[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

[from_the_outside]

"Oh, okay," she laughs, putting her arms around his neck and giving him a winsome smile.

"Take me home, soldier boy."

[nerves_of_ice]

He laughs, pulls her close, and tumbles the two of them together back onto the bed, then kisses her.

[from_the_outside]

She yelps a laugh as they fall back and hauls him close to kiss him until she has to turn her head away to cough, grinning, into her arm.

There's no chance in hell she's letting him go. She cups his face and drinks in the brilliance in his eyes, the way he keeps smiling at her. "God, it's good to see you smile, baby."

[nerves_of_ice]

He leans into her touch and keeps smiling.

"I've got something to be happy about," Bucky tells her, and kisses her again.

[from_the_outside]

She kisses him back, and then again, and then once more, unable to stop smiling, unable to stop kissing him, unable to do anything at all except wonder how her heart can be this full and not burst.

"Me too," she tells him, simple and sweet and absolutely, perfectly happy.

[nerves_of_ice]

He slides his hand up to cradle the back of her neck, and tucks her close against him.

"You need to rest," he murmurs. "And we both need to pack before Sarah and Inga get here in the morning."

[from_the_outside]

"We both need to rest," she reminds him, and sets her head back on the pillow to look at him, wry.

"I haven't had to pack anything in forever." She makes a face, eyes unfocusing, and frowns. "I think I have a bag somewhere."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky waves one hand in the direction of his pack.

"I've got lots of room. Depending on how much you want to bring."

[from_the_outside]

"Honestly? Not much."

Some clothes. Toothbrush. Her phone. "None of this stuff is mine. Or me."

She rolls her head to look over at the piece of glass art on the bedside table. "Except maybe that."

The sole reminder she'd allowed herself. The one thing in the whole damn place that she picked for herself.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Definitely that. And..."

He looks a little uncertain as he glances at her.

"... the egg? I guess? Probably we don't want it to go up in the explosion."

[from_the_outside]

She just looks at him for a moment, and then shakes her head, trying not to laugh.

"Yes," she says, patiently. "We'll take the egg."

Fortunately it's the only thing to take from the gallery right now. She's not sure how they'd have managed to get through Madripoor with a dozen or more priceless works of art.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I didn't mean it like that," he protests, reading her expression. "I just meant - I guess we can arrange for it to be discovered, or something, and donated to a museum. Once we're home."

[from_the_outside]

"Mm-hm," Sharon says, in a way that suggests she will consider donating it or leaving it somewhere to be discovered but it wouldn't be her first choice.

"And your Cézanne," she reminds him, before he can question her about it. "That's coming, too."

[nerves_of_ice]

He eyes her, then sighs and tucks one arm behind his head.

"I guess I better figure out how to get to the plane and back tonight, then. That's not going to fit in the pack."

[from_the_outside]

She frowns at him.

"What's to figure out?" she asks. "Just go over the rooftops like you usually do."

[nerves_of_ice]

He turns his head sideways and gives her a level stare.

"That would mean leaving you here alone."

From the tone of his voice, that's not acceptable and non-negotiable.

[from_the_outside]

She reaches to cup his face with her hand, looking at him for a long few seconds before she nods. "Okay," she agrees. "So that's out." She thinks for a moment, then meets his eyes again.

"We'll just take my car. Or, you will. I'll hide in the trunk or the backseat. We'll set the bomb on a timer or a remote switch, take the car, and be long gone before the place goes up."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Remote detonation," Bucky decides. "Timers have a high failure rate. I'll park and double-back to activate it so that if something goes wrong I can deal with it."

[from_the_outside]

"'If something goes wrong'?" she echoes, lifting her eyebrows at him.

[nerves_of_ice]

"If it fails to go off," he explains.

[from_the_outside]

She looks at him and sighs a little, shaking her head against the pillow.

"Just please don't blow yourself up," she tells him. "I don't know how to fly a plane."

[nerves_of_ice]

He chuckles, very softly, and leans in to kiss her.

"I won't. I promise. You ... probably don't want to know how many times I've done this, actually."

[from_the_outside]

"You're probably right," she tells him, a little wry, and kisses him back gently.

"Give me ten minutes to pack some stuff and then let's try to get some sleep, okay?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Need any help?"

[from_the_outside]

"I think I can manage," she says, amused, and disentangles herself from him so she can get up and go to her closet and dresser, opening drawers and beginning to take out some clothes, all of which look essentially the same: black long-sleeved shirts, black or dark pants, her leather jacket.

She puts them on the bed and goes into the bathroom to collect her toothbrush and toiletries. She works fast: her legs still feel a little wobbly.