Chapter Text
Sam doesn’t think of himself as petty.
He gets pissed off sometimes, likes getting his licks back same as anyone else. The worst he ever gets is a little vengeful. Never petty.
So, despite Misty showing up uninvited to harass him in his own home, Sam doesn’t retaliate. He even lies to Sarah. Tells the story in a fun can you believe what my ex-situationship did sort of way, and not in a can you please send some people to strongly suggest she drop her investigation kind of way.
Sam’s not petty at all, he’s a nice guy.
However…
No.
And .
Sam’s actually not petty at all, and , unrelated to Misty and her ominous threats cloaked as warnings, Sam just so happens to spend the next several months practically joined at the hip with Bucky.
Misty ruined one of the best days he’s had in a while, and has taken a particular interest in Sam’s spending time with the Black Widow’s right hand. But he’s not thinking of her when he pulls in through Natasha’s gates and slows to watch Bucky lifting weights in the grass, sweaty and grinning at Sam when he catches on to his audience. He’s not thinking of Misty when Natasha sends them on another prisoner pickup, and she’s not on his mind at all when they hook up in the parking garage after.
It’s a coincidence. Correlation is not at all the same as causation.
He’s pulling more jobs than he has since his family shored up the docks down south because it’s fun. Most of them have him partnering with Bucky because they work well together.
It’s a plus that Natasha likes them working together, tells them as much on a quieter evening after a bail bonds robbery goes bust and they’re tasked with pulling some of Natasha’s people out of a firefight.
She says her fondness for their partnership is why, after a team of six of them completed the job, it’s only the three of them that end up in a sitting room tucked into the top floor of her estate.
Sam’s leg bounces as the adrenaline slowly evaporates from his system. He doesn’t think he’s imagining the glances slid his way from where Bucky sits two feet to his left in a matching ornate armchair, but he isn’t able to catch him in the act. It feels weird, purposeful and teasing. Bucky is usually more than happy to get caught staring.
Maybe the difference now is that they’re not alone. Even with her back turned, crouched down to unlock a small safe, Natasha’s presence looms large. Sam doesn’t have to know exactly what they are to each other now to know there’s history between Bucky and Natasha – one that might call for more discretion that he’s come accustomed to.
Or whatever. It doesn’t matter, really. Sam likes sneaking off with Bucky after they succeed at something wild and reckless, but it’s not like he needs it. They don’t have to. They can quietly share space while Sam’s heart pumps electrified blood beneath his skin while Bucky lounges next to him, legs wide and inviting, skin smelling vaguely of sweat and gunpowder, gaze heavy on the side of Sam’s face and body whenever he looks away.
It’s all good. It’s fine.
Natasha slams the safe closed and turns with a flourish, a flick of the wrist sending a terrifying black tactical knife into the wood of the coffee table now in front of her. The blade is as wide as her forearm, and shocked through the center with two parallel lines of dark red.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” She comes around to sit on the table, grinning as she pulls the blade from the wood to cradle it in a delicate grasp. “She really does know the way to a girl’s heart.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and huffs out a derisive noise, fully committed to his disapproval of Potts. The noise could be about the knife itself, or just their relationship in general.
Just another thing they’re willing to let Sam witness, but only without explanation. Fascinating, but not important enough for Sam to ask. He likes them both, more than he probably should, but he knows better than to let that affection justify trust.
Natasha lays the knife into Bucky’s left hand when he holds it out, looking amused as he turns it in his hands.
“It’s impractical,” he says with a frown, “and excessive.”
He holds the very end of the handle between two fingers on his right hand, wobbling it in the air a little before twisting his wrist and catching it by the blade in his left. Sam gasps in worry before he can stop himself, glaring at Bucky’s stupid smile.
“Don’t have to worry about knicks and scrapes here,” he says, settling back into his wide armchair and holding the handle out for Sam. “What do you think?”
It’s perfectly weighted as far as Sam can tell, larger than anything he’d ever want to carry around, but the serrated edge is sharp and mean. It’s befitting someone with a reputation like the Black Widow, and if the smile she wears when he says as much is anything to go by, Natasha is inclined to agree.
She sighs dreamily when he hands it back, turning it around in her hands with a pleased little smile. Leaning forward, she swipes the blade past Bucky’s neck, behind his ear to make his hair swish behind him. He rolls his eyes before she even opens her mouth.
“You should let me cut this,” she says with a needling smile, “I don’t remember the last time you let it get this long.”
“Didn’t think you were paying that close attention,” he grumbles as he half-heartedly waves her hand away.
“You are a reflection of me,” she replies, settling back to cross her legs onto the coffee table. “And I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Yeah man,” Sam adds with a grin, “if you look a mess, people will whisper about what’s going on at home.”
Bucky frowns in vague confusion, but before Natasha can pile on, the door to the lounge opens with a commotion.
She turns around to stand at attention as Yelena drags a man by his bound wrists into the room and shoves him into the room. He falls to the ground, shaking with laughter muffled by the rope in his mouth. He's a mess of scars and bruises, a tattered t-shirt over well built muscles, and male pattern baldness that signals he’s lucky to have survived a few decades of the hard and fast living common on the outskirts of town.
“What is this?” Natasha asks placidly.
“Your problem,” Yelena says. “Barton said he was asking a lot of questions about contracts.”
“Okay,” Natasha replies evenly, “and why did you bring him up here?”
“And where’s Barton now?” Bucky asks, just enough concern in his voice to make Sam want to roll his eyes.
“I have things to do Natalia,” Yelena scowls. “I do not care where he is, and I do not have time to do your little interrogations and disposals.”
“Bringing him up here like this probably took more time than it would have to just gut him out front,” Natasha argues, “but alright. Thank you.”
Yelena makes a face at her sister and waves them all goodbye, shutting the door behind her with finality. Sam does his best to sit still, to keep his face uncaring and uninterested even as he assesses the guy’s bindings.
Her new knife in hand, Natasha takes a single step forward, and Sam’s mind conjures images of spiders wrapping immobile prey in layers of web.
The guy starts to push himself to stand, and Natasha makes a quiet, warning noise. His eyes flick to Sam, then Bucky, and back to the knife in her hand. He looks thoughtful for a long second before he nods, and sits back on his heels.
Natasha makes a pleased, performative sort of sound. She guides the tip of her knife along his cheek, cutting the rope in his mouth and leaving a shallow line of red on his skin.
Sam watches quietly as he opens his mouth, and works his jaw before speaking.
“So what’re you, the three wise men of the Widow Network?” He says from his knees, “the final boss before I get a peak behind the big red curtain?”
Natasha tilts her head to the side slightly, fire red hair shifting onto one shoulder. “You think the Black Widow to be something like the Wizard of Oz?”
“I don’t let myself get spooked by whispers on the wind, lady,” he shrugs. “Why would some big bad mob mommy stake her claim on a place like Deliverance?”
“Why indeed,” Natasha says with a laugh that is light, but patronizing. “Questions like that are why you’re about to die.”
He stops short, his mouth opening and closes. He exhales a nervous laugh. “No.”
“No?”
“No, you can’t just – I didn’t do anything! I didn’t take any jobs, I was just trying to learn a few things, make a few bucks –”
“A few bucks,” Natasha repeats, bitterness behind the mockery. “This was just about money?”
From where he’s sitting, Sam can’t be sure what exactly is happening on her face, but he can see the guy react, the nonchalance crumbling into anger.
“What else would it be about?”
“You can do that shit with those petty gangs and little driving clubs,” she says, accent deepening with the malice. “There are no bounties out on me because no one in this city would dare take a contract like that. The only ones you find are the ones I issue myself just to see who would be stupid enough to take it.”
He struggles ineffectually against his restraints and glares up at her. “Listen, bitch, I don’t —”
The quiet click and slip of a gun holster is the only warning Sam gets before Bucky fires a bullet through the meat of his shoulder and into the floor behind him. Sam’s proud of himself for not startling, but he does turn a wide eyed look Bucky’s way. Natasha shoves their unwanted guest onto the ground, uses her knees to pin his chest to the ground as he wriggles under her in pain.
“Aw, I should have warned you,” she coos, glancing over her shoulder at the two of them too fast for Sam to read anything in her expression. “He really doesn’t like that word.”
Sam looks again, their audience of one now too busy to worry about Sam’s reactions. To his eye, Bucky looks stormy and dead-eyed, as uncaring as the smoke wisping from his gun.
On the floor, the guy continues to writhe and scream, trying and failing to knock Natasha off of him.
“Trevor. Trevor! Stop yelling,” she calls, pressing the tip of her blade up under his chin until he has to shut his mouth. “You’re going to wake the children.”
He stops screaming, jaw working as his face flashes in pain. She nods slowly, approvingly, and pulls the knife away from his face.
His voice is shaky when he finally manages to speak again, “how the fuck do you know my name?”
She ignores him, and her voice dips into a low, cold whisper when she continues, “do you know why you are here now, and not fertilizing my rose garden with an arrow through your eye socket?”
He doesn’t respond, and whatever she can see on his face makes her sigh with disappointment.
“I don’t understand why you’re behaving like someone with time to waste.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know. I –” His gaze shifts to Sam, one eye peeking out from the other side of Natasha’s back. Sam tilts his head, thinking don’t fuck this up. “It’s because of Starla isn’t it?”
“Because of Starla,” she says, nodding. “Because Starla has good taste in friends, doesn’t she?”
Trevor nods.
“You are here alive, bleeding through your filthy t-shirt, because Starla knew you were in over your head, asking after jobs you shouldn’t have,” she says, sympathetic. “She told her best friend whose mother works for the Bishop Family, and one of their daughters trains with my brother. Honestly, you’re lucky Barton found you before someone else took you down to earn my favor.”
Sam will never know the right word for the feeling that swells in his chest as she explains just how wide her web’s been draped across the city, or just how she manages to keep it all straight in her head.
“I’m sorry,” he says through gritted teeth, “I didn’t think you were real. I was —”
“You didn’t think I was real,” she says, leaning her knee into his chest, fingers gripping his arm around the bullet wound as he groans, “but you wanted to hunt me down and kill me. For a few dollars.”
“I wasn’t — I mean I was, honestly, but that’s —”
“Trevor?” She interrupts with two solid slaps to his cheek, his blood on her hand splattering on pockmarked skin. “You called me a bitch, so your apologies and explanations mean very little to me. You might be able to live, if you tell me something I want to know.”
He takes a beat to think and Sam wonders how much of this was premeditated, and how far it will go. Did Bucky know ahead of time, were they both meant to be here, or is it a coincidence?
Either way, Sam bears witness, catches the moment their visitor makes a decision, the resignation flattening his voice as he tells her everything he learned while chasing down her trap bounties.
He tells her the names of people who were all too eager to try and partner up with him, the colors they wore, and where they met. He gives her descriptions of the people that told him she wasn’t real, the threat of her nothing but whispers between inexperienced street thugs.
She only hums in vague acknowledgement, but they all know better than to expect some huge reaction.
“I guess, what else do you want? I spent some time at The Den last weekend, with some of the MC guys that live there? They bought out my whole stash and told me all about this big shipment they’re expecting. I guess they’re trying to be the only supplier in town by pure market takeover. Some of the chucklefucks from up north are probably gonna try and intercept, but they only want to annoy the MC, they don’t have enough organization to distribute.”
Natasha stays quiet, her posture has relaxed slightly in the time it’s taken him to tell her everything.
“If someone,” he goes on, his words coming slower now, “or someones wanted to really fuck up their chances at expanding…”
When he ends in a shrug, Natasha looks back over her shoulder at them. Bucky doesn’t react, so Sam doesn’t either.
“It’d be hard, but not impossible. They got the money for guns but not enough trained soldiers to do much with ‘em.”
She rises to her feet, rolling her head to stretch her neck and shoulders.
“Okay.”
He swallows, sitting up on his elbows and then all the way up, hand on his shoulder, when she doesn’t stop him.
“Okay?”
“Yes, ‘okay,’ as in get up and go,” she says with a wave of her knife towards the door.
He struggles up onto his feet, and she slices through the ropes around his wrists and ankles. She turns around, daring him to try something in the few feet it takes to get to Bucky’s chair.
“Goodbye,” she says pointedly from her perch along the armrest. “Enjoy your last week.”
Trevor stares at them, looking pale and tired. “My —?”
She tilts her head, and now that she’s close, Sam doesn’t have to imagine the don’t be stupid purse of her lips.
He takes a step back, and then another, before rushing to the door on shaky legs. He pulls the heavy door open with significant effort, one arm tucked close to his body. Once he squeezes himself out into the hallway, Natasha sighs heavily and drops her chin onto the top of Bucky’s head.
“Do you want me to go after him?” Bucky asks, eyes still on the door.
Natasha closes her eyes and shakes her head in answer, forces out a sad little laugh. She trails her palm down Bucky’s arm and gently removes the gun still clutched in his hand. He blinks a few times, like he’s just waking up, then rubs a hand over his face.
“We’ll keep an eye on him,” she says, leaning to the side to pull her phone from her pocket, “and if anyone catches sight of him after six days, we’ll unleash the Wicked Witch.”
“Do you think it’s real?” Sam asks.
Natasha laughs as she taps at her screen. “The Wicked Witch?”
“No,” he says with a laugh, “this game changing shipment.”
“Ah, I don’t know,” she says honestly. “No way to know at this point, but we can find out. How does it go? Never trust without verification?”
“Not quite,” Sam says.
She waves her hand noncommittally and tosses her phone onto the coffee table.
“I already know the MC get most of their funding from Hammer – their accountant gets her nails done at Antonia’s shop. They think the money alone makes them untouchable, and I’ve been dying to show them the flaw in that logic.”
“Cops are gonna respond,” Bucky adds, voice still withdrawn and sullen. “He’d like nothing more than a gang war right now.”
“We are not a gang,” Natasha says, enunciating every syllable. “We are a family. But, if bad dad Alexei wants a war, if he wants so badly to fight crime, then I will be more than happy to give him exactly what he wants.”
In the silence that follows, the Widow slips away, the weight of an empire falling away until she’s Natasha again.
Still controlled and calculating, caring and compassionate, but now for the benefit of just one.
She slides her hand onto Bucky’s cheek, turning his head until she can look him in the eye.
“Are you going to be okay?”
Bucky’s gaze falls down to the middle distance, eyes darting in contemplation.
His chest rises and falls with a deep breath, then he nods decidedly.
“If it’s what you want.”
She tilts her head back to shake her hair out of her face. “You know that it isn’t.”
Bucky purses his lips, but doesn’t add anything else.
Natasha cuts her gaze over to catch his eye again. “But what choice do I have? What would you have me do? Cut and run, disappear? Let him decide who is wrong and who is right?
“I can’t do that,” she finishes, quiet and certain.
“I know,” Bucky replies. He sounds resigned, but happily so.
Sam understands. She’s so beautiful like this. A firestorm, dangerous and impossible to look away from. Bucky looks at her like he wants the flames to swallow him up, render him to ash, remake him in her image.
Sam is just starting to wonder if they even remember he’s there, if he should get up and leave, give them some room to really talk this out, but then Natasha looks curiously over at Sam.
“And you? Any objections?”
Sam rubs his tongue along the inside of his lip, pushes his laugh into a shrug. For him, it’s not complicated. “Fuck the police.”
Natasha laughs indulgently, and Bucky even cracks a reluctant smile.
“If you make a move like that unprovoked,” Bucky purses his lips with thought, “it will change things.”
Natasha nods solemnly, tucking a lock of his hair behind his ear. “Things are changing, even if I do nothing.”
Sam barely keeps himself from startling when Bucky flicks his gaze up to him.
His eyes find the floor again before he replies, “you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” she says, dropping a kiss to the top of Bucky’s head. She stands up between them, giving both of their shoulders a squeeze. “But that means we have work to do.”
⁂
So, it’s not on purpose. Sam spending time with Bucky is a necessity of the work. They have intel to gather and allies to secure, money to move and leaks to plug, bribes to intercept and blackmail to deliver.
Why Sam is suddenly so devoted to Natasha’s cause is a question no one asks, so Sam figures he never has to come up with an answer.
Sometimes Sam is Bucky’s extraction, and other times Bucky just appears, an extra gun when Sam’s in a sticky situation. Sam makes sure to accept the occasional job from other parties, but Bucky “happens to be in the area” a lot, and there’s always a backseat or the grimey space between two brick buildings, or some closet to duck into after.
Most times, neither of them have a good excuse, and Bucky is just there , loitering next to Sam’s car or twiddling his thumbs in the lobby of Shield while Sam finally takes his meeting with Rhodey.
He barely listens as Rhodey talks partnership and expansion, networks of influence, but by the end they’re laughing and shaking hands, so Sam figures he put up a good enough front. He’s got a spring in his step when he rejoins Bucky, in a good enough mood to agree to lunch as long as he chooses the restaurant this time.
It’s still the most fun when they’re on a job for Natasha cor Pepper by way of Natasha — where their individual skills are actually considered, when Sam can really get silly with the maneuvers and know Bucky’s bitching about unnecessary risk is just going to make things sweeter for them after they’re done.
One job takes them to the main airport to retrieve a package from a Widow that works at the Customs Desk. Sam decks himself out in charcoal grey coveralls and meets Bucky in a service tunnel for the handoff. To his complete surprise and utter delight, Bucky’s wearing a pinstriped suit and loafers, his hair slicked back into a bun at the nape of his neck.
Bucky gives him a warning look, but it’s completely negated by the embarrassed set of his mouth. He tries to hand over the briefcase, but Sam dodges. He can’t finish this without telling him he looks the new Business Daddy Ken Doll, like he’s about to try and sell him Exxon shares, like he’s trying to pitch him the screenplay he wrote over a weekend bender, no wonder Nat puts him in the helmet, no one would take him seriously if they ever saw how cute his ears are, until Bucky is blushing and mad and stammering and Sam has no choice but to press him up against a container loader and blow him in filthy apology.
There is some chance of getting caught, but it’s hardly the same adrenaline-fueled race to the finish they’re used to, no unquenchable need fueling his decisions, and still Sam can’t find it in him to regret it.
Not the first time it happened, but in hindsight it probably was an obvious warning sign of what was to come.
When Sam finally gets his money into a bank with better taste in employees, they hook up in the vault of safe deposit boxes because the manager takes just a few minutes too long dealing with another customer in the front.
Sam plays at being upset over the cameras for days after that, until Bucky breaks down and draws a diagram of the blindspot he’s sure they were in, blushing red scarlet when he catches Sam suppressing a laugh.
Once, and only once — after a job liberating thirteen iguanas from a guy trafficking in illegal animals — Bucky’s hand finds his hip, and Sam turns him down with a tiny shake of the head. The look he gets in return is so pathetic, so pure in its dejection, so blatant in its manipulation, that Sam would have been stupid to give in.
But by that point he’s gone just a little dick delirious. He tells Bucky to hold on until they get back, to be good by showing him he can wait, and rewards his patience on the same couch he’d thought they’d ended things all those months ago.
It’s not his fault. Sam’s always gone a little too soft for people. He’s never been able to detach the intimacy and joy that comes with sex from the people he has it with, not completely.
So while he knows it’s stupid and probably a mistake — that without the excuse of a real job with stakes that snatch his breath away and maneuvers that kick his heart into overdrive, he’s got no excuse to turn into Bucky’s space in some guy’s garage to press a fiery kiss to his mouth — he does it anyway.
Of course he does.
Sam’s learned by now that even these little jobs, ones that only require the implication of violence and the impossibility of escape, the ones that rely entirely on their growing reputation as a pair, are sometimes enough to set Bucky off, making him quiet and clingy in a way Sam apparently finds impossible to resist. By now he’s learned what to say, how to touch him, until he’s shaking apart in his hands, tension wrung out of him like water from a sponge.
He can’t help but feel a sordid sense of pride over it.
Sam takes every morsel of information he learns about Bucky and squirrels it away like he’s fifteen again with a crush on his lab partner.
Bucky never says it outright, but he’s got a passion for good food and drink and still cannot for the life of him cook anything more complicated than scrambled eggs. It takes a while for Sam to figure that one out. The memory of those pierogies in that terrible soup still haunt him, but eventually he accepts that someone’s mom made them, or Bucky bought them somewhere because he won’t even try to recreate them, acts all cagey whenever Sam asks.
Given the way he grew up — idle hands made to stir pots and chop vegetables until the day they found a steering wheel — Sam finds this tragic. As they square up the details on the Den raid, Bucky finds one reason or another to drag Sam into all his safehouses across the city.
One of them has a wall of weapons tucked into the bedroom closet, each neatly labelled with specs and point of origin. He stands quietly next to it while Sam makes impressed noises over the collection, but his pleased little smile is impossible to miss.
Each of the safe houses have kitchens stocked thoroughly enough for Sam to cook something when they arrive.
It’s what he’d do for anyone, has done for everyone. Every so often a whole team of them will hole up together, and Sam will make Clint or Nat or Scott or Luis fried fish and greens, sometimes a cobbler Scott tops with ice cream. Bucky will quietly praise the food every time, right in line with the compliments from everyone else.
It’s only when they’re alone that Sam makes jambalaya. The way Bucky’s cheeks go pink and his eyes get watery, smiling as he insists it’s fine, it’s good, ‘Я люблю острую пищу,’ that stays between them, that’s just for Sam.
There’s a lot to learn over the weeks they plan and prepare. Fun stuff like how Bucky likes to suck him off after Sam pulls off especially tricky or dangerous maneuvers, how desperate he gets for it after Sam hits a ramp with enough speed to clock some air time. Sam learns which shaky moans are just performance and which ones he really earned, how Bucky almost always wants it rough after jobs where he’s had to kill someone, and will do just about anything if Sam praises him over any of his other many skills.
There’s nothing more to it than that, Sam is just enjoying himself. Tremendously.
⁂
A favor for a favor for a bit of leverage over the right person puts Sam behind the controls of a helicopter, hovering over the six lane thoroughfare that divides the sparkling and modern Uptown from the dirty and undesirable Downtown. Bucky grumbles about the wind or a bird as hangs out the open door, complaining for complainings sake as he expertly snipes the pair of hackers through a window on the top floor.
Sam never quite gets a grasp on the information they’re threatening to expose, or how removing them fits into Natasha’s delicate house of cards, but a job’s a job, and these days he never says no to a job with Bucky.
There is no chase, no threat to force them together into a hidey hole, but there is the joy of flying, and bickering with Bucky over his sour mood, and the helicopter pad is both isolated and exposed when they land. When Sam helps Bucky tie his hair up into a messy bun to stop it from further tangling into the wind, he leans into Sam’s touch in a way that makes it impossible not to kiss him.
Bucky melts into the kiss like he’s been waiting all day for it. Sam presses Bucky up against the sliver of concrete in the shadow of the stairwell, and wonders if their little routine will ever get old, if it’s even possible something so good could turn toxic or lose its novelty, and prays that day doesn’t come any time soon.
When they’ve barely caught their breath and Sam’s pulling his jeans back up, having just decided to ditch his underwear and go commando, he realizes Scott is calling.
The Caller ID says Kurt but, of course,
“Hey, you in the city?” Scott greets in a rush as Sam tucks his phone into the crook of his shoulder. “Come down to Mirror Park right now! They’re blowing shit up.”
Sam yanks Bucky towards him by the hips to watch his eyes blow wide, and laughs as he fastens his belt for him. “Who’s blowing shit up?”
“Uh, you know the old water tower…” Scott trails off, conversing with someone further from the phone. “Oh yeah, bring Bucky! We have beer!”
He hangs up before Sam can respond, leaving Sam to blink at his phone. Their interest in Bucky has been interesting.
Not surprising, obviously. Look at him, ask around. Anyone would be interested. But Scott and his friends take a liking to him that’s got nothing to do with violence or sex.
Or if it does, they’re polite enough to make it seem innocent and platonic.
The invitation had been too loud for Bucky not to have heard it, but he still plays at surprised when Sam clears his throat.
“You wanna go watch a water tower demolition?”
Sam gives him an easy once-over as Bucky takes his time answering, settling his shirt back into place with an overabundance of care.
“If you want me to?” He shrugs.
“It’s okay to have an opinion, you know that right?” Sam forces himself to laugh instead of sigh. “You don’t have to come, it’s gonna be stupid.”
“I know,” Bucky says quietly. He looks away, screws his mouth to the side before he looks up again. “I do want to go with you.”
Sam sneaks a kiss against his mouth, too amused to stop himself. “Good,” is all he offers in reply, a smile on his face that probably betrays the cool indifference in his voice.
They cruise in comfortable silence through the city to the quiet and uniform flatlands of the suburbs. The park is a sprawling lawn of grass and a pair of benches, unremarkable other than the single, unadorned water tower cordoned off by a handful of traffic cones and a few beat cops. A sizable crowd has gathered around it, a few of them with signs, others taking pictures or setting up tripods.
Luis rushes out from the edge of the gathering excitedly with a bundle of fabric in the crook of his arm.
“Yo, you made it!”
“What the hell is this?” Sam touches his shoulder once he’s within arms length, motioning to the heavy blue canvas he’s wearing, complete with bright orange vest. The bundle in his arm squirms. “I thought this was just for fun.”
“It is for fun, I’m having fun,” Luis says to Sam, eyebrows bouncing. He looks at Bucky at Sam’s side. In his mission gear, only his posture and expression keeps him from looking completely menacing. “You ready to have fun, Broody?”
Bucky’s eyes flick to the water tower then back to Luis’ grin, and nods eagerly.
A little black and grey face pops up from the bundle in Luis’ arms and makes a chittering sound in the ensuing silence.
It takes a few tries, but eventually Sam gets is mouth to say, “tell me that’s not a fucking raccoon in your arms, man.”
“Oh, yeah, this is Rocket,” he says. “My new girl’s into street cats, this little baby’s got a —” he stops, grinning wide as he catches something over their shoulders. “Shit, hold him for a second,” he says, shoving the wiggling grey and black ball of fur to Bucky’s chest and clapping Sam on the shoulder.
Bucky’s eyes go round but he’s quick to secure the raccoon in his arms, bundling it up into his jacket with surprising ease as Luis runs off.
Sam keeps his mouth shut, doesn’t know what might come out of it as he watches them. Bucky’s face breaks into a reluctant smile as the raccoon grabs and nips at his metal fingers and Sam has to look away, trying and failing to catch someone’s eye as the crowd grows by a dozen or so more.
When the detonations finally go off a good while later, Bucky’s rubbing two fingers along the crown of its head, murmuring quietly, and it takes everything Sam has not to stare.
In the end, the tower comes down in an underwhelming dust up, but the crowd whistles and applauds like they’re on a movie set. Sam huffs a laugh, clapping along and smiling when he catches Bucky watching him.
It’s the perfect space for a kiss. An idle token of simple affection — if they did that sort of thing.
Bucky’s smile is light on his mouth as he spares a glance to the group of cops keeping watch from the other end of the park. He looks down at Sam’s mouth, but they both turn away before taking the leap of leaning in six inches.
Instead, Sam reaches out to lay his hand across his shoulders and lead them back towards where Luis and Scott are chatting with Kurt. Once their backs are turned, he lets his hand slide down and squeeze Bucky’s ass.
Because he wants to. Because the expression on Bucky’s face when he whips his head Sam’s way makes him laugh. Because maybe the cops are watching. But mostly because he can.
It happens again. And again, and again. The potential of a next step coming and going, free to take different shapes as long as it stays unacknowledged.
Luis tips them off to an underground cage fight happening in a few days. Big players, all cash, a score for someone who didn’t mind making a few enemies. It’s not the sort of thing any of them particularly need to do, but Scott’s excitement is not to be ignored, so they agree to join.
They infiltrate the place in four separate pairs, and the moment they discover it’s a dog fighting ring, things go sideways.
Sam loses Bucky almost immediately after the realization, and spends too much time trying to find the rest of the crew.
Luis’ cousin finds him just before the next fight is set to start, leaning close to press a beer into his hand and say, “we’re gonna tear this place apart.” Her smile is wide when she pulls back, gleaming silver grill adding another layer of wickedness with the gleam in her eye.
The sounds of people shouting and dogs barking has been constant since they ascended the stairs above the old appliance repair shop they entered through, but the sound of unexpected violence rings out clear when it erupts from somewhere in the back office.
The panicked yelling comes first, hasty protests and one-sided arguing. The gunshots follow close behind, then the musty attic erupts into screams and chaos.
Sam isn’t immediately sure what he’s supposed to do at first, but he catches a glimpse of Scott busting locks to cages and Luis wielding a bat in one hand and several leashes in the others, and fits himself amongst the fray relieving any guests of their winnings or prize fighters as he goes.
It’s a mess, there’s a stampede on the stairwell, and a knife fight breaks out on the sidewalk, but they manage to secure the entire building and the dozen dogs that had been stashed away when they weren’t being made to fight to the death.
Sam doesn’t find Bucky again until nearly everyone has left.
He sits alone on the curb behind the building, chest heaving and eyes unfocused. Sam stands watch for a minute before he works up the nerve to say something.
“Hey,” he tries, voice as low as he can make it without being drowned out by the distant traffic, and still Bucky startled.
He turns his head slowly before looking at Sam with vague surprise. Sam tells him the plan in low tones — Luis knew someone who knew a vet who could help do right by the animals they saved, it’s good that they were here tonight, the dogs will be fine, they’ll be okay.
Sam repeated the last part a few times until Bucky finally seemed to accept it, nodding as he rubbed his palms along his jeans.
There was nothing to do after that, so Sam sat with him, their shoulders pressed together in a long, endless moment of quiet. There was always the sound of the city, and the rest of their team chattered just out of earshot, but Sam still can’t remember the last time he sat still like this with anyone.
⁂
Sam skips exactly one race to crash one of Hammer’s after parties as Nat’s date with Bucky posing as their security, and suddenly Joaquín’s calling him six times before he can pull himself away and answer.
He takes the call from a corner of the smokey, low lit lounge, as far away from another person as he can manage.
“This isn’t like you,” Joaquín says with a forced laugh after Sam explains himself. “Should I be worried?”
Sam can’t stop watching the back of Bucky’s head as he talks to Nat. The shine of his hair, the breadth of his shoulders and the shape of his back in his dark suit, his little ass, the long legs.
“Worried?” Sam repeats on autopilot. “You got nothin’ to worry about.”
“Sam,” Joaquín presses, and the tone of his voice makes Sam turn his focus away from the solid lines of Bucky’s body to the floor. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing, man,” Sam laughs. “Just — distracted, I guess?”
“Maybe…” His sigh on the other end is longsuffering in a way Sam can’t relate to. “Have you thought about going home? Taking a break?”
Of course he could. He probably should.
“I will…” Sam drags his gaze up again to find Nat and Bucky both turned his direction now, twin expressions of mischief on their faces. “I will think about it. I promise.”
He can’t leave in the middle of a job. That would just be unprofessional.
They’re kind of a team now, people recognize the three of them as a unit, defer to Sam as someone dangerous and important in a way that he can’t help but thrill over. He doesn’t want to leave.
It probably won’t last, but nothing in this life ever does.
He’s going to stick around and enjoy it. Joaquín would do the same thing.