#and the thief x detective au/cliché

[theredcuyo]

I was thinking about writting some shuake and thought for the 5+1 style until i realized

They already are that

5 times Akira met Akechi (Going on dates, the social link in general actually) +1 Goro met Akira (Going to see him during/after 3rd sem)

5 times Akechi remember he had to kill Akira +1 Akira remember he had to Kill Akechi (3rd sem)

5 times they thought it could change +1 time it actually did (their relationship)

Istfg Shuake is ao3 tags and aus and prompts in a nutshell

[barnesandco]

Eat the Rich: Chapter 1

Eat the Rich Masterlist

The Avengers are tasked with tracking down an elusive thief, and retrieving the grand amounts of money she has stolen. Even after capture, she turns out to be impossible to break, save for a mystifying interest in Bucky.

Written for @mermaidxatxheart ‘s #jamiesmadwritingbash, under the Robin Hood AU prompt, with the dialogue prompt “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing, running around with the end of the world on her his arm?” in bold in this chapter.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: mentions of nightmares, memory loss and recovery, brief mentions of Bucky’s Winter Soldier days, and canon-level violence. Lots of frustrated Avengers. A bit of flirting.

A/N: I can’t decide if I want this series to make people laugh or cry, so good luck. Please comment and reblog! 

Divider by the fantastically talented @whimsicalrogers​!

The Avengers are confused. Perplexed and far out of their depths, they’re strewed about the meeting room with variants of displeasure on their faces. Bucky wears the biggest scowl of all, sitting ramrod straight in an armchair intended for postures far more comfortable. The source of their malcontent hovers in a hologram above the conference table, somehow managing to look bored while handcuffed and bound to a steel chair in the most secure interrogation room in the Compound.

You’re a thief. A crook who has been stealing big money from bigger people, in a slew of prominent heists that eventually led to the Avengers’ recruitment to your case. High stakes burglary isn’t their field, but when certain people threw their weight around, demanding a serious investigation, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had no choice but to play detectives to one elusive criminal.

A flirtatious one, too, Bucky thinks, remembering your first confrontation, as he traces the seams of his metal arm with the softer pads of his flesh fingers. 

Sam, Nat, and Bucky had tracked you all the way to Paris, where, one night, Sam gave chase while Bucky waited to intercept you on the predicted escape route, in an alley behind one of the classiest bars in town. Their prediction had proved accurate, and you had pretty much run straight into Bucky’s waiting arms. 

The ensuing fight should have been an easy one, and Bucky made the awful mistake -- the mistake he hadn’t made since meeting the Widows in the Red Room -- of underestimating a woman, and he ended up paying for it. 

His fists clench in his lap at the memory of how you had pulled a very Widow move on him, and he had wound up on his back with your thighs around his neck in a chokehold almost gentle. You had leaned over him to tie his hands together, and left him panting, out of breath, and with the taste of rust in his mouth. Clambering off, and wiping away the blood at the corner of his lip, you had then said, “I look forward to our rematch, handsome,” before disappearing into the dark, French night.

“Barnes?” He hears Stark call, and he blinks. “You still with us, or are you daydreaming about your girlfriend?” The room grows silent, and Bucky can sense suppressed smiles and silent glares, the latter aimed at Stark from Steve.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he grouses, letting his metal fingers dig into his kneecaps.

Sam, coffee abandoned on the table in front of him, eyes twinkling says, “We heard her through the coms, Barnes. In Paris, and in Buenos Aires.”

“And Oslo,” Peter pipes up, and Bucky falls back into the memory of autumn frost crunching under his feet, the reverberations of the orchestra in the opera house as he followed your coat-tails -- you played violin, because why the hell not -- down the busy street. Power-walking turned to running, and you had ended up in a crowded, posh bar with Bucky backing you into the wall in the hallway leading to the restrooms, holding your hands in one metal fist behind you.

Still, you had been unperturbed, trying to distract him with gemstone eyes while he called backup -- Stark, soaring in stealth mode above the fjord. “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing, running around with the end of the world on his arm?” You had asked, gesturing toward his metal shoulder, no struggle, no flight or fight. 

Red-lipped smiles, you had given him, and he had been so close to pulling out the handcuffs until a trio of burly security guards had appeared, your backup, apparently, and engaged him in enough combat to allow you to escape. 

“She seems to like you,” Sam finishes piercing the haze of another battle lost, less violently at least, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, well, I don’t like her,” is the best he can come up with, and he stands, moves towards a window overlooking the grounds, addressing the bulletproof glass, next. “What I would like is for us to get the money back so we can all go on our merry way and pretend this ever happened.”

The room falls quiet at that. Every person here is acutely aware of the fact that they’re no closer to getting the money back -- nobody could ever spend the amounts you’ve stolen recently, so quickly; FRIDAY’s run simulations on it -- and you haven’t budged under the interrogations you’ve faced thus far.

Barton enters the room as soon as he gets off the quinjet, still in his typical Bed Stuy uniform -- ripped jeans and purple t-shirt -- and Bucky, alongside Natasha and Sam in the observation room behind the one way glass, can see the angle he’s going with. 

It’s almost cliché, or maybe it’s just Clint, so relaxed and loose-limbed with too much pizza in his system and likely smelling of one-eyed dog -- Bucky adores Lucky, but he’ll never admit it -- the way he turns his chair around and sits, resting his chin on folded arms atop the back of the chair. 

For a moment, Bucky worries he’s fallen asleep right there, until his blond head lifts ever so slightly and he says, “Would you like something to drink?” 

You quirks a smile. “I’d like a proper introduction. What, were you raised in a barn?” The smirk is teasing, but there’s no bite, like you’re greeting an old friend with an inside joke. Barton traces the edge of the table.

“Almost. Ever heard of Waverly, Iowa?” He asks. 

You shake your head, and then, grin, informing, “No, but I have heard of you, Clint Barton.”

“So you didn’t need an introduction.”

“I’m a prankster, can’t you tell?” Bucky thinks of the navy blue dress in Prague, the tiny but powerful stink bombs you had kept in a thigh holster, how you had left them coughing. 

“Jokes are all well and good but, uh, stealing isn’t so funny,” Clint answers., sitting up, and Bucky can hear in his hardening tone that he’s starting to get serious. 

“Depends on who you’re stealing from,” is your flippant response.

“Also depends on who has to get the money back, too, and let me tell you, we’re a little tired of playing games.”

“Then I guess I win, right?”

“Are you sure you don’t recognize her? Her tactics seem familiar,” Sam says, and the sensation that has been aggravating the nerves in an unlocatable part of his brain since he saw her for the first time worsens, but Sam’s question is addressed to Nat.

“She’s not Red Room, if that’s what you mean. The Widows were trained to be merciless. She avoids getting more physical than she needs to,” Natasha answers, retying the band on her braid, flaming red hair coiled over her shoulder.

“She broke Bucky’s nose,” Steve points out in protest. 

Nat shrugs, leans forward to doodle on the notepad resting on her knee. “If it was me, I might have knocked some teeth out. Maybe pulled a knife or garrotte.”

“You have to tell me where you get those sting-y things,” you say the moment Nat enters the room, eyes sparkling and wide with awe. Bucky winces as he remembers the short-circuit from that little electric disc. The engineers in the bank had been pretty troubled by the thought of what could’ve caused that kind of damage to the internal systems, until he his fist around one of their necks gave them something else to worry ab--

Steve’s hand on his shoulder startles him back to the observation room instead of Hydra’s clutches, and he says, “Hey, Bucky, how’s it going?” with a nod to the room in front of them. Vibranium cuffs peek out from under the large, green hoodie that envelopes your form, making you look deceptively soft.

“She wants to know where Nat gets her taser discs.”

“You’re eager for those even after you’ve felt how much they hurt?” Nat asks calmly, and Bucky imagines an ice-cool smirk on her lips as she reminds you of how exactly you were captured. It was the tasers that brought you down, after Sam, Steve and Bucky flew and ran you to exhaustion through the streets of Algiers, costing Stark some collateral payments. He hadn’t minded too much, just been happy to have you in custody, finally.

“They look like they’d be fun to use. Pretty handy around certain metal armed men, too,” you suggest playfully.

“Yeah, he isn’t going to talk to you, but I’ve been looking forward to this chat of ours, so why don’t you start by telling me your name.”

“I don’t have one. I’m a ghost story,” you say, and Bucky assumes Nat is looking unimpressed, because you press forward with the joke. “You’re going to need a medium to talk to me.”

“And where do you suppose I find one of those?”

“You have one. Isn’t Bucky Barnes a ghost story, too?”

Sam’s about to name what is sure to be another way to cause unnecessary injury when Bucky butts in. “It doesn’t matter how she hurt me or how she could have hurt me,” this, with a glare at Natasha, who smiles down at the paper. “We have a burglar with billions stashed away and a buncha angry billionaires breathin’ down our necks to find it.”

“Well why don’t you give it a go if you think it’s so easy?” Looking up from the hangman sketch, Nat fixes emerald eyes on his, reminding him, once again, of the unusual interest you’ve taken in Bucky. One that started with mid-battle conversations of a different nature, and that has extended into custody. Something that’s been bugging Steve, his protective instinct whirring into overdrive -- Bucky sees his eye twitch from across the room at Nat’s remark -- no more so than during Steve’s turn to question the captive.

“You guys are all taking your turns playing Good Cop Bad Cop, but I haven’t seen Robocop yet. Why is that?”

“You left him tied up in Paris–”

“There’s an innuendo in there somewhere,” you sing-song, head tilting rhythmically from side to side. Bucky clenches his fists in the observation room.

“–so he isn’t much obliged to see you,” Steve finishes, bypassing your interruption.

Playful eyes with laser determination, unperturbed by locked rooms and handcuffs, focus on a spot just above Steve’s shoulder, almost looking through the glass, even though Bucky knows it’s just a mirror for you. “What a shame. I was hoping our little back alley tussle wouldn’t scare the big, bad White Wolf away.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Are you going to tell us where the money is or do you want formal charges and a jail cell?” He asks, shifting so he blocks your line of sight, folds his hands on the table, and broadens his shoulders, all-Captain and no-nonsense.

“Giving up on me so easy?”

“I wouldn’t call it easy, miss. We’ve been looking for months and tried just about everything to get you to cooperate.”

“Not everything.”

“She’s yawning,” Sam proclaims indignantly, glaring, shocked, at the hologram where indeed, the source of their troubles is yawning, like you could fall asleep, tied up and all. “Unbelievable.” He shakes his head, and Bucky stops a snort from escaping. He’s seen all kinds of interrogations, faced a fair few, too, and this woman is just warming up.

The ensuing discussion and debate continues for hours, until the sun sets behind the window Bucky’s standing by, and what silences them is the thump with which Clint puts his hearing aids on the table in front of him. Sam’s coffee wobbles dangerously, and everyone sighs as Clint wordlessly tells them to shut up. Murmurs of agreement to rest and get a fresh start tomorrow echo through the room, and Bucky catches Barton’s eye, and receives a wink. 

Later that night, in his room, Bucky knows he’s not going to get a minute of sleep. It’s just an intuition, something his very bones are telling him, and he sees no reason to dispute it. Under the throbbing ache in his head, there’s an itch in the grey matter of his mind, somewhere he can’t reach, and he twists and turns. The feeling is recognizable as the vexation inflicted when he’s on the verge of a memory, but those return either by dream or by sense these days.

Dreams are for the bad memories, the days of the Winter Soldier, his subconscious loosening whatever locks his mind placed to compartmentalize the pain, to stuff it all away. The nightmares, the terrible memories leave him shaking, but therapy helps. By a few percent, but when the load of pain is as heavy as his is, every small burden taken off his shoulder helps.

Sense brings back the time before Hydra, although it’s sometimes hard to believe there was one. Steve’s face buried in his shoulder, be careful, Buck; Romanian take out, his mother’s hands; faucet dripping, water running out; oranges exploding on his tongue, a month’s salary plus overtime from working at the docks for that sweet rush once a year. The Depression, the first war -- trench memory brought back by a rainy run in Central Park, the scent of muddy petrichor in the air -- snowfall in the Alps, Dugan’s cigar. His body remembers, and then shows his mind the way.

However, this, this infuriating personality that has him incensed and restless, she isn’t in his mind in any capacity, but Bucky thinks he knows her. Or that he might have, once. And he needs to know her, again, because he hates not knowing. The nightmares hurt, and the memories of what he’s lost do, as well, but not knowing, existing in the strange limbo between certainty and loss, it’s unbearable. If this woman knows him, if she’s another key to another past, another piece of him, he has to talk to her.

“FRIDAY?” He asks groggily, sitting up. 

The screen in the wall across from him blinks blue in acknowledgement, along with a “Yes, sir?”

“Is Steve up?” 

“Captain Rogers is awake and having a cup of coffee in the kitchen, Sergeant,” FRIDAY tells him, and Bucky curses at the idiocy of consuming caffeine at this hour of night -- whatever’s in that shit works even on the serum and that can’t be good -- replacing his sweatpants with jeans once more and heading out to find his friend.

Steve has his back to the entryway, deep in thought -- dumbass, anyone could sneak up on you like this -- when Bucky comes in and clears his throat. The mug in Steve’s hands looks comically small, and Bucky sits down across from him at the island, reaches forward to take it from him, and downs the remaining half.

It’s just one more testament to how disturbed Steve is -- as if the careless consumption of coffee at midnight wasn’t enough -- that he lets Bucky steal his coffee. Blue meets blue in the silver dusting of moonlight, and Steve tries to locate Bucky’s purpose in his eyes before asking him for it verbally. “What is it, Buck?” He’s tired, too many missions weighing on those eyelids, but too worked up to let them close, to find rest. What Bucky’s going to say won’t help.

“Let me talk to her.”