(Might have went off script a bit, hope you like it!) (also won’t let me tag you)
“The Devil Wears Metal”
Mafia AU | Bucky Barnes x Reader | Part I – The Setup
(Trigger warning: ‼️ swearing, strong words ‼️)
⸻
You didn’t mean to kidnap the most dangerous man in the entire eastern criminal underworld.
Really, you didn’t.
It was supposed to be someone else. A small-time enforcer. Not a nobody, but not him.
But that’s the thing about chaos, it tends to reward the bold and punish the clever.
And you’d always been both.
⸻
It started with a lead. A tech trail buried under six firewalls and a VPN thick enough to piss off half the dark web.
A name, Sebastian, just that, listed on the guest log of a backroom poker game at The Lily, a private club hidden under the city’s bleeding veins. A name attached to a man who’d apparently extorted your friend for thirty grand and left him with a shattered kneecap for the audacity of asking for receipts.
You didn’t want justice. You wanted revenge. Reputation.
So you did what you always do, you built a plan.
You bugged the club’s plumbing system with miniature cameras disguised as moldy valves. You mimicked a service request to get your hands on the blueprints. You modified a small EMP grenade and rigged the exit scanner to glitch.
You even rehearsed a whole “fake escort” routine in front of your mirror.
(It was bad. You hated heels. But you committed.)
The plan was elegant in theory: sedate, extract, interrogate, disappear.
And it worked.
Except… well.
Wrong guy.
⸻
You don’t even remember how you got him into the car. One second, his back is turned to you, you’re pressing the needle to his neck in the private lounge hallway, murmuring a sweet “shhh, this’ll sting,” and the next, he’s a deadweight slab of muscle and… oh my god is that arm made of metal?
No, wait.
That is a metal arm.
You stare at it as you drive, knuckles white on the steering wheel. It’s not a prosthetic. It doesn’t have screws or seams or wires hanging out. No, this thing is fused with skin, sleek and polished black and gold, like it was custom-forged by a war god with a taste for vengeance.
You nearly swerve into traffic.
“Jesus Christ.”
You glance at him again: still slumped, still unconscious, hair falling into his eyes, mouth slightly parted like he’s dreaming of ways to kill you.
You mutter to yourself, “Okay, okay, don’t panic. Don’t fucking panic.”
You panic. Silently. Of course you do.
You spend the entire ride back to your warehouse in quiet, rapid, internal screaming.
Because here’s the thing:
You know weapons. You’ve read files. You’ve broken firewalls just for fun. And you know what that kind of tech costs. That’s not street-made. That’s not gang-level anymore.
That’s warfare.
And if he’s got an arm like that…
Then, well, you may have just kidnapped the devil.
⸻
The warehouse is cold. Dull yellow light spills over a single folding chair in the center of the concrete floor, surrounded by a perimeter of crude, hastily reinforced traps and failsafes.
You chain him up like a paranoid maniac: metal around his torso, ankles, wrists. You use steel cable. Zip ties. Handcuffs. You even Velcro his ankles together because, why not? At this point, you’re improvising.
He doesn’t stir.
You pace in front of him, hands on your head, muttering like a lunatic. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the-how did this happen?”
Your phone buzzes. A message from your friend Leo.
“You get him?”
You stare at the man in front of you. Sleeping like a lion in hibernation. A very handsome, potentially homicidal lion with a cyborg arm.
You type back:
“…Kind of.”
Damn, and you promised yourself you wouldn’t bite your nails anymore…
⸻
He wakes up seven hours later.
You’re standing at the corner of the room with your hand on a taser and your heart in your throat.
He blinks slowly. Then again. Then he groans, like someone waking up from a very intense nap.
“…Ugh. What the fuck is this, IKEA?” His voice is deep, rough like gravel and sin, laced with dry sarcasm.
You say nothing.
He looks down. Chains. Rope. Zip ties. Velcro.
“…Jesus, you are thorough.”
“Shut up,” you snap.
He lifts his head. Barely. “Ah. Yes. You must be my captor.”
“No,” you say, glaring, “I’m your worst fucking mistake.” Your voice breaks. Dammit.
“Ooooh,” he hums, eyes scanning you lazily. “Sexy.” He is unfazed, amused even.
“Shut up.”
He grins. Grins. Like he’s just been tied up in a cozy spa, not a literal warehouse dungeon.
“That’s cute,” he says. “Really. What’s the plan, beautiful? Ransom? Organs? You gonna shave my head and sell it to rich creeps on the dark web?”
You roll your eyes. “Please. I wouldn’t sell your hair, I’d burn it.”
He snorts. “No, not the hair.”
You pace. “You’re very calm for someone in your position.”
He shrugs, or tries to, limited by the restraints. “Let’s just say this isn’t my first kidnapping.”
You narrow your eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”
He smiles again, soft and slow. “Now that is the million-dollar question, sweetheart.”
⸻
You spend two days trying to find his identity.
No prints. No DNA in any public registry.
Facial recognition hits a wall.
And he wouldn’t say a fucking thing.
Even your contact in the EU’s encrypted database throws up a “NO MATCH” warning in red letters.
Meanwhile, your prisoner?
Eats the food you bring him like he’s on a lazy holiday (makes you feed him).
Makes jokes about your cooking.
Tries to flirt with you.
“You know, this metal arm’s not the only thing hard, by the way.”
“Say that again and I’ll tase you so hard your ancestors will feel it.”
“Kinky.”
⸻
But something changes on the third day.
You’re working on your laptop across the room, watching him through the camera loop you installed in the ceiling, just in case he tries anything.
He hasn’t.
In fact, it’s kind of annoying. He could get out. You know it. He knows it. That arm? The strength? The way he keeps testing the chains just lightly every few hours?
If he wanted to leave, he would’ve already.
But he hasn’t.
And that’s what scares you more than anything else.
You look up.
He’s watching you.
His eyes are darker now. Focused.
“You think you’re in control.” he says suddenly.
You blink, guarded now.
He leans forward, just a bit. “You’re not.”
You try to snort. Try to play it cool. “You’re tied up in my warehouse, buddy.”
“And you’re out of your depth,” he says, so quietly it sinks in like cold water. “You have no idea who I am.”
Your stomach knots.
He smiles. Slowly.
“You kidnapped the wrong man. Or maybe…” He tilts his head. “Maybe you kidnapped the Devil.”
⸻
It hits you in pieces after that.
The arm. The mannerisms. The accent that slips in when he’s angry.
The rumors.
The stories.
The fucking nickname.
You type one final keyword into your database. One you didn’t dare use before.
“Devil.”
The screen loads.
There’s no picture.
Just a file. One that’s been sealed, flagged, and wiped clean more times than you can count.
But there’s a name.
JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES
A.K.A. THE WINTER DEVIL
Status: UNKNOWN. Dangerous.
Eliminate on sight.
You stare at the screen.
Then you look at the man, still chained to your chair, smirking like he knows everything.
You whisper, “…holy fucking shit.”
He grins.
“That’s more like it.”
⸻
(To be continued… maybe)
