[oom] you don't need to save me, but would you run away with me? // Part 2

[from_the_outside]

It's a long, long week. 

All the weeks here are long. She's been exhausted since she first arrived, and it hasn't gotten any easier – she's just gotten used to it.

What she isn't used to is watching what it does to Bucky.

He keeps busy, vanishing shortly after breakfast and not reappearing until well after dark, sometimes not until close to midnight. That doesn't mean she doesn't have eyes on him – she has eyes everywhere in this city. Some of what he gets up to he tells her about. Some of it she sees or hears about.

Some she only pieces together after the fact.

For example:

Four days into his stay she sees a flurry of alerts and messages about a gang of thugs that had decided to tangle with him in a Lowtown market. The videos of him throwing them into plate glass windows and walls and storefront doors travel through Madripoor like wildfire.

And then there are the rumors. It's public knowledge he killed Cade and that he's been seen with the art dealer: what no one knows is why, and the whispers grow steadily more frenetic as the week rolls on. The general consensus seems to be that the art dealer had Cade disposed of in order to help her own climb to power. More than one person attempts to contract him for help with an unsolvable problem. No one manages to hire him. No one seems to know what he wants.

Worse is that as the power dynamic between those on the lower rung vying for Selby's position fluctuates, he deliberately allows himself to be seen more often, delves more deeply into Madripoor's seedy shadows. She doesn't understand until her security catches a would-be assassin she saw coming a mile away, and then she realizes: his involvement with her, with Cade, has painted a target on her back.

So he's decided to paint a larger one on his own.

He loses weight. She pushes breakfast and dinner at him, but he eats mechanically, hardly seems to notice. The lines drawn on his face seem carved into rock. He stops smiling except occasionally when they're alone in the middle of the night, or when his phone pings with a text from Sam.

On the fifth night, he stops sleeping. 

He wakes up from a nightmare he refuses to talk about, and for the next few days she doesn't see him sleep at all. He's catching catnaps like he used to back in the Winter Soldier days, she thinks, but she's not sure. Every day he's a little quieter, a little more grim.

Which is why it's so strange that her apartment is completely filled with flowers.

Everywhere she looks now, there they are: large, expensive bouquets in fancy vases on nearly every available surface. He's had one delivered every single day, and every day she hates herself a little more for bringing him here. Every day he tells her come home with me.

Every day she tells him I can't. And he looks at her with those determined, weary eyes, and her heart breaks a little more.

It's a little over a week after he'd first arrived that she's hosting clients again. The party hasn't even started, and she already wishes she had a drink.

(There weren't any flowers today. She wonders if that's a sign.)

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[nerves_of_ice]

He laughs, quick and soft, and picks her up in his arms. Bucky kisses her, then carries her down the hallway, past the bathroom, and into the bedroom at the back of the apartment. It's as sparsely furnished as the rest of the place, with a dresser, a sheet-covered bed and frame, and nothing else.

He sets her down, gently, and gives her another quick kiss. "Wait here and I'll get the bags."

Bucky disappears down the hallway and returns in short order with both bags, the painting, and the two blankets from the armchair slung over his shoulder.

[from_the_outside]

She's right where he left her, except for her boots and socks, which she's taken off and tucked neatly under the bed.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she's taking stock of the size of the room and the bed and the dresser and begun making a preliminary shopping list... but it can wait. It can all wait.

The blankets get a fond look, as she starts stripping out of her clothes. She's too tired for it to be anything but practical, a way to get under the sheets and blankets and into his arms as quickly as possible, but she can't help but feel a little more like Sharon Carter with every piece of Madripoor she strips away. She desperately wants a shower, but she wants sleep more. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

[nerves_of_ice]

"You can, if you want," he teases, as he dumps everything but the blankets unceremoniously in a corner. Bucky spreads the blankets over the bed, pulls them back along with the sheet, and vanishes into the hall.

He comes back with a set of towels balanced in the crook of his arm, wrestling a second pillow into a fresh case. The pillow gets added to the side of the bed that he knows Sharon prefers, and the towels get placed on the dresser for her.

He vanishes a second time to make use of the bathroom - and to make sure things like toothpaste will be easy for her to find, along with adding a water glass for her - then returns after an extremely fast wash-up, leaving it clear for her if she wants. "Bathroom's across the way," he tells her, as he starts to strip out of his own clothing. "I'll give you the full tour of the place later, if that's okay."

[from_the_outside]

"I wouldn't be able to remember any of it right now anyway," she assures him, rummaging through the pack for her toiletry bag, and takes one of the towels with her as she heads to the bathroom. Like him, she uses it and cleans up as quickly as possible, brushing her teeth and washing her face before heading back into the bedroom, making a beeline for her side of the bed.

[nerves_of_ice]

He's waiting on his side, having already turned off the overhead light, meaning that the room is dimly lit by the faint dawn through the window. Bucky pulls back the sheet and blankets for her. "Come here, baby," he murmurs.

[from_the_outside]

She slips under the sheet and blankets and moves directly into his arms with a sigh, so tired that even the sounds of the city waking up around them won't keep her up.

"Let's not get up for a while," she murmurs, pillowing her head on his shoulder.

[nerves_of_ice]

He draws her close and kisses her hair.

"Sounds good to me."

She's here, with him, in Brooklyn. It's a dream come true, and it doesn't feel entirely real, although he's sure some of that is the surreality of exhaustion surrounding them.

But it's true, and that simple fact fills him with peace.

"See you in the morning."

[from_the_outside]

She slips her arms over his stomach and hooks an ankle around his and sinks into the sensation of the crisp, cool sheets, him warm and firm next to and under her, the quiet pre-dawn light of a Brooklyn morning sifting through the window. Her "good night" is mumbled and difficult to understand, but this isn't:

She's here, with him, in Brooklyn. And for the first time in six long years, she can slide into sleep without any fear at all.