bakerstreet | Body heat

[Interested in these two (again)? I'm happy to write a starter if yes, and have a few ideas you're welcome to pick from, or can drop me one of your own I can run with: city-wide blackout in winter and they're mid-bickering/detectiving and stuck in a basement | Fury made him bring her as snoopy backup somewhere and they get stuck in a surprise early snowstorm and ~~omgthere'sonebed~~ and need to make it until morning/the day after | Stuck in a car that broke down between cities and it's too cold to leave for the night to get gas | anything else?]

[omg hiiii! Absolutely interested! I loved our lil story we were building with them! If you’ll kick us off that’d be awesome :3

Stuck in a broke down car in a blizzard sounds super fun ngl 👀 ]

She'd gotten him to drive the car, because she still got a little anxious sometimes in them. Some part of her trusted him to be able to get them from point A to B safely, even if it was all subconscious. Why was she in a car with Bucky Barnes at eleven at night, running along a darkened highway that was becoming dangerously low in visibility as a storm seemed to whip out of nowhere? Because Fury or someone a part of one of those organizations that held a hand on the leash they liked to keep him on had given a tug and told him to do some surveillance and intel gathering on a potential cell starting up outside the city limits. He'd refused the babysitter they'd wanted him to take, and somehow Jessica's name had entered the conversation.

She had a feeling that he'd been more pissed about that then he'd let on when he'd brought it up to her, maybe hoping she'd say no. Jess had made an educated guess that Bucky didn't like to drag her into his 'work' life. Not that she blamed him. But she also had a feeling that Fury et al were seeing how far they could tug on that leash of his and when it would break. She wouldn't be the reason they decided to use worse measures to keep him. She was still trying to figure out a way to get him cut free from it all.

But her inability to push them all into that corner right now had them packed up and headed out of the city late, and she had a feeling that the person in the driver's seat wasn't particularly thrilled to have her there. Too bad for him. This way, she knew that the person watching his back would actually be watching it properly.

She might have kept up the silence until he broke it first, but there was a worrying grinding growl that came from the undercarriage of the car, followed by a jerking and shaking of the vehicle before the lights went out on the dash, the car still moving forward from inertia of its speed. Bucky managed to get them over to the shoulder of the road, but without the headlights, everything looked far too dark and close, made more claustrophobic by the sheets of wet and slush clumping down over top of them. "Well... shit. Whoever you rented this from is going to get a kick to the nuts."

Bucky doesn't mind being shoved into the driver's seat, he likes driving, finds it weirdly relaxing. The storm made it less so, but it was fine, he'd driven in worse before.

He tries to keep his work life and his private life separated, to the fullest extent that he can. Sometimes, that's easier said than done. Currently, it's completely impossible. He'd argued it when Jessica was brought up, but ultimately, it wasn't his call (was anything, ever?), and he had to deal with it regardless.

Then the car decided to completely die on him.
Right here.
In the middle of goddamn nowhere.

"Fuck," he mutters, steering the car to the side of the road, hopefully far enough over no one would hit them. What little light is afforded by a not-quite half-full moon in the dark night sky is only enough to see the snow already starting to pile into a thin blanket across the hood of the car. "Goddammit..." he tilts his head back against the headrest behind him.

She watched the silhouette of his head tipping back against the headrest, the angle of his nose, the curve of his chin, all of it almost black for a moment as her eyes tried to adjust to the sudden lack of light. The curse that slipped from him had her laughing, and she adjusted a bit on the seat, not quite ready to get out to see if there was something either of them had to do, or could do, to fix this.

"What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, right. Inauspicious. This is an inauspicious start to our little mission. Maybe it's a sign from whoever that this was a bad idea." Not that she didn't already know that. He hadn't wanted her to come, but not because he didn't like her or trust her. Probably for the same reason she wouldn't want to drag Trish on anything that was even mildly dangerous. Too much could go wrong and both her and Bucky were usually the ones left standing there alone, with blood on their hands. Or faces. She wasn't in a rush to see which one between the two of them had the best luck with survivor's guilt.

"Gee, who could've predicted that?" He'd told Fury as much before they even headed out on this stupid mission. Now he's just annoyed all over again.

He scoffs a little and shakes his head a little, "Yeah, that's certainly a word for it." He can't help the tiny smile that tries to tug at one edge of his mouth for her use of a ten-dollar word, though. ~~Don't judge him. He's still a nerd at heart, okay?~~

"I read big books too, Barnes. Not just the ones with pretty pictures in them." She was grinning, though. The banter helped calm the slight racing of her heart that had started when the car had first shut off. She'd had a moment of a flashback, but her accident and this one were too dissimilar to send her spiraling entirely. She was just glad that they'd both been happy to have him driving.

"So what do you do when shit like this happens? You're not planning on trekking all the way there, are you? Because I will sit on you and make sure that doesn't happen. I like you with all your toes."

"Hey, I didn't say anything," he says, hands up in a gesture of surrender, but he can't stop the grin that he echoes back her way.

He sits forward a little to give her his best incredulous look. "Well, what else do you expect me to do? I don't see a better option," he gestures vaguely with his metal hand at the winter tundra surrounding them.

A beat.

He says, "I'm sure my toes would be fine." Probably, he doesn't add.

"It won't storm forever. We can at least camp out until morning when there's less of a possibility of being creamed along the highway. We don't even know where we are." See? Logic. This is why trips had to have at least one party without a Y chromosome.

"Yeah, but 'not forever' can still be a long time," he points out. "Better to try to get ahead of anything worse in the works," a different brand of logic.

This is why he likes her, though. She will argue a point if she feels that strongly about it. Head-strong and stubborn is kind of his type.

"Tell me which of these scenarios has a better outcome: Scenario one, you stumble out of here, I have to follow after you because I'm not letting you run around like a chicken with your head cut off alone out there in a blizzard, and we wind up pulling a Shining ending and freezing in some weird macabre position. Or, Scenario two, we sit in the car, use the storm as a very valid reason to not go traipsing around in the white fluffy death, and maybe take a nap. It's getting chilly in here, and if that's the case, it's worse out there." Hell yes, would she argue a point she felt strongly on. Especially when it involved him losing body parts.

He huffs a soft, annoyed sound as he tips his head back against the headrest again. She's right, and he knows it, but that's just as annoying as everything else. Except it's harder to be mad at her than it is at Fury, especially since he's not actually here right now.

"Fine," he mutters, dejected. He hits the release on his seat belt and slides the seat back. If they're doing this, he's going to at least get as comfortable as possible in the car.

She blinked at him, wondering how much he could see in the dark interior. She heard the hiss of the seatbelt sliding free, and then the click and shift of him lowering the seat. "Really? Just like that? Wow. I should trap you in cars more often when we're arguing. I like winning."

He folds his hands behind his head and looks over long-ways at her. "I'm not exactly dying to get out in all of that... but I will. If anyone's walking anywhere, it should be me." She has some advanced physiology, but it's not the same as what the serum did for him, even if his version wasn't as good or potent as what Steve had been given.

He snorts softly and shakes his head, "Yeah... maybe you should give it a try next time." A smirk rests on his lips.

"It's the balls, isn't it? Balls make you think stupid things. It's okay. I forgive you for your balls."

She turned in her seat to face forward, mostly so she could find the lever that let her set the seat back. Back and lying down. Afterward, she took her seatbelt off. The car was still warm enough that the snow was having a hard time sticking too much, but that wouldn't last long. The upper half of the windshield was already getting hard to look through. "Don't suppose you could call your manager and complain about work environments, huh?"

He snorts a laugh at that and shakes his head. "You're crazy," but there's only fondness in his voice as he says it, so it can't really be an insult.

"Not really that kinda situation," he shakes his head. But hey, if he had to be stuck somewhere in the snow, she was at least better company than any of the idiots Fury was going to try to send with him.

"Yeah, well, you're the weirdo putting your dick in all this crazy. What's that say about you?" So there, Bucky. She settled in against her laid back seat, but realized quickly this might not be the wisest arrangement.

"You know... we could both get in the backseat. Share some of that body heat you got going on..."

"I guess it says I don't mind it so much," he says, shooting her a grin.

Honestly? He was fine, but then again... he usually slept on the floor on nights he's alone, less so when one of them is at the other's place; it's nice having that time with her attached to something else than the nightmare-covered floor of his apartment.

"Sure, if that's what you want," he agrees to it easily. He thinks about it for a moment and hums curiously, "Think there might be a blanket in the trunk?" Chances were 50-50, if he had to guess; any vehicle provided by Fury had a chance of being packed well, but it didn't mean every avenue was always covered, either.

"Okay. Get in the backseat." She darted forward and pulled the keys from the ignition. Jangling them at him, she smirked. "I'll go look in the trunk."

Fury was going to hear a mouthful from her about his shitty mechanic or whoever the car got rented from, but it might not come with a boot to the nards if there was at least a basic supply set in the trunk. Bracing herself, she opened the door and slipped out quickly, closing it behind her to keep as much heat in as she could. "Shit." It was cold out here. Cold and dark. Teeth chattering, she slid her way around the car to the back near the trunk to go rifle in it, looking for equipment.

He tries to grab her wrist and stop her, but she's faster and is already scrambling out of the car to check the trunk. "Brat," he mutters, shifting to sit up and get out of the car, moving the seat forward, as far up as it would go.

"Anything?" he asks, glancing over at the opposite end of the car toward where Jess rummages around the trunk. "Hurry up," he teases her, opening the door to the backseat. It takes a second for him to do the same with the passenger seat to push it as far up and out of the way as possible. "Does this..." but he's mostly talking to himself as he fidgets with the backseat trying to find any button or lever that might recline it even just a little, and she probably can't hear him anyway.

A soft 'thud' confirms he found the right button and he nods, satisfied. It's not a bed, but it's close enough given the circumstances. More like a shitty couch, at best.

There was a gym bag type thing in the back, along with an extra tire and all the accoutrements to change it. She unzipped it, feeling inside, since she couldn't see shit, feeling plastic, plastic, round plastic, then something material. Good enough. She could sort it out later. Grabbing the bag, she closed the trunk and opened the passenger rear side to slip in, feeling the chill all through her as a bit of wet had slipped down the neck of her jacket and was inching down her back. "I fucking hate snow."

"I know," he chuckles softly. He'd already shed his leather jacket, so they have something to make a pillow out of for the moment even if it's not the best one. "you've said so before..." He does listen, you know.

He glances over at her, not quite settled in any specific position yet as he asks, "Top or bottom?" he can already imagine the quippy joke or snapback she'll have for that, but it's a practical question, here. They can't lay side-by-side, so.

Her hair hid the smile at his affirmation. Yeah, he knew. Yeah, he listened to her. Yes, she knew and appreciated that. The bag rested on her knees and she cleared her throat before she tapped it. "There's water in here too, I think. Felt like plastic bottles."

Glancing over at him, she had to squash down the instant reaction to that question, but it showed in the way her lips were twisting into a smirk. "For sex? Bottom. For sleep? Top. You're heavy." For cuddling, well, she'd prefer to spoon him from behind, but the carseat didn't offer that much room.

He can barely see, whatever moonlight they’d had earlier seems to be hidden behind clouds now; she’s little more than a silhouette in the darkness, but he swears he can feel that smirk that twists her mouth just so.

“Very thorough answer, I like it,” he grins, shifting now to lay down against their makeshift bed. “And at least we won’t die of dehydration. Bet there’s an MRE or something in there too.” They aren’t great, but he’s certainly had worse.

“C’mere,” he mumbles, reaching for her with his right hand, warm fingers wrapping gently around her wrist to try and tug her closer, being particularly mindful of exactly how much cooler than usual the metal of his left arm would be at the moment.

She shoves the bag down into where their feet would be if they were sitting, up near their heads on that side of the car so it's within easy reach. Then she climbs up with his help, half on him, half on the seat. A little digging and she finds that material she'd found before. "I'll kick him half as hard as I was planning because of the blanket."

But she also takes a little time to shrug out of her jacket. Leather wasn't great to lay against for warmth, and she wanted to share hers with him, not block him from it. Laying on his chest was always a good place to wind up, so that's where her head went as soon as she flicked out the thinner than she wanted it to be blanket over them. "Now I'm really glad it was me, because you snuggling up with Agent Scowlyface Shades McNofun might be fun to think of, but less fun to do."

no subject

no subject

Broke down car blizzard time it is.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject