Chapter Text
“Didn’t know you were ticklish, Barnes!” Sam hoots as Bucky steps into the warehouse they’ve been using as a base of operations.
Bucky lobs his mask at him, keeping up a scowl until he can throw himself into one of the shapeless, ideally lumpy armchairs he and Steve had gotten from a moving sale in Palisades for twenty bucks. His glower melts as he settles in, but that doesn’t stop him from growling back at Sam, “Shut it, Birdboy.”
Sam just laughs in response, too entertained by Bucky’s latest escapade to feel any sting. “What, you gonna spank me?”
This time Bucky hurls his gloves, a solid baseball pitch that would have gotten him at least two bases. They smack the side of Sam’s chest with a satisfying thwack, but before Bucky can fully enjoy his handiwork, Steve walks in with a pizza box and Natasha.
“Everything go okay?” he asks her, aware that the question comes out too quickly but not caring anyway.
Natasha looks at him in a bemused, knowing way that makes him rub his right hand roughly over the back of his neck.
“Yeah,” she says, deadly serious. “Why?”
Oh, Jesus.
Sam and Steve both look over at that, laughter sliding off Sam’s face like water. Before the gravity on Steve’s face sets in too deep, Bucky cracks a grin and taps a light fist on Natasha’s shoulder.
“You took a while, I was worried Steve was chasing skirts instead of food.”
Sam howls in laughter and Steve makes a low sound caught somewhere between embarrassment and displeasure. He busies himself setting down the pizza before going off in search of cups and paper plates.
Bucky reaches for a slice, hoping to stake a claim before Sam gets up from the drone controls, but Natasha’s hand beats him to the box, sliding in front of the paper tab like a steel trap.
He looks up into her dry eyes, noting the full mouth quirked like an admonishment wrapped in warning. “You owe me a cup of coffee,” she says, and he hears what’s between the lines as clear as a church bell.
He suppresses a sigh of relief, but he knows Natasha can read it along with his gratitude in his eyes. “Tomorrow. That café on West 57th that you like, my treat.”
She makes a sound of resignation and lifts her hand from the box. He opens it and she darts in, grabbing the first slice; he doesn’t protest, just offers her a rueful, tentative smile.
Natasha doesn’t do anything as damning as smile back, just holds his gaze evenly as until she takes a bite of pizza. Bucky turns back to the box and slides one onto the paper plate Steve offers him as he and Sam return from digging out cold drinks from the cooler in the corner.
He can’t blame Natasha for being so upset; she has every reason to disapprove of what he’s doing—of what he’s asked her to be a part of. She hates every bit of this, despite (perhaps because of) how unnervingly brilliant she is at it. The secrecy, the duplicity, the shadow of betrayal threatening to crash down at any moment—it’s all bleeding too close to red ink for Natasha, and Bucky knows it.
If they’d been friends back in the forties, Bucky would have promised her a clean ledger, leaned in with an easy grin and a reassuring sparkle in his eye until she believed it too. But this isn’t the forties and Nat isn’t one of the girls he charmed for little favors like teaspoons of sugar. Bucky isn’t the same man, either—the weight on his left side and the phantom ache in his brain make sure he won’t forget anytime soon.
“—right, Buck?”
Bucky jolts back to the present at the sound of Steve calling him. “Huh?” he manages eloquently.
Sam cackles under his breath and Bucky relaxes—he hadn’t lost too much time, then.
“I was just saying,” Steve explains patiently (Bucky isn’t sure whether he’ll ever get used to scrawny Stevie taking on this caring persona, or if he’ll ever not be able to stop himself from punching his best friend the instant it tips overboard into pity or patronization), “we should trail their target this time, see if we can get any clues as to what they’re after.”
“Oh.” It takes a moment for Bucky to process—after the initial flash of panic at any mention of you, he realizes that this is, in fact, a wonderful, brilliant proposal. “Sounds like a good plan,” he says, as unenthusiastically as he can.
Natasha’s lip curls into a canary-chomping smirk.
“Great. So, Nat, you got it?”
Steve’s question is almost entirely rhetorical, but Natasha answers anyway, half-scoffing. Just to drive it in.
“Relax, old man. I can tail a mark with one hand tied behind my back.”
She’s looking at Steve when she says it, but Bucky doesn’t miss the millisecond that her eyes slide over to him. Internally, he groans. He doesn’t doubt for a moment that Natasha knows he took out his earpiece (and mic) to ask about the color of his own eyes—and he’s pretty sure she knows why he did it too.
“Anyways, where are you taking your date?”
Bucky takes a swig from his cup, glancing up when Steve prompts him with a nudge to the side. All three of them are looking at him expectantly; Bucky hasn’t felt this lost since the Queens kid rattled off a list of “hashtags” and asked for his “handle”.
“Same time next week,” Steve quotes with the same devious grin that had gotten him a two-step with Felicia Miller in December of ’36. Natasha’s grin freezes before she raises an eyebrow at Bucky, daring him to come clean.
“You sure that’s still on the books?” Sam prods, stacking his feet atop one another and leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know if throwing someone over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes is the most romantic gesture.”
Bucky quells the urge to throw yet another inanimate object at Sam, directing his irritation into his pizza with an aggressive bite instead. “Your wife tell you that?”
Natasha polishes off her second slice and reaches for a third. “Are you two done nagging, or should I make some popcorn?”
For what must be at least the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes, you sit up straighter in your booth and surreptitiously glance behind you. The café around you looks exactly the same as it did during your last survey, and the one before that.
Still, you can’t shake the feeling of eyes on your back. Slowly, you turn back to your brunch and the book you’d brought along to accompany it. A bite of frittata makes its way to your mouth, but it’s tasteless. Carefully, you flip the page, but don’t read a word of what’s in front of you.
The chatter of the café presses in on you from all sides: the barista is cheerfully explaining their specialty drinks of the day to a customer, the three tables nearest to yours are all engaging in what seems to be three separate dramatic retellings of the same cheating (or catfishing, you can’t quite tell) couple, and jazzy piano plinks out faintly over it all.
You spear another bite on your fork and chew. The prickling on the back of your neck hasn’t eased up, but the bright sunlight is helping dissipate your paranoia. Besides, you allow yourself to (semi)-flippantly remind yourself, The Man has swooped in to save you for the past three months. Why not today?
The hint of a grin curves your lips up at the thought. Your last encounter had been two days ago now, and you were still reeling.
So, same time next week?
Your cheeks heat ever so slightly at the memory—it was stupid! Totally stupid to think about at all, let alone hopefully. He hadn’t even answered—so why couldn’t you stop thinking about it?
Sure thing, doll, you imagine him saying back. He’d called you “doll”. And that accent that had come out! God, his eyes were dreamy…
“Everything alright here?”
You jerk, sending your fork clattering against the plate. The waiter who’d asked you looks on with undisguised concern as you grab at the utensil and slam it to silence against the table.
“Yes,” you answer firmly, “thank you.”
The waiter nods and moves on, clearly eager to leave you to whatever they thought you’d been up to.
At the coffee bar, Natasha turns from her riveting conversation with the barista about coffee extraction to pick up her phone and pretend to connect it to her comm unit.
“Bad news.”
Bucky’s voice crackles back almost immediately: “What? What’s wrong, where are you?”
Natasha sighs exaggeratedly. “The same place I’ve been all day. Why would you ever fall for someone who takes over an hour to finish one slice of frittata?”
“Jesus, Nat—and look, I haven’t fallen for anyone—”
“Sure, sure, so you don’t mind if I double dose the tea next time? I just realized I forgot to mix it in last time! You know, I could just take care of it right now, I’m pretty sure there’s still coffee in that cup…”
“…very funny.”
A jingle from the front door signals the entrance of a new customer; you glance up and return to your brunch, momentary interest thoroughly extinguished by the unfamiliar face.
Natasha, however, affords the newcomer a slightly longer look. He slides into a booth two away from yours and orders seemingly at random, pointing at the neighboring table and nodding distractedly. His eyes never stray too far from your table, and Natasha finds her interest piqued.
“You don’t happen to feel like playing hero, do you?” she asks her macchiato.
Bucky stays silent, so she switches radio channels with a casual flick of her thumb over the earpiece.
“Mouse has sprouted a second tail.”
Steve’s voice crackles back almost immediately: “Any familiar faces? Don’t engage unless necessary.”
“No worries, Cap.”
Natasha’s eyes slide over as you sigh, shut your book, and call over a waiter. Two booths away, the Tail leans forward and stirs his coffee with the handle of his spoon.
You sign the receipt and fold a few bills over the tab.
“Mouse and tail are on the move, I’m following.”
“Roger that.”
The door chimes and Natasha watches the Tail powerwalk after you; she digs out a ten and tosses it on the bar counter before striding out. For someone kidnapped on a semi-regular basis, you don’t do a very good job of throwing your pursuer off the trail; you New York-meander down the block and pause at the corner to throw an appreciative glance at the wraparound floral and LED window display, all without a second look at your surroundings.
Then again, Natasha muses to herself, the guy following you isn’t doing his job very well either. He follows (far too close, she adds disdainfully) with a single-minded determination, speed-walking past pedestrian traffic with a scowl. Well, at least it makes her part significantly easier to play.
From her casual lean against a building where she’s pretending to take a phone call, Natasha watches you stride across the street and past the subway entrance.
“Brown hair and eyes, six foot. Civilian clothes: green hoodie, blue jeans, Timberlands,” she rattles off before nonchalantly following you from a distance into a bookshop.
You drift from shelf to shelf, running a stray hand over a spine or two as you pass. The door jingles and your head snaps up, eyes locking onto the newcomer—but it’s a woman in a tan overcoat who heads straight for the biography section. Visions of the Man’s broad shoulders dance in front of you as you turn away; he would lean against the end of that bookshelf and launch a disarmingly mischievous grin at you, then offer to get you the book your fingertips were currently brushing…
You decide to leave the romance section.
Your abrupt departure leads you in quick succession to the display of new poetry collections, then the new Austen-inspired space opera series, and finally the dusty, cloistered back corner of outdated SAT guides and books abandoned by overly-devoted and fickle customers alike.
“Finally.”
And like Pavlov’s dogs, you whip your head up eagerly—the disappointment only has a moment to set in before the man in front of you lunges forward and clamps a wet rag over your mouth.
Natasha hisses into her copy of Life from the Dreamatorium: Abed Nadir, “You have seven seconds, Barnes,” before shoving it back on the shelf and stalking towards the back corner.
You smack the man’s hand away and jam your knee upwards with all the force you have. It connects and he staggers back, swearing. You take a break from wiping your mouth to spit, “Chloroform takes five minutes of inhalation to work, dumbass. You think you’re the first one to try it?”
He takes a break from dropping a barrage of f-bombs to start threatening several anatomically impossible things, and you realize that for all your bluster, you have no plan.
A hand lands on your shoulder and you jump halfway out of your skin, accompanied by a panicked yell—or, at least, what would have been a panicked yell if another, freezing cold, hand hadn’t muffled it.
“Hey.”
The hand on your mouth falls away, but you’re in too much shock to react, aside from making a few incoherent noises. You know this voice—and he sounds mildly abashed.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t want to make a scene.”
The Man seems to suddenly realize that his other hand is still resting on your shoulder; he snatches it back and tugs the brim of his cap down further over his face.
You resist the urge to peer into his shadowed features and quip to cover the tremble in your voice, “You know, there are easier ways to reschedule a date. Flowers and a note, radio call-in, carrier pigeon.”
His mouth drops slack for a second before he recovers. He shakes his head and you can hear a trace of laughter when he says, “I’ll keep that in mind. For now…let’s get outta here.”
He sounds like he’d have a nice laugh. Warm and rolling, like the bloom of a hot drink on a winter night.
“Yeah, okay. Don’t potato-sack carry me though.”
He does have a nice laugh.
Natasha watches from behind a bookshelf as Bucky leads you out through the backdoor. Without moving, she says under her breath, just loud enough for her mic to pick it up, “We’re a team, or we’re nothing at all. Keep that in mind.”
The man at her feet groans, straining against the hoodie-string she’d used to tie his hands and ankles together after hitting him with a Bite, and she sighs. Natasha leans down halfway, pulls him up with a fist in the front of his hoodie, and tells him with a dangerously calm smile, “We’re going to have a little chat now.”