Chapter 3
The problem with cat rescue and evac in an area where you didn’t have jurisdiction, Sam mused, was that no force on earth could compel the damn cat to come with you. That was also the problem with cats anywhere, Sam thought bitterly, especially if said cat happened to be the notorious James Buchanan Braindamaged Barnes. Because, brother, kitten be crazy.
Kitten had just tried to bomb the UN. During the Accords. Fine, Sam would just come out and say it: Kitten had just tried to kill Steve Rogers. Again. You’d think that’d be the sort of thing to freak a guy out a little, but nope. Steve Self-Sacrificing Idiot Rogers was convinced kitty’d been put up to it, or provoked, and wasn’t a murderous ball of spitting rage under all that fluffy hair. And yeah, it was fine, whatever, dude had totally been low key hitting on him and Sam was more than down with that (and would’ve been happy to go down on that) until Bucky With The Good Hair showed up on the freeway and Sam had been relegated to the friendly neighborhood queerplatonic/homoromantic bff with the occasional eye fucking all in the time it took to ask ‘who the hell is Bucky’. Because Sam had seen the look in the man’s baby blues when he talked about Barnes, and dude was definitely lovesick, not to mention channeling something small, fuzzy, and completely fucking harmless rather than a metal-armed assassin.
Not that Sam minded. It wasn’t like Murderkitten had stolen his man or anything…dude had called dibs about seventy years previously, and Paul and Darlene Wilson hadn’t raised no homewrecker. But yeah. Just you try thinking you’ve got a shot with Steven Grant Dem Sculpted Abs/Dat Ass Rogers then try ever moving on.
But even if it weren’t for all the Murderkitten mayhem, Sam Wilson was a good bro and would’ve rescued Sharon “Oh God Is He Stalking Me” Carter from Steve “I’m So Lonely Let’s Just Talk Some More About Peggy” Rogers. It had nothing to do with jealousy. Okay, it had a bit to do with jealousy. Or a lot. Maybe everything. Samuel Thomas Wilson wasn’t above being a little bit possessive of That Ass even if That Ass wasn’t his. Don't expect him to apologize, he didn't feel sorry at all, and his momma hadn’t raised no liar.
So Bucharest. Alright then. Nevermind they’d been playing here, kitty, kitty for two whole years now, and the last time kitten got cornered he’d lashed out like a motherfucker. Yeah. To be honest? Sam didn’t have a hell of a lot of hope this time’d be any different.
But what the Winter Kitten didn’t know was that this time the neighborhood fucktard had sicced his pack of pitbulls on him with an order to kill. And right now? Right now Sam Wilson had a pretty damn good view (he wouldn’t say bird’s eye, that sort of shit dad joke was entirely Barton’s) of them circling in…and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Would Sam like to see kitten get what’s for? Hell, yes. He’d shine a laser light at the thing himself for the sick pleasure of watching him try to figure it the fuck out. Sam’d tease him with the smell of catnip and tuna and then not give him a damn thing, son. Sam might even give kitten no few less-than-necessary baths, lock him in his crate and feed him nothing but dry cat food. But watch him get torn apart by a pack of dogs? The eighteen-sixties weren’t all that long ago and Sam was still black, even if his momma said he talked like a white boy. So how ‘bout a whole lot of oh hell no.
“German special forces have surrounded the building, Cap,” Sam called out a warning. Bunch of dudes in black with black SUVs and why the hell was black always the color of sinister bad guys—(he asked rhetorically, as a black guy breaking international law and sanctions to aid and abet a fugitive Murderkitten)? Seriously, though, Disney. Sam could use a break.
Except the guy Steve was talking to over the comms didn’t sound like the raging homicidal Murderkitten at all. For one, dude was pretty fucking lucid, and pretty damn chill to boot, more so than Sam would be had Captain America appeared in his flat in all his Star Spangled Glory. But he also didn’t sound like childhood friend and likely fuck-buddy Bucky Barnes.
“Buck. Do you know who I am?”
“You’re Steve,” that tentative voice said. “I read about you in a museum.” Okay, so that wasn’t what Sam was expecting. One, he hardly recognized Cap, and two? Two there were no sounds of rabid sex humping so okay, then. He owed Nat fifty bucks.
Then Steven Grant Subtlety Rogers called bullshit in the most roughed-up sex voice Sam’d ever heard. “I know you’re scared and you have every reason to be. But you’re lying.”
…well, okay then. Definitely fuck buddies. This wasn’t going to go nearly as bad as Sam'd feared it would. No, it was going to be much, much worse. Because if Natasha Romanov told the collective governments of the world to kiss her ass a few years ago, then Steven Grant He’s My Friend (With Benefits) Rogers would hand theirs to them.