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philtstone · 2 years

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Sam & Bucky, “grabbing onto their arm”

soooo ... i watched "why didnt they ask evans?" remembered that i loved agatha christie novels and immediately landed here. obviously wave the historical accuracy away bc i did just enough research for Flavour but not much for anything else. premise: everything remains the same as canon except bucky didnt fall off the train & a whole lot of characters were born much earlier in the 1900s. this isn't technically finished yet but it's enough to justify answering the prompt; i want to try to get the latter half of this "part" done & perhaps if the fates align even write a part 2 to actually complete the story but for now have this!! if you'd like to see more pls let me know <3 thanks for the prompt zainab love u

Sam figures this is just typical. So he’d decided to go to New York – get that loan. Hell, they need that loan. Boy, don’t do it, Sarah had said, but Sam figured it was his right just as anyone else’s, and Stark talked all that talk about his new GI grant. They won’t have you, Sarah said, and like an idiot Sam went anyway. He went, and he sat himself down in that nice fancy apartment building lobby across the room from the saddest lookin’ white fella he’d seen in a while, which was saying a hell of a lot. He got up, walked over, he spoke to the nice receptionist, he wrote his name down.

Of course, he was right – they would’ve taken him. Had the paperwork done up and everything. Stark may have been a bit crazy, hell if Sam knew, but he had money to throw at things.

Only then, the very next day, Howard Stark died.

HEADLINE EXCLUSIVE: HOWARD STARK FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY BEHIND MANHATTAN APARTMENT

The New York Times, Monday, October 12th, 1947

Nation mourns death of eccentric millionaire inventor and war hero Howard Stark, found dead of a gunshot wound this morning in the alleyway behind his Manhattan home. With him, also dead, was socialite fiance Maria Caruso. Police have yet to identify the nature of the death but have not ruled out suicide. However, sources confirm that the firearm found at the scene was not Stark’s, but rather belonged to Stark’s comrade and fellow veteran Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes.

The thing about Peggy is that she understands him, which is just a bitch and a half sometimes.

“You threw the weapon out.”

She’s repeating this, flatly, but with enough inflection that Bucky comprehends the are you perhaps a massive idiot implied therein. Peg would say it like that too — use perhaps and massive and arch her eyebrows.

Bucky presses his hands harder where they’re clutched at his temples and grimaces. “Look, I wasn’t thinking clearly, alright?”

“James.”

James, full name, not Jim like when she’s being chummy and of course Agent Margaret Carter of His Majesty’s Royal Service never quite got around to following Steve’s lead on the Bucky front. Bucky grimaces harder. Peggy will stare and be sardonic and, God help him suspicious until he explains.

“I dunno what you want me to say, Peg – it was there in the drawer and I couldn’t bear lookin’ at it anymore.”

Her resultant expression is just a touch too understanding for his taste.

“How the hell would I know that tossing a Colt into the Hudson in the middle of the night would get Howard killed?” Bucky adds, to move past it.

Minutely as possible Peggy flinches. Balls of steel, he’s always said. The other guys thought the same, but none of them had the guts to say it aloud. Speaking of other guys –

“Dugan’s coming over.”

“Like hell he is,” Bucky says.

Peggy takes an elegant drag of her cigarette. She’s sitting at the dull brown edge of his made-up bed and being careful enough that the ashes don’t spill. What difference that’ll make Bucky’s not sure. His apartment’s the definition of sad. Becca nearly cried last week when she visited, but then instead of crying yelled at him ‘til he relented and got a pillow.

“Evidently,” says Peggy, still on the topic of Dum-Dum, “he has not considered the double agent angle. His wife made you casserole.”

“Mm,” says Bucky, grim. He walks over to his meager kitchen, pulls a dusty bottle out from the cabinet and unscrews it. “Gonna get him killed one of these days.”

“Given my ongoing conviction that you are not in fact a spy –”

“Jury’s out on you though,” Bucky says, raising the bottle at her.

“-- you do realize that you are a prime suspect in the murder of our close personal friend.” She blows out. “If we can’t rely on our comrades, we’re rather fucked.”

“I am, you mean.”

Her mouth turns mulish and she looks away to the window then back. Maybe she did mean we, lumping the two of them under the tarp of some morbid umbrella. Steve’s dead and gone and sacrificed nobly, isn’t he.

“You didn’t kill Howard and he didn’t damn well kill himself,” says Peggy, steely. “I’d like to know which bastard did.”

Bucky puts his drink down. Sighs. Crosses his arms.

“So?”

“I’ll poke around at SSR –”

“You really do think it’s a spy –”

“Stay here. Word is they don’t want this in the press just yet, which, well. Neither of us were born yesterday.”

“You callin’ me old, Agent Carter?” he asks, just on the right edge of bratty.

Peggy steamrolls forward, “Don’t do anything untoward, please.”

“You’re the one sitting on the bed of an unmarried man,” Bucky says. He walks over to the window and tugs it open, letting cigarette smoke out and giving him an eye to the dank alley below. It’s spring and the sunlight’s pale and his room’s not too high up; were anyone to jump, they’d barely sprain an ankle. And Howard’s fucking dead. Bucky turns back and flicks a thumb under his chin. “C’mon,” he says, “gimme the rest of your cigarette. I’m the one wanted for murder.”

“Christ,” Peggy mutters, getting to her feet.

She hands the cigarette over anyway, and Bucky spends the minute it takes her to leave wiping off the lipstick stains. It’s a lost cause, more or less.

He has to put it out, against the peeling windowsill.

Sam’s rung the service bell a third time when the receptionist finally appears.

“Concierge’s assistant,” she corrects in a trill voice. Her curls are pinned tightly and her skirt waist more so. The red of her lipstick clashes garishly with her hair. Her nametag reads Dolores. “Can I help you?”

“Um, yeah,” says Sam, “Ma’am.” He grips his bag. “I'm here to inquire about my loan.”

The lobby he’s in is just as fancy as it was the first time around, with tall ceilings and crystal chandeliers and fine imported rugs on the floors. It was pretty empty last time too, quiet and genteel the way rich white people pretend to be. Only last time Sam was kept company not just by Miss Dollie’s red lipstick but the scowling, oblivious man she kept batting her lashes at; this time the place is empty. Police have roped off the elevator and even the white folks’ plush seating area is out of bounds. Dollie looks pastier than usual.

“Oh,” says Dolores, “oh. From –”

“Yesterday,” Sam says, slow and expectant.

“You’d better go home,” says Dolores.

“They took my name down,” says Sam, a second time. “I wrote it on paper and everything.”

Dolores has busied herself with some stationary thing under the desk and distractedly says, “I just don’t think dead people can give loans. It’s a shame, don’t you think? He was a real dreamboat.”

“Ma’am – Ms. Dolores –” She stops looking wistful about Stark’s erstwhile good looks and refocuses, “Now c’mon. I paid train money for this. My sister’s got two kids – our family’s business is on the line. I’d like to talk to someone.”

“I’d guess you oughta get a lawyer,” Dolores says mournfully.

“Dollie,” Sam starts, “can I call you Dollie?” She perks up, which is inconvenient, as Sam remembers that he knows better than to flirt with a white woman. “Don’t they have some kind of insurance in place?” he asks. “His family – estate, somethin’? I mean, Howard Stark, a guy like that wouldn’t leave millions lyin’ around.”

Not that Sam knows much about men like Howard Stark. But if the police won’t bother listening to him, he’s just gotta run with his own theories.

“Jeez,” says Dollie, sniffing. “I couldn’t tell you. The whole back door’s swarming with cops. No one’s even gone through the rooms yet.” And then she says, “Oh – oh!” And bursts into tears.

Sam hovers awkwardly on the other side of the reception desk and offers her his ratty handkerchief until she has collected herself enough to wave him off with one hand and stumble away to the bathroom. Her low heels thump unevenly on the carpeted floor as she goes. He straightens the tie of his dress uniform and looks around again. He can hear voices, but far past the desk, closer to the alley door and the mail room. Hell, he’d bet even the cleaning staff have been either sent home or brought in for questioning.

“Ain’t this just our luck,” Sam mutters.

There’s no one around. The elevator is right there. Sam takes a deep breath and heads upstairs.

Upstairs is fancier than downstairs in the sense that Sam’s been in lobbies before but has never been in the type of suite that takes up a whole floor. The tall gilded windows look out on nearly all of Manhattan. Someone – he guesses the same police who told him to stop wasting their time, they had better things to be dealing with – has taped off the entrance to each room, but other than that, Dollie was right: it’s more or less untouched.

Which makes sense, ‘cause there’s a whole lot to touch. Sam can barely see the bedroom (with its big four-poster bed) or the bathroom (with its marble counter) because there is stuff everywhere. There’s a painter’s easel with a feminine aura to it in the corner and paints laid out, slowly drying, and yesterday morning’s newspaper. A large cylindrical contraption moves back and forth beside the desk, over the carpet in one corner, like someone forgot it there; it emits a loud suctioning noise (Sam can see the carpet hole forming) while steaming a smoking jacket to misshapenness at the same time. The coffee machine has three levels, one each for cream, milk, and sugar; the coffee smells burned. These are not the weird things. The weird things are the three stacks of metal drawers emitting a strange humming noise, and the industrial sized ice box, and the half-deconstructed bicycle sitting on top of the desk with what looks like a freakier version of a machine gun strapped to the handlebars. It has wires and hydraulics and everything comin’ out of its ends.

“Just check the desk and leave, Sam,” Sam mutters to himself, pushing down his nerves. You’re the fool who got yourself into this, says Sarah’s voice in his head.

She ain’t wrong.

The glossy desk is smaller than Sam expected. He checks it; two drawers with locks on them, and the third opens to a couple loose lead pencils rolling around. He supposes an important man like Howard Stark wouldn’t keep his papers sitting just anywhere. Under the desk, maybe?

Nothing. Not even a damn cardboard box.

He straightens, hums at the locked doors. In front of him a lopsided chalkboard reads CADILLAC IN OUTER SPACE???? ASK JARVIS in giant block letters.

“Going around wastin’ my time …” Sam mutters, picking his bag up and rubbing behind his neck. “Maybe we do need a lawyer.”

Then he narrows his eyes.

There.

Right there.

Someone has picked the lock.

The first drawer sits just off its latch and the second has scuff marks under where the key goes in. “Well, shit,” he mutters. He gets back down on his knees. There is definitely a splinter, right down the middle of the second lock, like someone wrenched at it when a gentle picking didn’t do the job. “Now why the hell would he have to do that if he’s got a key?”

Sam’s habit of asking himself rhetorical questions is very suddenly put on the spot when, instead of the silence he usually anticipates, he is answered by a faint creak from the foyer beyond the study door. Sam freezes. He doesn’t think his dress uniform is enough to stop him getting arrested if anyone were to find him here now. Then again, with these locks and the general strangeness of the situation, arrest could be the safer option. Scooping up his bag, Sam slowly rises to his feet and pads softly around the desk, just barely missing the steam-cylinder and its jacket (it lets out a sad whistle), and slips a small pocket knife out from the inside of his left sock. He stalls at the doorframe, trying to breathe as quietly as he can. There’s definitely someone on the other side.

Inhaling sharply, he pounces.

“Oomph!”

“Shit!”

On instinct Sam grabs the arm that swings at him. He brings his knee up and his elbow down and there is a moment where they grapple, with strong emphasis on the moment part – very suddenly Sam finds his arm knocked out of the way and himself grabbed by beneath his chin, and slammed into the foyer wall like his cousin Deedee’s flour sack doll, so hard that all the breathe leaves his lungs in one fell swoop. His hat gets knocked off of his head with the force of it and falls to the floor.

Sam blinks. There is a scruffy, pale face in front of him, which features two big blue eyes that are blinking right back, looking equally startled.

They stay frozen like that for the space of two heartbeats. Sam’s fingers tighten where they’re fisted at the guy’s collar, refusing to yield. He’s pretty sure his knife has skidded under the shoe rack.

He really liked that knife, dammit.

“Who the hell are you?” asks the man suddenly, both loud and Brooklyn about it.

“Funny,” wheezes Sam, “I could ask you the same thing.”

He releases Sam, which is nice of him. Stumbling, he moves a few steps back, and looks quite suddenly more bewildered than before. He’s not much taller than Sam is, with dark floppy hair that hangs over one eyebrow and a frame like a heavyweight boxer. Despite his startling strength – Sam aint exactly the smallest of men – there’s an exhaustion that sits fragile under his eyes and a tense, well-concealed tremble in one arm. There’s something very familiar about his face. His slacks have scuffs at the knees and he’s wearing a lumpy-looking knit sweater that does little to mask what Sam’s dress greens are plainly revealing to him – that whoever he’s just run headlong into, trespassing in a dead guy’s bedroom, is a fellow soldier.

Or was, anyway. No more war to fight and die in. Sam tugs at the hem of his jacket. It’ll be a pain in the ass to steam again, and Sarah will raise hell about it ‘cause he’ll beg to borrow her steamer. They don’t get all that nice starching stuff at the dive motels Sam can afford.

“No one’s supposed to be up here,” insists the man, still looking baffled.

Sam straightens and rubs at his jaw, which feels like it just got caught in an industrial press.

“Sorry to disappoint,” says Sam, “but I am. Why are you here?”

“I asked first,” says the man, so unselfconsciously mulish that Sam can only stare.

“I didn’t just slam me into a wall.”

“You came at me with a knife!” protests the guy, which Sam thinks is a little unfair; that knife was kind of useless. He narrows his eyes. He oughta pick his hat up from the floor, but he figures it’d be kind of stupid to let his guard down. They stand there, eye to eye, at impasse. After the weird-looking carpet cleaner has whistled three times the man says,

“You don’t look like a German spy,” muttered, like he’s really thinkin’ about it.

“Seriously?” splutters Sam. He says this so forcefully that the other guy has the nerve to look a little offended. But now, come on – come on, Sam thinks. It’s a fair question. Only Sam’s been having a really difficult forty-eight hours, so he doesn’t appreciate it.

He decides to consider the situation a bit more fairly; how does he know this crumb hasn’t been having a tough time, too?

It’s here that something big and important feeling clicks in Sam’s head. He’s seen that scowl before – just yesterday, ignoring poor Miss Dollie.

And just this morning, in the papers plastered all over his motel lobby.

“Oh,” says Sam, “you gotta be kidding me.”

But alas, there’s no kidding to be had.

“From the paper – they think you killed him, man!”

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes pales three shades under what little tan he has, but otherwise doesn’t react.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says instead, a divot deepening between his thick eyebrows. “It isn’t safe.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” says Sam. “Some guy just grabbed me by the throat.”

Barnes does not seem to find this amusing. Instead, he looks a funny cross between ornery and miserable, and sets his jaw to considerable mulish effect. Sam hums to himself. Fact of the matter is, Barnes has had plenty of opportunity to kill Sam so far and hasn’t taken advantage of it. If he really was guilty – Sam thinks, briefly considering the warped mind of a cold-blooded killer, a few inches removed from the necessities of soldierhood – wouldn’t he want to get rid of any witnesses or evidence?

And yet here Sam is, very much not dead.

“Well … you don’t look like a murderer,” he says aloud, slowly, but keeps his arms crossed. Somehow despite his sardonic tone and clear mockery (at least, that’s what Sam hopes is coming across), there is something profoundly relieved about the expression that flickers across Barnes’s face.

Then it is back to its customary scowl.

“You gotta leave,” he repeats firmly, pacing once, back and then forth. Sam watches him carefully; there’s that tremble again, along with a steady, even tone and deliberate eye to the skyline behind them. More than just Barnes’s face is familiar.

But Sam is still annoyed.

“Through the window?”

“There’s – a stairwell.”

“Through the stairwell definitely crawling with cops?”

“For the love of God –”

“I am just listing my options, here.”

“Just leave, go away, pretend you never saw me,” Barnes says, waving two hands in front of Sam’s face like he’s batting the whole morning away, and looking harassed. “Okay? Jesus, it ain’t that hard.”

“Pretend I never saw you, creepin’ around the apartment of the fella you’re supposed to have killed,” Sam says. “Yeah, no, I’m gonna tell somebody.”

“Seriously?!” It’s Barnes’s turn to sound offensively incredulous.

“Or,” Sam says, “you could tell me what’s goin’ on.”

There’s a long pause. Sam hardly thinks his voice is friendly – if anything, he’s annoyed as hell – but Barnes opens his mouth, two beats, a sudden vulnerability stuck to his chin. Too vulnerable for whatever Sam’s asking. In that split second it sucks the breath outta the room.

Sam doesn’t have any idea what it is that’s just made Barnes’s head whip around until a bullet explodes into the lobby mirror above their heads.

“Fuck!”

Two rough hands shove him back into the study and Sam nearly knocks over the artillery bicycle; he looks up in time to see Barnes throwing his lanky frame against the opposing wall and holding his arms up over his head, yelling loudly in annoyance when another three bullets spray into the beautiful engraved wood above their heads and nearly bring down the chandelier. The coffee maker starts whistling out of control. Sam groans.

“Gimme your gun!” demands Barnes, which is beyond unhelpful.

“I don’t have a gun,” says Sam, waving one hand in the air to demonstrate this. “Where’s your gun?”

“I threw it in the fucking Hudson!” says Barnes. He looks like a guy who’s had a very long forty-eight hours; Sam can relate. “I’ve been framed for murder, remember?”

“We actually never established that that’s the truth,” Sam feels the need to point out, a second before another bullet tears through the poor over-steamed suit jacket.

Bang.

“Common sense!” exclaims Barnes.

Bang.

“Somethin’ you don’t seem to have much of!” yells Sam.

Bang.

“THERE IS A MAN SHOOTING AT US.”

Bang.

“HOW IS THAT MY FAULT?!”

Jiminy Christmas, says Sarah’s voice in Sam’s head. His sister is not gonna be happy about this.

They scramble for the front door as another two bullets sound off. Sam just barely has the time to reach down and grab his hat, and can just make out a slight, shadowed figure ducking back behind the wardrobe in the bedroom before they burst into the elevator lobby – right in time for the elevator door to ding open, and the tomato-red of the huffing police commissioner’s face to peek through.

Barnes has grabbed him by the arm again and pushed him into the stairwell going back downstairs before Sam has any time to react.

And, maybe importantly, before any of the many police officers squeezing themselves out into the hallway can see him.

Huh, he thinks, a second before the other man’s bulky shoulders burst through the door in turn, knock haphazardly into Sam, and half tumble them down the staircase with a garbled, “Come on, move!” tacked right onto the end.

“Can’t run anywhere with you fallin’ on top of me!” Sam says.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

And for all that Sam was raised Southern Baptist, he has to agree.

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