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The man was in his line of fire. Jack was far, far away, perched on a rooftop, but he was a damn good sniper. There was no way he would miss the shot.
“Mac, you have forty-five seconds and then I start shooting.” he said into the microphone.
“Okay.” Mac muttered, then yelped slightly, and Jack grinned. It was always nice to hear his partner trying to dodge the attentions of overeager, butt-grabbing, old women. Mac always said Jack had to be grateful it didn’t happen to him, but Jack just found Mac’s predicament hilarious.
Then he noticed something briefly shining in the corner of his eye and he turned carefully, trying not to blow his position wide open.
Fuck, there was another shooter a few hundred meters from his position and Jack wasn’t completely hidden because this had been the best spot to protect Mac.
Before he could come up with a solution, the other man dropped on his rifle, probably dead, and Jack began looking around, trying to find the third guest to this too crowded party (he and Director Thornton were going to have words about the accuracy of their intelligence, because lately the analysts seemed to be on fucking drugs and couldn’t find their asses to save their own life) and finally saw a man saluting him from an opposite rooftop, rifle bag already on his shoulder. If the cheek didn’t give him away, the metal arm surely did, and Jack growled in annoyance.
“You and I are going to have words, I swear to God,” Jack growled, and turned back to his own target.
“What?” Mac asked, puzzled, slightly out of breath.
Jack wondered if they were already at the part of the plan where Mac had to run for his life.
“Nothing, pretty boy.” Jack replied. “Let’s just wrap this up, I want a beer.” and to fucking wring someone’s neck. “You have ten seconds to get out of there, Mac.” Jack said and started shooting.
***
“You seemed awfully tense during the debriefing, Jack.” Mac pointed out, following Jack like a lost puppy when they were finally free of the Director. Unfortunately the debrief had to be cut short because of a “sudden emergency”, so Jack’s rant against intelligence had to wait. He wondered if they had left behind all the competent people when they had moved.
Thinking of the cause for the move, of Nikki, made his blood boil, so he focused back on Mac, but the guy was still waiting for an answer, and that reminded him of another, blood-boiling inducing matter.
“I wasn’t.” Jack answered brusquely. “I have to go.” he added, accelerating his step.
“What?” Mac asked surprised and tried to keep up with him. “But weren’t we on for a beer?”
The tone was hopeful and a bit hurt and Jack stopped. Damn, Mac really looked like a lost puppy when he wanted to. Fucking kid.
“Later, Mac. Sorry.” he muttered and shouldered on. Mac, fortunately, let it go.
***
“Haven’t I told you – repeatedly – that I can do my job?” Jack growled into the receiver when the call connected. “By myself?” he reiterated.
Silence for a moment, then-
“I was in the neighborhood.” a familiar voice answered, dry as the desert. Jack gritted his teeth.
“Don’t, James. I follow the news as much as any good American citizen, and I know you were coming back from a mission to Australia. Loki was wrecking havoc with the kangaroos or some shit and you were hit, badly.”
“Oh, were you worried about me?” the other man asked and this time a bit of the man’s personality shined through. It happened more and more every time Jack talked to him, and while Jack was generally glad of it, now the sassy tone just grated on his nerves, because he wasn’t kidding.
“Of course I was, you ass. But that’s not the point. We agreed you would stay out of my ops, James.”
“I did. I do. But he was about to shoot you.”
Jack was torn between growling and sighing.
“That is – again – not the point. I’m not the green operative you saved twenty years ago. I’m a fucking agent, James. You have to respect that and let me do my own goddamn job.”
The voice on the other side was oddly silent now and the quiet was a bit disquieting. As much as Jack knew that almost nothing he could do could unsettle James, he didn’t want the other man upset.
“Many times.” he finally said.
“What?” Jack asked, taken aback.
“I saved you many times in the past twenty years.” James explained and Jack groaned.
“That’s because you can’t keep your nose out of my fucking business, you ass, not because I needed it!”
James had the audacity to chuckle. God, the man was so infuriating!
“I have to go.” Jack added, frowning, when his doorbell suddenly rang. Mac must have followed him in the end. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Of course.” James agreed demurely and hung up.
But of course when Jack called him back hours later, when Mac was finally gone, James’ phone was off. Bastard.
***
“So our intel says the organization we’re hunting is reaching out to Hydra, and that caught the interest of another agency.” Patti admitted and before she could go on both he and Mac interrupted her.
“What agency?”
“You sure?”
Riley snickered and Patti glared at them all.
“No, just saying,” Jack went on, unperturbed, “’cause lately your guys in the analysis department are seriously dropping the ball.”
“Yes, I am sure,” Patti replied through gritted teeth. “Director Fury confirmed it.”
“Wait.” said Jack, blinking. “SHIELD? Are you involving us with SHIELD?”
Mac looked thoughtful and Riley intrigued. Jack just felt a headache coming.
“Even after being built back from the ground, SHIELD still has the best skills and knowledge about Hydra. They are useful if we want to infiltrate their operation.”
Jack had a good suspicion about who exactly was going to help them with this.
***
And of-fucking-course he was right!
Jack didn’t bother to smother the glare to James, who was seating placidly on the other side of the conference room table at SHIELD HQ (since the Phoenix Foundation didn’t exist) he, Mac, Riley, Patti, Director Fury and Captain fucking America were occupying.
Patti was doing a placidly good job of ignoring him, and his team was just surreptitiously shooting him curious glances. Captain America though was starting to feel irritated by Jack’s glaring at James if his sharp glances were anything to go by.
Director Fury was ignoring them all, and James, the unflappable one, was calmly listening to Patti drone on and on about the little intelligence they had on Nikki’s organization, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Is there a problem?” Captain America finally asked during a lull in the conversation while Patti was looking at something on her tablet.
Jack didn’t answer and kept looking at James. Maybe the man would suddenly catch fire by Jack’s glare alone, who knew.
“No, no problem, Captain.” Mac hastily answered when it was obvious Jack wouldn’t utter a word. “Jack is…. Reluctant to work with other agencies. Don’t let his attitude get to you. He is very professional on the field.”
This time Jack glared at Mac. He wasn’t professional just on the field. Then he heard a low chuckle and he turned to the object of his previous glaring. James’ expression was again placid, but Captain America was looking at him in amazed surprise and Fury was observing the Winter Soldier and Jack with one, intense eye, so Jack knew he hadn’t imagined the sound.
This was going to be one long, frustrating op, Jack just knew.
***
When all was said and done, Nikki had escaped once again, the Hydra contact agent was dead, along with many other Hydra agents, their base had blown up and Jack was pissed. He slammed open the door to the changing room SHIELD had given them and found James, half-naked and drying off his hair, turned away from him.
Jack grabbed the man’s arms and slammed him against the lockers. James grunted, but Jack knew two things: James hadn’t hit the metal hard and, most especially, he had let Jack grab him, because there was no way James hadn’t heard him and couldn’t throw him off. No one had enough strength to block James’ metal arm.
Jack knew all that, and in that moment it was both gratifying and frustrating that James was letting him do all that.
“What did I ask you not to do before we shipped out?” he growled in the man’s ear and, god, James’ body was so strong and unyielding against his.
When James didn’t say anything, Jack hissed in frustration.
“You are not my babysitter, James, so stop acting like one!”
That was all it took, apparently, because in a fraction of second, it was Jack who was slammed against the lockers and James’s face was millimeters from his own, blue eyes glaring into Jack’s.
“I won’t let them hurt you just to preserve your pride!” James growled, a strange and helpless frustration twisting his features. “They are fucking animals! They-” he looked away briefly, before his gaze settled back on Jack. Jack froze, feeling completely pinned and mesmerized by James’ fierceness. “They tortured and brainwashed me for years, Jack. I still don’t know how I got away, but I did, and I saved you, but I can’t-” James swallowed and Jack was fascinated to see the man’s eyes shine under the artificial light of the room. But it wasn’t just because of the light, Jack knew. It was life-altering to see proof of how much James cared for him, after crossing path for so many years, after being saved (unnecessarily and not) so many times. Somehow Jack had never stopped to really think about it. They lived such different lives. But did it really matter, after all this time, how different they were? “I can’t let them hurt you.”
Well, Jack didn’t have anything to say in response to that, exactly, so he did what only an insane man would do when an ex brainwashed assassin was confessing to care for you, and kissed James with all the ferocity and the frustration he’d always felt in and out of the man’s presence.
James was still for a moment, but Jack wasn’t worried and he was right not to be, because after a few seconds James dove into the kiss like a man starving.
Jack lost himself in the kiss, in the kind of overwhelming passion he hadn’t let himself feel for years, in the strong man who had lived through so much.
He felt like a fucking teenager, all high on new and unexplored love, but even if neither he or James were in their younger years anymore, they still had enough time and energy to make up for it. They had fucking finally reached the turning point of their dance and Jack wouldn’t stop for anything in the world.
So he didn’t stop when Mac entered, yelped in surprise and shouted excuses, running out of the room. And they didn’t even stop when Captain America entered and uttered something like “Really, Bucky? This explains so much” and went away, while James laughed into their kiss.
“This doesn’t mean you’re forgiven.” Jack growled and bit James’ lower lip.
“Of course not.” James muttered, then gasped when Jack sucked on his neck. Jack grinned in satisfaction and went back to kissing his way down James’ pale throat.