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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.)
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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Date: 2021-05-02 05:01 pm (UTC)"I'm serious," she tells him as he pulls away. "Don't think I'm not."
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Date: 2021-05-02 05:47 pm (UTC)He smiles, small and sweet. "It's a big tub, you know."
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Date: 2021-05-02 05:52 pm (UTC)He hasn't smiled in so long. Not like this. Not really. "Will you grab the epsom salts from under the sink?"
As he does, she leans over to run her hand through the water, giving the tub a rueful look. "I'll miss this tub," she says. It's huge and fancy and it has jets built in and she loves it.
But not as much as she loves him. She pats the side. "I'm glad we get one last night together."
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Date: 2021-05-02 05:56 pm (UTC)"Yeah, my apartment isn't as fancy or as big," he admits. "I hope that's okay."
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Date: 2021-05-02 05:58 pm (UTC)She shrugs slightly, looking around at the ornate fixtures, the marble, the molding. "You were right before. This place doesn't suit me."
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 06:09 pm (UTC)She looks over at him and indicates the other half of the tub. "Come on, Barnes. In you go."
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:17 pm (UTC)"Hot."
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:21 pm (UTC)She settles back against the tub wall and closes her eyes with a sigh, breathing the steam in as deeply as she can before she has to cough. There's so much to do in the next twenty-four hours if they're going to pull this off, but right now it's taking most of her energy just to keep from sliding under the surface. "Feels good."
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 06:33 pm (UTC)She and Mateo had been lucky. The others... not so much.
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 06:36 pm (UTC)She feels like she got gassed. Because she got gassed. "I probably won't be going on any jogs anytime soon."
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Date: 2021-05-02 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 06:55 pm (UTC)"Keep breathing deeply," he says, as he works. "Get as much of that steam in as you can before you put this back on for a bit."
Bucky hands her the mask and climbs back in with her.
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Date: 2021-05-02 07:06 pm (UTC)"Shockingly effective plan from Anders," she says. "I have to admit, I didn't think he was the one to worry about tonight."
She sets the mask over her nose and mouth again and takes a few deep slow breaths of oxygen, as requested.
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Date: 2021-05-02 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 07:15 pm (UTC)"No," she tells him, "I noticed he was nervous, too. I thought it was because he expected Mateo to pull something... it's not on you, Bucky."
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Date: 2021-05-02 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 07:22 pm (UTC)Fast healing or no, he should treat it when they get out of the bath, too, before it gets infected.
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Date: 2021-05-02 07:28 pm (UTC)He sounds wryly amused, and twists around to reach for soap and washcloth as requested.
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Date: 2021-05-02 07:31 pm (UTC)Hypocritical? Maybe. But she just got him back. She's not going to sit here and watch him ignore even a minor injury.
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Date: 2021-05-02 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-02 08:07 pm (UTC)At least the brief soak should have helped loosen any grit still caught in the cuts and scrapes. She takes another breath of oxygen and puts the mask down, coughing lightly as she coaxes him up.
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