#captainwinterquake

“Punk.” Bucky finished weighing the kiwis, then moved on to the plums. “By the way, where’s Daisy? Haven’t seen her since we got here.”

“I think she’s over at the butcher getting some steaks,” said Steve, vaguely recalling her plans to do a stir fry later that night. “Let’s finish up here and then we can go look for her.”

When all the necessary produce had been selected, bagged, and weighed, Bucky wheeled the almost full cart ahead of Steve towards the back of the supermarket. They each grabbed a few things along the way, cookies and chips and whatever empty calories they could get away with keeping in the pantry. Daisy had a basket full of fresh meat when they found her by the seafood. She was chatting with a man not wearing an apron or nametag, meaning he wasn’t an employee. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except Steve had never seen this man before. One look at Bucky told him he was equally stumped.

The man showed Daisy something in his wallet. She smiled and spoke kindly before he turned his cart towards the canned food aisle and they said goodbye. Daisy waved when she spotted them. “Hey guys! I got the steak and I also grabbed some ribs. They were on sale. I was thinking we could also get salmon? I haven’t had fish in a while”

“Sounds great,” said Steve. “Who were you talking to just now?”

“Just an old friend of mine,” she said while checking the price for a pound of Atlantic salmon. “We were in the same orphanage for a while before he got adopted. I may have had a little crush on him.”

“Is that so?” Bucky said, folding his arms. “Do we need to have a talk with him?”

“Knock it off, Buck,” Steve said, though it was a weak attempt at being the mature one and they all knew it.

“Are you guys seriously jealous?” Daisy asked, eyebrow raised.

“No!” They said in unison. Bucky glared at Steve, who glared back so hard his face hurt.

Maybe they were a tiny bit jealous.

Daisy shook her head. “Men, I swear…”

Bucky snaked an arm around her waist. “We just love you so much, Doll. Don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me. He was showing me pictures of his wife and their new baby,” Daisy said. “And at the risk of feeding into your male egos, you two have completely ruined me for all other men. No one will ever satisfy me like you do.”

“Thank you, our egos are pleased,” Bucky said, puffing out his chest. Steve would be lying if he said he didn’t instinctively do the same thing. “What do you guys say when we’re done, we go get some pizza?”

“I could go for a meat lovers,” said Steve.

“Okay, but you guys had better not eat all the mushroom pizza again before-” Daisy paused as she looked into their cart. The entire top layer was nothing but Oreos, Doritos, and ice cream sandwiches. She shot them a look. “Really?”

Bucky shrugged innocently. “We saved some space for your jumbo cartons of rocky road. Don’t worry.”

Daisy glared at him, then turned to Steve with a sickly sweet smile. “How about a papaya stir fry for tomorrow?”

Steve grinned as Bucky turned green. “Sounds good to me.”

“You guys suck…” Bucky muttered.

Several other people had chimed in on the thread, several of whom clearly wished they were the ones dating him rather than his actual partners. The images their words painted got more and more sexual, the further down the comment thread he looked.

“Let it go, Steve,” Daisy commented over his shoulder. “You don’t know them, and they don’t know you. Not really. And they don’t know Bucky or me. So don’t let it get to you.”

“But they’re denouncing or discounting you both!” Steve protested in agitation.

“Of course they are,” Daisy agreed. “But they don’t know the truth, and you’re unlikely to ever meet them, so why should I let it bother me?”

Steve pulled Daisy into his lap and kissed her. His forehead rested against hers when they parted for air, and she gave him a small smile. “I suppose you’re right, doll. Thank you.”

“Don’t feed the trolls,” Bucky spoke up from the kitchen doorway. “Least, that’s what she usually says.”

Daisy laughed and nodded. “If you give them a response, they feel justified in what they’re doing. Just ignore it.”

“Good advice,” Bucky agreed. He crossed into the room and wrapped his arms around both of his lovers.

“Besides, some of their ideas are pretty tame,” Daisy added. “I think we can do better, don’t you?” She gave them both a suggestive smirk.

“He’s open to it, Daisy.”

“He says that he is, but I’ve seen him watching me like he’s afraid I’m gonna try… I don’t even know what. I can’t do this if he’s afraid of me, Steve. I just… I can’t.”

“I know.” He reached out, touched her face lightly, stroking his fingertips along the line of her jaw. “I don’t think he’s afraid of you, Daisy. I think he’s afraid of his feelings for you.”

She turned to frown up at him in puzzlement. “What?”

“Buck and I only had each other. For ever, pretty much. And just like you know Bucky is someone you can love because of how I feel about him - Bucky knows that you’re someone he can love.”

“Oh,” suddenly, she understood. “He’s afraid of opening up. Being vulnerable.”

“You two haven’t seen each other much but I can already tell that he’s crazy about you.”

“You could always read me way too well, punk.”

“Jesus Mary and Joseph, make a noise, Bucky!” Steve whirled, clutching a hand to his chest. “How long have you been standing there listening?”

“Long enough.” Bucky shrugged, but his eyes were on Daisy, where she stood gazing at him, her expression troubled.

“Have you two even kissed yet?” Steve said suddenly.

“No,” Daisy answered when Bucky froze up.

“You’ve been on, what, three dates without me and you haven’t even kissed yet? God, you’re hopeless. Go on. I want to watch you.” Steve folded his arms and leaned back against the windowsill.

Bucky’s glance at Daisy was almost shy. “What do you say, doll?” he asked after a moment of fraught silence. “Punk there probably ain’t gonna move until he’s seen us play some tonsil hockey.”

She found herself laughing at the turn of phrase, suddenly relaxing as a small smile curved his lips. Those plush, pink lips which she’d found herself fixating on so often, these last few weeks, wondering how he would taste, how he would kiss. She took a step towards him, found him meeting her halfway.

“Got a good angle there, punk?” Bucky glanced at Steve, chuckled at his expression before slipping his arms around Daisy a little hesitantly and bending his head.

“I’m not much for friends,” Bucky replied.

“Suuuuure.” The girl looked from one to the other of them and snickered. “Riiiiight.”

Steve had to suppress a snort of laughter at her expression, somehow both disbelieving and suggestive at the same time.

“So you’ve gone to all the trouble of tracking us down for what reason?” he asked.

“Well, I’m Daisy Johnson.” She paused, as though expecting them to recognize the name, sighed when neither of them so much as blinked. “This is what I get for expecting two nonagenarians to use the Internet, I suppose. You might also know me as Quake?”

“I know that name,” Steve said, “it was on the same list as ours. The list of powered people who’ve declined to sign the Accords and are now considered ‘dangerous fugitives’.” She really didn’t look like a dangerous fugitive. She looked like a teenage girl going through an emo phase, wearing too much black eyeliner, all black clothes and lots of silver chains around her neck. There was something in her eyes, though, that told him what she looked like was just a disguise. And even the heavy makeup couldn’t disguise her beauty.

“Score, right?” Daisy grinned at him. “I admit it gave me a kick to be on the same list as Captain America and the Winter Soldier, not to mention several other former Avengers.”

“I also saw that name was missing from the latest list,” Steve said dryly, “which tells me that you’re probably working for SHIELD, or some other government agency.”

Daisy made finger guns and pointed at him. “Give the man a medal. Scratch that, i’ve seen your medal collection in the Smithsonian, you really don’t need another one. But yes, you’re completely correct. I’m working for SHIELD… and I still haven’t signed the Accords.”

“That doesn’t add up,” Bucky growled. “I reckon she’s a mole. Prob’ly wearing a wire…”

“No wires,” she turned her head left and right, pulling her hair back from her ears to show them that she wasn’t wearing any earbugs, knowing perfectly well that their enhanced vision would pick it up. “And I’m happy to prove it. Pulling her jacket off, she tossed it to the floor, following it rapidly with the shirt beneath. She’d kicked off her boots and was unbuttoning her jeans by the time Steve got over his shock at her just stripping in front of them.

“No, no, just keep your clothes on, please!” He cast Bucky a fulminating look. “We believe you. Buck’s just… wary. Too many times in the last year we’ve been tracked down in places where we should have been safe.”

“About that,” Daisy said, not bothering to rebutton her jeans or pick up her shirt, “I know how that’s been happening.”

“You do?” Bucky sounded eager, at last, lowering his guns. “We know it’s not my arm…”

“Correct, it’s not your arm.” Daisy pointed at Steve. “It’s him.”

“What?” Steve scowled. “How?”

“Totally Stark’s fault, though it took ages for Cou… er, the Director, to get him to ‘fess up. He implanted you with a tracker ages ago. Wanted to make sure he could keep track of you even if you took up on one of your harebrained schemes. That’s how they found you at the airport in Cologne, by the way.”

“Fucking Stark,” Bucky muttered. Steve’s expression had grown grim.

“Stark said that he wasn’t continuing the hunt for us.”

“And he hasn’t, nor has he provided the details of the tracker to anyone… except me. But the tracker is nonetheless still in you, and it still intermittently reconnects itself to various geopositioning satellites to ‘check in’. Secretary Ross has access to the ‘take’ from some of those satellites, and some clever dick at the NSA flagged the signal as something to check out. The second time they investigated the source, you were spotted on a surveillance camera.”

“God damn it,” Steve said fervently.

“So now, every time it connects to one of Ross’s satellites, there’s a tac team sent out to try and bring you in.”

“Where is it? I want it out,” Steve said, turning and striding over to the kitchen, jerking open drawers until he found a steak knife.

“Don’t be ridiculous, this is much sharper,” Bucky holstered a gun and drew a combat knife from a sheath on his thigh. “So tell us where to cut, doll.”

“Or you could stop being so dramatic and I could deactivate it?” Daisy pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and waved it at them. “Stark told me how.”

“Fine, you deactivate it, and then Buck will remove it.”

Daisy wrinkled her nose at them, seeing that they wouldn’t be dissuaded. “Fine. Here,” she called up the scan Stark had given her on the phone. “It’s in your butt.”

“Of course it is,” Steve growled.

“So drop ‘em, Cap,” she gave him a wicked grin. “I promise I won’t look.”

“I like her,” Bucky murmured quietly into Steve’s ear as he carefully incised a small cut into Steve’s ass cheek to remove the tracker.

“Me too,” Steve muttered. “She’s totally staring at my ass, isn’t she?”

“Yup.” Bucky glanced over at Daisy, who was watching with intense fascination even while wrinkling her nose at the blood. “Even though she said she wouldn’t look.”

“I lied, so sue me.” Daisy grinned at him. Bucky laughed outright even as the tracker popped out into his hand. He crushed it between his metal fingertips and tossed the bloody remnant into the garbage. By the time he turned around, the small cut in Steve’s ass was already healing.

“I think we’ll keep her around, what do you reckon, Stevie?”

“Well, the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound could come in handy,” Steve deadpanned back, pulling his shorts back up.

“You wait until you see what else I can do,” Daisy smirked at both of them. There was a distinct edge of flirtation entering into their interaction.

“Think you’re gonna get a chance to demonstrate,” Bucky cocked his head slightly, “because I can hear someone trying to be stealthy coming up the stairs. Can I take it that Steve’s tracker might have connected to those satellites one more time before we took it out?”

Daisy nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. I was delayed getting here. It would have connected again about half an hour ago.”

“Oh well.” Bucky drew his guns with a grin.

“Any chance I could get dressed first?” Steve said plaintively.

“We’ll hold them off while you cover up, Cap, don’t worry,” Daisy had fortunately put her own clothes and boots back on while Bucky conducted his field surgery on Steve’s butt. She grinned at Bucky, reached for the door handle. “Ready?”

“Time to kick ass!” Bucky leaped forward with a feral grin as Daisy opened the door. She followed him out with a delighted laugh.