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It starts when they’re five years old, and Steve stands up to Billy Reynolds, who’d pushed Mollie Parsons into a muddy puddle. When Billy had tried to shove Steve back (little Stevie Rogers, who looked more three than he did five, and the theory that a strong breeze could blow him away wasn’t all that mad) Bucky had stepped in to push Billy to the tarmac. Harsh? Maybe. But Billy had it coming.
As did a lot of the people they stood up to in the next few years - when they were twelve, and Martin Sherpherd started calling Liam Fowler names, Steve stood up to him, called him out on it, and told him to quit. When Liam tried to start a fight, Bucky punched him in the nose.
And it kind of continued like that for the rest of their lives.
Which is handy, actually, because soon, the bullies they stood up to turn into criminals, people who need to be brought to justice, and who better than them? It’s like they’ve been preparing for it their entire lives - every bully stood up to, every punch thrown, it’s all been in preparation for this.
It starts when a guy steals a lady’s handbag on the subway, and darts out of the station with it. The cop standing at the bottom of the stairway doesn’t seem to question it, probably thinks he’s running late or something - and that’s when Steve darts out of the train after him.
Unfortunately, by the time Bucky has caught up, the door to the train has closed. He stands, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and when the doors finally open at the next stop, he sprints.
Steve, meanwhile, is tailing the guy across Brooklyn, running down Nostrand Avenue, past the hardware store, and the hair place. It’s hard to keep an eye on him in the early morning crowds, but Steve does his best. Bucky, meanwhile, runs back towards the last stop, from Sterling Street right up Nostrand Avenue - he sees the guy when he’s about six feet in front of him, but fortunately, the guy doesn’t see him.
Bucky hands the very grateful lady back her handbag, and Steve marches a teenage with a quickly blossoming black eye down to the police station, where he quietly turns himself in.
It gets serious from there. A guy stealing a handbag turns into someone who stole their neighbours dog, turns into someone breaking into a single mom’s apartment in their building, turns into someone holding up a liquor store with a gun. The crimes get more serious, and so does the punishment they dole out.
“Do you not think this is kind of illegal?” Steve asks, standing over the body of a recently knocked-out repeat offender, someone who had been breaking into the homes of a few elderly people around the block, picking on easy targets. He gives the man a little nudge with his boot, and Bucky shrugs.
“Not as illegal as what he did.” He says. “And anyway, he’s not gonna do it again. Not likely. Now c’mon, help me lift Mrs. Higgin’s crap out.”
It’s not that they want to do it. Vigilante has become almost a constant profession, now, never mind the comic books Steve draws, and the job down at the school Bucky desperately clings onto. This wouldn’t be their first choice. But the police in Brooklyn seem pretty goddamn crap, which has lead them to doling out their own justice.
“Someone’s breaking into jewelry stores.” Bucky says over breakfast, frowning at the newspaper. “First Court Street, then Nucastle.” He squints, and turns to his eggs.
“It’s like a five minute walk between those.” Steve says, almost offhand, sitting opposite him at the breakfast bar, pushing muesli around his bowl.
Bucky looks up at him, eyes narrowing. “Any other jewelers around there?”
“Kay’s.” Steve answers. “Like another five minutes from Nucastle.”
Bucky grins, and slaps Steve on the shoulder. “This is why you’re the brains of the operation.”
It takes a few days of staking out, but it happens. The alarm doesn’t go off, but Steve watches as someone, a black silhouette, slips into the second story window. “Let’s go.”
For two pretty heavy guys, they’re surprisingly light on their feet. They slip into the window pane that had been removed by the burglar, and move across where they had gone, through the darkness. They’re careful not to touch anything, not to sound any alarms. The door to the stairwell has been left open, and Steve is careful as he presses his back to the wall, and peeks down. When he finds that the coast is clear, he descends.
Downstairs, there’s a single light on - a torch, Steve realises, upon further inspection. It moves around sporadically, as if someone’s holding it in their teeth, but when the burglar - a she - turns it around to focus on her work, Steve gets a look at her.
He doesn’t know her from adam, but that doesn’t matter. Hopefully she can’t see them from the stairwell, with the rest of the room being dark, so he and Bucky edge into the room, hugging opposite walls, before creeping forward. One wrong move, one car headlight shining through the window, one wrong step, it could reveal them. And they don’t bring guns, or knives, or anything like that to this kind of party - they’re pretty defenseless, as far as things go.
They edge forward until, finally, they’re closing in on her. Bucky hangs back, as he so often does, and it’s Steve who steps into the light. He looks at her, and the thick gold chain hanging from a leather-gloved hand.
“Put it down.”
Three words, a pause, and then she bolts. Steve’s always had a thing about not punching girls but Bucky knows that girls are vicious - when he grabs both of her legs to tug her to the floor, she reaches for his hair and yanks hard enough to tear it out. She drops the bag of jewelry, and Steve kicks it out of the way as he helps Bucky with the struggle - she lashes and kicks out, almost catching him in the nose, but when Steve manages to get a knee between her shoulderblades, Bucky takes it upon himself to tie her up.
They deliver her to the police station, bag full of jewels sitting beside her, and he wrists bound with a thick, gold chain. In the bag, a note, telling the police where to find the rest of the jewels.
And after that, it doesn’t take long for them to get noticed.
Three days later, Steve backs into the apartment with a bag of groceries in one hand and his keys in the other, Bucky carrying the other two bags of groceries. They’re bickering, as usual, looking between each other rather than at the apartment as they put the bags in the little kitchenette.
“I’m just saying, if you didn’t have eyelashes as long as your dick, you wouldn’t get your way so often.” Bucky says, propping one bag up on the counter.
“You’re just whipped.” Steve retorts. “Don’t act like it’s my fault that you give in so easily.”
“Yeah, well--” Bucky begins, but then he stops. He stares. “Stevie.” He says, and steve turns to look at the living room.
In the crumbling, forty year old wingback chair, a man in an eyepatch and a black leather coat sits with his hands folded in his lap. Steve and Bucky stare at him, as he says, “Gentleman.”
They don’t respond.
“My name is Nick Fury.”
“Haven’t heard of you.” Bucky says, and Nick nods.
“You aren’t supposed to have.” He says, ominous, and Steve frowns. Nick continues, “We’ve been watching you boys for a while now. Vigilantes, right? Giving little old ladies back their stolen property and beating up burglars. We saw what you did at the jewelry store.”
Steve freezes a little bit, so Bucky reaches over to discretely squeeze his hand.
“We had two agents and Iron Man posted to catch that burglar.” Nick says.
“We?” Steve asks.
“SHIELD.” Nick answers, and then, as if Steve had never interrupted: “We want to know how you caught the Black Cat before we did.”
“The Black Cat?” Bucky snorts. “She has a name?”
“She is a famous cat burglar. She’s been robbing jewelry stores in New York for months now. Spider-Man couldn’t catch her, and neither could Iron Man, Black Widow, or Hawkeye.” Bucky frowns to himself; he’s only heard of two of those. “So we’d like to offer you both a job.”
“A job?” Bucky asks, and Nick nods. Steve is kind of getting sick of the game of echo they’re playing, but never mind.
“A job.” Nick nods. “As SHIELD Agents. We’ll send you all the necessary files, post you on missions, and train you in self defense. It’s nothing you’re not already doing.”
I could meet Iron Man, Bucky thinks. What comes out of his mouth is: “What’s the pay like?”
“Pretty damn good.” Nick answers.
Steve and Bucky look at each other. Good pay might be nice, and at least they’d be doing some good, right? Silent understanding passes between them, and Steve says, “Only if we work as a team. We don’t work alone.”
Nick pauses, as if he considers that, and he nods. “Alright.” He stands, coat falling down to his mid-calves. He looks pretty apocalyptic, Steve thinks, but he’d never say so out loud. He watches as Nick moves to the front door, as if he’s a casual friend, someone who visits all the time. “You start on Monday.”
And then he’s gone, and Steve and Bucky watch the door, wondering, for the first time, how the fuck he got into the apartment.