#bamf!bucky

Each time, Bucky rolled with it, letting his joints stay loose and ready, relaxing as much as he could. Tensing up made it hurt more. He’d taken a beating before. The fifth time Ty went for his face, Bucky twisted his jaw at the last second, teeth coming down on Ty’s hand. He got a pretty good bite in before Ty hit him in the gut with his free hand, forcing the air out of his lungs.

Bucky laughed, soft, ugly. “Tony’s stronger than you think he is.”

“You fucking bit me,” Ty exclaimed, holding up his bloody hand with astonishment.

“Bet your ass I did,” Bucky said. “Smack me again and see if I don’t bite your damn fingers off.”

“You want me to get the kid, is that it?”

“Look, asshole, we both know this is all a show,” Bucky said. He hitched in a breath and spat more blood. “You’ve marked me up. Take your fucking picture that you’re gonna show Tony and get this fucking game going. I’ve read this script before. I know how this ends.” With me and Steve dead. With Tony a couple million bucks short and left to mourn us.

“Huh,” Ty said. “You’re not as stupid as you look. Too bad for you.” He pulled Bucky’s battered phone out of his pocket. The screen was cracked, but Ty held it up and snapped a photo, then punched up Bucky’s contact list. Bucky heard the ping as the file sent. Christ.

“You want to listen to your lover beg for your life?” Ty asked, conversationally. “I can put it on speakerphone.”

Oh, god, Tony. Bucky shunted his gaze to the side, not answering.

Ty didn’t slap him this time; he’d learned that lesson. He walked slowly around the chair and kicked Bucky’s ankle. Hard.

Bucky grunted. He flexed the metal arm, carefully. His fingers moved, clicking the plates into place. He twisted his wrist.

“You didn’t answer the question, lover boy.” Ty circled him again, kicked him in the knee.

God, that fucking hurt. Bucky clamped down, a guttural moan barely escaping his throat, leaning forward in the chair as far as he could. He twisted his arm at that last moment, too, felt the thin plates on the surface of the metal wrist biting into the tape. Bucky shook his head, then touched his tongue to his lip. “Not really, no,” he said.

Ty grabbed a handful of Bucky’s hair, jerked his head back so far that his throat was fully exposed and vulnerable. “You think you’re so tough, don’t you? Won’t scream, won’t beg, won’t ask for your lover. But I know where you’re weak. So you better give me what I want, or your kid is going to pay for it.”

He should. Bucky knew that he should. Beg, cry, shake. Ty was a monster, and what he fed off of was fear. This was the man who’d tortured Tony – for years – and Bucky was having a really hard time giving him any satisfaction at all. Bucky snarled, “Yeah, well, what do you want?”

That got a smug grin out of Ty and he tugged on Bucky’s hair again. Pain crawled along Bucky’s scalp and he bared his teeth.

“That’s better,” Ty said, “but not quite good enough. I wonder what it would take to make you cry. Wanna find out?”

“Don’t you have something better to do? Like make a ransom demand?” If Bucky and Steve got out of this alive, he was really going to need to have words with Tony about getting better villains in his life. This one talked too much and was too fucking overdramatic. It would have been pathetic if Bucky hadn’t been so god damn terrified. He bent his elbows, shrugged his shoulders.

“More fun to make Tony worry about it,” Ty said. “He knows what I did to him, imagine what he thinks I must be doing to you.”

“You want someone to cry, where’s your little friend, Justin Hammer? He seemed really good at it,” Bucky pointed out.

Ty rolled his eyes in disgust. “You are no fun. Go on, Aldrich, get the kid. Let’s see if we can’t break our boy, here. Would you like that, Daddy? Watching Aldrich hurt your son? Maybe, if you beg real pretty, I might let you suck me off rather than shooting him. Sound like fun to you? Let’s see if we can get you real good at crying. I bet we can.”

“You sick fuck,” Bucky snarled, twisting as much as he could in the chair, the tape pulling at his skin. “Don’t you fucking touch him.” His voice went up, louder, as Killian disappeared down the hallway. “Steve! No, god damnit, you leave him alone!” He yanked at his arms, wrenching at his hands.

“Oh, come on, Daddy,” Ty said, grabbing his hair and practically ripping it out. “I know you can suck dick with the best of ‘em. And you don’t want Aldrich to hurt your son. Just let it happen. You know–”

Bucky threw himself backward in the chair, rocking it back onto two legs. For just a moment, it seemed that Ty would yank him back and it would all be over but the bleeding, but then the front chair leg tagged Ty in the calf and he let go. Bucky wrenched the metal arm, listening to the servos screaming, and tore the tape just before he hit the ground.

Air rushed out of his chest and his lungs were crying for oxygen, but he didn’t have time for breathing. Bucky rolled, hands free.

A quick lunge with his left hand and what was left of the chair exploded into splinters. He took a great gulp of air. Ty brought the gun to bear, but Bucky was already moving. He kicked Ty’s legs out from under him and a shot went off.

Then another, further away, and Bucky’s blood turned to ice-water. “STEVE!”

Ty pushed himself up, scrambled to his knees and brought the gun up. Bucky lunged, got the palm of his left hand flat against the muzzle. He turned his wrist, ripping the gun free from Ty’s hand, breaking Ty’s fingers in the process.

Another twist and Bucky had the gun pressed to Ty’s temple. “Call him off. Do it now.”

Ty closed his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

“I will fucking shoot you, I swear to Christ,” Bucky said. When Ty still didn’t say anything, Bucky wrenched the gun down, pulled the trigger. The pistol was a low caliber, not as explosive as Killian’s monstrosity, but it made a short, flat whap! noise and then Ty started screaming. Blood gushed from the hole in his leg.

“Call. him. Off.” Bucky pressed the hot muzzle of the gun against Ty’s throat.

“Aldrich!” Ty yelled, still whimpering.

Nothing. No screaming, no gun fire, nothing.

Bucky’s heart stopped beating. He couldn’t breathe. He glanced at the gun in his hand. “Steve!”

Slowly, Bucky climbed to his feet. He didn’t want… did not want to see. He’d watched his own goddamn arm get blown off, seen the fingers twitching in the dust as his blood spilled down his side, but he’d never done anything harder than get to his feet, knowing that if he went down that dark hall, he might find his son’s body.

There was silence, broken only by Ty’s agonized whimpers. That man, that man was responsible for all this fear and pain. Bucky turned, very slow, the gun coming up. He pressed the muzzle against Ty’s forehead. Go on, he thought, I really, really want to shoot you.

Ty met his gaze, angry and burning with hostility and fear. His face seemed to dare Bucky to do it, dare him to finish it. To descend all the way to Ty’s level. Go on, do it.

Bucky’s finger tightened on the trigger.

He knew exactly what would happen if he pulled the trigger. The bullet would go straight through Ty’s skull, splatter his brains all over the floor. The body would slump, just so; there wouldn’t even be enough time for Ty to scream before he was dead.

Just like Sarah.

No. He couldn’t. Bucky could not do that to another human being, not and retain any of his own humanity. Life and death was one thing; shooting Ty now? That would be murder, no matter what justification he tried to pin on it.

“Steve,” Bucky said, shaking his head. He twisted the pistol in his hand and walked away from Ty Stone without a look back.

Killian was on his hands and knees in the hall, shivering. The doors to what might have once been a laundry room were open, but the room beyond was empty. Sticky wads of tape stuck to the floor and door.

“Where is he?” Bucky asked, bringing the gun down to point at Killian. “Where is my son?”

“Suit,” Killian muttered, his voice low and indistinct. He looked stunned and dizzy, not a threat.

“What?”

Bucky whirled, a movement in the room behind him dragging his attention away from the wounded man on the floor to a man who was climbing in the window.

Bucky blinked. A fit, middle-aged man, gently balding, wearing a suit and carrying… a taser? Was just getting his footing in the room. The man took off his aviator glasses and grinned. He looked… vaguely familiar. “Mr. Barnes?”

Killian was attempting to rise off the floor and Bucky put his foot down in the middle of the man’s back, forcing him back to the floor, not taking the gun off the newcomer. “What’s it to you?”

“I’m Phil Coulson,” he said, putting the taser gingerly on the ground in front of him. “Mr. Stark is my boss; I’m on security team three. Ten minutes ago, I personally put your son in Mr. Stark’s car, after tasering this idiot who tried to shoot me.” He nodded toward Killian, keeping his hands in sight.

“Tony’s here?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Barnes,” Coulson said. “Your son used his medical alert necklace almost an hour ago to let us know about your predicament. We’ve been tracking him. We’re um… here to rescue you. Where’s Stone?”

Bucky jerked his chin toward the front room. “He’s wounded, but he might be able to run. Unarmed, though.”

Coulson nodded. “If you’ll let me, I’ll bring backup in through the front.”

“Oh,” Bucky said, glancing at the gun in his hand again. He lowered it halfway, still uncertain and on high alert. “Sorry.”

Coulson touched his ear. “Killian’s down. Mr. Barnes is injured, but functional. Breach the front room. Come on, sir, let’s get you out of here.”

“What about–”

Coulson grinned, recovered his taser from the floor and shot it at Killian, who went down in a drooling heap. “I really, really love getting to use this thing.”

Steve wasn’t always in a cuddly mood; as he’d been getting older, he’d been more resistant to spending long periods of time sitting in Bucky’s lap. Fortunately for Bucky’s state of mind, that wasn’t the case at the moment. As Bucky and Tony sat in Detective Jones’s office and answered questions – carefully controlled by Tony’s exceptionally tall lawyer, Jennifer Walters – Steve was perfectly happy to sit in Bucky’s lap the entire time, leaning against his father’s shoulder and not quite sleeping. He kept jerking himself awake as soon as his eyes drifted shut, glancing up to make sure Bucky was still exactly where Steve had left him, and then drowsing again. Bucky knew exactly how Steve felt. It would be quite a while, he imagined, before he was willing to let his son out of his sight again.

Tony wasn’t much better, honestly. He kept one hand on Bucky’s wrist for the entire interview and when Bucky slung an arm around Tony’s shoulders, he could feel his boyfriend trembling minutely.

The detective didn’t mean to be thoughtless, Bucky decided; she just had a classic case of foot-in-mouth. Or maybe she was trying to make them angry in an attempt to stave off their nervous breakdowns, because he couldn’t imagine many more things that were harder to deal with than two grown men and a boy, all on the verve of various degrees of panic attack.

Bucky gave a statement. Steve said a few things, none of which Bucky wanted to hear. They had tied up a kid with asthma and stuffed him in a laundry room? Bucky almost started having a goddamn asthma attack of his own after hearing that.

“The captain is considering charging you and your security team with vigilantism,” Detective Jones said, crossing her legs. She had black combat boots on and Bucky found himself concentrating on the smashed wad of dirty pink bubblegum between her treads.

Tony gave her a flat look. “You know that’s a mistake,” he said. “You get that up in front of a jury, lady, and I’m a goddamn action hero. You think any American jury is going to convict me for tasering one guy and breaking into an abandoned building? I’ll pay for the damages, but you’re never in a million years going to get anything heavier than trespassing to stick to me. And when I go to the papers – note that I said when, not if – the city will bury you for it.”

Jones spread her hands. “Those decisions aren’t in my wheelhouse,” she said. “Way above my paygrade.”

“What’s the captain want, in this pretend little exchange of favors for not making me pay my lawyers?” Tony leaned back in the chair, calm, cool. Bucky could still feel Tony shaking, the vibrations in the tiny couch were rattling his bones. “Because I’m telling you, I like my lawyers and I don’t mind paying them to make your captain unhappy, if he’s going to make me unhappy.” On Tony’s other side, Ms. Walters smiled a shark’s toothy grin.

“Vigilantism is dangerous, Mr. Stark,” Detective Jones said. “I’m not casting aspersions on your security, obviously; they’re very professional. That being said, if this story gets spread around, citizens who do not have their caliber of training are going to be more likely to try to jump in and that’s going to lead to people getting hurt, and I don’t think any of us wants that. You and Mr. Barnes have both made waves through your recent heroism; we’d like you to use that influence responsibly.”

“I see,” Tony said. “You want me to lie–”

“No,” Jones said. “Just… don’t make a production out of it. Can you do that, Mr. Stark? Stay out of the papers for a while? It’s an election year.”

Tony laughed. “Me? Stay out of the papers? You have got to be kidding me. Do you even know who I am?”

“Try?”

“Sister, I try every goddamn day. I have a whole fucking team of people who try to keep me out of the papers. Jesus Christ,” Tony swore, getting to his feet and pacing around. “Seriously? You’re fucking kidding me?”

Bucky sighed. “Well, now you’ve done it,” he said to the detective. “Your captain’s going to be lucky if the first thing he does after he leaves here isn’t call a damn press conference.” Which Bucky totally didn’t want to do. He wanted to go back to Tony’s penthouse, have a shower to get the stink of Ty Stone off his skin, and then fall asleep on the sofa with his son sprawled out on his chest and hope to Christ that neither of them had any nightmares.

Bucky’d gotten a little bit used to the way people treated Tony like he was a package of explosives wrapped up in eccentric billionaire and quirky genius. Most of them reacted with some sort of exasperation and annoyance or, on the other end of the spectrum, laughing wildly at his bad jokes and sucking up. Jones merely leaned back in her chair with an aura of Job Well Done and winked at Bucky. She fucking winked at him. What the shit did that mean?

“I’m hungry,” Steve said, suddenly. Which Bucky kissed him for, because Tony’s anger melted away and Jones’s smug self-satisfaction was gone in an instant.

“If we’re not being detained,” Tony said, and waited pointedly until the detective nodded. “Then we’ll be on our way. You know where I am, if you need anything else. Aside from ‘stay out of the papers’ because if I can’t fucking manage it for my own privacy, I’m certainly not putting extra effort into it for New York City’s finest.”

“Really, what was that about?” Bucky stopped in the door as Tony led the charge toward the elevator.

Jones slipped him a business card. “This is my sister, Trish Walker. She’s a radio talk show host.”

“Oh, you are an evil, evil woman,” Bucky said, tucking the card in his front pocket.

She winked at him again.

~as always, @tisfan