[Bucky Barnes; R] The Ink And Paint Club: Chapter 4 Character/Series: Bucky Barnes/Maria Hill; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: God, they are so lucky that they're dealing with idiots and some clever employees. Title: The Ink And Paint Club- Chapter 4: Alan Rickman Would Call You Weak Author:yuuo Word Count: 4052 Summary:They immediately found a problem.
They immediately found a problem. They had no idea where the owner's office would be, assuming she was even in there. They wouldn't have to go through the kitchen to get to them- even if there was a back way out of the kitchen, which there didn't seem to be, typically offices didn't require going through the kitchen and having to wear a hair net every time someone went back there.
Which meant there had to be an entrance through another 'employees only' door, and god knew where that might be. Probably right where the other gunmen were. Which were just something that Maria and Bucky didn't want to deal with. There were civvies out there. Getting spotted and having to engage would just be an unnecessary fuss.
"Know what would be good right now?" Bucky said, still staying a cautious library voice level, as they made their way back across the kitchen to where their now-dead man had entered from.
"I can imagine many things that would be good right now," Maria said.
"So can I, and most of them involve not being in a hostage situation," he said. "But right now, I'd settle for a distraction that's not going to bring a rain of bullets at our heads. The way to that office has to be just around the corner and I don't think we can get away with sneaking by."
A few seconds ticked by while he racked his brain on how to get to that office without someone getting killed, a thought process that died as Maria settled against the wall next to him. She held out her hand. "Comm, phone."
Whatever she was up to, he wasn't sure, but he obliged her, handing her the phone and the comm piece from his pocket.
She didn't say anything about what she was doing while she played with her phone, a process that took about thirty seconds before she handed both back to him. "Put on the comm. The phone's translator program is synced to it now. It may not be the best English you'll hear, but you'll be able to follow what's being said."
"Helpful," he said, pulling on the comm piece. She was right, the English didn't translate quite right, mostly problems with verb tenses, but he could understand what was going on.
"Boss, there are a cop outside," one voice said in his ear.
The voice of the man who'd used the overheads before answered, in what probably was English. "If he asks about the noises, say there was a malfunction in the radio system. Not gunshots."
He tapped the silent button on the comm and looked at Maria. "There's a cop outside. Boss guy just told one of his cronies to tell the cop the reported noises were electrical problems in the radio system. If this cop is at all smart, he'll take their word, and then call for back up behind their backs. Any cop that doesn't figure out that something must be going on when a popular supper club in Manhattan has its doors locked on a Saturday night at dinner time is an idiot and should be fed his badge with ketchup."
"That's our distraction, then," Maria said.
He frowned, trying to figure out what he was missing in her statement. She wasn't stupid, she wouldn't suggest that just one man talking to a cop outside would be enough of a distraction for them to both get out of the kitchen. "That still leaves the others in the dinning area."
"Which is where I come in. I want that cop to scream for that back up. Having law enforcement suddenly drawing guns on them would keep them busy and allow you to get to the office. I'll go out and encourage law enforcement to call for that back up faster than their suspicions can."
"No," he said quickly. "You're not endangering yourself. You are not a distraction."
The look she gave him was one that he was sure had been seen by SHIELD agents many times, that of a no-nonsense high ranking agent who didn't like her orders questioned by anyone but her superior. He looked for fear, for worry, for any sign in her eyes that he might use to keep her from doing this. But he saw none, and when Maria set her mind to do something, she was going to do it, and all of his Barnes stubbornness was going to mean jack and dick.
"I will be fine. It will be easier for you to convince the man in charge that you're crazy enough to push that button if I'm not there with you. If you're alone, then he can't call your bluff based on there being someone you care about around here. I will go out, I will make a clean shot at whoever I have a better angle for. A law enforcement officer will not mistaken that for an electrical problem. There will be back up, and quickly, and the resulting stand off will keep the terrorists busy."
"And you held hostage and in as much danger as the civilians will be once bullets start flying," Bucky said. "You're one person with one gun, you can't take down all of them. You are not fast enough to dodge bullets, and you're not wearing any sort of protection against them."
"It won't be for long," she said. "When you convince their leader that you're serious about detonating the place, have him tell the others to drop all their weapons. If you do it fast enough, they won't have a chance to harm anyone. I can get free and return to the delivery door and get out before law enforcement can get more coverage around the building."
He took a deep breath, considering the plan and hating himself for realizing that if timing was on their side, she was right, it was a good plan. "That will only work if I can convince the head that his button doesn't work, and he can't risk that mine does. And what if he knows the explosives are a joke? He won't care if I hit that button. We don't know if those were bluffs or not."
"It's a chance we'll have to take. You're armed, and you're just as deadly when you're not. If those were bluffs and he doesn't respond to the threat of the explosives, you can threaten him other ways to get his men to drop their guns." She leaned forward to look past him at the doors that suddenly seemed uncrossable. "I know it's chancy. We could both end up dead, but you and Steve take that risk every time you take a job. Just because I'm not Steve doesn't mean I can't keep myself safe while I work in another part of the job from you."
He winced. She'd hit a a nail pretty hard in his head; he wasn't trusting her to handle herself. And he couldn't entirely blame that on his affection for her. He was attached to Steve, more than her, and they risked each others' lives a lot. He was just being an old-fashioned sexist, something that had gotten him into trouble a couple times with Peggy by not trusting a woman without a man's protection. Old social norms were sometimes hard to break.
She could take care of herself.
"All right," he said. "You get yourself out of there as soon as you can. You'd better be at the delivery doors when I'm done scaring the shit out of the guy in charge."
She gave him a smile meant to be reassuring, but it just felt final to him. "I will be." She pulled her Beretta out of its holster on her thigh.
Bucky stood for just a few brief seconds, looking out the round window in the doors. No one seemed to be heading into the t-section area just outside the door. He crouched again. "We go out at once. You go right, the bar's that way. I'm taking the chance that the office is the other way. If it's not, we'll improvise."
"I've heard about your improvising," she said.
"Is that comforting or terrifying?"
"Both."
"Good." He pulled out his own Beretta, just in case things went wrong and that improvising was needed. "Ready? On three."
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
Go.
Bucky shouldered open the door, using his momentum to roll up back into a crouch going the opposite direction he'd been in. There was another 'Employees Only' door immediately to his left and he pushed through that. Behind him, he heard Maria fire off three shots, two more than she'd said. Damnit, woman. Shouts and gunfire followed and Bucky had to bite down the bile in his throat at the fear that one of those shots might hit Maria.
Once through the doors, he stood and broke into a run, pausing only to look into open rooms as he went by. There was the break room. Passed by a room with small lockers on top of each other; another employee room, likely for changing in and out of ties and jackets before and after shifts, parts of uniforms that didn't need to leave the building.
He hesitated at the door, the smell of powder strong in his nose. He drew his gun and stepped in, ready to shoot anyone that moved funny. He followed the pungent odor to a locker in the far back corner of the room. There was black powder on the lock, wrapped around the numbers and handle as if handled by someone trying too quickly to put in the correct combination.
With his metal index finger, he wiped off some of the powder and brought it close to his nose before withdrawing quickly. TNT powder. "Someone around here is very clever," he said quietly to no one, looking around for signs of life. He was now willing to bet that those bombs had been far more dangerous when they first entered the building. He tried to formulate a quick theory, but there was a clock in his head that started shrieking at him that Maria and the other hostages needed him to act quickly, so he abandoned the thought and left the room, running back down the hall.
Passed by the employee bathrooms. That actually made him wonder where the public ones were. He hadn't seen them. Too many bathrooms to have to clean. But the business was high priced and hoity-toity enough to have dedicated janitor instead of making the other employees set aside customer service to clean up after disgusting customers. So maybe not a bad thing.
There were a couple small offices; probably for the mid-level management, people who managed the books, handled customer complaints, handled employee issues, leaving the owner to deal with other parts of running a business. Whatever those were. Bucky didn't know and didn't care, just making notes of the use of rooms as he went by them on the off-chance they'd prove useful. They were otherwise discarded details.
There was one last door at the end of the hall, a sign on it saying 'C. Lachapelle' in the middle of the door. There, the owner's office. He paused outside the door, pressing his ear against the door, listening for signs that anyone was in there. There'd better be, or he'd have to go hunting and leave Maria in danger longer.
In his ear, he heard a lot of shouting in poor and broken English, frantic and poorly translated enough that he tuned it out. But he heard the bossman loud and clear, calling his underlings idiots for tipping off the cops. He said nothing about a specific woman being involved, although there was quite a bit of talk of threatening the patrons if the cops tried to make contact. Bucky hoped that Maria had managed to get out of trouble as soon as she'd caused it.
Now he just had to move fast enough to prevent a civilian casualty.
The voice in his ear he could also hear through the door. Good, he was in there. There was a woman's voice that accompanied the voice inside the office. "If this is the only threat you can be, my father will not give you the ransom you ask for."
"If he wants to not be responsible for the deaths of your customers, he will cooperate. This business is still wired to explode."
Oh good, an invitation for him.
Snapping the lock as he turned the handle, Bucky slipped in like a shadow, falling back on the Winter Soldier, the Hydra operative that had no problem eliminating anyone who stood between him and his contact. The dead stare of an assassin who knew nothing else.
He was greeted with a gun pointed at him. At the desk was a blond woman, the cold look she'd had very quickly melting into fear and confusion at the addition of another person. The man pointing the gun at him was pale enough to glow in the dark, sharp contrast to the dark hair, and the dark suit. What, did he think that terrorizing a supper club required him to dress up as nicely as the customers?
"Unless you are here to negotiate on Monsieur Lachapelle's behalf, I recommend returning to the dining hall," the man said.
Bucky looked at the gun as if it were a water pistol. It wasn't, and it was close enough to his face that dodging its bullet may not be possible. But he could move before the shot was fired, and reading the man's body language, he wasn't actually as used to using a dangerous weapon as he pretended. Bucky would see him moving to shoot before the man even knew he was going to.
Actually, why not just eliminate that potential threat now? Bucky was in motion before the mercenary could even think to pull the trigger, yanking the gun out of his hand and crumpling it with the mechanical hand, very much now exposed. See if this dumbshit didn't recognize him now.
Bossman pulled his hand away like he'd been bitten by a snake, fear in his eyes and his already pale skin managing to get a shade lighter, and when he spoke, his voice trembled, but Bucky had to give him the credit of at least trying to not sound terrified. "I didn't realize the Winter Soldier would put himself out in the public alone. Aren't you afraid of Hydra?"
"No," Bucky answered, and there was utterly no reason to not lie about that, or about the first issue. "Even assassins need to eat. I don't like being taken hostage."
Bossman glanced at the floor at his gun that looked like a mangled empty Coke can, and licked his lips as if they'd gone dry. "There are still explosives."
"Those ones you warned us about when your idiots started shooting like they were blind?" Bucky said. "I took care of that."
The way Bossman managed to pale yet another shade told Bucky that either he was a goddamn good actor, even in the face of a dangerous assassin, or he thought those explosives were strong enough to be a danger. Good. Whatever moron set those up had screwed him over.
"You disarmed them." That was a fear-driven statement.
"No." Technically he didn't, he just played watchdog while Maria did. Yet another lie Bucky had no problem telling. "Have you checked your detonator lately?"
Bossman's hand flew to his jacket's breast pocket, digging into it and pulling out a phone and staring at it. He looked desperate, must've been, because he started jamming his finger on the screen. He looked up at Bucky like Bucky just might start chewing on his head.
Bucky held up Maria's phone. Oh how he wanted to smile an evil smile at the man, but that wasn't the way the assassin did things. The assassin made you think that he'd do his job and not care who got hurt in the process. The assassin was ice. So he merely raised one eyebrow, challenging Bossman to call his bluff.
Bossman put up his hands in a placating manner. "You wouldn't destroy this place. That'd hurt your reputation."
"Hydra already did that," Bucky said, dropping his hand from holding up the phone, pretending to be prepping it to set off the explosives. Then he gave Bossman a steady look. "Captain American isn't here to hold my leash."
The woman had scooted her desk chair where she was sitting back into a corner, looking between the men, terrorized by the threats they posed. Or rather, that Bucky posed. Bossman had been thoroughly disarmed.
Bossman took in a deep breath. "What do you want?"
There, now they were getting somewhere. "There are police outside. I want you and all your underlings to go outside to greet them. And leave your weapons."
"They'll come for you too," Bossman said, desperation to get out of his current situation lacing his voice. "You're threatening to set off explosives."
How Bucky wanted to drop the Winter Soldier routine and call the man an idiot for having weak explosives and thinking that Bucky controlled big ones, but he wasn't going to show all of his cards. "Will they?" He pulled out his Beretta and pointed it at Bossman. "This would let you off easy. It's your only chance to get out if you don't want the place to blow on you."
Bossman may have been an idiot, or a bluffer that had insufficient supplies to make that bluff worth anything, but he apparently was smart enough to know when to tuck his tail and run. He held up his hands, taking care to try to get around Bucky to leave without getting a bullet to the brain. "We'll- yes, we'll disarm ourselves," he said, and Bucky could hear one last lie in that tone.
Bucky tapped the stolen comm on his ear. "I borrowed this. I'll be able to hear you and your men, so no funny shit. Get out."
Bucky didn't envy Bossman's position. But it was his own fault for trying to take people hostage. Especially taking the Winter Soldier hostage. Bucky didn't like being in that position.
Once safely around Bucky, or as close as he could be, Bossman made a break for the open door and ran out like the world's most famous Hydra weapon was going to chase him like some hellhound. Bucky let him leave, watching him carefully as he went down the hall of employee areas. When he'd left through the employees only door, Bucky returned his gun to its holster and put Maria's phone in his pocket.
The woman in the corner still watched him, pressed as far back against the back of her chair as possible. Bucky didn't make eye contact until he could hear that Bossman had taken the warning about not trying anything clever to heart. Once he was satisfied that the police could take care of things from there, Bucky took off the comm and tossed it on the desk. "Your place is clear," he told the woman. "You're welcome."
Not eager to get engaged with the police on the issue, Bucky turned and hurried down the employees only hall, slipped down behind the t-section wall, glancing over the wall just long enough to try to spot Maria. When he didn't see her, he swore to himself, but the fact that she wasn't visible but the mercenaries were and were heading towards the door told Bucky that she was probably safe and with the other diners. Not ideal, but better than dead.
She could take care of herself. And she'd promised she'd be meeting him at the delivery door, so while he still had a chance to get out before the police came in, he ducked into the kitchen and out through the door to the delivery hall.
He saw no sign of her at the door, and worry made a sick lump in his stomach and his adrenal glands to pump out more hormones to elevate his heart rate and his muscles so tense he swore they would snap.
A noise behind him made him jump about five feet into the air, give or take a few inches, and he whirled mid-jump, Beretta pulled out and ready to fire at whatever threat that noise represented.
The maintenance door to the stage slid open and Maria partly emerged from the darkness under the stage. She looked on edge as she pulled herself out from under the stage. "Bucky! Thank god."
Relief crashed in with a plethora of chemicals pounding through his veins as he put his gun away and helped her the rest of the way out and up from her hiding place. "Are you okay? You didn't get hur-"
She didn't give him a chance to answer, backing him against the wall and greeting him with a fierce kiss, with hands gripping his coat lapels like a lifeline. "You're safe," she said after she was forced to break the kiss to breathe. She was still breathless, her eyes glassy from fear and whatever had just ignited that kiss. Natural results of too much adrenaline and too much danger, and a need to touch and make sure that the other was real, that the bullets and hiding hadn't killed them or separated them.
His mind responded in kind, worry mixing with hormones as he pulled her tight against him and kissed her lips, her cheek, her neck where he buried his face. "I should be the one saying that, you're the one that went out there with a gun."
They stayed like that for several seconds as panic died but adrenaline remained high before the sounds of more police sirens approaching took their attention. Bucky grabbed her hand. "Come on, let's get out of here before our way out is blocked."
She entwined her fingers with his, her palms wet from sweat and shaking and now Bucky wondered what was causing that shaking. Her nerves against his hand lit his on fire and if they didn't have to get out before anything could interrupt them, he'd suggest that the smooth stone wall of the building was a fine place to sate the fear-driven desire.
But it really wasn't, especially not with cops coming their direction. So they ran, Maria's footsteps a dull thud instead of the click clack of high heels. She'd left her shoes somewhere back in the club.
They'd reached the Tower before they both felt they'd gotten far enough away to not get pulled into a police investigation. They leaned against the outside wall, breathing hard from the run, from fear, and hormones that were releasing smoke into the air between them. He'd never worked with a woman in a dangerous situation like that, not one he had the freedom to touch, to kiss, to be with. The chemical reaction was unexpected and he wanted more of it, just for that moment.
Maria didn't seem to mind when Bucky turned, trapped her against the wall and gave her a fiery kiss to melt nerves and leave a warmth in the lower belly that would ache to be satisfied. He wasn't going to invite himself to her apartment, but he wanted to. If she'd allow him to. The way she matched his fire, hands sliding into his jacket like she wanted to remove it right then and there said she just might.
He broke the kiss, not moving to let her out of his trap, hands on the wall on each side of her head. They should really at least get inside. "I'll take you home to your apartment," he said, giving her a chance to say no to anything more until they'd gotten their heads screwed on straight and discussed pushing into this territory in their relationship if she wanted.
It took a lot of will power to make himself do that.
"Only if you stay there with me," she said, voice low, breathing in uneven gasps. "Call Steve, tell him not to wait up for you."