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.
Continued satisfaction. A wry smile, a cat playing with a mouse. She doesn’t say it, he doesn’t need to hear it, but strike a cryogenically frozen dog long enough and it knows what to do. Good boy.
“Great,” Harper says, setting her own glass down. She still holds onto the fruit in her hand, tapping rings against the skin, bracelets jangling with each move. “See if you get that deposit back.” Another joke, that sort of effortless, self-centered remark a girl from California should be good at.
She bites into the pluot - tart and sweet and juicy. He tugs at her shorts (but only the loops, what a gentleman!) and Petra obliges. They’re close now, enough that she can smell the alcohol on his breath, the inexpensive and bland deodorant he uses. She takes another bite, letting the juices drip on her lips.
That’s right, soldier. Think about it. Let your imagination run wild.
If he were still under HYDRA’s thumb, a regimented machine under tight rein, operating only within incredibly narrow parameters of what he was expected to do— then the Soldier would have been all strict focus and hyperfixation. He would care about the mission and nothing else but the mission, with no room for distractions. He’d never notice a pretty face walking around on a pair of heels, unless he was being assigned to kill it.
But here, Bucky Barnes is distracted.
With that boot finally off his neck and free to look where he likes and admire what he wants, he’s putty in her hands, lonely and touch-starved and subject to falling for exactly this: he leans in and reaches out to swipe some of the sticky pluot juice off the side of Harper’s chin, the corner of her lips, and then he finally closes the gap with a kiss.
It’s too early to declare the mission a success, but Petra allows herself a moment of absolute smug satisfaction. If pressed, if the target takes notice, it’s no matter: Harper’s happy to get laid by a handsome, tall American. Surely, he can overlook the hum of satisfaction in her throat, the way her lips curl when she’s kissing him back.
She moves quickly (too quickly? physically, a shade too fast?), dropping the fruit and letting it roll on the ground. Harper grabs the collar of his shirt, bunching the fabric in her fist, and pulls him forwards - down, further into her embrace. Her other hand moves up, so she can drag a finger on the sandy stubble of his jawline and up into his hair -
And, as a bonus, so she can get the knockout injection closer to his neck. Wait for the right opportunity, which should be coming -
The kiss deepens, perhaps a little surprisingly fast; he’s used to women from a century ago who could still be brazen, but it’s been a while. His mouth opens against hers, hungry, and Harper hauls him closer by the neck of his shirt and he makes a small noise into her lips, warm and amused.
A moment later, James can’t even consciously say what’s wrong with this picture. Because it’s not conscious, just some undefinable gut instinct (a spidey sense, if you will). A slight angle of her hand which isn’t right, her hand floating but her palm not flattening against his neck for some reason, the weight of something in her fingers and something glassy brushing the edge of his unruly hair because he hasn’t cut it lately enough. He’s realising it too late: there had been something in her hand while he was distracted by the pluot in the other one. Effective sleight-of-hand, tremendously well-trained,
but he’s been trained for longer.
The cold press of a metal needle. It punctures skin, and he reacts without realising it. Hard-wired muscle-memory, all the times again and again and again that HYDRA had shot him with sedative and tranquiliser, a single sharp impact like a bolt-gun to the head of a factory cow, as cold and impersonal as that, darkness and oblivion swallowing him up in ice and putting him to sleep over and over and over, he is so fucking tired of being asleep —
He jerks, his metal arm swinging up to slam Harper’s away from him. Something goes winging out of her hand, clattering on the floor. His neck is bleeding. He didn’t decide to do this; his body had reacted without him reviewing and approving the decision, all the programming of the Soviet machine still kicking in, and thank God for it, apparently.
But Petra Bulgakova is well-trained (even if her experience is measured in years, not decades), so maybe there's a way to salvage this. She's clever enough to keep in character – little Harper looks confused, put off that the cute guy she'd been making out with has pushed her away. “Hey – what the fuck?”
Maybe if her voice squeaks just right, things will be alright. If she rubs her forearm where the Soldier had smacked it away,bruise already forming. If she looks put out and pouty and pathetic, and -
Oh, he's bleeding. Well, at least the injection worked. Maybe? Call it fifty-fifty. She could go all Florence Nightingale - baby did I hurt you, I knew that ring was a cheap piece of crap - and take a look at the wound. But no, that was a full counter, he could tell it was purposeful -
Stall. All she needs to do is wait until the knockout drugs kick in. (Somewhere inside her, a memory that the Red Room didn't have current information for what it took to subdue the Soldier, they were going by an old dose, one that he might've built a resistance to - )
“Ow - ow!” She holds her wrist, bending down like she's hurt. A little tremor in her tone, some dampness in her eyes, and the Widow uncoils like a spring with an uppercut to the Soldier's annoyingly perfect jaw.
There’s a brief moment where the Soldier’s instincts are warring with (James’, Bucky’s): part of him is still in fight-or-flight mode and ready to throw down, while the other part of him trips on Harper’s dewy eyes and feigned wounded paw, and it makes him want to apologise and step forward. Take her wrist, check what damage he did. Was it all a mistake, a stupid mortifying misunderstanding —
That second instinct, the single second of stuttering hesitation, throws him off enough that the punch collides with his jaw.
A crack of startling pain, his head snapping to the side — oh, she’s strong, stronger than she should be, that feels like the serum or something like it — and the rest of those foolish weak impulses fall away like scales from his eyes. The Soldier’s metal hand, the left hand of HYDRA, snaps out again and clamps straight onto her white throat: gloved fingers tightening, trying to compress a wind pipe, crush her breathing, suffocate her. The blunt approach.
(A normal human likely wouldn’t be able to wriggle or thrash out of it, but she isn’t normal, is she?)
He’s silent. He’d always been silent, when he worked.
So, the funny thing? Strong as the impact was, she was still pulling her punch.
Being a Widow is about perfect control: of emotions, of the job, of your body. In one of her first training sessions, Petra punched the broad-shouldered sneer of a man hard enough to pulverize his jaw. From then on, it was drilled into her: Leave no mark. Hide who you are, what you can do. Your talents are not yours; your talents, and your life, belong to the Red Room.
The Soldier’s hand wraps around her slender neck, and Petra stamps down on the instinctual panic. Again, control. She grabs at the metallic wrist, squeezing, trying to see if she can dislocate - no go. There’s a moment between them, when her wide eyes lock with the Soldier’s narrow, impassive gaze, and she gurgles something that might be a laugh.
Her grip tightens, steadying herself, and she lifts her entire body off the ground. He’s strong enough to hold her, yes - but when her torso curls in on itself in a second, when her thighs slam into his neck, it’s with enough force to send him staggering back. Enough force for an opportunity to wrench her neck out of his iron grasp, to gasp for air and cartwheel off of him.
He rebounds off his kitchen counter, a sweep of arm accidentally colliding with the abandoned glass of water, where it rolls onto the floor and shatters. Glass ricochets off their legs. For a moment, some long-dead humour stirs upon realising that they were making out just a minute ago and how the fuck did this go so wrong so quick,
but there’s something in that particular move with the thighs which makes his gaze narrow in suspicion. That acrobatic, balletic cartwheel. He’s been almost choked out by a specific redhead’s legs often enough that he just has to ask:
“Are you a Widow?” James demands, frowning at her. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about already, with HYDRA and SHIELD alike coming after him —
She is as still as silence, posture hardened into battle readiness. Like a coiled snake prepared to strike, waiting for its opponent to make a move, analyzing which of a dozen different responses would be most appropriate. Grant – James – the Soldier – asks the question of the hour. Damn Romanoff, that fucking little turncoat, for the intel she's offered up to the enemy. Well, her handlers say she's the best since Romanoff. Petra says she's even better. Time to prove it.
The snake sheds its skin. Harper Carlson melts off of her: gaze narrows, gin spreads across her face like oil, the relentless energy of a devil-may-care horny co-ed dissipates. “Oh, obviously.” Even the accent's gone: SoCal vocal fry replaced with her (not) natural tongue. “Just like I told you. Men, all the same. You've had your fun - “ He throws a punch, and Petra steps to the side easily. “Running around. A little taste of being your own man.”
She ducks under the next blow, sweeping a kick to his legs. He stumbles, but doesn't fall – no matter, it puts her in a position to leap, taking a few steps up the wall to backflip over him, landing on his back with an arm around his neck. Chokehold.
“But we are not our own, Winter Soldier. We belong to the Red Room, you and I. Come home.”
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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 - "
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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.
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(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.”
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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.”
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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).
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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.”
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“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.
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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?”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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?”
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“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.”
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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.”
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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.
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“Great,” Harper says, setting her own glass down. She still holds onto the fruit in her hand, tapping rings against the skin, bracelets jangling with each move. “See if you get that deposit back.” Another joke, that sort of effortless, self-centered remark a girl from California should be good at.
She bites into the pluot - tart and sweet and juicy. He tugs at her shorts (but only the loops, what a gentleman!) and Petra obliges. They’re close now, enough that she can smell the alcohol on his breath, the inexpensive and bland deodorant he uses. She takes another bite, letting the juices drip on her lips.
That’s right, soldier. Think about it. Let your imagination run wild.
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If he were still under HYDRA’s thumb, a regimented machine under tight rein, operating only within incredibly narrow parameters of what he was expected to do— then the Soldier would have been all strict focus and hyperfixation. He would care about the mission and nothing else but the mission, with no room for distractions. He’d never notice a pretty face walking around on a pair of heels, unless he was being assigned to kill it.
But here, Bucky Barnes is distracted.
With that boot finally off his neck and free to look where he likes and admire what he wants, he’s putty in her hands, lonely and touch-starved and subject to falling for exactly this: he leans in and reaches out to swipe some of the sticky pluot juice off the side of Harper’s chin, the corner of her lips, and then he finally closes the gap with a kiss.
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It’s too early to declare the mission a success, but Petra allows herself a moment of absolute smug satisfaction. If pressed, if the target takes notice, it’s no matter: Harper’s happy to get laid by a handsome, tall American. Surely, he can overlook the hum of satisfaction in her throat, the way her lips curl when she’s kissing him back.
She moves quickly (too quickly? physically, a shade too fast?), dropping the fruit and letting it roll on the ground. Harper grabs the collar of his shirt, bunching the fabric in her fist, and pulls him forwards - down, further into her embrace. Her other hand moves up, so she can drag a finger on the sandy stubble of his jawline and up into his hair -
And, as a bonus, so she can get the knockout injection closer to his neck. Wait for the right opportunity, which should be coming -
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A moment later, James can’t even consciously say what’s wrong with this picture. Because it’s not conscious, just some undefinable gut instinct (a spidey sense, if you will). A slight angle of her hand which isn’t right, her hand floating but her palm not flattening against his neck for some reason, the weight of something in her fingers and something glassy brushing the edge of his unruly hair because he hasn’t cut it lately enough. He’s realising it too late: there had been something in her hand while he was distracted by the pluot in the other one. Effective sleight-of-hand, tremendously well-trained,
but he’s been trained for longer.
The cold press of a metal needle. It punctures skin, and he reacts without realising it. Hard-wired muscle-memory, all the times again and again and again that HYDRA had shot him with sedative and tranquiliser, a single sharp impact like a bolt-gun to the head of a factory cow, as cold and impersonal as that, darkness and oblivion swallowing him up in ice and putting him to sleep over and over and over, he is so fucking tired of being asleep —
He jerks, his metal arm swinging up to slam Harper’s away from him. Something goes winging out of her hand, clattering on the floor. His neck is bleeding. He didn’t decide to do this; his body had reacted without him reviewing and approving the decision, all the programming of the Soviet machine still kicking in, and thank God for it, apparently.
“What—”
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But Petra Bulgakova is well-trained (even if her experience is measured in years, not decades), so maybe there's a way to salvage this. She's clever enough to keep in character – little Harper looks confused, put off that the cute guy she'd been making out with has pushed her away. “Hey – what the fuck?”
Maybe if her voice squeaks just right, things will be alright. If she rubs her forearm where the Soldier had smacked it away,bruise already forming. If she looks put out and pouty and pathetic, and -
Oh, he's bleeding. Well, at least the injection worked. Maybe? Call it fifty-fifty. She could go all Florence Nightingale - baby did I hurt you, I knew that ring was a cheap piece of crap - and take a look at the wound. But no, that was a full counter, he could tell it was purposeful -
Stall. All she needs to do is wait until the knockout drugs kick in. (Somewhere inside her, a memory that the Red Room didn't have current information for what it took to subdue the Soldier, they were going by an old dose, one that he might've built a resistance to - )
“Ow - ow!” She holds her wrist, bending down like she's hurt. A little tremor in her tone, some dampness in her eyes, and the Widow uncoils like a spring with an uppercut to the Soldier's annoyingly perfect jaw.
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That second instinct, the single second of stuttering hesitation, throws him off enough that the punch collides with his jaw.
A crack of startling pain, his head snapping to the side — oh, she’s strong, stronger than she should be, that feels like the serum or something like it — and the rest of those foolish weak impulses fall away like scales from his eyes. The Soldier’s metal hand, the left hand of HYDRA, snaps out again and clamps straight onto her white throat: gloved fingers tightening, trying to compress a wind pipe, crush her breathing, suffocate her. The blunt approach.
(A normal human likely wouldn’t be able to wriggle or thrash out of it, but she isn’t normal, is she?)
He’s silent. He’d always been silent, when he worked.
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Being a Widow is about perfect control: of emotions, of the job, of your body. In one of her first training sessions, Petra punched the broad-shouldered sneer of a man hard enough to pulverize his jaw. From then on, it was drilled into her: Leave no mark. Hide who you are, what you can do. Your talents are not yours; your talents, and your life, belong to the Red Room.
The Soldier’s hand wraps around her slender neck, and Petra stamps down on the instinctual panic. Again, control. She grabs at the metallic wrist, squeezing, trying to see if she can dislocate - no go. There’s a moment between them, when her wide eyes lock with the Soldier’s narrow, impassive gaze, and she gurgles something that might be a laugh.
Her grip tightens, steadying herself, and she lifts her entire body off the ground. He’s strong enough to hold her, yes - but when her torso curls in on itself in a second, when her thighs slam into his neck, it’s with enough force to send him staggering back. Enough force for an opportunity to wrench her neck out of his iron grasp, to gasp for air and cartwheel off of him.
“Stay down, pretty boy.”
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but there’s something in that particular move with the thighs which makes his gaze narrow in suspicion. That acrobatic, balletic cartwheel. He’s been almost choked out by a specific redhead’s legs often enough that he just has to ask:
“Are you a Widow?” James demands, frowning at her. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about already, with HYDRA and SHIELD alike coming after him —
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The snake sheds its skin. Harper Carlson melts off of her: gaze narrows, gin spreads across her face like oil, the relentless energy of a devil-may-care horny co-ed dissipates. “Oh, obviously.” Even the accent's gone: SoCal vocal fry replaced with her (not) natural tongue. “Just like I told you. Men, all the same. You've had your fun - “ He throws a punch, and Petra steps to the side easily. “Running around. A little taste of being your own man.”
She ducks under the next blow, sweeping a kick to his legs. He stumbles, but doesn't fall – no matter, it puts her in a position to leap, taking a few steps up the wall to backflip over him, landing on his back with an arm around his neck. Chokehold.
“But we are not our own, Winter Soldier. We belong to the Red Room, you and I. Come home.”
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