Chapter Text
It’s the sound of bones snapping, Sam thinks, that will stay with him the longest.
The other noises have turned into a dull cacophony at this point. The wet thump of knuckles hitting flesh, the grunts the giver of these punches lets out with every blow, the wheezing chuckles the recipient of these punches lets out with every blow, these things Sam can almost tune out. He’s heard them so many times before.
It’s the snaps that get him. That sharp, clear, sick sound that even the plush, clearly expensive furnishings of this room—some ridiculous hotel suite that could comfortably house Sam and his entire extended family—can’t entirely muffle. The little gasping breath that follows each one, close to surprised, closest thing to a scream these assholes are going to get.
One of those assholes looks up at him after the latest grunt, crack, gasp. The asshole in Sam’s mind right now, Chief Dick, Sovereign King of the World’s Shitbags. Arches a blonde eyebrow, so pale it’s nearly translucent, over piercing blue eyes. Dashes a meaty hand over a sweat-beaded, clean shaven scalp before he crosses his arms over his broad chest, all but flexing.
“Well?” ask the asshole. This asshole. Reminding Sam of no one so much as Mr. Clean, if the mascot tripled his dose of anabolics and ditched the earring. He’s got the shiny head and deep voice and too tight t-shirt, though Sam doesn’t recall ever seeing Mr. Clean in a chest kit packed to the brim with ammunition. “How about now?”
Sam looks down from this asshole, to the other asshole at his feet. That asshole, who has wormed his way into the cracks of Sam’s life, who gets invited to parties and barbeques and reminds Sam when his nephews’ birthdays are for Christ’s sake. That asshole is looking back at Sam, blue eyes startlingly similar to the other set turned on Sam, except one of these blue eyes is half swollen shut by raised red flesh. The unobstructed eye is boring into Sam’s, though, with a message that couldn’t be more obvious if the scowling, bloody mouth below that eye was shouting it.
Don’t you fucking dare.
Sam looks up from his seat against the base of an expansive couch, leather so stiff and new he can still smell it, his arms draped loosely over his bent knees. He pulls a smile across his mouth, ignoring how it tugs at the split skin of his upper lip. Flashes his pearly whites, bats his beautiful brown eyes.
“Nah, man. I’m good.”
Mr. Clean shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Then he reaches down, to one of the fingers poking past the sole of his heavy black boot that’s crushing the hand beneath it into a tastefully dull beige carpet. He wraps his hand around that finger and pulls.
That snap, again. Slamming into Sam’s ears, clanging around inside his skull. But his eyes don’t blink. His smile doesn’t waver. Neither does that deep, dark certainty that he will hear this same sound again, when he breaks every single bone in this asshole’s fucking face.
“So,” Sam says, some time before he meets the Mr. Clean wannabe, before he learns exactly what it sounds like when a fingerbone is snapped in two, before Bucky’s face has practically gotten snapped in two too. “What do we got?”
The owner of that fully intact face turns away from the building looming in front of him as Sam lands on the pavement. Backlit by the illuminated storefronts behind him, but somehow still cast in shadow, having found the one pool of darkness on this block, the sole spot where he can stand and not be noticed. He blends into that blackness, of course, with his dark jacket and dark pants and dark hair, his pale face the only point of light.
“Well, gee,” Bucky drawls. “Look who decided to show up after all.”
Sam doesn’t roll his eyes. But only because he can see a fleet of cameras getting set up in front of those storefronts on the other side of the street, and the last thing he needs is for them to catch it and make it look like Captain America is rolling his eyes at this tragic situation, and not at the insufferable asshole standing in front of him.
“Got here as soon as I could,” Sam protests. “ ‘sides, party don’t start ‘til I show up, you know that.”
Bucky, cleverly positioned so that the cameras will only catch his back, if they pick him up at all, does roll his eyes. “Oh, yeah. I’ll be sure to let the bad guys know that next time. Maybe they’ll be nice enough to not take hostages until you arrive.”
“Hostages? How many?” Sam asks, the trace of amusement evaporating from his voice.
A shrug. “Too many.” Bucky juts his chin at the building beside to them. “Place is a hotel. Manager says it was pretty booked, so that’s a lot of people.”
Sam tips his head back to take in the hotel’s façade, all shining metal and gleaming glass, staggered in tiers set apart by yet more metal bars. All the windows at sharp angles from the next in a pattern that reminds him of an M.C. Esher print, that makes his eyes hurt if he stares at it too long. Those tessellated windows are pockmarked by pellets of the icy sleet that turned the beltway into a parking lot, forced Sam to pull over on the shoulder, crawl into the backseat to shimmy into the suit and take off from there, abandoning his poor truck to whatever fate awaits it. A few low, wispy clouds curl around the roof, and it’s like there’s nothing up above, just this hotel, rising forever.
“They couldn’t have picked a warm, sunny day to do this?” Sam gripes.
“Nope,” Bucky answers, a bit too cheerful for Sam’s liking. Figures. Broody bastard probably loves this kind of atmosphere.
Sam eyes the building, up and down, once more. “Okay. Looks like this place can hold a lot of people.”
“Fourteen floors,” Bucky says. “And at the top there’s—”
“A bar.”
Bucky blinks. “You know it?”
“Yeah. Rooftop spot. Real swanky. Trendy. Exclusive.”
“And…you’ve been there?”
“Yes.”
Bucky gives him a raised brow that speaks volumes.
“Shut up,” Sam mutters. “It’s very cool. The place to see and be seen.”
A beat. “How long did you last?”
“For one thirty dollar beer, and then I was ready to jump off that rooftop, suit or no suit.”
“Let’s work on going up the building, not down it this time.”
“You’re a real killjoy, you know that?” Sam’s gaze drifts past Bucky’s shoulder, taking in the uniforms and parked vehicles, flashing lights shaping a cordon around the building. “They made any contact with the people who took this place over?”
“Yes,” Bucky notes simply.
“Well, what did they want?”
“Nothing.”
Sam’s turned for a raised brow. “Nothing?”
“No. They stormed the place, shot a few people, and grabbed everyone else they found. At least that’s what the ones who got out said.”
“We got injured?”
“A couple. Ones who made it out weren’t too badly wounded. Some gunshot wounds, but mostly grazes. Sounds like there may be some people worse off still inside, though.”
“And the gunmen haven’t made any demands?”
Bucky shakes his head. “Some of the people who got out, they said they overheard the gunmen talking about making a statement. One that ‘couldn’t be ignored.’”
“Well, fuck if that doesn’t sound ominous.”
“No kidding. So…we can wait to see if they say something else, start making demands.”
“Or…we can go in and try to get the hostages out. Before these assholes shoot anyone else.”
“Yeah. So. How you want to play this?”
Sam eyes the building once again, frowning at the flapping flags above the lobby entrance – the stars and stripes, and D.C.’s stars and bars. He shifts his shoulders until he feels the comforting pressure of the shield, bearing its own star, against his back. “What do we know? We’ve got bad guys with guns who’ve shot some people and grabbed a bunch of others, though they haven’t said what they want. We don’t know how many of them there are, or how many hostages there are, or where any of these people even are, except for somewhere in this hotel.”
Bucky clucks his tongue. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
“Shitty situation to go charging into,” Sam notes. “And I wonder if—”
“Sam,” Bucky warns, voice low, and Sam follows his gaze up the building’s façade, spying a window about halfway up that’s been shattered open. There’s a figure in that opening, pale hair swirling in the blustery wind.
“Hostage?” he asks.
“Or hostage taker,” Bucky answers.
Sam taps his visor to zoom in on that figure, and he spots another, standing behind the first. “Two of them in there.”
“At least.” Bucky squints. “Think you’re right, she’s a hostage. Least I don’t see a gun or anything on her.”
“I don’t either,” Sam agrees. “Though that doesn’t mean—”
Sam’s cut off by a short, sharp scream as the figure behind the woman shoves her out of the open window. Then he’s up, moving, Bucky’s voice a wordless shout falling away below him as he flies toward the woman. He traces a curve in the air, smashing into her from the side, shifting her momentum sideways as he tries to slow them down.
They hit an empty stretch of damp sidewalk a block away and spin, Sam’s wings wrapped around the woman to take the brunt of her weight, the shield on Sam’s back taking the brunt of his. He still feels it, the impact jarring down his spine, his heels and toes smacking into hers as they whirl, the force of it all sticking his breath in his lungs.
A groan leaks from Sam’s lips when they finally come to a stop on his back, the woman’s head pressed to his chest, her damp hair clinging to Sam’s face, her body heaving as she gasps.
Sam lifts his head from the ground, sputters a few blonde strands away from his mouth. “Hey. You alright?”
The woman’s head moves, slowly, until her chin is planted on Sam’s chest, her eyes are blinking up at him, her mouth is open, trying to suck down air. Sam grimaces, knowing he’s probably knocked the wind out of her, would have knocked it out of himself too if he hadn’t learned years ago to exhale on the point of impact.
“Take it easy,” he advises. “Just try to breathe. Slowly.” She does, watching his face the whole time, bright eyes and pink lips both rounded, until her breathing matches his. “There you go. Now. You alright?”
She blinks. “N…no?”
“Okay,” Sam soothes softly. “I get that. Are you hurt?”
She sucks in another breath, shuddering. Blinks again at Sam. Then lifts her head, jerking it this way and that, eyes frantically searching out her surroundings. “What?” she croaks. “How did…what did…”
“Woah. It’s alright. You’re alright. Just took a little tumble, that’s all.”
“T…tumble?” She stares at him for a long moment. She levers herself up on her elbows to crane her neck further, and her boney joints dig into Sam’s stomach.
Sam grunts, wondering why she seems so much heavier than she looks, but he wisely stows that question away. “Yeah. Hey,” he calls, spotting the dark, shiny patch on her temple as her head cranes around. “You hurt?”
Her eyes find his again. One pale hand comes up to prod at the gash on her head, leaving all her weight on the other elbow, now digging into Sam’s rib cage that much harder. “What? No. No, I…I’m fine.”
“Good. That’s good. Hey. What–”
Another face appears, hovering above his own. Another set of blue eyes blink down at him. “Shit,” Bucky hisses. “You okay?”
Sam inhales through pursed lips. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m okay. She’s okay.”
“Good,” Bucky says. “Great. Now we gotta fucking go.”
Sam grunts. “What?”
Bucky reaches for the woman and gingerly peels her off Sam. “You’re fine,” he tells her. Sam lets out the full breath he’s finally been able to take without the woman’s weight crushing his diaphragm and shoots Bucky a sharp look.
Bucky grimaces. “It’s alright,” he tells the woman, voice gentler. ”Let’s get you to an ambulance, huh? I know he’s pretty soft, but that was still a hard landing.”
Sam shoots him another look, this one accompanied by a scowl, but Bucky is too busy passing the woman into the hands of a pair of paramedics to see it. He’s got a scowl on his face when he turns back to Sam, though.
“The fuck were you thinking?” Bucky snaps.
Sam’s eyes widen behind his visor. “Oh, I’m sorry, were you gonna catch the woman after she fell seven stories? I gotta explain the laws of physics to you? Again?”
Bucky hisses between clenched teeth. “Yeah, yeah. Be a hero, why don’t you?” He reaches for Sam’s arm to haul him to his feet. He leaves a hand clenched around Sam’s elbow after he’s upright, tilting his head to get a better look at Sam’s face. “Hey. You alright?”
Sam works his jaw, rolls his head around. “Yeah. Yeah. Think I’m good.”
Bucky’s brow crinkles. “You sure? Wasn’t your usual smooth landing there.”
“I’m fine,” Sam insists. “Any landing you walk away from, right?”
“If you say so,” Bucky comments, looking less than convinced, but he lets go of Sam’s arm when the other man starts walking back to the hotel, and falls in beside him.
“Well,” Sam notes, glaring up at the hotel, and the gaping, shattered window halfway up, “if we were waiting for a sign on if we should risk going in or not, I think we just got it.”