"Tripadvisor says wear white while visiting South America. White reflects the sun and helps to keep you cooler." Sam's heartfelt reading of the travel guide he'd pulled up on his phone did nothing to help Natasha's mood. His rooftop surveillance spot had one positive; he had five bars on his reception.

"You know I can hurt you. Right?" Her threat was quiet not because she didn't have enthusiasm for it. Her low grumbled statement was said less than five feet away from one of the targets of their day-long reconnaissance. "The least Stark could have done is given us white T-shirts."

"With our names on them?" Steve offered absently. He scanned the festive crowd although their two targets were known, easy to spot and were in the company of Natasha shopping for souvenirs. He never turned off his sense of what could go wrong.

Natasha feigned interest in the bejeweled bikinis hanging along the pale yellow wall outside one of the gift shops lining the tourist-packed plaza; she fingered the dangling beads and let the targets pass. Her attempt to blow a limp sweat-soaked wisp of hair from her face was met with humidity driven resistance. Her whispered comment "I hate Stark," drew a huffed laugh from Sam and a sigh from Steve.

Bucky maintained his usual resistant comm-link silence.

"Beebee, come look at this!" The Rubenesque woman's voice told a history of smoke-filled bars and a long affair with straight-up no ice whiskey. She waved a short-fingered hand in the air, a generalized summoning gesture that anyone in the crowd of cruise ship patrons around her could have mistaken as a call to her side. She never looked up from the object of her discovery. "Beebee! Where are you?"

The question thrown into the outdoor market appeared rhetorical to her shopping companions until a svelte-looking figure dressed in a white sundress and too-large for her face sunglasses slid up to her side, "Maymay, I'm right here." Her chin nested conveniently on the bare-skinned shoulder to peer at her companion's newly found treasure. "What the hell is that?"

"This my dear is what we have been looking for all our lives. Luck." She picked up the heavy faux-bronze replica of the sculpture in the Plaza de Santo Domingo and ran her fingers over the ample curves and dips, allowing one pad to linger on the rounded breast. "This my love is Gertrude. Our own private version to bring home with us. We'll find the real version soon. I have the maps right here." She patted the bright-colored woven bag that hung across her body.

"Of course we will, I have complete faith in your navigational skills." Beebee cooed close to her ear, followed by a peck of her lips against her cheek; she disappeared into the cooler depths of the market.

Maymay cradled her intended purchase with the kind of awe that most tourists reserved for the emerald shops, she made her way to the vendor. Her flowing tangerine on white linen skirt brushed past the black-clad leg of Natasha browsing the "I Heart Cartagena" T-shirts. The faint brush of Natasha's hand across her back drew nothing more than a quick glimpse over her shoulder and a soft smile. Something Nat easily returned before checking her phone. "Well, I've tagged her. Now we see if it sticks to linen."

Bucky stood with his feet unevenly placed on the red clay tile roof of the tallest building overlooking the plaza where their targets had stalled in their sightseeing. His assigned by Steve location was a good vantage point, sure; but he protested the sight lines weren't optimal, and the comfort level for a long haul was lacking. Any further objection at the assignment was quickly pulled back by the smirk it evoked from Wilson. Bucky shook his head and dutifully climbed the stairs then scaled the delicate tiled roof to access the peak. His final comment to Steve as he headed into the building was "This sucks."

The Winter Soldier could kneel on a flat tar-paper roof for days if needed. Torrential rain, unrelenting sun, frigid cold; without food or water; hurt or whole; didn't matter. The distinct thick material was strangely comforting. Black grainy surfaces, soft and hot in the sun, silently giving to his steps. Firm but still forgiving in the cold. He'd spent countless hours studying the nuanced textures and colors, learning the distinct odor emitted in various weather conditions, all while waiting for a target. His drill-down study of roofing materials served no real purpose except to bring him better companionship than the Voice on those long stretches of nothingness that finally came to an explosive end with a single pull of the trigger. The sensation of his knees or ass pressed into the soft give of a tar and asphalt roof filled him with a calmness that settled his focus down to only one thing. The mission. The brittle clay tiles had nothing on the lay of good flat tar roof.

They had their hasty assignment this time around. Stark's mission. His newly found sense of freedom balked at that phrase: Stark's mission. The no-plan, how-dare-you-pound-on-my- gate, Barnes-you're-a-complete-loser mission. Bucky rolled his vibranium shoulder. A move to dissipate the shame that filled his chest every time he let his thoughts roll back to his drunken self-generated humiliation at Stark's gates. He forced his mind back to the nuts and bolts of this assignment: Find the operatives who would lead them to the Chitauri-based weapons, confiscate them, extract information, neutralize the enemy.

Nothing new about the surveillance. A piece of cake without the killing part. The one upside to the location: A steady ocean breeze to cool the abundant amount of sweat generated by wearing a blue leather jacket in a tropical climate. He silently groused to himself about the lack of planning. He glanced towards Wilson perched on the roof of a glow-in-the-dark yellow stucco row-house. "Birdman, are you sweating as much as I am? That flight-pack's gotta be hot. You've got those damn goggles on. Dork."

He kept his commentary to himself given the active comms that he had reluctantly agreed to use. He still had an annoying ring in his ear from three months earlier when Mother used the stun prod on his neck and shorted out his earpiece. The memory drew a shudder, but the tinnitus pissed him off since it always peaked in the head-down, butt-up, best sex position with Steve. He groaned at the recollected snarking Voice comment, "Don't do anything you can't tell your Mother, Soldier."

He digressed for a moment of gratitude that the Voice appeared to be more hung-over than he was and had gone completely quiet since they left New York.

His insistent "I don't need any more damn voices in my head," comm-link protest on the quinjet a few hours earlier, was deftly handled by Steve's perfected moves. The hand tangled in Bucky's hair-tugged his head back-a tongue running up his exposed throat-the stinging bite to the nape of his neck; Steve's maneuver never failed to melt his stubborn resolve. The ensuing circling arm that snaked around his waist slithered up his chest to constrict his body back into the firm, and unyielding warmth that was Steve sent his will out the window. The earpiece was slipped quickly into his ear while he was still nothing but a rubbery melted mess, his head lolling back on his shoulder. A small sigh at how easy it was for Steve to get what he wanted, he didn't resent it, too much. The feel of his hands on his body was ultimately worth it in the end.

The general musings about Steve touching him, sent his gaze to the far corner of the open area below, he sorted through the white-clad crowd of tourists for the tall, muscular figure that hovered on the fringe of their activities. He needed to lay eyes on him every few minutes to keep himself grounded. The undulating mass of people blocked his view. He bit his lip in anticipation and searched until he heard his own choked, "Steve?" whisper across the comm-link.

"Here, Northeast corner." The quick response was accompanied by the movement of a darkly dressed man with a beard and tousled blond hair stepping out from under an overhanging balcony. He nodded towards Bucky's position. "Right here."

The reassuring sight and sounds of Steve allowed him to return to his favorite pastime. An eyes closed recollection of hips pressed behind him. The sharp bite of teeth leaving a mark on his body that he couldn't see to appreciate but the distinctly lustful look on Steve's face as he fingered the spot for the few minutes his skin would hold the scar was all the confirmation he needed. He embraced the image of Steve's half-lidded eyes following his hand as he explored his skin, leaving fleeting evidence that he had claimed some hidden patch of Bucky's flesh. The quickly faded bruise on his inner thigh, the mouth-pulled welt in his groin, bite marks laid across his chest, all of it made his gut twitch and caused a hint of blood to pool between his legs. He found himself wondering what the Voice was going to have to say about his new found mission distraction: Sex with Steve.

The huffed laugh caused his foot to slip on the delicate red-clay tiles. Every twitch and step seemed to dislodge ancient chips of stone to scurry down the roof and over the edge, raining down pebbles and dust onto anyone below him. A death sentence for an assassin. Bucky's brain itched at the poor choice, reminding him of how much he detested his current assigned location. He looked longingly at the deep blue three-story building at the other end of the plaza. The one with the alluring, very flat, dark gray-black tar paper and asphalt covered roof. The temptation was overwhelming. The justification was minimal; the sun's moving, less glare. He made his move to skitter down the tiles, causing a torrent of broken clay pebbles to clatter in his wake and tumble to the ground below. His assassin skills didn't fail him, by the time people looked up he was gone.

"We're having lunch now, boys. It looks like we're starting with shrimp scampi, a nice red wine, and a few minutes to look over the entrees. Can I get you anything?" Natasha held her position in the shade of the side street market; she varied her perusing from the postcards to the bikinis to the Panama hats. Then over again.

Sam's groaned stretch filled their ears before he added, "Are we sure about these two being our targets? Just wondering out loud, this was a bit rushed, you know, Barnes pissing Stark off just when he seemed to let the whole thing rest. Not that he should let it rest, I mean it's a big deal, but then again Barnes was brainwashed after all. How could Stark still want to kill him? Then again. I live with him and maybe I can see Stark's point. No disrespect to either of them. We didn't have much time to confirm this intel, so maybe..."

"What the hell are we doing here?" Bucky's irritation laced question burst across their hearing, taking all of them by surprise. An uncharacteristic contribution to their usual three-way-only comm discussions.

Sam sighed a rebuttal, "We are surveilling our targets. That's what we're doing." A subtle adjustment to his position barely relieved the calf cramps as he squatted on the roof.

Bucky snarled "No kidding? Is that it? I had no idea." His last word ended with a slight rasped squeak. "I thought we were here to intercept a weapons shipment, or an alien invasion or stop an alien weapons interception; something other than babysitting two tourists wandering lost all over Bogota for the past seven hours."

"Cartagena." Steve closed his eyes and allowed an internal groan of regret as soon as the correction fell out of his mouth.

"What? Cartagena?" Bucky croaked again. "Oh, sorry. My bad. Wrong sun-drenched South American location. Bogota, Cartagena, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires. Is there a difference? No. Not really. I've been to all of them, I think? Anyway, they're all hot, crowded, bright, too bright. Stupid yellows, reds, blues. Tourists, narrow streets, crap sight-lines. Confusion and sweat, handlers didn't know what they were doing..."

Sam's comments mingled with Bucky's monologue, "Okay, he's losing it, great, we've got a sniper on the roof, and he's going down the tubes. He even used a number not divisible by three."

Steve left the corner of the plaza and paced to scan the tile covered roof. "Nat, do you have eyes on him? I can't see him. He was up there a few minutes ago. I saw him." A hint of panic began to rise. "Sam, can you see him? Buck? Location, what's your location?"

Sam answered, "Nope. No sight of him. He's a damn ninja. One second he's on that roof next second...gone."

Natasha's disconcerting laughter cut across Steve's worried questions. She muttered with a clearly sultry tone, "Southeast corner, blue building, roof. I'll be there in five, my love." It was followed by another laugh.

"I take it our target's standing in front of you. Are you safe?" Steve spun around to try and lay eyes on Natasha. "Sam, you got her?"

"I got her. She's okay for the moment. I'll get to her. You check on Barnes."

Natasha held her phone to her ear and tossed her head as she laughed. Her face-to-face encounter with their target at the Panama hat pushcart was entirely unexcepted. A tickle of suspicion crossed her mind as she replayed the last few minutes and wondered if Beebee had spotted the bug she had planted on Maymay's skirt. Or maybe it was the full-on black head-to-toe outfit in the middle of a sea of white that brought her the unwanted attention. She smiled coyly at her and ducked to dig through the stock below the cart. "Be careful, Steve, he's heavily armed." She could feel if not see Steve's rebuking glance. "Nevermind, you know that, besides, I doubt he'll shoot you. Sam on the other hand."

"No worries I'm not going over there. I just might shoot him back." Sam added as he ditched the flight pack and ran to join her.

Steve turned his attention towards the blue painted hotel. "Enough. No one is shooting anyone, just keep an eye on the targets, I'm heading for him." The trip across the open square through the throng of people came to a halt when his gaze fell on Bucky as he prowled the rooftop. Growing frightened glances from the surrounding people directed towards the menacing figure on the low roof pulled at Steve's attention. He kept his focus on Bucky; the rolling, pacing stride that stood out against the brilliant azure skyline. Bucky, long hair tousled by the ocean breeze, a sniper rifle held across his body, pointed to the ground; the dark leather jacket; Caribbean sun glinting splintered reflections from the dark and gold-hued metal arm. There he was, alive; memories intact, damaged, frightening, scared, surviving, beautiful; and he was with him, in his bed, inseparable.

A stolen fleeting moment to let it all sink in. He thought about the last three months of exploring every curve and line of his body, finding their way as lovers; learning how to navigate Bucky's post-Hydra world of Voices and medications and uncertainties. A smile crept across his face when he thought about how far they'd come together.

"Steve? Are you there?" The uncertain question broke across his consciousness. He blinked to fight the glare from the blinding sun that sat just over Bucky's shoulder. What came into focus cut his smile short.

Bucky stood wide-stanced on the edge of the roof; the toe of his boot just over the lip; Steve thought he could see the steel gray of his eyes, as he started right through him. The rifle hung loose in his hands.

"Buck. You trust me right? Nod, just nod that you can hear me."

Bucky's head moved slightly, a hint of a nod.

"Good, I saw that. Don't move. Don't do anything. I am on my way."

Steve slipped a cautious hand under the hem of Bucky's jacket, "Let's go, Buck, get down from there." The tug to pull him back ended with his arms wrapped around him, they stumbled towards the scant amount of shade offered by an air conditioning vent. His quiet order to "Sit down" was obeyed as Bucky slid down to let his back rest against the vent. He sucked down the first bottle of water. Steve squatted in front of him and offered a bit of truth, "You look like hell."

"Gee thanks."

"Sure. I figure you should at least get some honest feedback after that stunt you pulled." Steve settled in next to him.

"Is this the lecture portion of the program?" Bucky poured the last gulp of water on his head.

"Nope. It's the genuinely curious and concerned portion."

"I'm all good here. This ain't my first time. I've been in a lot worse shape, worse conditions. You think a little sun and lack of water stopped me before?" Bucky wiped his hand across his forehead, pulling the sweat away from his eyes.

"Not what I'm talking about." Steve shook his head and let his arms rest on his knees. The pause to let Bucky speak went by silently. He tried again, "What were you thinking?" The question was quiet.

"That it's stinking hot here? That I sucked down a couple of gallons of water on the quinjet and I've gotta piss, but I'm up here on this damn roof watching Wilson doing a crap job of looking discreet while wearing goggles and a flight-pack. Dork. He's killing the tourist trade at the pushcarts on the Plaza, impersonating a vulture on that roof."

"Buck, you were prowling like a wild animal up here; quite the show down below. Not so great for the covert operation we're on but cheap entertainment for the cruise ship crowd. So I'm asking again what were you thinking? Going to Stark's place? Drunk?"

"Not bad, Rogers. It only took you twelve hours and eighteen minutes to ask those questions."

"I thought I'd give you time to clear the alcohol." Steve handed him another water.

"Thanks, considerate of you." He pushed the bottle away.

"That's me. Considerate Steve."

"Perfect Steve." Bucky muttered and let his head fall back against the vent.

"Cut the crap. What were you thinking?. You were the one that insisted I wear a comm when I met with him about the data. You were ready to kill him if he touched me. Two nights later you're giving yourself up? How do you suppose I feel about that? Finding you there? Stark could have had Interpol, the CIA and the FBI on you in under thirty minutes."

"He could have tried," Bucky growled, rolled to his feet and paced away.

Steve followed to block his escape, "Talking big for someone who got caught by a ninety-year-old woman.'"

Bucky stepped closer, nearly touching the dark blue uniform that stretched across Steve's chest. "Asshole. She's a Widow, not a woman and not your average ninety-year-old. More like us than say one of those cruise ship grannies."

Steve didn't back away, "You didn't think to use the main entrance to the Avengers Facility. The unlocked main entrance."

"Fuck you, Rogers." Bucky's step to back away was stopped when Steve grabbed both biceps and tugged him back, he drew in a slow breath, waiting without struggling.

Steve moved to let his lips brush against Bucky's ear, he whispered, "Looking forward to that."

"What?" His weak attempt to pull out of Steve's grip ended with him staring intently at him. "Still?"

"Of course. Why would you think anything else?" He laughed.

"I screwed up. Stark's calling you every night, I embarrassed you. I'm crazy. I'm a mess."

Steve cupped Bucky's face between his hands, his move to bring their lips together hesitated with Bucky's whispered, "You know, I hear voices." He smiled and covered his words with his mouth. He meant for the kiss to be quick, a token while out in the open sunlight in the middle of a mission but Bucky's faint moan pulled him in. He pushed his tongue deep into Bucky's mouth, his arm wrapped around his neck, holding him in place as he pressed their mouths together. The muffled sounds were clear across the comms.

Sam's voice cut into their moment. "We can hear you. Really. We can. Enough."

Author Notes: Rubinesque: Applied to a woman who has similar proportions to those in paintings by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Ruben; attractively plump; a woman who is alluring or pretty but without the waif-like body or athletic build presently common in media.