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Bucky has been living with Steve for most of the seasons he can remember, and had been hanging around him for basically all of the others. It’s only natural that he’s come to expect being woken up from catnaps in various rude ways by his overenthusiastic, overly large friend. The most common sleep-interruption is movement; this is fair enough, and something that Bucky effectively gives up the right to complain about every time he chooses to sleep on top of Steve. Still, Bucky thinks he does have some right to complain about being woken from a comfortable catnap in lazy midmorning sunlight by loud, incessant barking. Everything about the situation had been perfect – the aforementioned sunlight warming the brick of the wall, the soft dappled shade from the clouds, the gentle breeze that was blowing towards the worst area in town for once so that the streets smelled almost pleasant, and Monty was minding his own business some feet away, giving the illusion of companionship while also maintaining a nice peaceful silence.
Of course Steve has to go and get in a fight and break it all up, Bucky thinks resignedly at several other dogs apparently get with the programme and the very air starts to ring with the vigour of their barks. Of course he does. It’s just Bucky’s luck that the runt puppy with a smart mouth who’d wormed his way into Bucky’s life early on would grow into his floppy paws and start being able to back himself up in a fight. It’s just Bucky’s luck that he ended up fast friends with the most incredibly troublesome, wayward dog in town, who has the most distinctive angry bark to boot.
The human in the house next to the wall is decidedly not as resigned to Steve’s miraculous trouble-finding and fight-starting ways, judging from their angry shout of, “Shut the fuck up!” and the thump that sounds like a shoe hitting the wall. Unsurprisingly, it has very little effect on the warring dogs.
“Shut the fuck up is right, god damn,” Monty says. He sits up slowly, apparently having also given up on the notion of a nap. “Bloody hell, that’s a racket.”
“My goddamn friend is a menace,” Bucky says unhappily, and really, he thinks it’s a mark of how much he likes Steve that he doesn’t let himself dissolve into the profanity-riddled ranting his internal dialogue currently consists of.
“That dog I always see you with?” Monty asks interestedly. This is only the third conversation they’ve had but apparently Steve’s companionship has already made an impression, Bucky thinks as his ears continue to twitch under the assault of noise.
“He slobbered all over me when we were little,” Bucky says grumpily, because he’s still really not over the fact that that, of all methods, was how Steve made friends.
“Interesting start,” Monty says. “Aren’t you going to go help him?”
“He grew into his floppy paws,” Bucky says dismissively. “He can back himself in a fight now.” Nevertheless, he does get up and start heading towards the source of the noise. He knows better by now than to run towards the fight – long experience has taught him that he never gets there in time – and sure enough, before he’s even halfway there the barks have tapered off into growls that last about three steps before they fade into disgruntled silence.
When Steve finally does come into sight, Bucky’s stupid trouble-magnet dog is almost entirely occupied with washing a wriggling puppy who seems to be, despite the nasty bite on their hind leg, in paroxysms of joy under Steve’s attentions.
“You’re a dumbass,” Bucky says from his very nice vantage point on the wall above Steve. Steve, the asshole, must have spied Bucky out of the corner of his eye or something, because he doesn’t even respond except to wag his tail slightly faster. Bucky can still wistfully remember the halcyon days where he could sneak up on Steve and make him jump with a word.
The puppy cranes his neck upwards to give Bucky a deeply suspicious look. Bucky is suddenly overcome with the urge to pose regally, and who is he to deny animal instinct?
“Yeah, well, who’s the one that came running to help the dumbass?” Steve counters.
“I didn’t come running,” Bucky sniffs, as Steve says, “Another dumbass, that’s what,” in a tone that is altogether too triumphant.
Bucky jumps down directly onto Steve in retaliation to this insult, carefully catching himself on soft paws but letting his weight dig into Steve’s back maybe a little bit uncomfortably for a second. The puppy still looks deeply suspicious, but they’re clearly willing to put up with Bucky if it means more time with Steve, which is fortunate because it’s the exact way that Bucky feels about them.
"She was only eating," Steve says softly once the puppy finally tires of being fussed over and scurries away, tail high and stride purposeful, if not entirely even.
“What happened?” Bucky asks.
“I don’t know. Some bigger dogs,” Steve says. “When I got to them all the food had been stolen anyway. You know how things are going.”
“Have we seen them before?” Bucky asks, and Steve hesitates slightly but nods. This is bad code for yes, I’ve fought them before, but Bucky doesn’t call him out on it, only rests his head against Steve’s neck. “Tell me what they look like?”
This is also bad code, this time for let me know who to fight, but Steve similarly doesn’t call Bucky out, only says, “They’re big, y’know. German Shepherds and the like. They seemed real comfortable stealing food from a little pup.” His voice is stiff and unhappy and the sound of that tone makes Bucky stiff and unhappy as well.
“Desperate times,” he says, even though he knows that it’ll be pointless.
“Desperate times don’t mean we gotta start ganging up on each other,” Steve says heatedly.
“You’re idealistic.”
“You’re pessimistic.”
“What, you think we should all share? Give away the scraps we get?” Bucky asks, instead of going the way it feels like he’s gone a hundred times and taking the easy way out by saying something like guess we balance each other out. They still do, he still believes that, but he kind of wants to hear Steve defend himself, too.
“What’s wrong with that? We do it,” Steve points out, which is true, they’ve had this system worked out since they were small, but there are so many things wrong with this that Bucky doesn’t know where to start.
“There’s so many things wrong with that I don’t know where to start,” Bucky starts. Steve snorts, and twists his head around to stick his cold wet fucking nose in Bucky’s nice clean fur, provoking a shriek and a retaliatory attack, argument forgotten for now.
The thing is, Steve isn’t entirely wrong, here. He and Bucky do have a system that they’ve worked out between them through a lucky mixture of limited communication, careful observation, and trial-and-error. They’ve done it for so long that it’s basically second nature to share everything they eat at this point, and they can both name off the top of their heads which humans favour dogs and which prefer cats with their scraps. But even in their longstanding partnership there are, occasionally, difficulties – Bucky needs less food, which he uses as an excuse to push more food onto Steve, and Steve finds more food, because more people like his big earnest body that wags with his tail , which he uses as an excuse to make Bucky eat more. Really, expanding this system to more than two people would be problematic and troublesome, not to mention expanding it to an entire small community of different animals, many of whom dislike each other based on small and petty things. The logistics of it would be a nightmare.
Bucky tells Steve this as they head back towards their territory – a slightly-less-than-respectable alley that is so short it’s almost an alcove, sandwiched between a shop that sells food and a place that sells soft things which are very difficult to steal but very comfortable blankets – and Steve tips Bucky off his back, which, rude.
“I know that, Jesus,” Steve grumps, as Bucky flicks his face with a fluffy tail that Steve only halfheartedly takes a snap at. “Doesn’t have to be that well organised. Just. Being kind.”
“Being kind,” Bucky says, and even though he means for the words to come out as a little bit disparaging he mostly sounds wondering. He feels wondering, at Steve’s irrepressible kindness.
“I know you know what that means,” Steve snipes.
“I’m starting to wonder if you know,” Bucky volleys back. “We’re all hungry, Steve. It’s a tough ask to be kind on a good day.”
People have been leaving lately, and not coming back. The humans don’t toss scraps out so much anymore, and the shops keep selling what they’d have thrown away before. So, of course: the animals on the street are hungrier and thinner and more short-tempered. The only way you could get food out of most of them would probably be to fight them for it. And just to make things worse, the nights are growing colder. The very oldest of the animals on the street have dire things to say about this having happened before, but to everyone else this is new and unpleasant territory. Bucky hates it, not necessarily because it makes things harder on him – he can handle that – but because the slight changes in behaviour make too-righteous Steve deeply, indignantly angry, and he gets into a lot more fights than usual.
Because the world hates him and is directly out to oppose any point Bucky makes, the puppy from before comes scrambling around the corner in an incredibly undignified fashion with a slab of meat clamped firmly in their mouth. It’s then presented to Steve as she pants and wags her tail happily.
“Half-half,” Steve compromises, shooting Bucky an incredibly smug look and also managing to give the puppy the bigger half.
“Lorraine!” comes a horrified bark, while Steve and the puppy – Lorraine, Bucky guesses – finish their impromptu meal. “No!”
The frantic noise comes to an abrupt stop when the dog emitting it bowls into Steve, who yelps. It’s more surprises than pained, but it does get Bucky to start moving, and seconds later he somehow finds himself balancing delicately on the twisting body of the interloper with his claws dragging through dark fur.
“Peggy! It’s okay! Stop it!” Lorraine the puppy exclaims, which does get the new dog to cease and desist even as she continues to show her teeth and growl. For all that she’s shorter and smaller than Steve, it’s an intimidating sight. Peggy’s (?) canines are long and gleaming.
“Um,” Steve says, as Bucky knocks his head into Steve’s front paw. He’s able to conclude, from this thorough investigation, that Steve is fine, as usual.
“I was sharing my food with him,” Lorraine the puppy says, a little sulkily. “He stopped the other dogs from taking it, at the docks.”
“You were sharing your food with him,” Peggy repeats, and then seems to do a double-take. “He stopped the other dogs?”
“That’s what I said,” Lorraine says.
“He’s fine, by the way,” Bucky observes, with every appearance of nonchalance. “Two fights this morning,” he continues, growing less calm and turning to glare at Steve a little, “and you’re just fine –”
“Three,” Steve mutters, and Bucky bats at him with a sheathed paw a little harder than necessary. His big dumb dog at least has the decency to look a little guilty. Buck immediately pledges never to nap away from Steve again, no matter how warm and tempting the wall may be.
“You’re going to make my hair go white,” he mutters right back, but he’s interrupted before he can really work any steam up.
“I think I owe you an apology, then,” Peggy says, a little hesitant. “I didn’t – well – where Lorraine and I have been, big dogs are always lunging for you.”
Steve frowns, and Bucky groans internally, already sensing the Justice that Steve’s going to start channelling.
“That’s not right,” Steve says stoutly, not disappointing. “Even for food in winter –”
“Mmm,” Peggy says, cutting him off without remorse or shame. She looks with sharp eyes at Steve and then turns that intelligent gaze onto Bucky, who refuses to shift uncomfortably even though he wants to, slightly. “Anyway. I suppose we’ll just be off. Perhaps we’ll see you around.”
“Goodbye,” Steve says politely. Bucky says nothing at all, but both of them watch the two dogs hurry away.
“I don’t think she was telling us everything,” Steve says.
“What a genius,” Bucky says. “What an absolutely stunning conclusion.”
“You’re honestly the worst,” Steve says desolately, and tugs their blanket out from under the loose bricks in the wall where they hide it so it doesn’t get stolen.
“Of course she doesn’t have to tell you everything that goes on in her territory during the first time you meet her, for crying out loud,” Bucky says.
“I know that,” Steve sulks. “I was trying to be nice. Neighbourly, even, if she lives down by the docks. We are kind of preoccupied with each other,” he adds, which, Bucky knows, thanks, he’s half of these arrangements and he likes them a lot.
“I know,” he says on a sigh. “You’re nice, you’re so nice. But you don’t need to go digging for trouble.”
“Sometimes trouble needs to be dug,” Steve says, but Bucky knows the difference between his friend taking a stand and his friend taking the piss and this leans more towards the latter.
“Just stay still, you overgrown pillow,” Bucky mutters, pawing at Steve’s thighs for a few moments before climbing onto them and curling up.
“You’re a fucking jerk,” Steve grumbles, but he curls a little tighter so that Bucky’s surrounded by more warmth and their faces are comfortably close.
~*~
Even with their well-oiled plans and habits, they had Bad Days, where food is hard to come by. And those bad days were growing increasingly frequent, which was how Bucky found himself in the next neighbourhood over. The next neighbourhood happened to be the docks, which was good because there were more people willing to toss them something and more shops to cater for the humans who came down here to lift boxes and groan. Humans truly are strange, Bucky has to think, not for the first time.
Their trip turns sour when loud growling starts behind him, and as he turns around he finds that Steve has locked eyes with a slightly bigger dog who had, apparently, sneaked up on Bucky while he’d been distracted by his disdain for the bipedals.
“C’mon, Steve,” he says loudly, butting his dog’s stomach and herding him hastily around the nearest corner.
“He was looking at you,” Steve grumbles, letting himself be herded.
“Looking how?” Bucky asks. He has to admit to finding a level of humour in this; he’s expecting Steve to say something territorial and adorable, not for his face to go serious.
“Like he was going to attack you,” he says. “I know you say I like to pick fights, Buck, but –”
“I believe you, punk,” Bucky interrupts, because he never wants Steve to think otherwise, to think he has to convince Bucky he’s telling the truth. Steve doesn’t lie, not to him. And Bucky returns the favour.
“Jerk,” Steve mumbles by rote.
“But – I didn’t have anything. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t even looking at something to eat,” Bucky points out.
“That’s why I don’t like it,” Steve says. Something’s gone out of his body, or maybe something’s made its way in. All Bucky knows is that his dog is tense and wary, that the docks seem somehow more sinister. “And – I think he was one of the dogs I fought last week. With Lorraine the puppy, you remember.”
“I remember,” Bucky says. He’s slowly steering them out of the docks neighbourhood as they talk, and while he’s not sure if Steve noticed he can see his dog relaxing as the distance between them and the docks grows.
“We should do something,” Steve says, once they’ve passed by their territory and, by mutual unspoken agreement, headed north.
“You can keep your trap shut and your nose clean,” Bucky says, but it’s half-hearted at best and Steve doesn’t even bother to dignify it with a response. Bucky sighs pointedly. “I’ll ask around,” he promises. Cats might have a reputation among the humans to be aloof and standoffish, but they gossip a lot more than any other species on the street.
For a moment, he’s foolishly hopeful that Steve will say something sensible like, ‘no, Bucky, it’s alright, we can keep ourselves out of trouble this one goddamn time,’ but all he gets is a hopeful look and a slight wag of the tail. Alone, those things are formidable, but combined, and alongside Steve’s wide blue eyes, Bucky isn’t ashamed to admit that he softens like food in the sun, as long as he’s only admitting it to himself, deep down. “Goddamnit,” he grumbles unhappily.
“I just want to know if there’s something I can do,” Steve says, so stupidly earnest and wonderful. Then he ruins it by saying, “And don’t do that thing where you omit information,” just to be a shit.
“That was one time,” Bucky grumbled, batting at his friend. “Let it go.”
“Never,” Steve pronounces grandly. “You did wrong by me that day, Bucky. You –”
It is at this point that he chokes, rather abruptly, because Bucky has employed a tried and true method of briefly shutting Steve up: he twisted around and stuck a paw in his mouth.
~*~
“Monty.”
“Bucky,” the other cat says, looking up from his pristine grey fur briefly before returning to the important business of cleaning it. This is usually the beginning and the end of their interactions when they run into each other, which is why Monty looks up with interest when Bucky continues talking.
“Whereabouts do you spend your time?” Bucky asks.
“A little here, a little there,” he says noncommittally. “But if you’re looking to change locations, don’t. You’ve got a good spot with your dog.”
“Oh, we know,” Bucky says. “But my dog met another dog near the docks.” He pauses, tries to think about which interaction is more easily explained. “She seemed to think he was a lot friendlier than the big dogs in her neighbourhood.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Monty says, so emphatically that it takes Bucky a little by surprise.
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s worse,” Monty says. “The dogs there are positively vicious, and not for any good reason, either. I used to scavenge for food there, but it’s not worth it anymore.”
“Not for any good reason,” Bucky mutters. Dread is crawling, slow and implacable, up his spine. He flicks his tail but it does nothing to mitigate that feeling.
“You’re attacked if you have food and still attacked if you don’t,” Monty adds helpfully. Fuck, but Steve is going to have a field day with this, Bucky thinks despondently. He was either going to invite every small stray animal to his territory or fight all the big stray animals in their territory. Possibly both.
“It took a while to really come to light,” Monty says. “Because of the food thing, you know.”
“I know,” Bucky confirms, mind swirling. He’s honestly tempted not to tell Steve, because Steve is going to get himself into major fucking trouble with this information, Bucky just knows it. Steve would find out eventually, though, and then he’d have material to wail about for the rest of their days. Bucky is so absorbed by the inherent horror of this prospect that he only notices Monty’s speaking to him with a paw bats at his tail. “What?”
“I said, why are you asking?” Monty says, probably more patiently than Bucky deserves.
“My goddamn dog gets all fired up at the prospect of fighting evil,” Bucky says. His voice sounds half proud, which it definitely does not have his permission to do. “Plus,” he admits, “I kind of told him to let it go, about a week ago. And now it turns out I – well, shouldn’t have, I guess.”
Monty actually leans backwards slightly in surprise. “Oh, you should have,” he says. “And you should tell him again, louder. Those dogs are bad news.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Bucky says, and the but my dog will ignore it all anyway goes unspoken. Monty looks at him sympathetically, which: Bucky doesn’t want sympathy, he wants his dog to stop being stupidly noble. If Steve was just in the habit of picking petty fights Bucky is pretty sure he could have trained it out of him by now. But as it is he always feels like a heel trying to get Steve to stay out of something when Steve unerringly picks the worthiest fights he can possibly fight. And if he was the type to blow up over something petty, Bucky suspects that they would have parted ways long ago. It doesn’t make him feel better, in this moment, but it does resign him to the inevitable course of events.
~*~
“We have to go help them!” Steve says indignantly and immediately after Bucky has finished relaying what Monty had said.
“It could just be gossip,” Bucky says, even though he had gone and gotten this gossip backed up by three other cats. Well, two, if he was being technical – Connie had only batted a stray piece of fluff and said, “The docks? I wouldn’t even think of going there. I’ve heard things,” and, upon being pressed for details, only said vaguely, “Oh, you know, things. Bad things.”
“Yeah, and all the fights that’ve been happening lately are just coincidence,” Steve snorts. He doesn’t even both to wait for Bucky’s weak, “I mean, maybe?” protestation before setting off in a southerly sort of direction, stride lengthening slightly and his paws meeting the ground more decisively than usually.
“C’mon, Steve,” Bucky says, dashing so that he’s in front of Steve and his friend stops in his tracks instead of bowling him over. “What’s your plan, huh? Just head down there and fight them all?”
“It’ll work,” Steve says stubbornly.
“Yeah, sure, if they politely line up and wait for you to fight them all one by one,” Bucky snaps out.
Steve pauses, but he still backs himself. “I can take them, you know I can –”
And, well, technically that’s actually probably true, Bucky has seen him take on big groups and still come out victorious, but still – “You don’t fucking have to –”
“It’s better if I do,” Steve insists. “No faster way of getting the message across. Beating them all is a pretty strong fucking message –”
“Okay, sure, but you don’t have to do that alone,” Bucky points out, rather reasonably, in his own humble opinion.
“Because we’re so swamped with friends who’ll drop everything to fight with us,” Steve replies, tone flat. And, to be fair, he has a point; he and Bucky have been fairly absorbed in each other, to the extent of presenting a fairly intimidating image of togetherness that others tend to back away from rather than attempt to get closer to.
“Okay, but –” Bucky says weakly, but Steve looks calculating now and he’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or not and it’s kind of distracting him. The distraction is particularly devastating considering that he doesn’t know what else to suggest and is frantically combing through his internal list of contacts for someone who might want to be involved in this stupid harebrained plan. He really isn’t coming up with anyone, and he’s not sure whether this is a mark of good or bad taste in acquaintances.
“Actually, you’re right,” Steve says slowly. Bucky almost says asks I am? but he’s a cat, he can restrain himself in time, and only a little flick of the tail gives away his surprise. “It’s better if the dock-strays are involved in this too. Gets rid of any illusion that they might be able to hang around once we kick them out. And they have a stake in this, they’re the ones being terrorised.”
“That’s…a good point. Two good points,” Bucky says, considering this. Steve bares his teeth in a proud approximation of a smile and ducks his head down to get his nose under Bucky and sweep him off his feet.
“Let’s talk to the dock-strays, then,” he says cheerfully, as Bucky flails in an attempt to keep his balance and emits a noise that sounds something like, “MrasflgsPEH.”
~*~
The docks always smell salty, kind of coppery, even when the sea is still blocked from sight. It’s always been their second choice for food when their own territory is lacking. Now that they’ve come for a purpose, though, Bucky could swear that the entire area seems dead-set on proving that Steve is right. They run into one fairly large dog who sneers at them but seems content to continue chewing on the bone he has. Buck had to dig his claws in slightly to stop Steve from growling at that. The two of them catch what their eyes had slid past before: cats, rail-thin, slink away when they see Steve’s bulk making its way down a street; small dogs will turn or divert their paths to avoid them. Small squabbles can be heard breaking out in the surrounding area, and they are over depressingly quickly. Steve’s muscles slowly grow tighter.
“It’s no use,” he says finally, head drooping a little. “Nobody wants to talk to us. They’re all so scared, Buck,” he adds softly, voice dropping to a distressed whine.
Bucky kneads his dog’s tense muscles slowly from his excellent vantage point on Steve’s neck, occasionally unsheathing his claws when he can tell Steve is growing too complacent. “Let’s see if we can find Monty,” he says finally. “He knows everyone. And I usually know where to find him.”
“Where?” Steve asks, turning away and agreeably obeying the small nudges Bucky gives him to direct him towards his nearest nap-space.
“I don’t actually know much about him,” Bucky admits, “but we tend to like the same nap-spaces, so he has good taste. We can probably find him.”
Steve grumbles something indistinct about having to do all the walking in this arrangement, and Bucky ignores him regally. Steve does, after all, have the bigger body now, and is well able to walk long distances while carrying Bucky’s definitely small and very delicate weight. It’s probably like Steve’s not even carrying anything at all, Bucky agrees with himself, and hears a little oof as he drops heavily so that his chin rests on Steve’s head and his paws dangle on either side of Steve’s neck.
“You’re a fucking jerk,” Steve says halfheartedly. Bucky purrs and licks his ear.
“Turn left here,” he says. Predictably, because everything that can go wrong will go wrong, the underside of the bridge is empty except for a few pigeons who scatter at their arrival.
“Next stop is three streets away,” he announces, and Steve groans but starts walking.
~*~
“Who in the world needs this many napping spots,” Steve grumbles, as they make their way over to the fifth spot. “Isn’t our den enough?”
“Not when you’re not there,” Bucky says, and enjoys the way he can feel Steve blush.
“Is that him?” Steve asks hastily, successfully distracting Bucky.
“Yeah, that’s him. Monty!” he calls, making Steve wince at the sudden rise in volume. “Sorry, Steve. Monty!”
“What?” Monty snaps, getting up. “Oh, hello Bucky. But still: what?” he sounds less angry than before, but still slightly peeved. “Is that your dog?”
“He’s hell-bent on fighting those big dogs you mentioned,” Bucky says, at the same time Steve says, “Or is Bucky my cat?”
Monty looks impassively at Steve, and Bucky swats his neck lazily.
“I told you they were bad news,” Monty says to Bucky. “You can’t think you can just go in to fight them and win!”
“He can,” Bucky says. “Think so, I mean. But I convinced him to look for allies –”
“He is right here, and as I recall I made the argument for allies,” Steve interrupts.
“We mutually convinced each other that allies would be a good idea,” Bucky continues smoothly. “And, well, you know everyone…” He lets the sentence trail of suggestively and doesn’t even move while Monty considers this.
“It’d be grand to see them fought out of territory, to be sure,” Monty says thoughtfully.
“How many of them are they?” Steve asks. “What are we looking at?”
“You’d best ask the animals who live at the docks,” Monty says. “I don’t know their inner workings. I avoid them.” His tail twitches fretfully, but his gaze and his voice are both steady when he says, “I’m not making any promises, mind, but meet me here tomorrow morning.” Then he hops up onto the metal staircase winding its way up the building next to him and disappears.
“He doesn’t have to be the only one doing any talking,” Steve says determinedly, turning back towards the docks. “Let’s go, Buck.”
~*~
The first dog they talk to is old Chester who hangs out on street corners. He’s old and wiry, and rejects them out of hand. “Don’t be stupid,” he are his exact words. “What, you and a little kitty cat can solve all the problems? Don’t make me laugh.”
“We can solve one problem –” Steve had said indignantly, but Bucky guided him away.
The second animal they spoke to was the seventeenth they had seen, another old dog by the name of Erskine.
“I have nothing for you,” he says tiredly. “Stop trying to get me back.”
“Back?” Steve asks.
“You are not a Hydra dog?” he asks, and peers at them a little more closely. His eyes are cloudy, but they catch on quickly enough. “No – you have a cat on your back,” he murmurs to himself. “What do you want, then?”
“Hydra dogs?” Steve asks.
“Information,” Erskine nods to himself. “What for?”
“To stop them,” Steve says, and Erskine nods again, approvingly.
“That’s good,” he says. “Why?”
“Why –” Steve hesitates a little. Bucky bumps his face into the back of Steve’s head and purrs quietly, reassuringly, and his dog takes a breath and simply says, “I don’t like bullies.”
“Someone who will stand up to them,” Erskine says thoughtfully. He goes silent, and for a while the noise of the docks is the only thing Bucky hears – humans shouting, things banging, the water moving. He’s about to nudge Steve a little when Erskine speaks again. “They started taking for the food. Then they liked it too much, and took when there was nothing to be taken.”
“How many of them are there?” Bucky asks, and Erskine transfers that cloudy gaze to him.
“Three,” he says, “main leaders. If you can make them leave, I believe the rest will follow or dissolve.”
“Where are they?” Steve asks.
“They roam the docks,” Erskine says. “But during the nights you can probably find them in the little street behind the ugly short building. It’s the best place, you see, and they take the best things.”
“Oh, I know what building you’re talking about,” Bucky mutters balefully. The pile of bricks is an eyesore, and probably doesn’t deserve the name building.
“Tell me who they are,” Steve says, and Erskine obliges.
~*~
“Peggy! I’m glad to see you,” Steve says after – well, a frankly rather depressing amount of time being run away from. Lorraine the puppy is nowhere in sight, and Bucky can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad one.
“Mm, I’m sure,” Peggy says dryly. “What is it?”
“We want to fight the big dogs out of territory,” Steve says. His voice is possibly the most earnest it’s ever been, and Bucky knows exactly how he’s deploying those big blue eyes, having been on the receiving end of that pleading gaze for a good chunk of his life. It probably says something about him that he’s only built up the very weakest of immunities to the look, and sure enough, Peggy relents.
“You’re joking,” she says, but it’s hesitant and reluctantly intrigued.
“No,” Steve promises. “It’s wrong, what they’re doing. We need to show them that small animals can’t be pushed around.”
“Well,” Peggy breathes. “It’d be good to see that. How do you plan to do it?” she asks, and even through the eagerness of her tone she manages to sound a little sceptical.
“Fighting, mostly,” Steve admits. “
“We’re talking to others,” Steve says, a little weakly. “I’m a good fighter.”
“No doubt,” Peggy murmurs. “You won’t have much luck down here, I’m afraid. Even the ones who want to fight aren’t in much condition to.”
“Is that a yes?” Steve asks hopefully. This is a tried and true technique of his that Bucky had (and has, but he doesn’t need to reflect on that) fallen for a truly embarrassing number of times.
“I can see what you’re doing, you know,” Peggy says, and with those bright intelligent eyes Bucky has no doubt of it.
“I’m definitely hearing a yes,” he adds anyway, to support his dog, and Peggy shows her teeth in a smile and nods.
“That’s a yes,” she says, almost breathless with it, and dances slightly on her feet. Steve does something similar, and Bucky graciously puts up with it for about six seconds before biting the scruff of Steve’s neck.
“I know one friend I can bring,” she says. “Past that, I’m afraid I’m not very social.”
“Bring them to the meeting tomorrow,” Bucky says, and Steve takes it upon himself to explain the when and where even though Bucky had definitely been getting to that. Definitely.
~*~
Monty truly outdid himself, is the first thought that flits through Bucky’s mind when he and Steve make their way to the old building some time after the sun has risen. There are two other cats, two dogs, and Peggy all sitting and talking with each other, but it’s not necessarily the quantity that has Bucky so impressed. It’s not even the diversity of species, though that is commendable. It’s mostly, in fact, due to one of the dogs Monty has dug up from somewhere, because he is fucking massive. He’s bigger than Steve by an absurd amount. Bucky can remember the circus that came to town a few seasons ago and the massive animals who had been kept there, and he is ready to swear that this dog is bigger than those wilder animals were.
“Glad you could join us,” Monty says. “This is Gabe, and Dernier,” he says, indicating to the cats. “That’s Morita –” he gestures at the small dog, “– and that’s Dum Dum.” He says it so dismissively, like it is normal to spirit a massive dog into clandestine meetings. Bucky is not sure that he even knew dogs that big existed, and Monty only says, with the utmost casualness, that his name is Dum Dum. Peggy hasn’t even batted an eye. “And the lady says she knows you.”
“Nice to see you again, Peggy,” Steve murmurs, the very image of politeness, but from the sound of his voice Bucky can tell that Steve is shaken up by the size of the other dog – Dum Dum, Bucky only realises in this moment, is a strange fucking name – and he can only feel relief that at least one other animal in the world is still having normal reactions to strange things.
“Howard’ll be here in a moment,” she informs them. Only a few moments after she says this, a deep black crow swoops down to land on top of her head. Bucky rears back a little, and he can feel Steve next to him doing the same. The other cats and dog also display similar alarm, because crows are not to be trusted. Crows are a little bit unnatural.
This particular crow screeches extremely loudly until Peggy tips him off her head.
“Stop that, Howard,” she scolds. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“Howard?” one of the cats – Bucky thinks it’s Dernier – asks doubtfully.
“He can help,” Peggy assures them. “He’s very clever when he’s not being very silly.” This is delivered with a pointed glare, and Howard ruffles his feathers but falls silent.
“I’m more than very clever,” he scoffs. “I’m a genius.”
“Help us get rid of the big dogs and we’ll see,” Dernier replies. Howard glares but doesn’t protest.
“Someone named Erskine told us about the dogs,” Steve says, diplomatically moving on. “They call themselves Hydra dogs –”
“Ooh, and they hang around near the water, how imaginative,” Morita snaps, with a rather staggering amount of bitterness.
“Um,” Steve says. “Yes. Well, according to him there are only about three masterminds behind things, if you will, and if you kick them out the rest will follow or dissipate.”
“That seems hopeful,” Dernier mutters.
“Well, it’s the best information we have to be working off,” Steve says. “And it’s better for us to try and localise our efforts. We’d need more strays to fight everyone.” Somewhat grudging silence meets this statement, and Steve continues a little uncomfortably. “Well, I was thinking that we should do this as publicly as we can. So –”
“So we can be as publicly humiliated as possible?” Monty asks dryly.
“Not unless you’re planning to fail,” Bucky says, equally dry, to some amusement. Monty tilts his head a little, blinks slowly.
“No,” Steve says, gaining some confidence. “We think more animals will come and help us than them, if we do this in public. And when they do it only gives the Hydra dogs more incentive to stay away.”
“Alright,” Monty agrees. “As public as possible.”
~*~
They execute their plan when the sun is near the centre point in the sky. It follows as such:
1. They spread out, and start trawling the docks slowly, in an unobtrusive fashion.
Bucky and Monty stay above, on walls; Howard does them one better by literally staying in the sky, because he is a bird that can fly. Dernier and Gabe stay on the ground, as do Morita and Steve, all of whom spread out on one side of the road. Dum Dum, who is the opposite of unobtrusive, is relegated to a position several feet back and on the other side of the road to boot.
2. Find one of the three leading Hydra dogs.
It does not take them particularly long to find one. He’s just like Erskine and the dock-strays described: big, dark, with long ears and a scar above his left eye. The dog they call Kruger is obviously just waiting on a street corner, and jumps out at Gabe without provocation.
3. Fight him.
This is achieved easily, considering how eager Kruger was for a fight.
4. Join the fight.
Kruger is a big dog with strong, lean muscles, and he barely seems to care when Bucky and Monty drop down on him, merely kicks away Morita, and gets a better grip on Gabe, who hisses and spits.
5. Get Howard to stir things up around the rest of the neighbourhood.
The crow might have been an enigma but he was good at making a racket, nobody could deny that. Slowly, other heads begin to pop around walls and buildings as step six begins:
6. Employ the big guns; end the first fight.
Steve and Dum Dum step forward at about the same time, both of them growling and bristling and generally making themselves nuisances: one, Kruger falls back, on the defensive in an instant and then backing away with promises of retribution in the next. (“Yeah, sure,” Morita goads, from where he’s lying against the wall he’d been tossed into. “I’d like to see you and your cronies try.”) Two, the smaller animals see, without a doubt, that Kruger has gone. They see their enemy in retreat, and it emboldens them. Some of the braver ones already start to creep out from behind their shields.
“That wasn’t smart,” one of them says. “He’s going to come back with more dogs.”
“That’s why you all need to join us,” Steve says, pitching his voice to carry. “You saw how he ran. We can make them all run.”
7. Get others to join their fight.
The other, smaller cats and dogs look around at each other; most of them hesitant, some of them eager. A few of them step closer to Steve.
“Grackles are vicious,” Howard says suddenly, in an aside to Peggy. “I can come back with grackles.”
“And how will you convince them?” Peggy asks, dubious, and Howard scoffs. “Well, alright then,” she snorts. “Go and come back with grackles.”
8. Wait.
Bucky can’t help but to seek comfort with Steve as the strays they’ve gathered mill around nervously. It feels distinctly like the calm before the storm, but with his face in Steve’s chest with Steve’s heart beating obnoxiously against Bucky’s nose he can breathe clearly.
In the distance, dogs start barking. Bucky can hear if not see the increasingly nervous movements around him, the slight quickening of Steve’s heart. Steve leans down to nuzzle at Bucky, and he doesn’t think either of them know whether it’s meant to be giving strength or gathering it. Maybe it’s both.
“Stay safe, you punk,” he mumbles into Steve’s fur before forcing himself to pull away.
“You too, jerk,” Steve says fondly, giving the top of Bucky’s head a slobbery lick.
9. And then, finally: fight.
By the time the Hydra dogs round the corner, Monty and Bucky are both ready to dart out right in front of them. The dogs can’t stop at such short notice, and cats are notoriously good at getting underfoot. Whatever formation the Hydra dogs were trying for – if they’d been trying for formation at all, which seemed unlikely, although Bucky was tremendously biased – was summarily ruined, and dogs went toppling over.
From that point, the fighting truly began. It was messy and bloody and chaotic, and for all his intentions to play a part it was intense enough that the situation offered two options: look for Steve or fight. He couldn’t do both at once, and, well, Bucky would always choose Steve. So.
Just as he thinks he spots golden fur, Howard’s screech sounds on the air – and fuck if Bucky didn’t already know the exact sound of that bird’s screech, it’s that annoying – and the crow himself drops to the ground leading a veritable cloud of feathers. Fighting slows or even ceases altogether as dogs and cats alike try to understand this new variable.
“The doves wanted to join in,” Howard explains to Bucky as he lands on Bucky’s head, even though Bucky had not asked for any form of explanation. “Birds are dumb. Except crows.”
For all that Howard derides other birds as dumb, they’re smart enough to stay away from snapping jaws and also not attack Steve (although a few of them go for Dum Dum, who can be heard sputtering his indignation from a mile away, probably).
“Get lost,” someone snarls, and one of the Hydra dogs breaks and runs. It looks like Kruger, but Bucky can’t be sure.
“Don’t chase!” Bucky can hear Steve yell, and despite the short time that they’ve known him, the dock-strays fall back. Bucky has a moment of feeling deliriously proud of his dog before he realises that this just made him look like the leader and thus good attack material. And, sure enough, the tall lean dog he’s pinned as Schmidt snaps his head around and abandons Dernier in favour of lunging for Steve.
Bucky’s dog, taken by surprise, is bowled to the ground and pinned. Bucky doesn’t register Howard’s indignant squawk as he’s displaced, barely even realises he’s heading for the duo until he hears Steve’s, “Bucky, no!” and feels the impact of an unfamiliar body under his claws and teeth.
He is one small cat against a much bigger dog. For a moment it seems like he gains the upper hand – Schmidt certainly doesn’t expect Bucky to climb onto his back, and Bucky’s Steve-climbing skills hold him in good stead – but all he has to do is roll to make Bucky fall, and roll over him to squash Bucky, both of which is does. Bucky tries to leap to his paws as fast as he can, but it’s not fast enough; in an instant, Schmidt has his left front paw between unforgiving teeth.
“Let him go!” Steve snaps, but he doesn’t move, because Schmidt isn’t biting down, doesn’t even move except to plant a paw firmly on Bucky’s chest to stop him from wriggling. Bucky can feel his heart beating and his blood roaring and the ground scraping into his back.
“Steve, do it,” he says, ignoring the warning pressure around his paw, and his voice must stay at least a bit steady because Steve sways forward a little, undecided and agonised. “Steve! Do it!”
He punctuates this with a slash to Schmidt’s face, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Steve move, and then there’s a crushing pain in his paw and he thinks he’s yowling but he’s not sure and the pressure releases but his paw hurts –
He thinks Steve is saying something, but he can’t focus on what. In the next instant Steve’s picked him up by the scruff like he’s a kitten again, achingly gentle, and is carrying him away.
“Steve?” Bucky asks, maybe a little hazy, but the shout and the noise is behind them now and it’s quiet. Steve puts him down and then curls around him, a wall of warmth on all sides. His paw still hurts, but it’s a little duller now, aching instead of stabbing.
“You feeling okay?” his lovely dog asks, voice soft.
“Did you chase him off?”
“No. You got him good, though, claw right in the eye,” Steve says. His light tone is very much betrayed by the anxious licks he’s covering Bucky in. It’s entirely reminiscent of the way they met, that first time Bucky had bailed Steve out of a fight and Steve had given him a free and also unwanted bath and wormed his way into Bucky’s heart.
“But you wanted –” Bucky starts, only to be comprehensively interrupted.
“You’re more important, you know you are,” Steve says, tone so wounded that Bucky gives the line of questioning up. “Besides,” Steve adds reluctantly, once his tongue has worked its way down Bucky’s tail, “there were a whole lot of others who looked pretty keen to finish the task. And it’s only right that one of the dock-strays sent him packing. How’s your paw?”
“Hurts,” Bucky grumbles as he admits, because he knows Steve won’t accept another answer. Steve noses at it gently, and Bucky can’t help but whine, snatch it away. That only makes it hurt more.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Steve says. The sounds of fighting, Bucky is able to notice, is dying down. Schmidt must have been driven out, then. “Do you – do you want to go to a human?”
“Not really,” Bucky grumbles. “Do you want to go back and tie up the loose ends of the fight?”
“I want to take care of you,” Steve says.
“Try Howard,” Bucky says.
“Howard?” Steve asks, a little doubtful.
“Mm. Crows are clever,” Bucky says. He doesn’t know what it is but it feels like something is wearing off; his paw really is starting to hurt now. For all that he tries to keep it out of his voice, he’s pretty sure Steve hears it.
“Crows are clever,” Steve repeats. “Give me a moment.”
He stands up and leaves, which is exactly the opposite of what Bucky wants, really, but he needs to get Howard, so Bucky can suck it up.
He takes the opportunity to inspect his paw and, wow, this is not what he wanted to see. He’s pretty sure that paws are not meant to bend like that, or have fur scraped clean off it, or be so red, or, well, look anything like Bucky’s paw currently looks like. Monty and Howard turn the corner ahead of Steve, and Monty visibly winces.
Howard is less helpful than Bucky had hoped he would be. “Willow bark,” he caws. “Go to a human.”
“Don’t wanna,” Bucky grumbles, like he’s a kitten again, but he presents his scruff to Steve anyway.
“How was the fight?” Bucky asks, trying to take his mind off the pain. “We win?”
“Hell yeah we won,” Monty says, because Steve’s mouth is full. “Dum Dum sat on Zola. It was the best thing I ever saw. And I’ve seen a lot. Also,” he adds, “grackles are so bloodthirsty. So bloodthirsty. I did not know that.”
“Grackles are vicious,” Howard says, his tone oozing satisfaction. “Once they taste eyes –”
“Okay, no, that’s enough,” Monty says. “I’m never opening my eyes near a grackle again.”
“Eyelid is a tasty topping,” Howard says with a bird-shrug, and Monty groans with disgust.
~*~
Steve took Bucky to the human who ran the shop and occasionally tossed them scraps, who was as unhelpful at first as Bucky had expected (emitting a short squeaking noise and then many distressed unintelligible noises) before bringing in someone who was more helpful and had given something to Bucky that knocked him out cold. It meant that he woke up without a clue as to how his paw was correctly re-oriented, and frankly, he thinks he likes it better that way.
In better news, neither Schmidt nor Zola had been seen by anyone on the grapevine, and Kruger had last been seen falling into the river and being swept away. Dum Dum was pitching the idea of a collective, but according to Monty the dock-strays were a hard sell. Either way: Steve wasn’t particularly interested, and was more than happy to spend time with Bucky, which was excellent.
“I think one leg is shorter than the other,” he grumbles at Steve the afternoon the human finally let him outside (after only one day and one night of plaintive whining on his part and mournful barking on Steve’s). “Look at this – look at –”
He tries to balance on two legs, but the slight discrepancy in length causes him to fall a little bit on the bad leg and he yelps.
“I get your point, I get it,” Steve says hastily, and curls around Bucky, successfully restricting his movement.
“Y’know,” Bucky says as he settles into Steve’s warm body, “sometimes it feels like you don’t trust me to move.”
“I don’t know where you’d get that idea,” Steve breathes out, and when Bucky twists his head upwards he can see a gleam in blue eyes.
"Punk,” he grumbles as he capitulates and closes his eyes. He’s a cat. He can nap at the drop of a hat.
“Jerk,” he hears Steve say fondly, before he falls down into soft grey sleep.