Steve POV
Steve woke up in the early Wakandan morning, pinned on the bed under the weight of Bucky. He grunted as Steve half-shoved him off himself, scrambling out of the mess of sheets tangled around his legs to release himself from the bed.
Compromised.
Everything was compromised. The job, Bucky, but also, himself. He’d been alone for so long, relying only on his own judgement, exiling everyone out of his life until he was left with only the people he could trust. And so what if that meant he was by himself? Loneliness was a fair price to pay for honesty. Steve had rules, and it always seemed that those who got close to him could never follow them. Well, he’d always been excellent at following his own rules. And others, which is what made him a great soldier. He could detach from himself, until he was just on autopilot, trusting the command of those above him.
Feelings make you vulnerable.
Barnes could have, quite literally, killed him in the night. If that had been his plan, the man could have seduced him and then cut his throat. Or escaped. Steve was half-shocked to see that he hadn’t moved at all, and it would have been more prevalent in his mind if he wasn’t so appalled with himself. He’d fucked up everything. What he ought to do- what he really should do, is call Fury, tell him he was compromised, ask him to send Sam, and take a long sabbatical. Maybe he could pick up mountain biking. In Northern Europe.
But all he wanted to do was get back in bed. Or maybe make coffee first, and serve a warm cup to Bucky. Ask him where his head was at, where he wanted to go from here. And maybe he wanted to run away with him a little bit. There seemed to be a young, foolish part of his mind that told him to quit his job and abandon every shred of his civilized life to move away to Iceland and raise sheep, and maybe take Bucky with him.
He needed to stop. He needed to think logically, and come up with a plan that didn’t involve him changing his name and moving permanently to a foreign country. He needed to run.
He didn’t bother leaving a note. What the fuck would he even write? “Good morning, I had a great time last night, I’m going on a jog to clear my head of the fact that I could get fired or imprisoned for what I did, please don’t rob anyone while I’m gone”?
He quickly put on basketball shorts and a tank top, grabbing his phone and his wallet and letting google maps track his path for him. He turned up the music in his air pods, not wanting to be left with the thoughts inside his head. Every time his feet hit the road, the words you failed echoed in his head.
He only began to loop back around once he was so thirsty he could barely swallow. Memories from last night began running through his head. The two of them, bickering over expensive hotel water. The two of them, stubbornly sleeping back-to-back in the same bed. The two of them, kissing and making love. Bucky, waking up this morning all alone.
He checked his phone. He’d been gone for two hours already. He couldn’t even imagine how angry Fury would be if he knew that Steve had left Bucky alone for this long. Was that Bucky’s plan all along? Get his guard down so he could escape?
Steve half-hoped he’d be gone when he got back. It might be easier that way. He had a plan for that: call the local police, alert Fury, have a full CIA swat team out for his ass in less than an hour. Somehow, that seemed easier to handle than if he returned to find Bucky still there.
Because Steve had given him a perfect window of opportunity to escape. And if Bucky was still back in the little hotel room, that would mean he hadn’t even tried to leave. Steve wasn’t ready to face what that would mean.
He entered the hotel and climbed the steps to their hotel room. As he neared the door, he heard a raised voice and he paused to listen.
“What do you mean, he can’t?! Well, put him on. No, add him to the call.” There was a short pause. “Thor? What’s going on? … Fuck, man, I’m really sorry to hear that. … Can it wait? Until next week? It’ll all be over by Thursday. … Okay. If you have to. Send a postcard.”
Steve waited a few more seconds, but didn’t hear anything else, so he entered the room. Bucky sat on the edge of the bed in only his sleep pants, soft belly pooching over the waistband that his dark happy trail disappeared into. Steve would be lying if he said that sight didn’t do all sorts of things to him.
“Something wrong?”
Bucky scrubbed a hand through his hair, making the short strands stick up in all sorts of directions. “Yeah. My fucking strong man’s dad died and he has to go back to Norway for a two-week funeral, or something.”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “Strong man?”
Bucky sighed, falling back onto the bed and staring at the ceiling. “Yeah, for my job. Not like it fucking matters anymore. The whole plan falls apart unless everyone’s there.”
Steve sat next to him on the bed, gingerly. He was trying to wrap his head around what was happening. He’d pretended he didn’t know that Bucky had been planning something criminal this whole time, and he thought Bucky had either bought it or had been pretending too. His whole world had been flipped on its head, and he was unused to the honesty. “Why can’t you just do it?”
“Because. I have to be orchestrating the whole thing. Little hard for me to be the eyes if I’m the muscle, too.”
“You know I can’t let you do that.”
“Are you listening? I can’t do it at all. The plan’s done.” He moved his head to look up at Steve. “You gonna arrest me for planning a job?”
“Well, I certainly could. I could arrest you for Attempted Burglary.”
Bucky shook his head and turned away. “You don’t understand anything.”
“Yes, I do. I understand that you care about your sister and you want to help her. You’re..” Even now, Steve couldn’t be mad at Bucky. He could help but feel all his alliances compromise, everything within him being pulled to the man on the bed. “You’re a better man that I gave you credit for. But still, I can’t let you steal from others to pay for her medication. There’s organizations to help people like you. I’ll bring you back to America, I’ll help you get insurance to cover it. Or we can take out a loan. There’s another way, Bucky. We can do this without breaking the law.”
Bucky sat up again, looking shocked and somewhat bemused. “Steve, I don’t want to steal money to pay for Becca’s medicine. I want to make Thanos go bankrupt to distribute the medicine back to the open market.”
--
Steve sat in the back of the black van, getting jostled between a man with curly salt-and-pepper hair and young man with brown hair that’s been dyed silver. He was forced to sit in the far back, and Bucky was driving and chatting with the redhead. He looked out the window to see the fancy limo with the royal flag flying from the hood was still following them.
He was repeating the plan over in his head, mouthing along with the words to memorize it. T’Challa will go to the front of the estate for his appointment. Our inside man will let us in the back. I will knock out the guards while the brunette girl distracts the others. The silver-haired kid-- Pietro-- he corrected himself, trying to keep everyone’s names straight. He’d been introduced to each member this morning, including the king of Wakanda, the impact of which had not been lost on him. He’d never really heard the name Donald Thanos before, but apparently he was a medicine mogul who made his fortune from developing the drug that Becca used. Everyone hated him, from King T’Challa to his own staff members, notably a blond man with a British accent who was supposed to let them in. No one knew his name, to protect his safety, but the rest had been calling him Vision.
Pietro will crack the safe while the girl with short brown hair will hack into security. Bucky and I will take the bags of money up to the roof, where the helicopter will pick us up. The man with the goatee will cause the power outage, and the deaf man will help us put the money in the helicopter. Some of us will leave in the helicopter, and the rest of us will leave with T’Challa and his entourage after he’s done meeting with Thanos’ personal assistant.
The team had been assured that Thanos himself was vacationing in the States, as he liked to this time of year. Bucky had gone over plan with everyone twice before they began the drive to his estate. It was a long ride from their departure at one of the hotel’s party suites, where Bucky had demonstrated everyone’s positions with monopoly pieces- a fitting touch of irony that Steve couldn’t help but appreciate. It’d been kind of hot to watch Bucky work, and Steve had to admit that he was good at it. He was born to lead, thinking in organized ways that others could only hope to achieve, telling everyone their place and what they could expect to see. The briefing had been so similar to what Steve had experienced in both the military and law enforcement that it had almost calmed him. Almost. He would’ve been more calm if he was about to patrol the streets of DC instead of stealing from the richest man in the hospital industry, but hey, you can’t have it all.
In the end, it’d been the memory of his mother that made him agree to Bucky’s plans. Bucky had put his hand on his shoulders, looked into his eyes, and asked him Do you think Sarah would have died if health care was free, Steve?
And the thought hadn’t really occurred to him before, when he was younger. He never thought about how their poverty prevented them from affording insurance, or how no one contracted tuberculosis in the year 2007, or how any hospital on the entire East coast could have saved her in seconds if he’d had the cash to cover it. He specifically hadn’t thought about that last bit. And it was a gamble, for Bucky to bring up his mother. It could’ve gone badly. He could’ve jumped up, screamed how dare you imply that I didn’t do every goddamn thing I could do save my mother, and had Bucky arrested right then, but he didn’t. Instead he’d nodded, turned off his phone, and asked what he needed to do.
The only part that he’d really had a problem with was when Bucky told him that Thor-- the muscle, the position that Steve was filling-- was supposed to help him carry the money to the roof. Knocking out guards so that Bucky could sneak through Thanos’ uninhabited estate and commit a crime that was only hurting a billionaire, and in fact aiding thousands of people, was the easy part. But he wasn’t sure he could assuage his scruples enough to actually help steal the money himself. There was still a part-- a very large part-- of him that said this was all a mistake, that feelings were his weakness, that he was abandoning his moral compass to aid a bunch of criminals.
But they didn’t act like criminals, with maybe the exception of the redhead (who just plain smelled like trouble to Steve- Russian trouble in particular). The girl with the long brunette hair didn’t look older than 20, and the guy on his left looked like he could have a family. The woman who sat in front of him and kept fiddling with some lines of code on her computer actually did have a family; she’d proudly shown him a picture of her daughter when they met. They mostly just seemed like a group of Bucky’s friends, united by the idea that they could make the world better, and the ones in power were failing to do so.
Half of Steve was shouting that the systematic institutions were in place to protect the people. The other half was shouting that they never had, and all systematic institutions were doomed to fail.
There was one thing he knew for sure: Thanos, a man who’d created a means by which to help people, but was using it to help only himself, was everything he hated in humanity.
That’s what kept him going, what kept him in the back seat of the van on way to ruin him. Thanos was a bully. And there was nothing Steve hated more than a bully.
The long stretches of mountains in the distance and nearby hills covered in green forests gave way to a neat driveway lined with streetlamps, and through the front window, Steve could see a gaudy mansion lurking over the circular driveway. Bucky slowed and parked on the side, where the redhead and the man with curly hair exited the van. Steve thought back to Bucky’s monopoly board.
Bruce will act as T’Challa’s bodyguard. T’Challa has a noon business appointment to speak with Thanos’ PA about financing some research. Nat will be hidden in a duffel bag that Bruce will carry. While everyone’s distracted, the rest of us will go around the back.
As the three began to walk toward the entrance of the estate, Bucky stopped the redhead for a moment. Steve overheard Bucky make her promise to stay safe, and gave her a hug before helping her zip herself into the duffel bag. He came back to the van after Bruce picked her up, and instead of sitting back in the driver’s seat, sat next to Steve in Bruce’s vacant spot.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Steve replied automatically. Bucky raised an eyebrow, challenging him.
“It’s not too late to leave. You haven’t done anything yet.”
Steve looked at his hands. “Yes, I have. Besides, if I leave, your whole plan falls apart.”
Bucky shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. We’ll figure something out. I want you here because you want to do this, not because you feel guilted into helping. Okay?”
Steve looked around, at the odd group of friends around him. From the bucket seat opposite Janet typing furiously on her laptop, Wanda gave him a small smile. Tony was fidgeting with some time of C-4 that was making Steve nervous, and Pietro was putting batteries into some device with a combination lock on it. He thought of his mom, how much she would love all of them if she were here. He thought of Bucky, of their time the night before last, and what a possible end to all this could look like.
He made up his mind, leaning forward and kissing Bucky lightly on the lips. “Yes. I lost faith in the police department a long time ago. It just took until now for me to realize that I’ve lost faith in myself, too. I want to help people somehow, and I know this is going to.”
Bucky seemed surprised at this kiss, and Steve knew that they still hadn’t talked things over yet, but he also seemed pleased at Steve’s answer. “Okay.” He was about to say more, but then his phone chimed and he checked it. “Good news and bad news. Vision’s at the back door now.”
“What’s the bad news?” Tony asked, looking up from his incendiary contraption.
“Thanos isn’t in America. He flew back this morning. T’Challa’s going to have to meet with him, instead of the PA.”
Janet’s face went white. “Can he do that?”
Bucky nodded. “Thanos is a greedy asshole. It was a better bet with the PA because he’d be more likely to just accept the money, but it just means we’ll have to be more careful. Let’s move.”
Bucky went back to the driver’s seat and drove them around to the back, where a man in a suit was holding a door open. Bucky parked, and then looked over at Janet. “Are we good to go?”
Janet typed a few more times, a notification sounded, and then she replied. “Yep. Tell Peter and Clint they can land on the roof.” They left the van and entered the building, and Steve heard the distant hum of a chopper approaching.
Wanda gave Vision a kiss, and thanked him as they parted. Bucky seemed surprised, but not bothered.
“You didn’t know that they were together?” Steve asked Bucky with a frown.
Bucky shrugged. “We aren’t required to tell each other everything. I trust her to handle it.”
“But that could get messy… you know, if there’s feelings in a job.”
Bucky paused, and motioned for Tony, Wanda, Pietro, and Janet to go on. He pulled Steve into a side corridor to talk. “Steve, I know all these people, except for Tony and Peter. I worked with them on my last job, and it went wrong. That’s how I ended up in jail and they all went free. But I’m not just working with them again because I trust them. We’re a family, kind of. I’d die for anyone here. I could do this job with a bunch of strangers on the internet- I could just give them their cut and then we’d be safe. But I truly believe that our connections to each other make us stronger. If anything, Vision’s feelings for Wanda makes this plan more likely to succeed, not fail. Does that make sense?”
Steve didn’t immediately answer, and Bucky rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. “Think about it. You ready?”
Steve nodded, and they left the hallway to catch up with the rest. As they took a quick turn, Steve spotted two men in dark suits wearing cords around their ears walk toward them. He quickly put a hand on Bucky’s soft middle, keeping him in the hallway behind him. “Stay back,” he whispered. “I’ve got this.”
Bucky gave him a nod, and Steve couldn’t quite gauge his expression, although his closest guess was pride. “Go get ‘em.”
Steve walked forward, and the two guards spotted him. “Hey, you! Don’t move. Let me see some ID,” the one on the left commanded.
“Of course,” Steve answered smoothly, pulling out his wallet. As they approached him, he fisted his hand over his wallet and punched the one on the right, knocking him out. Before the guard on the left could grab his gun, he elbowed his hand and kicked the gun to the floor, moving it out of the security guard’s reach. As he bent over to grab it, Steve caught him in a headlock and lowered him to the floor. The man spluttered, his face turning red as he grabbed at Steve’s arms. Steve didn’t release him until he was completely still, and he checked their pulses and called out to Bucky. “You can come out now.”
Bucky came up behind him, glancing at the unconscious guards and checking his phone. “Okay, Vision’s giving me directions to the safe room. Left here,” he pointed to double doors that lead to stairs going up and down. “Down, and then left at the bottom, and then two doors to the right.” They made their way through Thanos’ luxurious estate, keeping an eye out for more guards on the way. Steve opened the second door, and inside was the entrance to a large vault, and Tony, Wanda, and Janet were watching Pietro attach his combination device to the vault door.
“How much longer?” Bucky asked Pietro, casting a wary glance to the camera in the corner.
“Twelve minutes, maybe less,” he answered, reading something on his phone screen.
“Okay. How are we on loops?”
“Good. I’m circling through only the areas where we are, so we don’t draw too much attention. Currently I have the roof, this room, and the corridor where Steve knocked out those guards,” Janet responded, routing some lines of text.
“You’re amazing. I can see why Scott married you,” Bucky gushed, and Janet gave him a wink.
“Stevie, knocking out the guards? I’m impressed!” Tony exclaimed, sliding his eyes over him. “Take my card, give me a call when you get tired of Thiccy over there.” He handed Steve a bio card that said, inexplicably, genius, billionaire, playboy.
“Exactly how many high-profile people does it take to steal some money?!” Steve asked Bucky, exasperated.
Bucky shrugged with a chuckle and opened his mouth to speak, but Tony interrupted. “I own 73.4% of the market on explosives. And unlike this asshole, I’m willing to do business and share my boom-boom sticks with anybody. Any more questions?”
Steve grimaced. “No, I am definitely good. Are we sure this is gonna take 12 minutes, Pietro?”
They turned to look at him, and he was squinting at the device as it gave a clunk and the numbers settled on a code. “Actually, I think we’re good to go now. Would you like to do the honours?”
Bucky stepped forward, and put his hands on the crank. “Steve, care to give me a hand?”
Steve grasped the other two cranks, and the pins clinked as the round door inched away from the wall and swung on its hinges.
Inside the vault were floor-to-ceiling shelves, and each shelf was filled with bags full of money. One on the floor contained a freshly-hatched Natasha, who had already lined up ten duffel bags.
“Hi guys, glad you could make it. Little problem. Turns out Thanos isn’t the kind of asshole to keep his bank hoard in the form of cash.”
Everyone cast their eyes to the full duffle bags on the floor. “So… what exactly is in the bags?”
Nat unzipped one of them, revealing the shiny contents. “Diamonds.”
“Fuck,” Bucky exclaimed, the rest of the group groaning in agreement.
“I don’t understand,” Steve said, puzzled. “What’s wrong with diamonds?”
“They’re heavy,” Nat explained. “It’ll take longer to carry up to the roof, and we only have until about 1 until T’Challa leaves. It’s going well, as you can see by my presence here, Thanos already took the money, so possibly shorter than that.”
“And the chopper,” Janet added, and Bucky made a tense expression. “It can only carry so much, and for all of us to escape quickly enough for Thanos to not notice us, that means we can carry less diamonds.”
Bucky looked to Steve. “Your call, pal. How much do you want to carry to the roof?”
Steve recalled the information about the house Bucky shared. That meant they had to go up five flights of stairs. “Will the plan still work if we only take half his money?”
Bucky thought for a moment. “I don’t know. There’s 3.1 billion dollars worth of diamonds here, so I feel like 1.5 billion is still enough for him to fall back on. It’s up to you and how much you want to carry.”
There were just under 50 bags of diamonds in total, each bag weighing about 200 lbs. The helicopter would be capable carrying all 11 team members, excluding Vision (who would stay at the estate), and T’Challa and Bruce (who would be leaving in the limo and van), and the cash should only way 60 lbs. Either they could only take half the money, or half of them would have to find another way to exit the estate. “We take all the money. If he has enough to not go bankrupt, then all of this has been for nothing.”
Bucky nodded. “Okay. Nat, Wanda, keep packing. Pietro, Tony, Steve and I will bring the bags to the roof. Janet, make sure the stairwell is clear. Up top, Peter and Clint will help us load the chopper. Bruce will text me when the meeting’s over. I assume we’ve got about 25 minutes.”
Pietro and Tony went first, and Bucky and Steve each grabbed one bag, and carried a third between them.
Halfway up the third stairwell, Steve’s worry was so tangible in the air that Bucky spoke. “It’s okay, Steve. You made a good call.”
“How do we decide who stays behind?”
Bucky didn’t respond for a moment.
“Buck?”
“It’ll work out.”
“You’re planning on staying, aren’t you?”
“C’mon, Steve. I weigh more than even one bag of diamonds. Peter has to be on the chopper, to drive. You should, too.”
“No way, I’m not going. Not without you.”
“You have your job to think about. I’m going back to jail no matter what happens, no question about that. But I’m not pulling you down with me.” As they ascended the fourth staircase, Tony and Pietro came back down from the roof. “Whoa, what’s goin’ on here? We talking about who goes on the chopper? Cause one of those seats is reserved for me.”
“Absolutely not,” Steve snapped.
“Bucky-” Tony started, but Bucky waved him off. “I got this. You and Pietro get the other bags. Steve, he has to. High-profile, remember? It’s better for the rest of us if the press stay out of this. I’m saving as many of your asses as I can.”
“But not your own,” Steve responded angrily. All this time, he’d been so focused on knowing Bucky’s whereabouts all the time, and it scared him more than he cared to admit to leave him behind. And not because of the law, or some false sense of guilt or responsibility. Steve was starting to think that he really cared for Bucky deeper than he thought.
They reached the roof, where a smiling Clint rushed over to the door to help them with the bags. The driver of the chopper was a kid who looked like he was missing a class in freshman high school, but Steve was hardly even fazed.
He kept turning the outcome over in his head, wondering if it was a mistake to get involved in all this, after all. Just as he and Bucky wrangled the last three bags onto the roof, Bucky got a text from Bruce. “They’re leaving, now. You have to go.”
Peter and Clint strapped in, Tony joining them in the helicopter.
“No! You go. Take my seat. I’m going back into the vault, with the others.”
Bucky opened his mouth to speak, but just then the power of the building went off. It was still bright enough to see in the midday sun, but the building must have gone into lockdown as a grate began to descend on the doorway Bucky stood in. Steve tried to pull him from the door, but his feet were planted tight.
“Steve, you have to let go. This exit is going to seal shut.” Steve still tugged on his arm, fear plastered on his face. He was distantly aware of himself making an embarrassing whimpering. “Steve, go. Quickly. If you don’t let go and leave now, the door is going to pin my arm shut.”
Steve released Bucky’s arm, and it felt limply to his side. It was just in time, as the door that had been slowing the descent of the grate broke under the pressure, and the gate slammed to the ground with a force strong enough to dismember. Steve clutched two bars of the gate, and Bucky comfortingly put a hand over his. “We’ll see each other again, I promise.”
“Steve!” Clint yelled behind them, over the sound of the chopper starting up. “We have to go before the power comes back on!”
“Buck...” Steve started, but his voice died in his throat before he continued, strangled by the tears he felt creeping to his eyes. He’d been holding on for so long. He felt like he wasn’t alone, for the first time in years. He wasn’t ready to let go.
“I know.” Bucky gave him a small smile, then stepped back to shut the door that wasn’t broken.
Steve turned and got into the chopper, pulling the door shut behind him, and counted 48 bags of diamonds just to make sure. He looked out of the window and watch the estate disappear behind them as they flew North over the Wakandan mountains.