barnes and Agent 24 are captured on what should have been a routine op. Instead, they find themselves at the hands of General Domashyov, a HYDRA-wanna-be with a collection of Chiutari weapons. With 24 locked in an anti-mutant collar and Bucky’s Vibranium arm shackled with a super-soldier-proof cuff, can they escape?
Warnings: brief mentions of torture (not graphic), cursing, some violence, angst
