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“Circle up, a-holes!”
Bucky smiled a little to himself as Peter Quill bounced onto the bridge of the Milano and gestured the Guardians of the Galaxy to gather round. The first time Bucky had heard Quill summon them that way - not long after Bucky joined the crew (if “joined” was the word for a journey that started with him begging Steve to help him find a safe place to recover after his Winter Soldier deprogramming, and ended up with Howard Stark’s kid Tony making a call to some actual space aliens he knew) - Quill had shot Bucky an uneasy glance right after, as though concerned that Bucky’s World War Two sensibilities might be affronted. Little did he know that as far as Bucky was concerned, “a-holes” was downright cutesy. Some of the things Dum-Dum Dugan had used to call the Howling Commandos would have singed Quill’s ears.
The crew slumped into a rough semicircle. Gamora and Drax immediately commandeered a couple of crates to sit on and resumed what they’d been doing before Quill arrived: specifically, sharpening a fuck-off giant knife (Drax) and poking at some kind of sleek black tube that somehow looked even more dangerous than the fuck-off giant knife (Gamora). Groot twined together his twig-like fingers and looked attentive.
Rocket sauntered up to stand next to Bucky. “What’s up, Quill? Here -” he half-turned towards Bucky and tossed him something - “hold this.”
It was a little pewter square, maybe a couple inches across, nestled in a wreath of wires. “This gonna blow me up?” Bucky asked as he casually flipped it over, squinting at the underside.
“Eh, it’s fine. Just, if you like the rest of your limbs where they are, make sure you never turn it upside down.”
Bucky blanched, his skin going suddenly cold. Rocket let out a bark of laughter.
“I’m screwing with you, Barnes! It’s a flashlight.” He patted Bucky’s leg, and chuckled. “Your face. ”
“If you guys are done flirting,” Quill said without rancor, just as Bucky had found the on switch for the flashlight and was deliberately shining it into Rocket’s eyes as revenge, “we got a job.” He flicked on the holographic display over one of the consoles. Bucky leaned against the edge of the console opposite and settled in to listen.
The job was straightforward and, by the Guardians’ standards, refreshingly low on expected violence. Some crime syndicate had apparently stolen an artefact of immense destructive power. Luckily, they didn’t seem to realise what they had; even luckier, they showed no interest in finding out. Instead, the syndicate had immediately started advertising through back channels that the thing was for sale to the highest bidder. The reason the Guardians were being brought onboard was that Nova Corps didn’t have the kind of underworld connections needed to set up a meeting with the syndicate - but former Ravager Peter Quill sure did.
“So all we have to do is be convincing as gangsters looking to buy a superweapon,” Quill concluded. “Then, once we get our hands on the doohickey, we get out before they realise our credits are fake, and Nova Corps swoops in and nabs them.” He flashed a smile. “Now, you’re probably thinking: How are a bunch of dashing galactic superheroes going to pass muster as criminals?”
“I was -” Bucky got cut off as the tube in Gamora’s hand suddenly sprung to life, uncoiling a long electro-whip from one end. She gave a pleased hum and swung it experimentally, slicing a crate in half. “I was not thinking that.”
“Well, trust me - I have found us a bulletproof alias,” Quill announced with a little flourish of his hands. “Nova Corps picked up the infamous Bluey Malone last night for arms trafficking. As a favour, they’re sitting on the news about him getting arrested for now, so the first thing I did was call up our artefact-swiping pals and let them know ‘Bluey’ is looking to set up a buy. So, one of us goes in as Bluey, everybody else posts up nearby in case there’s trouble, we get in, we get out, we get paid - and the galaxy’s safe for another day.”
Bucky nodded. As plans went - as Quill’s plans went especially - this one was pretty credible.
“Well,” Quill continued, “actually, two of us need to go undercover. Malone doesn’t usually travel with a ton of guards, but he’s never without his… I guess, mascot? Attack dog? Pet? Let’s say pet. They’ve been together for years; it’d be suspicious for Bluey to show up without him. So, Rocket and Bucky, you two go in in disguise and -”
“No.”
It wasn’t the word that raised the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck. It was the way Rocket said it. A glance down showed that Rocket had his ears pinned right back against his skull - and when he spoke, his voice was pitched up, breathless, close to breaking.
“ Fuck you, Quill, no. ”
He was shaking. Rocket always had steady hands, always - and now he was shaking.
The confusion on Quill’s face was starting to give way to alarm. Bucky cut in, starting, “You don’t have to -” without knowing exactly how he was going to finish that sentence, only knowing that no one, no one was going to make Rocket do something that had him sounding like that.
Rocket spoke right over him, without really seeming to register. “What, you think I’m gonna pretend to be some krutacker’s pet? His mascot. ’Cause I’m just some dumb little fucking animal, is that it, Quill, you -”
“No, what, hey! Rocket, you’re not - I’d never -” Alarm was now full-blown panic, as Quill practically begged. “Rocket, it’s me , you know I wouldn’t - I just - look!”
He flicked his fingers, and the holo image of the artefact dissolved, replaced by a surveillance video playing without sound. In it, a diminutive figure in a broad-brimmed black hat and long coat was being ushered through the door of a swanky casino. He glanced back, and Quill paused the video on a closeup of a pointed, furry face. “ That’s Bluey Malone.”
Rocket froze; then said, “... huh.”
Bucky tilted his head. The resemblance was rough - Malone’s fur, true to his nickname, was a bright turquoise, and his eyes were a pupiless amber instead of Rocket’s warm brown - but with a few tweaks, he was pretty sure Rocket could pass easily.
“And this -” Quill continued, restarting the video, “is his pet.”
As the holo continued to play out, they could see that Malone was actually holding the end of a leash, looped loosely around one hand. This became even clearer when Malone glanced backwards and appeared to say something, patting his thigh as he did so - and, at the other end of the leash, a humanoid figure lumbered into view.
The figure did bear a passing resemblance to Bucky, he supposed. The man’s skin was entirely silver, but it was still evident that one of his arms was metal; and Bucky knew from experience that the arm tended to be what people remembered more than the face. But that wasn’t foremost in Bucky’s mind at this moment. Instead, he was watching the leash, the collar it was attached to, the supple way it flexed over the man’s skin. The expression on his face, blank, blissful, as he settled at Malone’s feet. The fond smile that flickered across Malone’s face as he snaked a clawed hand down to stroke his pet’s hair.
Bucky’s mouth went dry.
Distantly, he heard Rocket saying, “Quill, that ain’t better - ” and he did sound steadier now, thank God, though something was clearly still upsetting him. “You’re really gonna ask Bucky to put a collar on? After… after everything ?”
“Rocket, it’s our best shot. It can’t be me; I gotta be there as me to set up the deal. Gamora won’t do it. Groot can’t do it. And Drax - we all agreed Drax was banned from undercover missions. You remember last time?”
“I have no wish to fight under covers,” Drax put in. “They restrict my movement.”
“They sure do, buddy,” Quill said over his shoulder, and widened his eyes in a see? gesture at Rocket.
Rocket’s fingers were curled protectively into the hem of Bucky’s shirt, as he subtly positioned himself between Bucky and Quill. “So find a different plan. You don’t have to -”
“I’ll do it.”
Rocket’s mouth snapped shut, and he turned to gape at Bucky.
So did the other Guardians. Bucky couldn’t exactly blame them; a part of his brain was gaping at himself.
Strangely enough, it was Gamora who said, “Are you sure, Barnes?”
Well. Not so strangely, perhaps. Rocket might understand all too well what it was like to be shaped into someone else’s weapon, but of all the Guardians, only Gamora truly shared Bucky’s experience of the years spent being used as that weapon.
Bucky looked around, including all of them in his answer. “You remember when I joined?”
Quill nodded. The others didn’t, but from the way they shifted - Gamora tilting her head, Drax leaning in and lifting his brows in invitation, Groot looming in a friendly fashion, Rocket tugging a little at Bucky’s shirt - he knew they were with him.
Bucky took a deep breath. It wasn’t something you just - came out and said. But fuck it. He wanted them to understand. “Back then, I’d just come off years of having a leash on for real.” He tapped the side of his head. “And I knew what happened when the wrong person got hold of the other end of it. I came to you because you were the only people I knew could stop me. Could - catch me. If I needed it.” He broke off - that part, that was too much - and finished abruptly, “What I’m saying is - after having a leash in my head, I don’t really give a fuck anymore about what it looks like to have one on my neck. It’s not real. And I guess I’m saying, it’s…” He looked away. “It’s okay. If it’s you.”
Before anyone else could react, Gamora stepped up and hugged him.
It was awkward. Gamora wrapped her arms around him like she was folding a sheet, and squeezed too hard, and it was so much the hug of someone still new to affection and so perfect all at once that it made Bucky’s heart twist painfully in his chest. He returned the hug as gently as he could. She spent a long time searching his face after she drew away.
A scratchy hand patted Bucky’s shoulder. “I am Groot,” Groot reassured him.
Rocket’s hand unknotted itself from Bucky’s shirt, and instead silently slipped into Bucky’s hand.
***
Less than twenty-four hours later, Bucky was regretting all his life choices.
He’d been so fixated on the collar and the leash in the video that he hadn’t fully processed the rest of the outfit favoured by Bluey Malone’s… companion. Now that he was actually in costume, he didn’t have that luxury. Every exposed inch of Bucky’s skin was covered in a metallic silver paint - and there were a lot of exposed inches, because the man’s working uniform apparently consisted of boots, the absolute smallest shorts Bucky had ever seen in his travels throughout the galaxy, and nothing else.
Well, almost nothing else. Bucky ran a fretful finger under the collar at his neck. He meant it, when he’d said being seen in a make-believe collar didn’t bother him. And this one was about as unobjectionable as he could imagine. The leather was butter-soft, and the leash was specifically designed to exert no force at all; if Rocket gave it even a moderate tug, it’d just snap like a busted shoelace. Rocket had clearly gone out of his way to source the least obtrusive equipment he could find.
No, what bothered Bucky was something more nebulous. Something that stirred in his gut when he thought about Rocket buying him a collar, and making sure it was as comfortable as possible. Something about the silent image of the man he was now impersonating: a man kneeling at his employer’s -
(master’s?)
- feet and looking as though he was in paradise. Bucky had so many questions about the relationship between the two beings in that video, but he knew one thing for sure: that wasn’t an expression that mere money or feudal loyalty could place there.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Ready?” Quill asked when Bucky toggled the door open. “You - oh heyyyy.” His gaze swept appreciatively down over Bucky and back up. Quill grinned lazily. “Maybe that should be the new Guardians uniform.”
Bucky smiled back in spite of himself. It was difficult not to relax around Peter Quill. The man flirted as easily as he breathed, without meaning anything by it, and it always seemed like whatever danger they were facing couldn’t be all that bad if Quill was still making eyes at everyone in the room.
“Hands off, Quill,” Rocket muttered, also not meaning anything by it, as he shoved past Quill and into the room. “Bucky, we…”
He stopped dead, his eyes with their amber contacts widening to the size of dinner plates.
It made Bucky feel self-conscious, even though Rocket had definitely seen him in even less than this. It also made him feel something else that he wasn’t about to examine before heading off on a dangerous undercover mission.
“You, uh.” Bucky gestured at Rocket’s hat and gangster getup. “You look good.” He wasn’t lying; the hat suited Rocket down to the ground, and even the blue tint they’d given his fur was rather becoming.
“Yeah,” Rocket breathed. “Uh. You, too.”
And he reached out a hand for Bucky’s leash. And waited.
Bucky realised that Rocket wasn’t going to take the end of his leash. It was Bucky’s choice, even in play.
He placed the end of the leash in Rocket’s palm without a second thought.
***
The members of the syndicate were, as it turned out, not subtle beings.
“Better this way,” Quill murmured as they crossed the nightclub floor to where the half-dozen syndicate bosses were installed on a low dais, inhaling some kind of swirling blue gas from hovering spheres and surrounded by scantily clad aliens. “The more eyes on us during all this, the less likely they can get away with chopping us up and shooting the pieces out into space and hi! ” He switched on the dazzling smile. “Good to see you all in the flesh!”
As Quill made introductions, Bucky kept looking warily around the room. Two exits, neither close enough for his taste. At least a dozen tipsy nightclub patrons between them and escape through either one. There were visible weapons on at least three of the bosses, and -
Then he felt Rocket’s hand on his arm, pushing him gently to his knees.
Bucky dropped with an eagerness that would normally have embarrassed him. Should have embarrassed him, except that a clawed hand slipped under his collar to gently draw him closer to Rocket’s seat, and it was suddenly hard to be too distressed by anything.
Bucky could vaguely make out Rocket starting the negotiations (“So, I hear you krutackers got something as might interest me…”), but it was all a bit distant, all a bit… abstract. Rocket’s hand was still holding the back of his collar. It made the leather constrict just the tiniest, tiniest bit around Bucky’s throat, not enough to narrow his breathing, but enough to feel. Bucky bent his head forward a little, chasing the sensation.
Rocket’s other hand started carding through Bucky’s hair.
Bucky’s mind didn’t go blank. Not the blankness of the Soldier. The world didn’t go away - it was there, in the tiny points of pressure, the tightness at his windpipe and the pleasure of claws over his scalp. Those were his anchors, and he gripped onto them. The rest, the voices, the faces, faded in and out, but that was okay.
Rocket had him.
“Two hundred million. Pleasure doing business,” Rocket was saying. Fuck, were they wrapping up already? How long…
“I knew my very favourite business partners would get on like a house on fire!” Quill beamed. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Bluey’s got other business he needs to attend to - no rest for the wicked, if you -”
“Hang on a second.”
One of the syndicate bosses shot out a burly arm - he had eight, Bucky noticed, so there were more where that came from - and caught Rocket by the wrist.
Bucky held his breath. This was it - they’d taken too close a look at the fake credits, this was -
Then the man said, “Nice bit of arm candy you got there.” He grinned greasily. “What’s the price for some of his time?”
Rocket smiled.
Then he grabbed the man’s tie and yanked, and bashed the guy’s head against the table.
Quill’s hands flew to the holsters at his hips. The rest of the syndicate were on their feet, a couple of them with guns already drawn.
Without even so much as glancing at the other armed gangsters surrounding him, Rocket pulled the wounded man up by the hair, and got right next to his ear. “He’s a free agent,” he said, dangerously soft, “and you will talk about him with some fucking respect .”
No one breathed.
Until a syndicate member reholstered her gun and clucked, “For fuck’s sake, Q’orrrrzzzplutz. Can you not keep it in your damn genital sheath for one meeting?”
Rocket cast a glance at Bucky, who nodded slightly. Together, they left the club - Quill guarding their backs, Rocket’s hand twined in Bucky’s leash - as, behind them, Q’orrrzzzplutz’s long-suffering colleague continued to lecture him. Out of the syndicate’s sight, Bucky grinned.
***
If Bucky’d been expecting a post-mission chance to actually put his skimpy outfit to a more fun use, he was disappointed. Rocket stomped off to the showers immediately, and later reappeared in his normal clothes, every trace of blue scrubbed from his fur. Bucky followed suit, shedding the body paint and consigning the tiny shorts to the very bottom of his locker (hey, you never knew your luck).
On a whim, though, he put the collar back on.
Rocket was aggressively disassembling a shoulder-mounted missile launcher when Bucky arrived in his workshop. Rocket paused, quivering slightly, at the sound of the door opening and closing. Then he went back to ripping at wiring with even greater ferocity. Bucky, knowing his presence had been clocked, waited.
It wasn’t until the missile launcher was in pieces that Rocket said, “ Krutack Quill. I hated everything about that.”
Bucky’s hand went to his throat. If he was smart, he’d just slip the collar off and shove it down the waste disposal chute the first chance he got.
He said, “I didn’t.”
Rocket turned - and spotted the collar. His eyes went wide.
Bucky slipped a fingertip under the leather. Just a little pressure, just a faint tightening. It rooted him. “I meant what I said, about how it’s okay if it’s you.” He swallowed. “But if I’m honest, I really meant… you, you. If it had to be anybody. I… I liked knowing you had me.” He started undoing the buckle on the collar. “But if you hated it, we never gotta mention it again. I mean that, too.”
Rocket just stared at him.
Damn it. He’s freaking out. Or he thinks I’m pathetic for liking - Christ, I don’t even know what this is, and I’m dragging him into it. Good going, Barnes, you fucking idiot.
Rocket jumped up on the workbench, and put a hand out to stop Bucky’s hands. Then, carefully, he re-buckled the collar onto Bucky.
Bucky looked at him searchingly.
“You’re something, Barnes. You know that?” One side of Rocket’s mouth curved up. He sounded a little breathless. “You really like me… being in charge?”
Bucky huffed a laugh at how tame Rocket - Rocket, the being with the filthiest mouth Bucky had ever encountered - managed to make it sound. “Not all the time. But every once in a while, I think… yeah.”
Claws stroked over his collar.
“I reckon,” Rocket murmured, leaning in, “that I can work with that.”