Chapter Text
SHIELD was one of the only intelligence agencies to openly recruit beings that went bump in the night. Granted, SHIELD generally didn't want them going bump in the night—that kind of clumsiness gave secret agents a bad name—but their other abilities? SHIELD was very keen on those. With the inventiveness SHIELD was infamous for, they were the only agency to pair werewolves and vampires in the field. The two predators could be an uneasy mix at the best of times with a natural tendency towards avoidance, and volatile field situations were better classed as the worst of times, but it worked.
They compensated each other’s weaknesses and complemented each other’s strengths. A werewolf could feed a vampire and shake off the effects faster than ordering a pizza, be at full strength to watch a vampire's back when they were weakened by the day. Maybe conventional wisdom was that werewolves and vampires couldn't get along, but SHIELD's joint program was a staggering success.
Bucky knew all that. He’d read all the smug pamphlets when he’d joined, along with about a million policies and the detailed consent forms involved with feeding vampire agents.
He also knew the joint program didn't assign permanent partners, which was why he'd never worked with this particular vampire before, one Agent Steve Rogers.
Bucky had snorted when he’d read why SHIELD had the rule about no permanent partners—prevention of inadvertent packbonding with vampires incapable of returning the sentiment—because one, that was a tired werewolf stereotype that needed to die and two, in Bucky's experience humans were the ones who’d packbond at the drop of a hat. The memory of watching three human SHIELD agents fight over who got to take a googly-eyed stapler home from a conference was indelibly etched in his brain.
What Bucky didn’t know was why Agent Steve Rogers was holding out a protein bar. They were perched in the rafters of a warehouse, waiting for not-overly punctual arms dealers to show up and deal arms. They’d been here for several hours, long enough for midnight to be creeping close, but none of that explained suddenly appearing snacks. It was still sealed, the blue and yellow wrapper proclaiming it a SHIFTbar!, packed with carefully formulated nutrients for the werewolf on the go.
Rogers waved it a little, poking it in Bucky’s direction, and Bucky raised both eyebrows. He apparently took that as a request for an explanation, a more generous interpretation than the unprofessional what the fuck Bucky had actually been thinking.
"I thought you might be hungry."
Bucky lifted his gaze to stare at Agent Rogers. There was a lot of him to stare at, which was unusual. In Bucky’s experience, vampires tended towards the average: average build, average height—which might be short, if they were old enough that average had meant something different when they'd been alive. It wasn’t like a vampire could get swole post-vamping, which meant Rogers had been built like a brick shithouse when he’d died.
Maybe that's why he was trying to feed Bucky. Maybe he was new and it was a holdover from life, when he must have eaten a lot to maintain that build. He didn’t ask, because asking how long someone had been a vampire was extremely rude, but he made a mental note to ask Nat.
In the meantime he had to deal with this. Take it, don’t take it. He had to work with Rogers, this mission was important, and he tried to deploy his asshole self only when warranted, so he reached out and took the bar.
"Thanks," he said, neutral and more than a little grudging as he slipped it into his pocket, but Agent Rogers smiled. Just a quick, flashing thing, no hint of teeth.
Oh good, Bucky thought, he’s been reading one of those Interacting with Werewolves handbooks. Bucky didn’t care if someone showed their teeth, but he was pretty sure most of them had it as rule one, like they thought werewolves were just wolves playing dress up in human skin.
* * *
Bucky flew through the air, twisted to hit the wall feet first and rebounded, using the extra momentum to slam into Nat and hammer her into the mats. She went down, rolled, and pinned him, a hand on his throat, tips of her fingernail denting his skin.
He grinned up at her, teeth bared, and pant-laughed.
"Cry uncle?" she asked.
"Sure," he agreed cheerfully.
She rolled off, sitting neatly cross-legged next to him on the mats, looking just as immaculate as when they'd started.
He tipped his head back, staring up at the ceiling, and felt aches and bruises and what he was certain was a cracked femur start to heal. He loved sparring with Nat. "Do you know Steve Rogers?" he asked. "Vampire agent."
"Built like a Clydesdale?"
"That’s a horse, right?"
"They were the ones on that beer commercial you cried at." She grinned slyly, a hint of fang peeking out. "When it played on the TV in the cafeteria."
He hadn't cried, he'd teared up, but he refused to be ashamed. "That puppy was adorable, and the horses saved it from getting taken away from its friend. "
"’wolves," she said, but it sounded fond. She rose gracefully to her feet. "I know of him, but I don’t know him."
"Is he new?"
"I believe he joined SHIELD a few years ago, but he only moved to the joint program recently."
"No, not new to SHIELD new to—" Bucky hooked his fingers into the shape of fangs and held them against his top lip, fighting hard not to laugh at the entirely done-with-everything look she gave him.
"I swear, James, I have no idea why I spend time with you."
He grinned at her. "I keep you young."
"You keep me something, and right now it’s elsewhere."
* * *
Bucky's next mission was with Deputy-Director Hill. She was higher up the food chain than Bucky was usually sent out with, but no one else was available and the mission needed a werewolf. After Rogers, he had a new appreciation for her strict professionalism and lack of suddenly appearing SHIFTbars!.
They were island hopping in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, tracking scum of the earth who was leading other scum on a highly illegal big-game hunt for sasquatch, a creature so endangered and so protected its existence was an international secret. At least it was supposed to be.
Much as SHIELD was pro-endangered creature protection, it wasn't their job, and it wasn’t why they were here. They were here because this particular scum was trafficking intelligence, using his hunts as a marketplace for stolen secrets. It wasn't just sasquatch; if it was endangered, he'd led hunts for it and his customers left with more than just illegal trophies.
Bucky enjoyed missions where he got to go wolf and run through the forest, his silvery coat, dappled and streaked in shades of grey, blending into the shadows and making him invisible. Running this particular scum to ground before sunrise would have been better, but Hill’s uniform protected her from the debilitating effects of direct sunlight.
Hill opted for diplomacy and handed the surviving sasquatch hunters slash secret buyers over to the Canadians. Posturing and gladhanding completed, and Bucky was glad he’d opted to stay wolfy for that, Hill loaded their unconscious quarry onto the quinjet and started the trip back to SHIELD HQ.
Once they were in the air, Bucky shifted. It left him standing naked in the quinjet while he grabbed his uniform, but that was part of being a werewolf and anyone who worked with werewolves got used to it pretty quickly. He pulled his uniform on, greeted their pilot, and went to sit next to Hill. She didn’t look great. Vampires could function in daylight, but they weren't at their best and it didn't come without a cost.
Luckily, it was an easy fix. Bucky didn’t say anything, just rolled his sleeve up, exposing his bicep, and lifted a questioning eyebrow.
She nodded once. "Thanks."
It was simple from there and the quinjets were well-stocked with the disposable kits: neat little hard-sided cases that held an alcohol wipe, a bandage, and a disposable scalpel. After, everything went back inside and they snapped shut for disposal. He grabbed one and the process was so familiar he could probably do it in his sleep: clean his skin with the wipe, carefully slice through his bicep and into the cephalic vein, then twist his arm so she could drink.
He was a little light-headed when she sat up, but she was back to her normal self.
"Okay?" she asked.
"One hundred percent," he said and slapped a bandage over the cut before putting everything back in the kit, snapping it closed, and tossing it in the disposal bin. He'd heal fast enough, but the bandage kept blood off his uniform. He dug into his pocket for a SHIFTbar!, amused when it was the same flavour Rogers had given him. It might even be the one Rogers had given him, now that he thought about it, since he transferred everything between uniforms.
Still tasted good, even if it was.
He wolfed it down, then tipped his head back and closed his eye. He didn't need to sleep afterwards, he could keep going if he had to, but when he didn't have to…
Bucky yawned once and the soft sound of Hill tapping on her tablet followed him into sleep.