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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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?”
Grant latches onto each memory as something to be treasured - dissected later, certainly, once he’s in private and able to think about his past without breaking down in front of a pretty girl. But Petra, Petra feels the stirring of a fifteen-year-old mutate deep within her bones, and years of Red Room training (and torture) forces her to suppress. To deny that they exist, that it was all weak bullshit anyway, that Madame will be furious when it’s in her report, so best to just bury it now.
She blinks. Wrinkles her nose. Shrugs.
“It’s nice being - you know - on my own for a bit.”
“Yeah,” Grant says, as if he understands, even though he doesn’t.
He is, he suspects, horrifically lonely. He’s seen old photos of the man he used to be, and even in those immediate days after his rescue, the pictures blurry and taken in the middle of a field camp, the man shaky and pale and with bags under his eyes from exhaustion and captivity, Bucky Barnes was surrounded by friends and compatriots. His arm slung over Steven Rogers’ broad shoulder, the Howling Commandos around them, an irrepressible weary grin on his face. There had been some sort of camaraderie there, with all of them at least going through hell together.
He wonders what that felt like.
There’s so many reasons which might have a college girl happy to leave home behind, though — from the more innocuous to the more sinister — so he doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry, and they keep sauntering along. It’s summer, but the night is cool enough that she won’t freeze in that halter top. He’d probably offer his jacket otherwise. (Idiot. Predictable.)
“So how long are you in Bucharest, Harper?”
They’re drawing closer to his building; he navigates the streets from memory, not having used a smart phone his whole time on the run. He learned by pulling out paper maps and walking, just walking, mapping each new city beneath his boots whenever he flees to the next one.
Harper isn’t lonely; she has her sisters. The other girls in the sorority, elsewhere at a football game, cheering on Romania and Italy indiscriminately. Petra has her sisters, the other widows, the ones that sneer at her when her back is turned, jealous of how she has Madame’s favor. Petra isn’t lonely, she has Madame Bulgakova. The woman gave her purpose, lifted her form a life of mediocrity and selfishness, showed her how to be useful. How to be powerful. How to be deadly.
Petra isn’t lonely. She has her mission. Recover the Winter Soldier. Glory to the Red Room. Kill your distractions. Weak begets weak.
(And a fish doesn’t know what water is.)
“Couple more days,” she says. These are the lies that don’t matter; no man wants to hear about plans further out from the next morning. She’s learned this lesson well: from the other Widows, from her briefings, from the bed of corpses. Besides, by this time tomorrow, she’ll have rendezvoused with the Red Room, mission finished. Maybe she’d have some wine to celebrate. “But I might come back. There’s some cool stuff here.”
Talking about the future is dangerous. He can’t promise that he’ll still be in Bucharest if she comes back. He can’t tell her what countries he might move onto next, either. Can’t just drop in a blithe Hey, look me up, maybe we’ll hang out again,
so he resolves himself to just enjoy this standalone evening for what it is. They reach his building, and he fishes out the metal key for the front door. No fancy intercoms or digital keypads here, it’s all charmingly analog, purposefully-chosen. No security camera unblinking from the corner of the entryway.
Grant shoves his shoulder against the building door, “It sticks a little,” he says, apologetic, and leads the way up the creaking stairs to his place on the third floor. (This apartment block is across from an empty field; far enough that a sniper can’t get a good bead through his windows, but high enough that he could jump out to one of the adjacent buildings. He knows. He’s checked.)
When he leads the way in, there’s a faint sheepishness to him which would apply no matter what: a bachelor, self-conscious about his living space. It’s a studio apartment, all one room. A lumpy brown two-person sofa right by the kitchenette, drab peeling walls, a mattress right on the floor but neatly-made. He winces, seeing the whole place through someone else’s eyes for the first time.
“Sorry, I, uh,” jesus christ, “I don’t host much. You want some water?”
Or something harder, but he’s not trying to sound like he’s plying her with alcohol.
Petra’s been in more shithole apartments than she can count. Dives hastily rented for a mission; abandoned condos in condemned buildings for a sniper’s den; little hideaways she shares with a corpse. Sometimes one she put there. So stepping into the Soldier’s sorry excuse for a home does little to phase her - she’s pretty sure she’s seen that mass-produced throw rug before.
But Harper, Harper needs to feel special. Needs to make Grant feel special. So she does a little visual sweep, lets the emotions play out openly on her face: horror, amusement, fond indulgence. “Grant,” she says. “Babe, you need to get a bedframe. If nothing else so you’re not just a freakin’ cliche.”
(She’s slept on rocks, on dirt, in branches, on rooftops. She doesn’t care. Even her cot back at headquarters is purposefully not too comfortable).
“Water would be good,” she says, slowly taking off her purse to drop it next to the door. “Kinda drank a lot, huh?”
Kinda. He flashes her a rueful smile, before he heads for the kitchenette to rustle up two glasses, and fill them with cool filtered water from the fridge.
“Bedframes are expensive, and you don’t technically need one,” Grant points out, and if you didn’t know the truth, it sounds plausible enough. A young man saving money, something right out of /r/malelivingspace.
Despite the bleakness, though, there’s a few small homey touches which soften the barren look of the room: a throw blanket hanging over the couch, a bowl of fresh fruit from the market. The mattress, such as it is, is tidy and clean and made with military precision, all the edges tucked in. He automatically scoops up a small stack of notebooks and shoves them into a battered backpack, and hangs it on a hook on the wall, before looping back around to hand Harper her glass of water.
Obviously more fidgety than he was in the bar, some of that charisma rattled. It’s his first time bringing someone home since— Well. Since decades. He’s a little nervous. Better stop thinking about it.
Half-jokingly: “You’re in an Airbnb. That’s gonna be an unrealistic snapshot of most people’s lives, c’mon.”
This - this is good, isn’t it? People banter, tease each other, give and take shit about wall hangings and mismatched silverware and bedspreads. She’s certain (well, nearly certain) that the Soldier wouldn’t risk vermin. They are alike in that way; for those that spend half their lives in field missions and with fleas, a clean bed is paradise.
Harper meanders around, exploring the meager studio room. She doesn’t overly pry, doesn’t open up any notebooks or root through the cabinets. She just takes it in. Looks out the window, a girl checking out the view - out of sniper range, what a clever boy. With how much she’s been camped out away from him, watching from afar, it’s only natural to want to enjoy the satisfaction of finally, finally making it inside.
She sips the water, slow, deliberate, and plucks a pluot from the bowl. “It’s, uh. Rustic. C'mere.”
C’mere, she says, a gentle tug at the metaphorical leash, and something in the Soldier and James Barnes alike is wired to obey and drift back over to her side of the room. Ready to comply.
Grant sets his glass back down on the table, barely touched, clearly having just been a pretense to keep his hands busy. But then he’s come closer and standing in front of her.
She’d be short, if it weren’t for the heels. He’d noticed that on their walk over, with his arm slung over the girl’s shoulder, but it’s something different to be sizing each other up face-to-face, too close in each others’ personal space. He finally reaches out, his gestures just as slow and deliberate, and hooks a finger in the loops of her trousers to draw her closer.
“I’ll pass on the critique to the landlords,” he says, warm.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.”
no subject
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.”
no subject
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.
no subject
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.”
no subject
“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.
no subject
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.”
no subject
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.”
no subject
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?”
no subject
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?”
no subject
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 - "
no subject
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.
no subject
(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.”
no subject
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.”
no subject
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).
no subject
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.”
no subject
“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.
no subject
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?”
no subject
Grant latches onto each memory as something to be treasured - dissected later, certainly, once he’s in private and able to think about his past without breaking down in front of a pretty girl. But Petra, Petra feels the stirring of a fifteen-year-old mutate deep within her bones, and years of Red Room training (and torture) forces her to suppress. To deny that they exist, that it was all weak bullshit anyway, that Madame will be furious when it’s in her report, so best to just bury it now.
She blinks. Wrinkles her nose. Shrugs.
“It’s nice being - you know - on my own for a bit.”
no subject
He is, he suspects, horrifically lonely. He’s seen old photos of the man he used to be, and even in those immediate days after his rescue, the pictures blurry and taken in the middle of a field camp, the man shaky and pale and with bags under his eyes from exhaustion and captivity, Bucky Barnes was surrounded by friends and compatriots. His arm slung over Steven Rogers’ broad shoulder, the Howling Commandos around them, an irrepressible weary grin on his face. There had been some sort of camaraderie there, with all of them at least going through hell together.
He wonders what that felt like.
There’s so many reasons which might have a college girl happy to leave home behind, though — from the more innocuous to the more sinister — so he doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry, and they keep sauntering along. It’s summer, but the night is cool enough that she won’t freeze in that halter top. He’d probably offer his jacket otherwise. (Idiot. Predictable.)
“So how long are you in Bucharest, Harper?”
They’re drawing closer to his building; he navigates the streets from memory, not having used a smart phone his whole time on the run. He learned by pulling out paper maps and walking, just walking, mapping each new city beneath his boots whenever he flees to the next one.
no subject
Petra isn’t lonely. She has her mission. Recover the Winter Soldier. Glory to the Red Room. Kill your distractions. Weak begets weak.
(And a fish doesn’t know what water is.)
“Couple more days,” she says. These are the lies that don’t matter; no man wants to hear about plans further out from the next morning. She’s learned this lesson well: from the other Widows, from her briefings, from the bed of corpses. Besides, by this time tomorrow, she’ll have rendezvoused with the Red Room, mission finished. Maybe she’d have some wine to celebrate. “But I might come back. There’s some cool stuff here.”
no subject
so he resolves himself to just enjoy this standalone evening for what it is. They reach his building, and he fishes out the metal key for the front door. No fancy intercoms or digital keypads here, it’s all charmingly analog, purposefully-chosen. No security camera unblinking from the corner of the entryway.
Grant shoves his shoulder against the building door, “It sticks a little,” he says, apologetic, and leads the way up the creaking stairs to his place on the third floor. (This apartment block is across from an empty field; far enough that a sniper can’t get a good bead through his windows, but high enough that he could jump out to one of the adjacent buildings. He knows. He’s checked.)
When he leads the way in, there’s a faint sheepishness to him which would apply no matter what: a bachelor, self-conscious about his living space. It’s a studio apartment, all one room. A lumpy brown two-person sofa right by the kitchenette, drab peeling walls, a mattress right on the floor but neatly-made. He winces, seeing the whole place through someone else’s eyes for the first time.
“Sorry, I, uh,” jesus christ, “I don’t host much. You want some water?”
Or something harder, but he’s not trying to sound like he’s plying her with alcohol.
no subject
But Harper, Harper needs to feel special. Needs to make Grant feel special. So she does a little visual sweep, lets the emotions play out openly on her face: horror, amusement, fond indulgence. “Grant,” she says. “Babe, you need to get a bedframe. If nothing else so you’re not just a freakin’ cliche.”
(She’s slept on rocks, on dirt, in branches, on rooftops. She doesn’t care. Even her cot back at headquarters is purposefully not too comfortable).
“Water would be good,” she says, slowly taking off her purse to drop it next to the door. “Kinda drank a lot, huh?”
no subject
“Bedframes are expensive, and you don’t technically need one,” Grant points out, and if you didn’t know the truth, it sounds plausible enough. A young man saving money, something right out of /r/malelivingspace.
Despite the bleakness, though, there’s a few small homey touches which soften the barren look of the room: a throw blanket hanging over the couch, a bowl of fresh fruit from the market. The mattress, such as it is, is tidy and clean and made with military precision, all the edges tucked in. He automatically scoops up a small stack of notebooks and shoves them into a battered backpack, and hangs it on a hook on the wall, before looping back around to hand Harper her glass of water.
Obviously more fidgety than he was in the bar, some of that charisma rattled. It’s his first time bringing someone home since— Well. Since decades. He’s a little nervous. Better stop thinking about it.
Half-jokingly: “You’re in an Airbnb. That’s gonna be an unrealistic snapshot of most people’s lives, c’mon.”
no subject
This - this is good, isn’t it? People banter, tease each other, give and take shit about wall hangings and mismatched silverware and bedspreads. She’s certain (well, nearly certain) that the Soldier wouldn’t risk vermin. They are alike in that way; for those that spend half their lives in field missions and with fleas, a clean bed is paradise.
Harper meanders around, exploring the meager studio room. She doesn’t overly pry, doesn’t open up any notebooks or root through the cabinets. She just takes it in. Looks out the window, a girl checking out the view - out of sniper range, what a clever boy. With how much she’s been camped out away from him, watching from afar, it’s only natural to want to enjoy the satisfaction of finally, finally making it inside.
She sips the water, slow, deliberate, and plucks a pluot from the bowl. “It’s, uh. Rustic. C'mere.”
no subject
Grant sets his glass back down on the table, barely touched, clearly having just been a pretense to keep his hands busy. But then he’s come closer and standing in front of her.
She’d be short, if it weren’t for the heels. He’d noticed that on their walk over, with his arm slung over the girl’s shoulder, but it’s something different to be sizing each other up face-to-face, too close in each others’ personal space. He finally reaches out, his gestures just as slow and deliberate, and hooks a finger in the loops of her trousers to draw her closer.
“I’ll pass on the critique to the landlords,” he says, warm.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)