[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.)

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

He frowns a little as she coughs. "Does it hurt to breathe?"

[from_the_outside]

"A little," she admits, keeping her eyes closed. "Not too bad."

She and Mateo had been lucky. The others... not so much.

[nerves_of_ice]

His frown deepens, and he reaches for her wrist, laying his fingers against her pulse. "Do you feel like you're short of breath at all?"

[from_the_outside]

"A little," she says again, and opens her eyes when he takes her wrist.

She feels like she got gassed. Because she got gassed. "I probably won't be going on any jogs anytime soon."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Stay here. I'm going to get the rest of that oxygen," he tells her, and surges to his feet, wrapping a towel around his hips before he goes back to the main room.

[from_the_outside]

She half-turns to watch him go, but stays where she is to lean her head back against the tub wall and close her eyes once more.

[nerves_of_ice]

It doesn't take long at all before he hauls the oxygen tank, tube, and mask into the bathroom and starts setting it up beside her.

"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.

[from_the_outside]

He seems concerned enough that any arguments or teasing stops in her throat, and she just nods as she watches him set the oxygen up. "Okay," she tells him, and does as requested, taking deep slow breaths of steam and holding them before letting them slowly out, coughing a bit as she does.

"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.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I should have reacted faster," he says, more than a little bitter. "I noticed he was nervous. I should have followed up on it before he had the chance to act."

[from_the_outside]

She reaches her free hand over to him, squeezes his knee comfortingly.

"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."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, but leaves it at that as he reaches to thread his fingers through hers.

[from_the_outside]

"How's your leg?" she asks. "If you grab some soap and a washcloth I can help clean those scrapes out."

Fast healing or no, he should treat it when they get out of the bath, too, before it gets infected.

[nerves_of_ice]

"If I say it's fine you're not going to believe me, are you?"

He sounds wryly amused, and twists around to reach for soap and washcloth as requested.

[from_the_outside]

"Why would I?" she challenges. "I know what you're like. I don't care how fast you heal; that's no reason not to take care of yourself when you get hurt."

Hypocritical? Maybe. But she just got him back. She's not going to sit here and watch him ignore even a minor injury.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I washed it off when I showered earlier," he points out, as he hands over cloth and soap.

[from_the_outside]

"Not well enough," she tells him, and makes an imperious gesture. "Stand up so I can clean it out."

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.

[nerves_of_ice]

He rolls his eyes at that, but stands up without arguing and then turns to sit on the wide rim of the bathtub so that the scrapes are in easy reach for her without her having to stretch.

"Okay. Do your worst."

[from_the_outside]

"You'd think you'd have a better attitude about this, considering what a mother hen you are," she tells him, and shifts to her knees, laying her left arm on his leg so she can gently work the soapy cloth into the abrasions. She goes slow and careful, her touch as deft and gentle now as it was seven years ago, the first time she forced him into allowing her to tend to his injuries.

Now, though, she pauses every so often to press a kiss to his thigh (or to take a breath from the oxygen mask), and when her stomach does flips when she looks up and meets his eyes, she doesn't lie to herself about why.

"It's not too bad," she says, a little grudgingly, but that doesn't stop her from being as thorough as possible. "But I'm pretty sure that was a piece of denim I just fished out."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Maybe I was in too much of a rush before to do a good job," he admits, albeit reluctantly.

He doesn't try to stop himself from running his hand through her hair as she works, over and over, slowly drawing his fingers between the golden locks.

[from_the_outside]

"Oh, maybe," she mocks, albeit lightly, and rinses the cloth in the hot water so she can start wiping away the soap and grit, hissing between her teeth whenever she has to press into or wipe out a particularly red, sore-looking area. "Sorry," she tells him, glancing up apologetically.

"I'm sure this stings. I'm almost done."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's okay," Bucky murmurs.

[from_the_outside]

"Tough guy, huh?" she says, lightly, and keeps going until the scrapes are red and tender but clean, then leans forward to kiss his leg and pat his knee.

"Okay," she tells him, and looks up with warm, pleased eyes. "All set. Back in you go."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Like a fish," he mutters, amused, and gives her a quick kiss before he settles back into the tub.

"How's your breathing?"

[from_the_outside]

"Better," she says, and it does seem a little easier. "The steam is helping, I think."

And the oxygen. She sighs a little and takes another deep breath through her nose as she leans back against the tub wall.

One more push. Twenty-four hours. And then she never has to come back here ever again.

[nerves_of_ice]

Something relaxes in the set of his shoulders when he hears that.

"Good."