AN: For those wondering where the last 2 chapters of "And The Wounded Sing" are, they will be written. I needed a break after 4 months of heavy Bucky angst, so what do I do? Write more Bucky angst, this time in an AU. This AU is inspired by Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, in which Darcy takes after Stephanie the semi-competent and Bucky after Morelli the hot, overprotective cop, but this fic is not as spastic as those books as I tend to mire myself in angst. C'est la vie.

General disclaimer applies: The characters belong to Marvel and are used for non-profit, entertainment purposes only.

Title a lyric from "It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)" by Arcade Fire.

And If I Call For You

Part One

By: Wynn

And if I call for you
Oh, Orpheus!
Just sing for me all night
We'll wait until it's over
Wait until it's through

There were days when Bucky seriously regretted becoming a cop. Days belligerent snot-nosed punks spit on him as he hauled them in for illegal graffiti, days drunk domestic abusers got in a lucky kick or punch before he landed a few of his own, days that he stared at death, at a body on the ground or in a car or in a ditch somewhere and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would never find out who killed them.

Today, though, is not one of those days.

Today he stands in the small alley between old Mrs. Monroe's house and the one belonging to wanted fugitive Jay Chesterson, and he stares up at the most gorgeous ass that he's ever seen. Currently the ass, in a pair of dark denim jeans that disappear into tall black boots, wiggles as the body to which it belongs hangs halfway through the open window of Jay Chesterson's kitchen. Bucky hears a grunt and then the legs extending from the most gorgeous ass that he's ever seen kick out at him, providing the leverage needed for the body to haul itself further through the widow. He takes a moment to admire the delicate balance, and, again, the gorgeous ass, before he remembers the hawkish gaze of old Mrs. Monroe, likely reporting his every move to his ma in a whispered phone conversation. Sighing, he reaches up then and snags one of the waving black boots only to let it go a second later as it kicks out at him.

"I've got a tazer and pepper spray," the body squawks at him from the window, "so unless you want to end up face-down and drooling in a pile of alley piss, I suggest you keep on trucking, buddy."

Bucky sighs and closes his eyes. Of course. Of course.Who else would it be? Who else would be simultaneously gutsy and stupid enough to break into the house a man on the run from six outstanding charges in the middle of the goddamn afternoon? Only Darcy, the prickly thorn in his increasingly bleeding side. At least now he knows why Mrs. Monroe called his ma rather than the precinct. Everyone called Bucky whenever the matter concerned Darcy Lewis, and matters always concerned Darcy Lewis, no matter the fact that they broke up more than six years ago.

Sighing again, Bucky opens his eyes. He glances up once more at the undoubtedly gorgeous and troublemaking ass before preparing for doom. "Try it, sweetheart, and I'll have to arrest you for assaulting a police officer."

The legs freeze. Bucky hears Darcy curse. She cants back far enough to peek over her shoulder and out the window at him, wincing when they lock eyes. She turns back around, and Bucky can nearly picture her face, her nose scrunched and her eyes squeezed shut, as she figures out how best to play this. Confrontational? Indifferent? Conciliatory? He swipes a hand back through his too-long hair and waits, placing bets on the former rather than the latter given prior history.

Darcy doesn't make him wait long.

"Top o' the morning to you, Detective!" she chirps out, twisting around until she sits facing him on the windowsill. She takes his breath away as she always has, her mouth lush and battle red, her hair down and blowing in the breeze, but she aggravates him off as she always has, arching an imperious brow at him as though he were the wrongdoer here and she the righteous citizen. She might not consider herself to be particularly moral or righteous, but he knows she definitely views him as the wrongdoer in any situation concerning them, so confrontational it is then.

"It's two o'clock in the afternoon," he says, striving for calm. "And it's Sergeantnow."

Darcy frowns down at him. "Since when?"

"Since about three weeks ago."

The imperiousness flickers. Bucky sees a small smile, quickly formed yet genuine in its pleasure for him passing the Sergeant's exam. Yet as quickly as it forms, Darcy squashes it just as fast, tilting her chin up to stare down at him. "Well, Sergeant, like I said before, you can just keep on trucking because I haven't broken any laws."

Bucky peers up at her, perched on the window ten feet in the air, and cocks a brow.

"I haven't," she insists. "The window was open. It's not a crime to look."

"I'd say you were doing a damn sight more than looking."

"I didn't break in. You can't arrest me for breaking and entering."

Bucky sighs again. "Darcy, I'm not going to arrest you, even if you were doing a B&E. Can you just get down from there? Do you even know what this guy did?"

Her lips thin. "Yes, I do. I'm not a rookie, Barnes."

The use of his last name makes him tense. "Then why are you here? Barton's supposed to send Bobbi after the violent ones."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "The guy chucked a toaster at Dum-Dum's head. That's not exactly the work of a hardened criminal."

"He threw a toaster at him and then he tried to run over Dugan with his car. And he's got priors, Darcy. For assault."

"Hence the tazer and the pepper spray. Plus, Sif's been giving me self-defense lessons. She says I'm getting pretty good." She pauses and purses her lips. "I could probably kick your ass now."

His nostrils flare, but Bucky doesn't otherwise rise to the bait. Instead, he stares up at Darcy and she stares down at him, neither giving an inch. The impasse lasts approximately seven seconds before Darcy speaks because she never met a silence she couldn't fill.

"What are you doing here anyway? You haven't done patrol work in years."

"I'm not now. Mrs. Monroe called my ma. Said there was a suspicious character lurking about." He sends her a tight smile as he continues. "She was right."

Darcy's mouth compresses again. She looks up at Mrs. Monroe's house, and presumably at Mrs. Monroe, and sends a scowl at both. "She needs to mind her own business."

"So says the woman dangling out of some perp's window."

Now Darcy directs the scowl down at him. "I'm doing my job. Which I should get back to now, so if you'll be on your way." She waves a hand at him, trying to shoo him down the alley.

"You know that's not going to happen. I'm not going to leave you here alone."

Her scowl deepens. "I'm not some damsel for you to save. And even if I needed saving, it wouldn't be from you. I'm not your concern anymore. I haven't been for a long time."

Bucky breaks then, dropping his gaze. He stares at the trashcan in front of him, what Darcy must have used to haul herself up to the window. He feels the first stirrings of anger in his gut, mixed with familiar ache in all matters concerning her. Clenching his jaw, he takes a few moments to breathe in, to calm down, before looking up at her again. "Yes. I know you're not. You've made that abundantly clear. So as soon as you get down from the goddamn window, I'll go."

The impasse returns. Bucky plants his feet and crosses his arms over his chest. Darcy tightens her grip on the windowsill. He preps for round two, scrounging his brain for whatever might lure her down, then debating the wisdom of trying to haul himself up next to her, when she tenses and glances back over her shoulder. Bucky sees her eyes widen. Darcy opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, she's being shoved off the windowsill and into the air. He has enough time to glimpse Jay Chesterson scowling down at them before Darcy lands on him, sending them both crashing to the ground.

The air leaves his chest in a rush as he hits the asphalt and as Darcy hits him. Bucky lays still a moment, dazed and breathless, a twinge radiating through in his left shoulder. Then his current arrangement processes. Darcy sprawls on top of him, warm and soft, her face inches from his. Her hair envelops them, nearly blocking out the scant afternoon sun shining into the alley, and he flashes back to the last time they were like this, three years past, the night of Steve and Peggy's wedding. Bucky thought that she'd forgiven him then, forgiven him for his shortfall when he was twenty-one and fresh back from the army, scared shitless at the prospect of her being pregnant and furious at her for not telling him. She hadn't been pregnant, she had learned that four days later, but by then the fights had been fought and the damage had been done. Darcy hadn't forgiven him either, not completely, slipping out of his hotel room the day after the wedding before Bucky woke and running off after to marry Ian the Intern in Atlantic City.

And now she's here, looking at him and touching him, and he can't help it, though he knows he should because she was right. She's not his concern. She walked away, the first and the second time, but his body rejects what his mind recalls and he drags his thumb across her waist in a soft caress. Darcy's eyes widen. Her mouth opens, but whatever she's about to say vanishes when the sound of a door slamming shut penetrates the fog surrounding them. Darcy perks up like a damn bloodhound then, arching up to listen. The arch puts her breasts squarely in his face, and Bucky tries not to look, but he does, gazing at them like Tantalus at his forbidden fruit.

A car starts in the distance. Darcy curses, at Bucky, at gravity, at her perp escaping, before she jumps off him to chase after Chesterson. Bucky lies still a moment, again dazed and breathless, at her, at his own damn stupidity. Closing his eyes, he knocks his head back against the asphalt then he hears Darcy shout and he's up and charging down the alley, reaching the end in time to catch her again as she dives to evade Chesterson and his car.

They hit the ground again, but there's no gazing this time. Darcy's up and off of him almost as soon as they hit, turning away, but not before he catches the flush to her face.

Bucky frowns at her. "Are you—"

"I'm fine," she mutters, wiping her palms on her jeans.

His frown deepens. She doesn't look at him as he stands. Instead, she keeps her jaw clenched and her gaze fixed on the spot of road where Chesterson disappeared. Whether the clenched jaw is for Bucky or for Chesterson or for the both of them, Bucky doesn't know, but he doesn't care. Reaching into his jacket pocket, glaring at his shaking hand as he does, he pulls out his cell then calls Steve, who answers after two rings.

"Rogers."

"Put out an APB on Jay Chester—"

"What? No!" Darcy turns then and lunges for Bucky. She latches her hands around his wrist and drags it away from his ear. "Do you know how much his bond is worth?"

"I don't care," Bucky says as he tries to wrench his arm away. "He tried to run you down."

Darcy digs in, both with her feet and her nails. "And I'll taze him in the ass for it when I catch him. Twice."

Bucky winces from the bite of her nails into his arm, but he doesn't give in. "Or he'll break out his baseball bat and beat the shit out of you, Darcy. I can't—"

"You can and you—"

"No! I can't. Not again."

Darcy stops trying to fight him. Her eyes go wide and her hands slacken in their grip enough for Bucky to pull away, but all he does is drop his gaze. The silence between them enhances the hiss of the still open line. Bucky closes his eyes at the sound. No doubt Steve heard what he just said and would want to talk about it later, would want to rehash the past that he's nearly got locked away, Darcy crumpled and bleeding and left for dead after trying to catch Brock Rumlow alone. It had been her fourth job for Barton, Darcy taking up bounty hunting after her divorce from Ian. She'd spent a week in the hospital, the longest week of Bucky's life, including his army tour, long enough for him to break Barton's nose for hiring her, for Jemma to finally leave him, for Steve to catch Rumlow and lock him away before Bucky found him and likely killed him.

Darcy's hands tighten on his arm again, not in a violent death grip this time but in something like a reassuring squeeze. His eyes fly up to hers and he finds them the softest they've been towards him since she woke in the hospital nearly a year ago, Bucky asleep by her side.

"Chesterson's not Rumlow," she murmurs now. "Even if he was, I'm not stupid enough to try that again. I'm happy to leave the psychos to Bobbi. But that doesn't leave me much. Not the kind that pay. I need this bond, Bucky."

Bucky nearly says that she needed a new job, but he'd gone down that road when she returned to work for Barton and all that had gotten him was her walking away from him again. He glances at the phone, still hissing, Steve still waiting for this to play out, then he looks at her hands on his arm and up into her eyes, her expression quiet but firm. He can't help but sigh as the fight leaves him. "Okay. Okay. But the next time you go after him you take Thor with you."

"Fine. Yes. Will do."

Bucky looks at her, squinting at the swiftness of her response.

Darcy sighs and releases his arm. "I'll call him. I promise. But time is money and money is pizza and rent, so I need to go get him before he decides to blow town."

Bucky blows out another breath. Already regretting the decision, he lifts his phone to his ear and says to Steve, "Cancel that."

"You sure?" Steve asks.

Bucky stares at Darcy a moment. She lifts a brow at him, which is better than a raised chin, which was better than shaking hands, which was better than the sight of her turning and walking away. "No," he says, closing his eyes again. "But do it."

"Okay."

Steve clicks off. Bucky opens his eyes and switches off his phone, shoving it and his hands into his jacket pockets. He expects Darcy to turn heel and run after her FTA then, but she doesn't. She stays before him instead, watching him. Bucky can't meet her eyes though, too afraid of what she might see. A few seconds pass and then she reaches out and lays her hand on his arm.

"Thank you."

He nods in response, his throat tight. Her nails are black, coated in something that makes them shimmer like stars. As she pulls her hand away, he says, unable to stop himself, "Call if you need help. It doesn't matter when."

Darcy says nothing, so long that Bucky finally glances up at her. He can't read the expression on her face. He tries to keep everything at bay, tries to summon the fixed stare of the cop, then the quiet gaze of a friend, anything but the riot that she stirs within him. He doesn't know if he fails or if he succeeds. She nods at him a moment later, and he watches as she slides her hand into the pocket of her coat. When she retracts it, she clutches a pair of sunglasses, the red heart frames he won for her in a carnival his senior year. His breath stills at the sight and his eyes fly up to hers again, but she's got them closed and keeps them closed until she dons the glasses and then he can only see a faint glimmer of her eyes. She smiles, though, and a smile is better than a smirk, which is better than a frown, which is better than a scowl.

"Will do." She starts to back away, up the sidewalk toward her car. As she goes, she lifts her hand and gives him a jaunty salute. "Catch you on the flipside, Sarge."