armeyets | for webbs.

“They get rowdy during a game,” Grant says, over another sip of his drink. “And Romania’s playing live, so that’s even more intense. If they win, the city’s gonna go haywire. If they lose, it’s gonna be even worse.”

The man can’t even explain how he knows it, but that knowledge swims up out of the depths. Years and decades of sports riots, of towns going wild for their local teams, he couldn’t tell you the year it happened but he’s certain it happens, he has a vague impression of a crowd charging onto a football field and literally picking up the goals and carrying them off down to the river—

These past few months, the instinctive muscle memory always came back easiest — how to drive, ride a bike, walk, disassemble and reassemble a gun — but sometimes these more cerebral facts materialised, too. He always grasped at them, these slivers of lost memory.

“Come on, it can’t be as bad as the Yankees.” It’s automatic, said without thinking: not one of Petra Bulgakova’s carefully rehearsed quips, but something raw, personal. A remnant of an older life, the one that the Red Room was very, very thorough in wringing out of her. They surface sometimes to talk with her handler about her pills. Clearly, they need to change the dosage.

(”If nothing else,” a man with laugh lines around his eyes and a little paunch around his belly said to her, ”you can always blame the Yankees, Pen.”)

“Besides, I bet I can be pretty sneaky.” She grins, jiggling her loud bracelets to accentuate her joke. Harper Carlson likes attention, Harper Carlson couldn’t sneak or hide if her life depended on it. But Harper Carlson knows that there’s other ways. “You’re not gonna let me out there myself, are you? Wow. Buy me a drink with your own money first.”

He hasn’t had to carry on a conversation like this in so very long. Normally exchanges are quick, brusque, to-the-point: bare logistics only, almost mechanical. His charm is atrophied, the conversational niceties are near-dead, but —

But he can feel it stirring as Harper flashes her grin at him, some long-buried part waking up, coming out of hibernation and blinking at the world through his frigid blue eyes. Some ancient thing thawing.

So that impassive expression finally cracks: a faint smile ghosting his mouth, as he drains the rest of his vodka, quick. (A sledgehammer, applied with precision to that growing fissure.) “Alright,” he says, then summons the bartender back over. “Another one for the lady,” in crisp Romanian, as he fishes in his pockets to find more loose change, leans a little forward and slides the bills across to buy them both the next round.

The ice continues cracking underfoot.

“So. Tell me about yourself, Harper From America, Who Knows the Yankees.”

"Everybody knows the Yankees."

Another woman might take note of the flicker of a smile, of the way that Grant’s eyes crinkle, at how even the bare movement of his arm seems fluid in a way it hadn’t moments before. Somebody else who knew what lay beneath the ice would be happy, thrilled to see the little glimpses of James Buchanan Barnes. (In another universe, Steve Rogers leans forwards, breathless, trying to coax out more.)

But Peltra Bulgakova, hiding behind the empty smile of her cover, takes only clinical notice of a job well done.

“I mean,” she shrugs, swirling the last of her cocktail. “There’s not a lot to say. I’m from Berkeley,”

(Lies)

“- on a gap year - “

(More lies)

“- but majoring in photography.”

(Mostly a lie, but she does have an aptitude for it. Call it fondness, or what passes for a hobby in the Red Room).

“I’m here with a bunch of my friends in sorority. I mean, I’m not part of the sorority, the application fee is like two hundred dollars, but I’m like - honorary, you know? Only I don’t have to do all the community work stuff if I’m busy, it’s great.”

“Photography?” Grant perks up in a way he hadn’t before, his genuine interest piqued. (It’s fascinating, how far photography had come in all the years he’s been awake: no longer needing to stand fidgety and still for long photos. The exposures getting faster and faster, flashes of propaganda photos during the war, quick shots, then Polaroids, handheld cameras, and now everyone’s goddamn phone can do it.)

“I had a buddy into drawing; we took a live portrait lesson together once. Not actually the same thing as photography, obviously, but—” He’s grasping for an idea, another sliver of memory. “What’s that called. En plein air and stuff? I figure there’s gotta be some overlap there. Seeing something interesting you wanna capture.”

Interesting. She wouldn’t have expected anything so mundane as photography to catch his interest. Perhaps HYDRA had him do surveillance? But no, she would have heard about that, would have been in her briefings. Maybe it’s a new interest of Grant’s, something picked up in the last two months -

But no, he mentions a buddy. Somebody from before. A puzzle, then - Petra likes puzzles.

“Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, except for all of photography needing to be en plein air” - (her French pronunciation is deliberately horrible) - “but I think I get it. Like, taking notice of things. Looking for lighting, or reflections. All of that.”

The bartender sets another drink down, and Petra flashes another, bright smile. “I like taking pictures of people more than things. People are so much more interesting, they just “ - she waves a hand, as if trying to think of the right word. “Do more.”

Warming, with the faintest ghost of humour: “Yeah. The pretty models don’t hurt, either.”

And Grant — James — not Bucky, not yet — knows that this conversation is probably a bad idea. He should cut the cord, politely disengage, let it spiral out into nothing, let the girl have her night out on the town herself. But the thing is,

he is so desperately lonely. This is the longest conversation he’s had in he doesn’t know how long. Two years alone, with only the most fleeting connections in foreign languages before he pulled up stakes and moved on, trying not to let his past catch up to him. He remains vigilant, tries to cover his tracks, but he’s starting to hunger for these small reminders of civility, personhood: the chat with the bartender, a joke exchanged with the greengrocer. English sounds better on his tongue. It’s been a while since he’s gotten to use it.

“I’m not that great with people, though,” he admits, ruminative.

She laughs – dry, amused, warm – and playfully swats his arm. “Just like a boy, only thinking about pretty girls.” Boy, not man, trying to associate him with the sort of co-eds and nerds and frat assholes that Harper would know. Keep the Soldier thinking about her as somebody young, inexperienced, too used to campus life and clubbing to recognize anything else.

Petra shifts on her stool, turning to face him more fully. She crosses her legs (practicality, not going for seduction yet), and leans her meager weight on an elbow on the bar. “You're doing alright so far,” she says, kindly. “You bought me a drink and you're asking cool questions, that's good. But hey - “

She leans forwards a little, plastic bracelets jangling, and traces the stiletto of one heel against his calf. “I can deal with people. I know all about people, I've got you.”

Well, maybe just a little seduction.

His hackles almost instantly go up at both touches (the swat of her hand, the press of her heel): with the tightening of his shoulder blades going higher, the winding of muscles, a rigidity in his neck, all incredibly apparent to a woman who has trained for so long to measure people’s body language.

And then, just as apparent, Grant consciously lets it go. Lets himself ease back like a wind-up toy soldier letting that tension subside, remembering to unclench his jaw, stop grinding his teeth, turn off that part of his brain and body and sheer animal instinct which is always looking for threats, watching for enemies, balancing on a hairtrigger to flip someone to the ground if they tried to touch him. He turns off that reflexive reaction like he’s flipping off switches, powering down the machine.

Easy. Be normal. C’mon. Just be normal.

“And I,” he says, an attempt at sounding gallant (they’re both wearing masks tonight), “promise to get in a very gentlemanly fistfight if any drunk angry football hooligans try to cause trouble for ya. I can do that, at least.”

Another wave of tittering, sparkling laughter - nothing to worry about, nothing out of the ordinary, just a young (not technically) sorority girl finding amusement in a man’s offer of (not technically) violence. And to think, people say chivalry’s dead. But Petra allows herself an extra little giggle for the sheer pleasure of it, to celebrate the Soldier continuing to let his guard down for her.

Progress. Even if it’s just a step, even if it’s only a little - she can work with a little.

“And you’re gonna like, protect me? See, Grant, you’re just way too sweet.” All smiles, all tapping her nails against the glass of her ginger beer and rum, all watching the local laborers out of the corner of her eye.

“Maybe I could take your picture sometime. Or do a sketch, but my drawing sucks ass.”

The man’s about to laugh and smile and say yes — because this is flirting, right? this is how flirting works — but realisation cuts in a moment later. The Soldier has in fact let his guard down a little too far, and gotten sloppy.

Remembering: this is a different, more modern era. Photographs cue automated facial recognition, and can be run through databases to flag his location. He’s barely been staying ahead of grainy CCTV footage, let alone proper portraiture from a girl who knows how to take good pictures. Even if it was analog, who’s to say it wouldn’t wind up online someday? He can’t exactly demand that she never post it anywhere, it’d be suspicious as hell —

But he masters his expression, that jolt of alarm, instead smoothing it over after another sip of his drink: “Maybe a sketch, yeah. And I could do just as shitty one of you in return.” The corner of his mouth ticks upward. “Could be fun.”

The buddy he’d mentioned— he can’t remember the other man’s face in specific, but he knows he would’ve been better at it, better at doodling expressions and capturing others’ personalities on the page.

“How far away’s your dorm?” Grant asks.

He doesn’t strictly mean for it to sound like it does; it’s more about how far she would’ve had to go in a strange city by herself, navigating new neighbourhoods on a late night without the protective company of her sorority sisters.

But still. It sounds how it sounds.

Now, isn’t that curious? It’s like the portcullis of a castle coming crashing down. Hackles raised, a dog picking up a scent, the Soldier stiffening into action. Petra can’t even put her finger on what changed - nothing in his posture, barely anything in his gaze, his voice is loosening up, like it has been for the last few minutes. But something changes nonetheless: Harper’s innocent offer of a photograph is deflected, so casually and carelessly that she can’t help be impressed.

Maybe the Soldier isn’t as boring as she thought.

“Of course, it’ll be fun,” she says. “Like, don’t expect much, I’m freakin’ serious - but my art prof keeps telling me that art is its own purpose. Sounds like crap, but it’s an easy grade.” A little self-centered rambling goes a long way with crafting a persona, as well as keeping it.

The question gets a pause, a tilt of the head, an inquisitive look - is he propositioning her? And Harper answers: “Grant. Babe. My dorm is in San Bernadino.” She’s being gently chiding with him, teasing. “We’re in a couple of AirBnBs. I’m sharing one with like, five other girls.”

There’s a crinkle of a smile at the corners of his eyes, a sheepish twist to his expression.

“European backpackers used to do hostel dorms in my day, not AirBnBs,” Grant says — and it sounds plausible enough, and not necessarily earmarking him as the old man he feels sometimes, trying to keep up with all the societal changes. He looks… in his thirties, maybe? It could be a remark from a waning millennial if you didn’t know the truth, the ageless exhaustion behind that blue gaze.

“Just thinking if you’ll need an escort later, since your friends are all at the game. A chaperone.”

It’s once again chivalrous, gentlemanly. Old habits.

A good-natured eyeroll, a soft groan that’s equal parts fond and exasperated. “Great, I needed some back-in-my-days lecturing, I don’t get enough of that already.” But she’s already smiling again, teasing, offering little jabs and barbs so Grant can have the pleasure of batting them away. Because she’s getting a good grasp on what sort of a man he is: not one who wants a sweet, submissive girl to play with, nor one who can only take direction. A bit of action. Some tête-à-tête. Conversation as a game, not just talking.

Well, Petra is definitely good at talking. And she’s even better at winning games.

“See, you say you’re not good with people,” Harper points out. And now she is leaning forwards a little, breathless, inviting. “And then you go and offer up something like that. You’re really sweet.” A pause, contemplative. A sip of her drink - she should probably slow down - and a shrug. “And you’re cute. And paying for drinks, the full package.”

There’s a few things which should probably raise more alarm bells for him.

Harper hasn’t yet asked what he’s even doing in Romania, and he doesn’t strictly have a good answer for it; he’s avoided casual friendly conversation long enough that no one’s really bothered asking.

But she’s not local authorities with extradition treaties knocking on his door and asking uncomfortable questions, she’s not American military-branded surveillance drones, she’s not a CCTV camera; he’s not expecting the worst from this innocuous package. Even most SHIELD agents have a particular rigidity to their bearing, the way they snap to attention. Harper looks too young to have that kind of experience. (He’s not thinking about Natasha Romanoff’s chameleonic ability to blend undercover.)

It’s a small gap, a lapse. It’s just nice to be having a normal conversation again; to smile at a pretty girl again.

“Just trying to do the right thing,” Grant says, a rueful twist to his expression. “Young girl abroad, on her own, too many drinks and trying to find her way back. I’d worry.”

She’s done a lot to craft Harper Carlson as a persona: the normal forged documents; hacking into a server room in San Bernardino to update a school’s register; practicing vocal fry and slang until she dreamt in it; forging a few casual friendships with the sort of people who would be friends with her. But there’s more to it - she’s played a sorority girl before, but this particular one was well-calculated to be a honeypot for a particular man. So she’s cheerfully self-centered in a way that eases the pressure for the Soldier to talk about himself. Carefree enough to ditch her friends and go to a bar, not so careless to walk around with her purse hanging out. (Her cleavage - well, that’s different).

And she’s languid, moving like flowing water. A little fidgety, in a way that normally gets drilled out of any government agent. All while they’re talking, she’s been shifting her weight on the stool, or playing with one of her bangles, or tapping something against her glass. Even now, she reaches up to curl her finger around a lock of hair.

“Like I said,” Harper says. “Sweet.” A pause - considering. Harper wonders if she’s judged this guy right. Petra Bulgakova wonders if it’s time to cast out the bait. They both take a chance:

“What about your place?”

He waits over it a little too long, weighing the choice.

He’s old-fashioned and out-of-practice. He had, genuinely, intended for the genteel, toothless version of this: a nice stroll back on a brisk, not-too-cold night; escorting the girl safely to her doorstep; maybe he’d kiss her cheek goodbye before taking his leave of her and returning to his sad empty apartment. A brief, pleasant memory to be tucked away into a pocket and nursed for the future. Nothing more.

But Harper (Petra) plays her card and pushes it, just a little, and she can see those gears practically turning in his skull before he admits, “It’s not much to look at. I haven’t been in town long, haven’t really had the chance to decorate. But if you don’t mind the shitty decor…”

There’s a dimple in the corner of his smile, rarely-seen. It’s a shared language, a mutual understanding. There had been women like her in London: talkative, flirtatious, quick to pick up a handsome Allied soldier from overseas. If he squints, he can just about grasp those hazy, faint memories.

Grant finishes the dregs of his drink — it’s mostly melted ice by now — and slides the empty glass across the bar. Pivots on his chair, a boot balanced against the floor, ready to get moving.

“Wanna get out of here?”

Hook primed with a piece of bait; slice of cartoonishly yellow cheese on the mousetrap; a scantily-clad pornbot fired at the private messages of a rich loser. It all ends up the same. Though the Winter Soldier is a far, far better catch than any fish or rat or wealthy victim. Petra nearly preens with delight, catches herself starting to move her arm (to pump her fist, a very American thing to do), before stopping herself. Chalk it up to liquor, little Harper Carlson's been knocking those drinks back.

But she just smiles – pleased, raking her eyes over Grant in a way that doesn't hide her intentions. And Harper purrs: “I'd love to.”

She leaves her own drink as it is, the last dredges of half-melted ice and ginger beer, and braces herself against the bar to slide off her stool. In her training, she’s practically done parkour in her heels, so the way that she wobbles and stumbles is entirely manufactured. But sure, let the Soldier catch her; let him think that she’s maybe a little tipsy; let him get his guard down. And down. And down.

"Shit - "

There is a very different sort of muscle memory which almost activates here: if someone on the street were to bump into him or even if someone else in this bar were to stumble into him unprompted, there might be a stern hand clamped around their wrist, bending an elbow backwards until they were forced away. Not allowing any spare space for a knife to slip between his ribs, or for a gun to be pressed into the small of his back.

But Harper is teetering away from him, about to slip off the stool, and so some other, older instinct kicks into gear. She sways; he moves forward faster than most people could, and he catches her; their heads and shoulders jostle a little too close, and he unconsciously breathes in the smell of her hair.

And his hand is too firm on her arm, cold metal beneath his glove, crisp Soviet titanium. So he pivots neatly to stand on her other side instead to temporarily hide the arm (ah fuck, James, this is gonna be a problem later, whatever, deal with that later). He slings a warm flesh-and-blood elbow over her shoulder to help steady her as they start moving towards the door.

“Easy there,” he says, in warm Romanian, half-teasing.

She’s been briefed on the Soldier’s arm. Other things, too: a few of the fighting styles HYDRA drilled into him, the technology they used to keep him in cryogenic storage, how he’d been passed from one handler to another, Zola to Pierce. Some of it has been useful, other is just…a curiosity. Knowledge is one of the few vices the Red Room offers her.

(Though not too much. Madame has ensured that there’s some gaps in the briefing, redacted so completely that it’s impossible to see the holes. Longing. Rusted. Furnace. Etc.)

Still, it’s one thing to intellectually know about the titanium grip, the chill of cool Soviet precision; it’s another to feel it (not quite) on her skin. A pause, like Harper’s trying to understand what’s happening - and then Grant recovers, steadies her, moves on. It’s a good job of it; better than how he’d been doing before. Maybe he’s getting better.

“Jeeze,” she drawls, “I’m fine, babe. You’re such a fucking mother hen.”

“Oldest of four,” the man says, “I can’t help it.”

And it’s only a step afterwards, a missing beat as they start walking down the street together, that he realises he didn’t know that particular piece of information a moment ago. The memory hadn’t even come swimming up out of the abyss: it was simply suddenly there, absent then present, a gift from the universe bursting back to life.

So maybe talking to someone is good for him. A doctor would have things to say about it, probably: reawakening old neurons, lighting up parts of his brain that hadn’t been active in years. Maybe this was better, a faster way to come back to himself than empty rooms and quiet lonely drinks.

“Those heels can’t be practical.”

There’s a trick the Red Room has with their neural reprogramming (brainwashing, they call it). It’s hard - not impossible, but hard - to manufacture memories out of nowhere. It’s easier to paper over pre-existing ones - the actors change, the play stays the same. But now and then, the cracks show: mother hen isn’t something Petra Bulgakova says. It’s not something Harper Carlson says.

But somewhere, in the labyrinthine caverns of subconscious, Penelope May Parker still waits. (and waits.)

She rolls her eyes, grinning over - nothing out of the ordinary here, just a girl pleased that she’s going home with a cute guy. “Maybe not praaaaactical,” she says, vowels flat on the first syllable, dragging it out. “But I really hate having to crane my neck up at everyone.” And then, almost as an afterthought: “And they make my ass look great.”

Well-calculated, to get the Soldier thinking about her ass. And not about how reckless he’s being. Not about how she’s shifting her rings (one on her index finger, with a retractable needle and a knock-out drug, gets moved into position).

Petra plays him expertly, and he’s easy enough to play, not used to fending off this particular type of threat: the Winter Soldier had always been in-and-out, a brute fist punched through glass, leaving bullets and blood in his wake. When your brainwashed assassin is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. It’s not the subtle play, the social engineering, pushing the psychological buttons.

So they walk together as he leads the way towards his bleak little apartment on the edge of downtown, her leaning on his gentlemanly arm; at six feet even, Grant is tall enough to support her as they stroll. His nose crinkles into a smile.

“That’s a trap,” he points out. “If I don’t say your ass looks great, then I’m in trouble. So, humbly noted: your ass does look great.”

She hums, satisfied - Petra with how well the mission is going, Harper with the cute guy finally complimenting her ass. It’s not that she’s been trying to get his attention, but now that she has it, she’s not going to turn it down. At least, that’s for the friendly, flirty, somewhat reckless co-ed. The agent has other plans.

“Now I get to yell at you for perving out.” A grin, a flutter of eyelashes, and the trap is set. Something obvious. Teasing. Continue on with the verbal sparring, the back-and-forth, the way that banter steadily gets saucier as the night goes on. Seduction might not be Petra’s specialist, not in the same way it is for some Widows, but she’s done it many, many times.

“You talk to them much?” She asks. “Your brothers and sisters.” Innocent question.

“Mm.” A small noise, noncommittal, another slightest skip in the record where he’s not quite sure how to fill the silence before it turns too awkward.

He needs to pivot, get off the topic of his family and history— too many inconvenient questions without any real answers behind them, no real way to explain who he is, why did he ever think he could just have a normal night out with a cute girl—

“Not anymore. How about you? Any family bugging you with calls every day you’re overseas?”

for webbs.

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