maskirovka | (no subject)

It was snowing in New York. Despite the weather, the city never slept. Hustle and bustle filled the still-crowded streets as citizens went about their usual habits, long-time residents more than used to the Big Apple's idiosyncrasies. Buildings were lit up like star-filled towers, and one in particular was still buzzing busily, even at such a late hour.

On the fortieth floor, two individuals occupied a fairly nondescript conference room, waiting for a third. The man, tall and dark-skinned sported a long black coat and a black eyepatch, and was slowly pacing back and forth. The woman, seated with dangerous nonchalance, was idly smoking a mint-scented cigarette, the smoke drifting around scarlet curls that cascaded around a pale, sharply aristocratic face. Cat-green eyes flicked now and again to the tall man, and it might have been a trick of the fluorescent light, but her upper lip may have lightly lifted in an expression of exasperated derision once or twice.

If so, it was irrelevant, as words had been exchanged, opinions noted (and just as quickly discarded), and decisions made. The time for talk was over. Now was the time for actions. And assignments.

And just possibly, the time to save the world.

Again.

Directory Fury glanced at the silent clock on the wall, then huffed a frustrated sigh.

The woman, Agent Romanoff, gave a light scoff, stubbing out her smoke on the table's perfect surface. Fury shot her a glare. Which she shrugged off, saying in a Russian-accented voice, "It would appear, Director, that your dog is incapable of telling time."

Fury's glare devolved into a glower. "He'll be here. Barnes is the best tracker there is."

"So you keep insisting."

The long black coat whispered as it fell still when he did. "Can it, Romanoff. You know what's at stake here. We're going to have to work together if we all want to survive."

She waved an elegant hand, crossing arms over her chest in marked defiance.

Not missing her silent indignance, Fury lifted a single eyebrow. "Mind your fangs, Romanoff. I don't want to have to put either of you into Time Out."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You think I'm going to let you get out of doing your fair share of the fighting?" Bucky joked as Natasha slipped away. His last sight of her was looking pale and beautiful before the bedroom door closed behind her.

Then, internally, he chided himself for being an idiot. She was only the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and one of the strongest too. He wasn't even sure if it was the fact he was tempted by her invitation—to join her in the warm darkness of a shared bed—or the fact he turned her down that made him an idiot in this case. Maybe it was both.

But he'd learned his lesson about letting himself get caught up in midnight green eyes and sly smiles.

It was better for both of them if he kept his distance.

More than that, though, his instincts were screaming at him to explore the b&b, to establish his territory before he could relax. He needed to smell the air, get the lay of the land. If some of that came from the protective drive to make sure that their lair was safe for the woman currently in bed? Well.

Fuck, it's better not to think about that too deeply. Instead, he walked bout inside and outside, checking every inch of their home for the duration of this mission. Then he takes a seat on the sofa in the living room and starts unpacking and rechecking equipment. If his position puts him between the door and Natasha, it's a coincidence. Surely.

(Idiot.)

She usually slept deeply and well, but today true slumber remained cruelly elusive. Six hours later, staggering into the bathroom and gazing at her haggard reflection in the mirror, Natasha snarled a Slavic curse and blamed her throbbing temples on a certain wolf parked right outside of the still-closed bedroom door, if her nose wasn't playing tricks on her frazzled senses.

Four packs of plasma later, she scrubbed her teeth and rinsed her mouth, needing coffee now that her immediate hunger had been sated. (Wouldn't do to attack her companion for his deliciously supernatural blood, now would it?) Clad in a sensible violet sweater and black slacks, she emerged from the bedroom, sensing the twilight even through the thick curtains.

Her eye immediately went to Barnes, and Natasha swallowed a knot of sheer, pure desire. Stop it, idiot. This is work, nothing more. Leave it alone. "Hey," she heard herself say in greeting. "Everything quiet so far?"

Bucky closed his laptop and pushed it aside when Natasha reemerged. Even James Buchanan Barnes couldn't spend an entire day cleaning, checking and double checking his gear. (It had only been three hours.) In the time since, he's turned to research, scanning the local news and gently accessing local law enforcement's records while he waited for the vampire to wake up so their work could really begin.

So far, his search hadn't turned up much new.

He smelled the vampire before she appeared. As much as werewolves might complain about vampires smelling like corpses on principle, in this case it wasn't the case. Not if he was being honest. There was a faint, metallic scent, and something uniquely Natasha, all blended with rose and chocolate.

All tempting.

"Just the owner dropping by to give us some muffins and snoop a little. Normal small town nosiness. Nothing violent."

"Mm, I thought I smelled apples and cinnamon." Natasha found the basket, taking a still-warm muffin and lifting it to her nose. It wasn't as delectable as the scent of a certain wolf over there on the couch, but it was pleasant enough. She peeled back the paper wrapper and took a bite, gently settling in the large upholstered chair adjacent to the couch.

"Find anything useful?" He'd been on his laptop, no doubt digging into what online resources available. Probably not many, given the rural location of this place, but any help was better than none.

Bucky had already eaten two of them himself. Can't blame a guy. He's got the metabolism of a lycanthrope to feed, not to mention a whole day spent with nothing but time to kill and a sweet tooth. In some ways, it was a relief to see Natasha out of bed. That means having her sleeping back there will be one less vulnerability (some territorial instinct in the back of his brain insists he should protect a sleeping... pack mate? he doesn't examine the impulse too closely), and one less temptation.

He wouldn't be longing to go join her, antsy as a puppy while he waited in the next room anymore.

Bucky took a bottle of water from the table, drinking deeply before he answers.

"Define useful?" he asked with a shrug. "I think I might have found a victim that SHIELD missed. Happened a couple of weeks before the others, and it looks more like an accident. That might be something to check out. Otherwise... it's kind of FUBAR out here. Whatever's doing this, it's making a mess."

Natasha nibbled on the muffin, mulling over the informal report. Her brows rose when Bucky reported the missed victim, and she shifted from her chair to the couch, unfeignedly interested in the news. "Show me?"

She leaned over slightly to peer at the laptop screen as Bucky opened it again, deliberately ignoring how her shoulder gently pressed against his, as well as the distinctive scent that filled her nose behind the apples and cinnamon from the muffin. The body beside hers was still wonderfully thick and solid, intimating at the strength carried within it, and the vampire had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from crawling right over into the wolf's lap, computer be damned.

"Why didn't the locals report it?" she forced herself to ask. "There've been enough incidents to make a pattern, how did they miss this one?"

Bucky flicks through a few tabs in his browser—a few pictures of a crime scene in the forest, cordoned off, the victim covered in most of them, aside from one human hand protruding from under a black tarp. The tab he finally stops on is a local newspaper article. The headline reads: Lost Hiker's Body Recovered.

The pictures on this one are a little more lurid, though still discreet enough to offer some privacy to the victim.

"One, because it was before the timeline most people have been looking in. But mostly, it seems like the body was exposed to the elements for at least a week. They thought this tourist had gotten lost on a mountain trail. Found the body looking busted at the bottom of a ravine. The scavengers had already gotten to it by that time, so everyone assumed it was the fall and the animals that did the damage. But..."

He pulls up a map then, the confirmed kills flagged in yellow, the hiker's death in red. All together, they make a tight cluster.

"It's in our unidentified monster's hunting range, which on it's own could be a coincidence on it's own, but..."

A new tab. He's accessed the autopsy report for the hiker, side by side with a confirmed victim.

"The trauma pattern is more or less the same. Attacked from above and behind. Missing organs. I guess we can't rule out this was a mountain lion or something, the body went over a cliff and vultures got the rest. But they're similar enough not to ignore it. Plus, if it means this thing has been in the area, say, sixteen days longer than we thought, that changes our search parameters."

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sorry for the slow replies!

no worries; i've been down with the allergies myself ugh

don't i feel that. my allergies have been insane this year