Chapter Text
Sierra, upon coming home, wastes absolutely no time coming down with the flu. Then, in the finest traditions of big sisters everywhere, she passes it to Sam. This happens approximately forty minutes after Sam and Steve walk through the Wilson family threshold, pinpointing the moment of transmission to her hey bro glad you ain’t dead yet annual hug, and whatever bug Sierra’s carrying joins forces with Sam’s Year Of Global Travel Avec Terrorist Hunting and promptly knocks him on his ass.
Sam, as someone who has gotten sick literally four times in his life, wallows in the strange waters of snot along with the unfortunately all too familiar waters of inter-sibling resentment. The only consolation is that Sierra is sniffling and hacking and oozing along with him.
His mom, who he’s pretty sure has never been sick ever in her life, just laughs at them and their quarantine camp on the living room couch. His dad adds a lot of tea and honey and lemons to the grocery haul and reminds them of the existence of the Wii. Steve actually makes the tea - thank god figuring out the kettle and determining precise ratios of lemon and honey stops him from hovering in a corner like the ghost of a rabid border collie - and when he brings it over he makes the mistake of sitting down to squint confusedly where they’re ruining each other in MarioKart. When Sam and Sierra realize he’s basically a giant heating pad they wordlessly conspire to trap him on the couch. Dad keeps the winter household temperature maybe ten degrees warmer than the ice-blasted hellscape outside, because he and Mom are freaks who believe in festive seasonal sweaters but not in gas bills. Even Barf steps up his cling game, which Sam did not think was possible.
“Barf?” Steve said, when his own Welcome To The Wilsons hug was performed by Sam’s Mom’s labradoodle launching himself ecstatically into Steve’s arms. “You named your dog Barf?”
“Mom named her dog Bartholomew Zebulon Wilson, and I did him a god damn favor,” Sam said, which made his mom’s first face-to-face words to him “Swear jar!”
In any case Steve handled Barf trying his best to put his buttlicking tongue up Steve’s nose very well, and while Barf is usually of the opinion that every stranger is his new best friend he’s especially taken a shine to Steve. Right now he’s parked himself on Steve’s feet, his tail thumping from time to time whenever Steve or Sierra talks.
“Y’know, you, you’re a lot alike,” Sam mumbles. A mighty and extensive honk echoes from the other end of the couch as Sierra blows her nose.
Steve glances at her, then at Sam, then at the dog. “Who?”
“You two,” Sam says, waving a hand. “You. Sierra. You don’t care about anything ‘cept when you do and then it’s like damn, whoa . Y’all don’t give a shit .”
“I so give a shit,” Sierra growls, ruined by how she sneezes four times immediately after.
“S’whatI’msayin’. You, when you give a shit, you give that shit, knowhattimean? You give the whole entire shit. None left over. S’why you two don’t give a goddamn ‘bout the other stuff, everybody worrying ‘bout their hair or their clothes, do they like me, does everybody think I’m uncool. Y’all don’t care. Y’all are so uncool and y’all don’t care. ”
“Fuck you, I’m cool,” Sierra groans, but she doesn’t bother to open her eyes and the used tissue she throws at him bounces off Steve’s bicep.
“You are fundamentally uncool,” Sam informs her. “You edit Wikipedia.”
“No more cough syrup,” Sierra declares croakily. “Captain America, Sam gets no more cough syrup.”
“Sure,” Steve agrees, in what Sam deems to be a far too sarcastic tone of voice. He thumps weakly at Steve’s hip with one wool-socked foot. “Hey! Withholding humanitarian aid! Illegal!”
“I’m not listening to any more codeine-fueled psychoanalysis,” Sierra announces. “Denied.”
“It’s not like you give a damn either,” Steve says to Sam, trying to prevent his attacks with a couch pillow before finally picking up Sam’s besocked feet and trapping them in his lap.
“Hell no. I give many damns. S’how you get popular, guys. S’how - s’how I do my job, y’know, you gotta care about the little stuff.” Sam, whose blood composition is currently 75% Nyquil, still somehow manages to not say the next thought, which is that’s why y’all don’t have any friends. It’s - well, it’s true, but not that true, and anyway Steve has like… three whole friends. And he has Sam, who has claimed the title of Best Friend by virtue of spending a literal year traveling the world with the guy and the original Best Friend having been bumped up to Common Law Husband.
Sierra has friends too probably, though maybe the closest she’s gotten so far is “competition she hasn’t crushed yet”.
“Plus I can fly,” Sam adds, as an afterthought. “I got wings, that’s cool as shit.”
“Wow, we get it, you’re a fuckin’ jock,” Sierra says snottily.
“And Sam, baby, that was six times you said shit just now, so that’ll be twelve dollars in the swear jar,” Mom says from the kitchen. “At your leisure, of course.”
“Mooooom!”
-o-
They get nearly two weeks of peace, probably because nobody in Congress wants Steve to ruin their Christmas. Steve tries to say something about not wanting to impose but Sam’s mom looks at him until he mumbles off into silence, which Sam wishes he’d videotaped for posterity and also personal mom points. As it is Steve gets situated front and center in the Wilson Holiday Photo, his eyes only a little unhinged and his shoulders straining the seams of his fresh-off-the-rack festive holiday sweater. “Try and look a little less like you’re trying to kill us all with your mind, baby,” Mom tells Sierra, so even she brings out her most benevolent grimace. Mom uploads it into the Costco holiday card maker with the serenely satisfied look of a woman who’ll have to send out her Christmas cards extremely late but doesn’t care because it’ll feature Captain America sandwiched between her two relentlessly overachieving children.
Christmas is a way more low-key deal this year than usual, what with the media attention and Congress and all, so instead of the usual drive down to North Carolina they stay at home and argue about whether the Lambo counts as Sam’s Christmas present to Mom or not. Sam most definitely thinks so, because it was his first-aid stitches and ipod that paid for its arrival, while Dad and Sierra loudly declare that since it’s Tony Stark’s actual real life dollars that “paid” for the car it doesn’t count.
They all get to emotionally terrorize Steve with presents, which more than makes up for the contention. He looks more and more cornered with every pair of Captain America socks, Captain America headphones, Captain America hat and Captain America bedsheets they give him; their genuine smiles and careful wrapping say gifts but the gifts themselves say merciless hazing and Steve’s natural instinct to haze back is clearly running headfirst into the fact that this is Sam’s mom. Sierra even gets Steve a Captain America snuggie, because despite their differences she is truly Sam’s sister and delivers when push comes to shove.
Steve’s gift to them all is pencil-drawn portraits - Mom and Dad with Barf, Sierra as Wonder Woman, Sam as Superman - which Sam can only assume Steve drew in the dead of night like some kind of extremely buff house elf while everyone was sleeping, because he definitely didn’t see Steve doing any of these. It’s also hysterical that Steve gave Sierra’s Wonder Woman outfit tac pants instead of the leotard, but Sierra looks like she likes it, or at least isn’t planning on strangling Steve in his sleep.
It’s a pretty quiet holiday. The firestorm of media generated by Steve’s return has been slightly hijacked by 1) a White House intern staging a wild but extremely inept assassination attempt on the President and 2) Christmas. Sam’s mom is two seconds away from adopting Steve, so he currently has no listed residence for journalists and paps to unearth and ambush him at. Sam’s listed residence is currently occupied by a nice Gujarati couple with a baby on the way, so he’s also kind of off the grid. Whatever Maria Hill did to protect his parents while he was gone is still holding, because their house hasn’t been swarmed either. The entire extended Wilson clan knows that to talk to reporters in this case is to be a little snitch, so there’s no angle there. It can’t last forever, but it’s holding for now.
Steve’s also not wild about hiring a PR firm or agent or whatever it’s gonna have to be. When Sam brings it up Steve puts his hands over his face, tipping on the couch. “I’ll do it,” he says, muffled. “Just. When I find a good one.”
“How do people find this sort of thing, anyway?” Sam asks. “Do you just Yellow Pages it? Go on google?”
“The smart thing would be to ask Stark,” Steve says, hands still over his face.
“And you don’t want to?”
“No. I will. But. Not right now. It’s Christmas, and…”
“And you don’t want to start the whole circus while the tinsel’s barely up yet?”
“I’m sure everyone else would like to enjoy their holidays in peace too,” Steve says in his Captain America Can’t Say Fuck voice, hands sliding down.
“You really don’t wanna do this,” Sam observes.
“I’ve done press before,” Steve says. “It’s a lot of traveling. Meeting strangers. Making nice with people you want to hit with a chair.” He sighs. “I want to at least get a place somewhere first, but… maybe that doesn’t make sense, if I’m just gonna get shipped all over the place after.”
“Nah, man, you promised JB,” Sam says. “You gotta set up a crash pad. Besides, where am I supposed to stay when I visit you?”
Sam still doesn’t know if it’s gonna be a crash pad situation or if he’s gonna move his whole ass up to New York with Steve too. He doesn’t want to interrupt the lease on the family currently renting his own house, and increasingly, he’s realizing, he doesn’t want to be that far from Steve. The guy’s his best friend. Sam has friends in DC, sure, but he has friends in Denver and LA and Salt Lake City and the Bronx, and more to the point he just spent a whole year completely international. It’s not like he’s gonna be drastically missed.
He’d more or less abandoned Facebook after Riley died - he’d logged on three weeks after and the first thing he saw was a memorial service details post from Riley’s mom, after which he closed the tab and hasn’t gone back since - and he’s not a dumbass so he hasn’t been updating his insta while on the fucking run. A couple of his bar buddies and his friends at the VA have texted him, asking if he died or moved to Tibet or eloped with a stripper or what, and Sam had replied to them all that her name was Candie and they were in love and that everyone would be welcome at their housewarming, once they actually got a house to warm. (Sam can’t wait to introduce Steve as the hot blond he ran away with.)
So Sam hasn’t totally fallen off the map either, but it’s still a shock to be reinjected into normal human society like this. It’s a shock he has some practice with, though: it’s not wholly different from what it’s like to come off deployment. Between dealing with his own sandbox hangovers and helping other vets with theirs he’s got it down.
And Steve is definitely showing some of the signs. He acts in the Wilson house the same way he acted in every hotel room and hostel and apartment they stayed in: during the day the guest room occasionally looks like a bomb went off, but before bed Steve gathers everything up, packs it up tight and lines it up by the bed. Go bag, nice and ready. Steve came here right off the Western Front, Sam remembers. The guy’s been on the move for years and years, even before he washed up in the future. It’d be like if Sam came off deployment but instead of going home he ended up in Australia: everyone talks funny, he doesn’t know anyone and all the food tastes just off enough to be wrong.
Sam's not quite sure how to address that yet, given that Steve hasn't even started looking for a place to move yet. He figures he’ll get off his ass once Steve does, but in the meantime he’s kind of enjoying just bumming around his parents’ house, eating Mom’s food and hanging up the Christmas lights that always fall off the side of the porch. He stayed with his parents right after he got discharged, too, but the last time it had been, well, fucking horrible. All he’d do is sit in the basement or backyard and methodically suppress thoughts of setting fire to his mom’s azaleas. Or the neighbors’ playground. Or his own fold-out couch bed. Whatever he happened to be looking at in the moment. When suppression didn’t work he’d drive out in his sister’s car to some patch of woods and engage in psychotherapeutic pyrotechnics.
It’s a lot better now. Sam still can’t really sleep in the basement anymore, but Sierra’s claimed that and anyway the only way Darlene Wilson would make Captain America sleep on a fold-out futon is if they had literally no other furniture and the entire Wilson family was sleeping on the floor. Instead they’ve got the guest room - Sam was initially on the couch, but then they fell asleep watching Die Hard and after spending so long sharing space on their trip it doesn’t really feel weird to sleep in the queen bed together.
Sam knows they should eventually split things up, but that day ain’t here yet. He's enjoying it while it lasts.
-o-
Steve, in between trying to puppet himself through a convincing facade of normalcy for Sam’s family and ignoring the near-constant buzzing of his official Starkphone, has been trying to come up with a plan. It has not been going fast. The Wilsons all got him presents, which, thank fucking god he did those sketches so he wasn’t just left sitting there like a miserous toad, and at some point between his little talks with Congress and arriving smack dab in the Wilson holiday pageant somebody leaked his phone number. That means every reporter, groupie, well-meaning grandma and wingnut wacko have been taking turns dialing in like they’re on a schedule.
The Starkphone has been slowly starving of battery on the Wilson kitchen counter ever since. Steve should probably get a new “personal” number at some point, but he’s not interested in being contacted outside of an emergency and if it’s an emergency then it’ll damn well come to him. It always does. He transferred the only three important numbers over to the pink phone and hasn’t looked back.
The pink phone remains fully charged at all times. Steve bought a double-layered waterproof case for it and two extra power packs at the airport.
He did spend some time seriously considering attaching the phone case to some kind of chain-and-bracelet arrangement like the Secret Service does for the nuclear football briefcases, but in the end he figures that’d be as good as painting a target on it. He’s got to treat it like a normal phone.
While also guarding it like it’s the key to the Lost Ark, of course. If he somehow loses it, if it gets stolen, if he fucking drops it down a sewer grating - well, if it drops down a sewer grating he’ll damn well get it back out, but if it’s otherwise physically compromised it’ll be a risk. And while he’ll be able to set up a new connection based on what Bucky showed him, this is still Bucky’s phone. Steve’s not giving it up unless he’s several miles past the last resort and accelerating. He needs to be smart about it.
He should print out the screenshots of Bucky’s texts and stash them somewhere safe then extra thoroughly delete any digital files.
No, he can’t. He’s self-aware and socially current enough to recognize that that’s creepy. Keeping the letters someone sends you is normal, appropriate, fine; keeping the texts in a similarly hard copy form is not. Texting is not like letters. He knows that.
Besides, so far they’ve really only had such scintillating exchanges like you ok? yes. Need anything? no. and landed? Yes, staying with sam’s family in virginia. And Bucky’s photos, of course.
Bucky has been staunchly upholding his end of the daily contact bargain, sending the groupchat pictures of, probably, whatever he’s looking at at the moment. So far it’s been pictures of his boots - proof of life - and the occasional snapshot of sky. Making sure there’s absolutely nothing to draw context clues from and deduce anything at all about his position, Steve thinks, with something a little too angry to be wryness. Still. It’s Bucky talking to him. And yesterday he got to text Bucky your shoelace is untied.
Steve wishes they could send letters, because there’s all kinds of things you can stick in an envelope. He’s started sketching Bucky a new card deck, and it’s meant to be his welcome home present only Steve’s pretty sure if they were sending letters he’d be mailing it all card by card to Bucky as soon as each one was done. The only reason he hasn’t bought paint yet is because there’s no way to set up his full studio sprawl in the Wilsons’ house and not seriously inconvenience somebody.
This way is better, probably. It’s certainly faster. And novel, at least: they’ve never talked to each other in this way before, in little bitesized chunks of electronic data, the connection practically in real time. It’s not like seeing Buck’s handwriting but he can see Bucky in there all the same - he’s either lost the ability to spell, for one, or - it’s his metal hand, Steve realizes suddenly, feeling deeply stupid. Its ability to interact with a touchscreen must be either erratic or nonexistent, so either way Buck doesn’t text with full use of both hands. No wonder he doesn’t seem up for very long conversations.
Steve’s probably overthinking it, but he can’t afford to fuck this up. He’s got to make Bucky want to send more than a sky picture. He’s not quite sure how yet - he doesn’t want to be harping on about the Good Old Days, and he’s still not sure what exactly Bucky meant by I’m going to be Bucky Barnes and he’s not sure Buck knows either. Steve doesn’t want to be... creating a blueprint that Buck might feel the need to follow. Sam and Natasha were right about him having identity issues; they’re probably right about how to address them.
Give him space doesn’t mean leave him alone, though.
Steve sends photos right back. His location isn't constrained by opsec and he isn’t limiting himself to one a day, so Buck gets a photo essay on Barf, the welcome home dinner Mrs. Wilson cooks Sam, the wealth of Cap things they inundated him with and an extended tour of every holiday decoration put up in Sam’s neighborhood. Bucky doesn’t exactly comment on any of them, but it’s barely been two weeks and he’s probably busy being on the move.
Steve can’t ask about that, can’t demand details and coordinates and contingency plans, can’t get on a plane or steal a jet and just start kicking the doors of the world in until he finds Bucky behind one of them. This is the only way he has right now to make things easy for Bucky. He wants it to be easy for Buck to talk.
And it’s fucking working, because two days after Christmas Steve wakes up to a very soft ding from the phone under his chin. It’s 3:23 AM, though that’s almost certainly not the time wherever Bucky is. Sam's on the couch tonight, fallen asleep playing that cartoon racing game with Sierra; Steve doesn't have to worry about waking him up. He swipes open the notification.
Marlene: talk
Steve pauses, his brain coming online in something a little softer but no less complete than a combat wakeup. He assesses the situation, eyes scanning the single word over and over, then starts typing.
Ginger: Did i ever tell you about the time i got picked up by the coast guard because i tried to swim the hudson
Marlene: no
Marlene: why the fcuk were uyo doign that
Ginger: well
Ginger: In my defense it was 0500
Ginger: I had a lot of energy to burn
Ginger: It seemed like a good idea
Marlene: why the river.
Ginger: I don’t like water sometimes
Marlene: so you junped nto thw ribver. Of courbse you did
Ginger: I wanted to see if i could do it
Ginger: And i could!
Ginger: Coast guard stopped me halfway across but i definitely could have kept going
Ginger: The captain was really nice about it
Ginger: you alright?
Marlene: fine
Marlene: sonetimes i ne d distratcion s
Marlene: usuully books
Marlene: i read everyhtihng i have with me though
Ginger: you need more?
Ginger: i have a kindle account. You can use it if you’d like
Ginger: you know what kindle is?
Marlene is typing…
Marlene: book app
Ginger: yep. You can download it for free and use my login
Marlene is typing…
Marlene is typing…
Marlene is typing…
Marlene: its throuhg amazon. Keeps trakc of devices adn registers them
Ginger: download it on a burner phone?
Ginger: and how about i make a completely new account, load it with a gift card and send you the login
Ginger: so it’s not affiliated with me or anyone
Ginger: and you can download the app on a burner
Ginger: would that work?
Marlene: yes
Ginger: and i can do the same thing, if you think it’s alright
Ginger: that way it’ll be like we’re reading the same book together
Marlene is typing…
Marlene is typing…
Marlene: i dont read very good boooks
Ginger: what do you mean
Marlene: you saw them
Marlene: [IMG_6231]
Steve blinks down at the photo that comes through. The book - it’s got to be a book - shows an oversaturated painting of a lady - deeply endowed in the chest, thigh and hair department - in the middle of collapsing against a man in a severely compromised jester costume. The title says FULL MOON MAFIA: Cirque Infierno . Below it, over one of the jester's bulging thighs, a smaller blurb says The right hand of the ringmaster meets the daughter of the don… what will win? Family, duty or THE PACK?
It’s also not one of the books Bucky had with him when they parted, so either he’s somewhere with an English bookstore or he’s started finding them growing under rocks. Given that Buck somehow found a spaceship just lying in some cave, Steve can’t entirely rule it out.
Ginger: looks pretty exciting to me
Marlene: the writiing is very bad.
Ginger: but you like them
Marlene: theyre effecttive.
Ginger: i mean, with authors like ann l. probe
Ginger: how can you expect anything but quality
Marlene: yuo dont hav to read it
Ginger: well i can’t read that one, it’s not digital
Marlene: whhat do you read
Steve pauses, propping himself up on his elbows in the guest bed. Not much of anything lately, he finally types. Before that it was usually global intel dossiers. Before that, history books. I had a lot to catch up on
Marlene is typing…
Marlene is typing…
Marlene: well
Marlene: my boooks atleast will be funnier
Steve snorts hard and drops his face into the pillow, knowing that any more noise will wake the dog and send it clicking around through the house. Before he can think too hard about it he flicks the phone’s camera on and towards him, taking a selfie that’s ghostly from flash, eighty percent pillow and twenty percent bedhead and eyebrows. God, he needs a haircut. His eyes are all scrunched up, at least, and it’s obvious that it’s from laughter.
Steve sends it. Marlene is typing pops up immediately and doesn’t go away for a rewardingly long while. Steve’s drifting off again, one eye open and the rest of his face mashed in the pillow, when Bucky finally replies with go bakc to sleep.
Steve grins, sends off a single heart emoji and rolls further into the pillow, making himself shut the phone off and leave anything Bucky comes back with for morning. He can take his time, be patient, give Bucky space. Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day. All he needs is a foothold, an inch, and Buck just let him have one. Buck will let him take the whole mile.
So long as Steve gets it right. He knows he's distant at breakfast the next morning, but he's got to think. He has yet to nail down a complete strategy, what with both of them still relearning their tactics and the field itself being so new. He’s got a lot to think about. All the times he thought I wish I could show Bucky - well, now he can. The price of milk. The kinds of milk. The way cars look these days - a lot of big motorcycles haven’t changed much, but cars sure have. Though Bucky’s seen cars, obviously. And probably milk too.
He should probably find something better to show Bucky than the cost of groceries.
Steve realizes he’s been standing at the sink with his coffee and staring out the window into the patch of woods behind Sam’s parents’ back yard for longer than is maybe warranted. Then he squints.
Either one of those trees has one hell of a wooden tumor, or there’s a person sitting up there trying very hard not to look like it.
Steve’s spine straightens, slowly, one vertebrae at a time. “Sam?”
“Yeah?” Sam wanders over from where he’s been slathering peanut butter on toast. “Wassup?”
Steve gestures with his chin out the window, keeping the motion small, moving back so Sam can get the full view. “That big tree on the left.”
Sam scans the area for a second. Then his eyes widen. He slowly sets down his toast. “Sierra,” he says, very level. “Where’s Mom.”
“Groceries,” Sierra says from the hall, appearing in the doorway a second later, frowning. “Why?”
“Where’s Dad?” Sam asks, still in his sitrep voice.
“Son?” Mr. Wilson pokes his head in from the office, spectacles hanging off his nose. He and Sierra are both looking at Sam with concern; they’ve picked up something’s wrong. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Sam says, moving away from the window, making eye contact with them one at a time and briefly pressing one finger to his lips in the universal gesture for shhh. “I was just thinking me and Steve could cook some steak tonight, wanted to know if Mom left already. It’s fine, I’ll just call her.”
He walks over to the kitchen table, picks up a piece of mail from the basket and writes ACT NORMAL, UNDER SURVEILLANCE on it, then hands it to Sierra. “I’d say Steve’s got a recipe we should try but all his recipes are from the Great Depression.”
“Hey,” Steve says, his pink phone out and opening a message to Hill. Do you have an agent stationed near the Wilson house right now? “I’m not that bad.”
Sierra’s eyes flick over the envelope, then to Sam. “You can’t cook either,” she says slowly, but she steps over to hand the envelope to her father.
“I couldn’t cook,” Sam says. “Your situational assessment is outdated.”
Steve’s phone vibrates. No, Hill says. Stark satellite surveillance only. Problem?
Anyone else have agents here? Steve types, then catches Sam’s eye. Sweep, top to bottom, Steve gestures, using his face and eyebrows to say you start up I start down? Sam nods and waves for his family to stay in the kitchen.
They clear the house, then start over again. Steve hears Sam calling his mother as they go through, checking under sills and in the unenclosed light fixtures. When Sierra catches them in the kitchen again with an uncompromising expression and a paper that says WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON in pink highlighter, they show her and Mr. Wilson how to look for planted surveillance bugs.
They don’t find any around the house, so they gather in the kitchen to take apart the usual suspects and look for embedded microphones. Sam clicks on the TV and flips to something with a regular laugh track, covering their voices with background noise like Natasha taught them. “Is this necessary?” Mr. Wilson murmurs as he unscrews the casing on their kitchen telephone. Sierra’s dubiously putting a ziploc full of their cell phones in the freezer.
“We don’t know how many HYDRA agents are still out there somewhere ready to take a potshot,” Sam says quietly. “Better safe than sorry.”
“It might not be HYDRA,” Sierra mutters, but she’d surrendered her phone willingly enough even if she did pointedly mention she’d only got it upon landing in the States a week ago. “I’m not saying it can’t be, I’m just saying a lot of people have reasons to have eyes on us. You did steal military property,” she says to Sam. “And he’s Captain America.”
“I’m asking around,” Steve says, pulling the pink phone out to check. “If it’s our guys or not.”
“Shouldn’t that be in the freezer too?” Sierra says, eyeing the phone.
“If this phone is compromised we have much bigger problems,” Steve says absently. Hill has replied with standby , and then, no confirmation but that just means my nsa and fbi guys are ignoring my calls. I’ll ask stark to dig back end data but it won’t be fast
And then, need backup?
Steve shows the screen to Sam. Sam slowly rubs his hand over his mouth, reading, beard scraping faintly against his palm.
“What would that look like,” Sam says finally.
Steve types it out. Hill replies immediately. Iron Man can be on site in 45 min.
Steve and Sam look at each other. He’s pretty sure they’re both thinking the same thing. They’ve only seen the one guy so far, but it’s more than possible he’s just the advance scout for however many teams they can cram into the neighborhood. They’re surrounded by civilians on all sides, and Sam’s family is the first priority. Iron Man is not a stealth unit, but they have no idea if that would be overkill. They’ll need overkill if whoever’s out there came armed for Captain America. They need to find out what they’re dealing with.
“What about the satellite imagery,” Sam says slowly, rubbing his chin. “Would that even… it’s the holidays, lots of people have family visiting and are moving in ways they don’t usually do.” His mouth slants even as he sets his jaw. “Unusual numbers of cars, high likelihood of all of us being in one place, hard to pick out suspicious activity.”
Perfect time for an ambush, he doesn’t have to say. Steve wishes like hell they had Natasha and Bucky here. Steve’s run ops with only two people, sure, but never protecting civilians and civilians who also happen to be his partner’s family at that.
“So they’re not our guys,” Sierra says, watching them, jerking her chin at Steve’s phone. “Are they.”
Steve and Sam exchange glances. “Can’t confirm,” Steve says. “We have to play it safe.”
“Even if they are legitimate,” Mr. Wilson says slowly. “FBI, or… police. Our being under surveillance and not being told about it is unlikely to mean anything… positive.”
“Yeah,” Sierra says flatly. “You ever heard of COINTELPRO, Steve? About what happened to the Black Panther movement?”
“Sierra,” Mr. Wilson says quellingly.
“I… probably don’t know enough,” Steve says, making a note of the names. They sound important. It’s not the first time he’s thought about just how much of his information had been filtered through SHIELD, of how fucking stupid and gullible and careless he’d been. How fucking long it took him to see there was something wrong in SHIELD, let alone that it was fucking Nazis. “But I know someone’s not on your side just because they’re wearing the same uniform as you.”
“We have to check this out, Dad,” Sam says. “We can’t afford not to.”
“You shouldn’t have any kind of unknown surveillance on you,” Steve adds. “If it’s the FBI, or police, then they need to be told this isn’t safe for them to do.”
“And if it’s not them,” Sam says grimly, “we need to handle this stat.”
-o-
Once Mrs. Wilson comes home - safe and sound and setting her jaw at the instructions to carry on as normal, having been given the recent events rundown - Steve and Sam convene in the basement to strategize. They’ve got three handguns and the shield between them, along with Sam’s wings and the built-in submachine guns there. The only thing they have that could remotely qualify as body armor is a couple of parkas, none of which fit Steve.
“Going commando,” Sam jokes grimly.
“Just don’t get hit,” Steve tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’d think they teach you that in pararescue.”
“Yeah, right before the water-to-wine course and right after walking on water,” Sam says. “You better be quick with that dinner plate. If I get shot Mom is gonna take turns cutting us like kebab meat.”
They evaluate the terrain, peeking out the corner of one of the basement’s windows that face the woods. Winter means the branches are all bare and there’s little cover on the ground, which means they’ll have to disguise themselves to get close enough to pay a personal visit. “Could you come in from above with your wings?” Steve asks.
“Probably, but it’d attract attention from everybody around,” Sam says. “The noise would travel, too, ‘cause of the height I’d need for a vertical drop.”
“So we come in from the ground.”
“Yep.” Sam sucks his lower lip into his mouth, eyes narrowed at the distant figure. “We’ll go in after dark.”
-o-
“Go out to dinner,” Sam tells his parents and sister. “Go to DC. See a movie. If we don’t call and give you the all clear by eleven, you don’t go home, understand? Go to Union Station and call Natasha and then Stark. Here.” He hands his mother a sticky note with phone numbers on it. “They’ll make sure you’re covered until we can get back to you.”
“Son,” Mr. Wilson says, his face heavy.
“We’ll be fine, Dad. We’ve dealt with a lot worse.”
“We’ll have backup,” Steve adds, because there’s no way Sam’s parents won’t worry but they can at least be reassured that Sam’s not unprepared or alone. “We’ve let people know what’s going on. We’re not going in blind.”
“Let’s go, Paul,” Mrs. Wilson says, taking her husband’s elbow. Her face is set. “You’re taking us to dinner. Somewhere fancy. Sierra, dress nice, baby.”
She pauses in ushering them up and adds, “But wear shoes you can run in.”
-o-
Sam goes to see his family out, all of them getting in the car in the garage to hide the fact that Steve and Sam aren’t going with them. Steve gives Barf a bone and shuts him in his crate, moving quietly just in case their surveillers have a good directional microphone. There’s no sign of movement; when Steve looks out the back window, the shape in the tree is still there.
Sam comes back with their available gear. They suit up, Sam layering for maneuverability without a parka and Steve not bothering beyond a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of gloves. They don’t have comms but cell phones should be sufficient if they do split up - Sam’s got Sierra’s phone on him, the one they’d all agreed was the least likely to have been compromised, unless the AT&T guy at the airport was a plant. And if Sam’s phone was tracked, it would show him with the rest of his family, eating a nice dinner somewhere out in DC.
“I’m putting Hill on standby,” Steve tells Sam as they prepare to exit via Sierra’s bedroom window. “Stark flies fast. He’ll cover them if this turns out to be bigger than we can handle.”
“You should probably tell JB too,” Sam says.
Steve… considers it. He doesn’t want to distract Bucky, not when he’s dealing with his own, far more precarious situation, but if something does go wrong it’ll have been the stupidest oversight in the world to not let Bucky know.
Developing situation at Wilsons’, he finally types out. Will update when we know more. Found some surveillance, going to check it out.
There’s no immediate answer, which probably means Bucky is asleep. Steve puts it out of his mind, silencing the phone and slipping out the window after Sam.
They take a roundabout way into the woods, crossing through backyards and into the next neighborhood over to approach the target from behind. Steve breathes deep, letting his senses expand. It’s strange to be stepping into the woods like this, especially since it’s not woods at all, just a part of the local park that extends between housing developments. He can hear cars in the distance, and the television someone has on in one of the houses on Sam’s street behind them. Christmas lights twinkle on the rear porches and decks. It’s about as different from the European forests of the front as it’s possible to be while still featuring dirt and trees, but it doesn’t feel any less like hostile territory.
Steve spares a thought to how it’s probably some kind of operatic irony that good old American soil feels to him like occupied warzone and rolls his eyes at himself. It’s a forest. When Steve gets homesick, it’s generally for shitty paving, yelling neighbors and the lung-shriveling stink of burning coal. And it is like the front. There’s at least one potential enemy agent in the woods ahead of them, and the stakes might as well be the same. Sam’s family is as high-value a target as it gets.
They slip through the trees. It’s a clear night, the stars visible as clean pinpricks through the bony canopy of the trees. They start by sweeping the perimeter, dipping in and out of the patch of woodland to check the nearby neighborhoods; Steve follows Sam and his knowledge of the neighborhood he grew up in, checking if there’s a team placed in the woods or a van full of agents parked in the nearest cul-de-sac next to the garish grins of plastic snowmen. It’s slow going, but eventually they decide that their treebound watcher is the only hostile on site. Unless the jerky animatronic reindeer break free and reveal themselves to be HYDRA agents the area is clear.
They crouch down behind a tree trunk. “Okay,” Sam whispers. “How we doing this.”
“Let’s knock the bird out of the tree,” Steve says. “And see what comes running.”
-o-
Among the skills bestowed unto him by the forests of Europe - besides the knowledge that almost anything is technically edible and the surprisingly involved technique to make coffee out of acorns - is the ability to climb more or less any tree. Steve takes the shield off his back and hands it to Sam, then walks his hands up the trunk. It’s big, sturdy; it should take his weight. Jumping up for a hold would make too much noise, so Steve’s about to koala-hug his way up the first few meters when Sam taps his shoulder and presents him with both hands cupped in a step-up. Steve gratefully steps up.
The climb is slow going, but Steve can appreciate a challenge. There aren’t any branches for the first twenty feet or so, so Steve ends up doing some koala-ing after all, moving glacially slow to keep the scrape of his boots on bark down to a minimum. He creeps up the tree, placing each hand and foot as quietly as he can, easing his way between every twig and branch that seems supernaturally determined to jab into his eyeballs.
Eventually he makes it to the height of the agent’s nest, and then, higher. It takes a few minutes to gather himself up on the branch, drawing his legs up under himself in a crouch.
An owl hoots overhead. Steve braces, judges the distance, and throws himself down into the agent’s tree.
Hitting just above the guy makes the tree shudder wildly and the agent shout in shock. Steve swings around the trunk, grabs the guy around the neck and clamps a hand over his mouth. For a second Steve’s other hand spasms for a knife that isn’t there - if this was Bieniec or Sourbrodt or Nordrach he’d slit the agent’s throat and it’d be over, but it’s Virginia, they’re not a mile from Sam’s parents’ house, and they need this man alive. Steve gives the struggling body a sharp yank to make sure he hasn’t tied himself to the tree or anything, then changes his grip and flips them backward off the trunk.
They only do one rotation before Steve hits the ground in a half-crouch, but the agent goes limp enough in his arms that for a second Steve wonders incredulously if the guy fainted. Steve doesn’t ease his hold, flipping the agent over and putting him facedown on the ground, twisting his arms back so Sam can slide in from the dark and ziptie everything in reach.
Steve checks the guy for an earpiece, and finds one. He also finds a holstered sidearm, a directional mike and an ID folio for - Steve angles it to catch some moonlight - one Michael Edgemond, agent of the FBI.
It’s at this point the guy comes up from his swoon and starts struggling, so Steve hands the gun, earpiece and folio to Sam and hoists the guy to his knees.
“What the fuck,” he half-shouts, struggling enough that Steve has to shove him back so he doesn’t overbalance. “What the fuck are you doing? Who are you?”
“I’m Dasher, that’s Vixen,” Sam says from behind him. “But you sure as shit ain’t Santa Claus. Wanna tell us what you’re doing up that tree?”
“You threw - you -” The guy twists around, gaping up at the trees for a second and looking back at Steve with incredulous fury. “You threw me out of a tree!”
“Threw?” Steve says, unimpressed with the guy’s situational assessment of the last five minutes.
“This is assault,” the guy says, an edge of shakiness starting to bleed into his tone. “You’re assaulting a federal officer.”
“Really?” Sam says interestedly, passing Steve back his shield. “How so?”
“I’m a FBI agent!”
“Sure you are,” Steve says agreeably, holstering the shield on his back. “Who’s on the other end of the comms?”
“My partner, who is also an FBI agent, which makes assaulting us a federal crime.”
“Uh huh. That’s a pretty sad excuse for being some creep we caught stalking people,” Sam says, heavy with skepticism.
The agent twists to try and see him, then goes guppy-faced with fury. “You’re holding my badge!”
“So? You think there weren’t HYDRA operatives in the FBI?” Sam says calmly, the hardness of his face the only indicator that they’re all not just having a teasing holiday chat in the woods. “All the Nazis had nice official SHIELD badges and CIA badges and whatever other badges they liked. They were real officers. You think we’re gonna believe you just because you pinky promise you’re not a bad guy?”
“What?” The guy’s looking wild around the edges, trying to shuffle around on his knees to face Sam more. “You think I’m HYDRA ?”
“What we know is that you’re armed and spying on us,” Sam says, just as they all hear something big moving towards them through the trees.
Steve grabs the shield off his back and turns towards the sounds as Sam melts back into the dark, pistol at the ready. It sounds like only one person, blundering through the woods, but the sound might be a cover for more, stealthier movements around them.
“Don’t shoot!” someone calls breathlessly, a man, in the kind of voice that’s trying to carry but also not be heard out of sheet embarrassment. “I’m Agent Orell - I’m his partner - we can explain!”
Looks like the comm had been the open line kind. Steve grimaces and listens hard for others approaching; it’d be just like HYDRA to send in one guy as a sacrificial lamb to distract from the rest of the team taking up positions around them. The advancing agent has both hands up and he’s moving not quite towards them in the dark. This guy’s in a lighter coat and hat, not bundled up to the eyebrows like the first agent; he was probably sitting in a car not too far away, for him to get here so quickly.
Or in a house, or in a van, full of a dozen other agents watching and listening. At SHIELD Steve would only get involved at the very end of surveillance ops, the last hours where stakeout became ambush and his job was to lead the raid, but he knows how it’s run on high value targets.
“Stop,” Steve orders when the guy gets close enough to visibly recognize the kneeling shape of the first agent.
The agent stops. “Kneel,” Steve orders, keeping close to a big-trunked tree just in case he needs to use it as body armor. “Next to your partner. Face the same way. Hands on your head.”
The second agent obeys, and as he drops to the ground Sam slides out of the trees again and efficiently zip-cuffs him, emptying his pockets and taking his phone, wallet, keys and service sidearm. “Let’s hear that explanation,” Sam says, once he’s stepped out of reach at their backs and unholstered his own pistol again.
“We were assigned to your detail,” the new guy says immediately, turning his head slightly like he wants to crane and look at Sam before thinking better of it. Steve circles around to face them, stepping in close enough to loom but still stay out of grabbing range. Both agents’ eyes flick to his gun, his face, then the gun again. “I’m Trent Orell and that’s Michael Edgemond -”
“Prove it,” Steve says.
“You can call our supervisor,” the new guy says, rallying. “I’ll give you the number. He can explain -”
“Hey, good idea,” Steve says. “No, keep your hands up. I don’t need you to give me a number.” He pulls out the pink phone, keeping his eyes and his pistol trained on them, and dials Natasha’s current line from memory.
She picks up right away, which probably means she’s feeling magnanimous. “Hey,” Steve says. “I need a favor. Can you get me an emergency number for the director of the FBI? His personal one. One he can’t ignore.”
“Are you having fun without me, Rogers?” Natasha says suspiciously.
“Only because you’re not here,” Steve says. “Wish you were. We haven’t thrown anyone off a roof in ages.”
“Ah,” Natasha says. “You found some new friends out there in suburbia?”
“Yep. See, they say they’re FBI, but…”
“Yeah, don’t they always. You called Hill?”
“Yeah, first thing. She had satellite imagery only and that didn’t give us much. Holiday patterns.”
“Fucking Christmas. Alright, yes, I can get a number for you. Standby. And send me photos of their faces and IDs,” Natasha says. “Even if they do end up being real live feds we don’t want them to feel like they can just go around doing things.”
Steve dutifully hauls up agents “Edgemond” and “Orell”, making them flinch one at a time in his phone camera’s flash. Then he does it again, this time asking very politely if they could keep their eyes as open as possible for the camera, please, don’t want to go throwing off the facial recog. Then, with the agents’ night vision shot and having just announced their presence via multiple light flashes, Steve and Sam back up into the trees to see if it brings anybody running.
The two agents look around and start shifting after a couple minutes, one of them saying, “Uhhh,” quietly, but otherwise the woods stay quiet. Steve sends the photos to Natasha, one eye on the trees around them, and gets a number and a winky face in return.
He glances at Sam, who shakes his head. They wait a while longer, crouched in the bony undergrowth; Steve once again wishes for Natasha and Bucky, for people he can trust to do exactly what’s necessary and finish any fight they end up in. It’s an old wish, though, a variation on one he’s been having since he got dug up in 2011 and one that it turned out wasn’t met by just having people on his team. Alpha STRIKE, case in point.
Clear? Sam gestures at him finally, eyebrows up, and Steve shrugs and nods back. Sam hands him a phone - one of the agents’ phones, Steve realizes, which, good thing Sam thought of that because Steve was two seconds away from dialing the director of the FBI on his goddamn Bucky phone. How’s that for breach of opsec.
Thank god for Sam, Steve thinks, stepping out in front of the two kneeling agents and holding up the phone. “Passcode?”
He doesn’t immediately get an answer. “I won't ask again,” he adds, mild, and tosses his pistol up and spins it so it smacks back into his hand barrel first.
He gets the passcode, the second agent counting off four digits. Steve returns his grip on the gun to firing position instead of the one universally agreed upon for pistol-whipping.
Luckily for everyone, the phone’s pick up two rings after he dials. “Hello, Director,” Steve says preemptively. “This is Steve Rogers.”
There’s a few seconds of silence. “What?”
“I also go by Captain America,” Steve says conversationally. “Sometimes.”
“...Is this a joke?”
“I hope so,” Steve says. “Because I have two men here claiming to be your agents, but since we caught them engaged in covert surveillance on my current residence, I’m not inclined to believe a word out of their mouths. But there’s a chance they are legitimate, so we figured we’d check before deciding how to dispose of them.”
There’s a short, distinctly appalled silence on the other end of the line. “Dispose?”
“We can’t just leave them here,” Steve says reasonably. “They’d die of exposure.”
“Where -” The director cuts off, sounding fairly angry about it. “What the hell is going on here?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Steve says. “Either you approved surveillance on me, or you didn’t. If you did, well, I’m not thrilled, but I understand. But if you didn’t…”
“Assuming any of this is true,” the director says in a controlled voice, “you expect me, at ten o’clock at night, to just disclose classified information to some person who calls and says he’s Captain America?”
“Hey, we’re being nice. We’re doing this the hard way,” Steve says. “All you have to do is go make some calls and find out who’s on Cap watch tonight. Or are you saying there is no Cap watch? Because if not, we can do things the easy way after all.”
“I don’t like what you’re implying,” the director says tightly.
“Me neither,” Steve says. “But HYDRA keeps trying to kill me, so I don’t really have the luxury of being nice. You have twenty minutes. I’ll call you back.”
Steve hangs up, then looks at the formerly arboreally situated agent and gestures at him. “Hey, do you get bathroom breaks on tree duty? Do you just piss in a jar up there?”
“What?”
“Bathroom breaks,” Steve says patiently. “You’re required by law to have them, you know.”
“That’s only by state,” Sam says from behind them. “It’s not federal law.”
“What, really?” Steve says. “That’s not right. You got a union, son? Don’t tell me you don’t.”
The two of them stare up at him. “There’s… the FBIAA…” the non-tree-bound agent says after a second.
“And what do they do?”
“They’re… the FBI union. Basically.”
“Are you a member?”
“...Yes?”
“Paid your dues?”
“Yes?”
“Good,’ Steve says. Both of them are looking at Steve like he’s speaking Chitauri now, only the tree guy looks extra mad about it. “Bring up bathroom breaks at the next meeting. Bodily functions don’t stop just because you’re on duty.” Sam’s poker face looks like it’s really taking a beating. Steve makes sure to make eye contact over the agents’ heads. “It’s inhumane to force conditions that don’t account for physical needs, no matter what your job is.”
“Can you please,” the tree agent says, through gritted teeth, “please, please, please stop talking.”
Sam shakes his head in disappointment, his voice remarkably steady for how he was biting his cheek a second ago. “This is what happens when you try to help people,” he says sadly. “Ungrateful.”
Steve shrugs. “You can read a horse its rights but you can’t make it drink.” He checks the pink phone; no reply. Bucky’s definitely asleep. “We should check in,” Steve tells Sam anyway.
Sam nods and pulls his own phone out, presumably texting his family that they haven’t been shot to death by Nazis in the woods yet. Steve keeps an eye out while Sam’s attention is occupied, then they switch off so he can update Bucky. Only two guys so far. No fight, they say they’re FBI. Probably just surveillance. Confirming now.
The other phone in Steve’s hand rings. He swipes without looking. “Not bad,” he says. “Eleven minutes to spare. Names?”
The director doesn’t sound happy, but he at least has the sense not to fuck around. “Special agents Trent Orell and Michael Edgemond.”
“And their badge numbers?” Steve says patiently.
There’s a distinct animosity in the director’s tone as he recites the numbers. Steve really should look up what the man’s name is sometime soon. The numbers match, at least, so at least they won’t be seeing each other in court for charges of manslaughter.
“I’d like to speak to my agents now,” the director says coldly.
“Nope.”
“Nope?”
“You can talk to them when you come pick them up,” Steve says. “I’m not interested in playing go-between for you. Besides, their hands are ziptied.”
“Ziptied? Did you assault -”
“We didn’t assault anybody,” Steve says, hard, cutting him off. “We just spent an entire year dealing with everybody and their auntie trying to kill us, and it all started right here in DC. So when we find somebody spying on us, we take steps. If you don’t want me to treat your agents like hostiles, then you warn me beforehand and send me a list and a photo of every man you’re going to have on my detail.”
There’s a long, frosty silence on the other end, which Steve can at least respect better than incredulous sputtering. “For the level of access you’re asking for, Mr. Rogers,” the director finally says in hypothermic tones, “you would have to be a supervising agent of the FBI. We do not hand out classified information to any person on the street who takes it in their head to ask, regardless of their personal situation and individual paranoias. I can refer you to our applications page if you like.”
Steve lets his shrug be obvious in his voice. “Okay, don’t. We can go through this song and dance as many times as you like. I see an agent I don’t recognize, I have no choice but to take steps.”
“There are steps we can take as well.”
“Come and try me,” Steve says, and hangs up again.
Agents Allegedly Edgemond and Orell are staring at him. “You’re crazy,” Allegedly Orell says faintly.
Steve smiles, feeling his face stretch back over his teeth. “What would you do if you found armed strangers spying on your family?”
“Call the police, like a sane person, ” Allegedly Orell stresses, immediate.
“Sure,” Steve says. Sam snorts somewhere behind them. “And if you turned out to be HYDRA with an assault team waiting in the wings that would’ve gotten them all killed. That’s if HYDRA didn’t just hijack the local 911 calls outright.”
“Or put their plants in the local department,” Sam says. “How do we know you haven’t tipped off the cops either? Their boss is probably calling the five-o on us right now, by the way,” he adds to Steve.
“Good point,” Steve says, taking out the second agents’ phone, winding up and throwing both into the undergrowth. Tree Guy makes a choked-off noise but wisely doesn’t actually say anything, though maybe that's because now he looks too mad to speak.
“Relax,” Sam says, hanging their two holstered sidearms off a tree branch. “Feeb phones for sure got location services enabled. You’ll find them eventually.” He looks at Steve, jerking his head at the two agents. “What do you want to do with them?”
“This is kind of a new experience for me,” Steve admits. “In the war we always just killed them.”
“Yeah, I’m not super feeling that,” Sam says, scratching his chin. “We’d have to bury them and it’s a real bitch to dig anything when the ground’s frozen.”
Steve sighs. “I suppose we should drop them off somewhere they can get picked up. The director’s probably scrambled his own backup too.”
“Yeah, let’s get them back to their little friends,” Sam says decisively. “What do you say? Strip them naked and leave them handcuffed together on the nearest highway median?”
One of the agents makes a muffled choking noise. “Why not,” Steve says, holstering his pistol. “After all, it is Christmas.”
-o-
There’s something in the tree with him.
It’s almost dawn. The birds are awake and have started twittering their heads off. There’s breathing near him, and when he stills himself to listen, a rapid heartbeat.
It’s a dog.
Barnes stares at it. The dog stares back. It’s in a tree. It’s in his tree. He arrived too late to find anywhere open to stay in this godforsaken villagette and so a night in the park it was. It’s right on the coast so it’s warm and dry and the trees are big gnarled bastards sprawling out in twisty shapes, many of them relatively low to the ground. So he can see, more or less, how the presence of the dog is not out of the realm of possibility.
It’s crouched with all four paws underneath it on a big branch, close to the trunk. It’s obviously a stray, with torn ears and a dirty, patchy pelt. It doesn’t look very comfortable.
It occurs to Barnes that the stare might actually be a fairly plaintive look.
He pries himself out of his tree fork, swearing under his breath, and heads for the dog. It doesn’t really move as he approaches it, just crouches down lower to its branch and looks up at him with big yellow eyes. It sort of dodges back when he makes a couple of testing grabs for it, but it doesn’t snap at him and doesn’t try to dive off the branch so he steels himself and hooks it quick under his metal arm.
It struggles, making his gutshot side twinge, its paws scrabbling at his thigh and hip, but it continues to not bite him so he’ll take what he can fucking get. “How did you get up here,” he mutters vengefully as he struggles down one-armed, the dog headbutting him repeatedly in the kidneys. “You weren’t there when I got in.”
They get down to the ground more or less without incident. Barnes bends to set the dog down and gets kicked in the stomach for his trouble, the dog pushing off him to skip tidily away down the beach. It does stop a few dozen yards out to look back at him, but probably only to make sure he’s not chasing after it with an axe. Barnes scowls at it and turns away. May it find much happiness grubbing in the nearest dumpster.
He makes his way back up and resettles in his tree fork. It was actually pretty damn comfortable up here and he has at least thirty more minutes before full dawn.
Ten minutes later he cracks an eye again. There’s a brief scratching, scrabbling noise, as of dog claws on tree bark. Barnes opens his eyes all the way. The dog is back in the fucking tree, even higher this time, inching along a branch no thicker than Barnes’ thigh.
“Who taught you that?” Barnes demands. “Why?”
The dog keeps creeping along, thoroughly ignoring him. It’s definitely headed his direction, though. Why. What the fuck does it want.
Maybe it can smell the food in his pack.
Well, it’s not fucking getting any. If it can climb trees it can certainly fend for itself. Hunt, or whatever. Dogs hunt. Especially out here. It’s probably got him confused for some kind of overgrown tree-dwelling deer or whatever and is trying to hunt him.
The dog settles four feet away, crouched down, and puts its head on its paws. It looks at him with giant yellow eyes.
On the other hand. Barnes is capable of killing anyone in a hundred mile radius in a hundred different ways in under ten seconds, but he’s not sure he could manage more than two minutes of conversation. Skillsets are not evenly distributed. Appearances can be deceiving.
Barnes opens his pack and tosses it the meat from his sandwich. It looks thin.
-o-
It’s around four in the morning. Sam’s family came back safe, and as midnight came and went it became apparent that the FBI didn’t think it was worth it to come break their door down, or that they were at least busy making sure their two surveillance birds hadn't lost any toes. Steve’s staying up anyway, just in case they decide to try anything before morning, and promised to wake Sam up if he so much as hears a rat fart out of place. He paces the house in silence, first indoors and then slipping back outside to do a perimeter check; he ends up in the Wilsons’ backyard, shadowed under their deck, looking out at the little forest.
He couldn’t sleep tonight even if he weren’t on watch. He didn’t get the adrenaline surge of real combat but he knows this alertness is going to last the next eight hours or so, and he might as well use it thinking. He’s not dumb enough to think this little incident will be anywhere near the end of it, and the FBI aren’t the only ones who’ll be hellbent on hounding him now that he’s back in the States. They aren’t going to give up when he moves to Brooklyn, and it’s only going to get worse when Bucky joins him.
It’s not going to matter if Bucky’s civilian cover is bulletproof. The Wilsons are civilians. They’re Steve Rogers’ known associates now too.
Some part of Steve rankles at thinking like this, strategizing like this, about Americans. These are his people. The war is over. Should’ve been over. Peggy could thrive under the spy life but Steve can’t keep hold of the necessary doublethink, can’t run the deception necessary to treat a hostile like a friend for any length of time. He doesn’t work like that. If someone’s an enemy, they’re the enemy. If they’re the enemy, he acts as the enemy deserves. And to a part of him, it burns to turn that gaze upon the men who swore themselves to the protection of the same country he did.
The rest of him, the part that’s been roughed up by cops before he was old enough to drink and tripped up by his fellow soldiers in Basic and most recently had to deal with a coup from the fucking Secretary of State, dials Natasha’s number again.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself. What now? Found another FBI surveillance team in your oatmeal?”
“Not exactly. But I was thinking that since they went out of their way to pay me a visit, I should go out of my way right back. Also, they might try to arrest me tomorrow morning.”
“Ah.”
“So I figured I’d ask an expert. Any ideas on how to make the director real sorry he ever took his post?”
“Going after another federal agency so soon, Rogers?” Natasha says, but she sounds pleased. “And you keep telling me you don’t know how to talk to a pretty girl.”
Steve tilts his head up, finding the distant wash of stars over the faint glow of local light pollution. “Will you help?”
“Of course,” Natasha says. “Let’s have a little fun.”