Bucky POV
Pietro stood at the bottom of the fifth staircase, illuminating the way with the flashlight on his phone.
“Thanks, man,” Bucky said, feeling defeated about his lack of information. It wasn’t Vision’s fault-- as just a housekeeper, there wouldn’t have been any way for him to know. However, it was up to Bucky to foresee possible difficulties and make adjustments. He was responsible for getting the remaining members out safely. “I’m sorry it had to happen like this.”
Pietro put a hand on his shoulder. “I was there with you last time, I’ll be with you again, no matter what happens. I owe you everything, Bucky. I know you did everything you could.”
Bucky embraced him. “That means a lot.”
Pietro clapped his back. “We should probably go before the lights--”
“Right.” They quickly made their way down the rest of the stairs. There was some smoke in the basement left over from Tony’s detonation, and a few pulsing red lights alerting the power outage. Nat, Wanda, and Janet came from the vault room.
“How are we looking?” Bucky asked Janet.
“We’re good here, but I’ve lost control of the cameras in the basement and the roof. I’ll have to be more careful with our coverage on the way out, because now they’re looking for loops and they can block my access quicker than I can make a new route.”
“Okay.” Bruce and T’Challa had already left, so they should be safe until Thanos began questioning things. Also, T’Challa had diplomatic immunity from being questioned if he hadn’t committed an actual crime, and Bucky had been very careful to make sure that he couldn’t be incriminated. “Now we just have to get out.”
“I have a plan,” Janet began, shutting her laptop. “He has an art gallery on the second floor. I could pretend to steal a painting.”
“Hang on,” Wanda interrupted. “We’re getting caught to go free?”
“That’s a good, plan, actually,” Nat said, agreeing with Janet. “It would distract him from the other crime if there was something smaller going on. We should wear masks, and then he’ll call the cops. We can return the art and then get, what, detained for enough time to escape? How hard can it be?” The rest of the group looked uncertain. “C’mon, we’ve gotten out of worse before! ... Well, all of us except for Janet.”
Janet chuckled. “I’ve gotten out of sticky situations too. And you’re going to love me for getting us out of this one-- I’m currently wearing nylons.”
Bucky glanced down at her ankles, and saw hose in the gap between the cuff of her pantsuit and her fashionable shoes. “Okay, well, that’s two heads. There’s four of us here. Are any other of you lovely ladies wearing pantyhose?”
“Ugh, god, don’t call it that. Y’all should be glad I’m obsessed with the 90s,” Wanda said, snapping the waistband of her black hose under her ripped jeans. “Alright, everybody, hose off.” Nat and Bucky waited while Janet and Wanda removed their hose, and then they ripped them for makeshift masks.
“Okay,” Nat announced. “Let’s steal some art.”
--
The alarm sounded as soon as Janet touched the frame of the very ugly abstract modern art. It was a tiny thing, no larger than a piece of copy paper, situated in a frame about twice its size. The painting was entirely red on the bottom half, and the top was dotted with the worst imaginable green, and yellow lines bisected each dot.
“I don’t get it,” Bucky complained as they waited for guards to arrive. “I could drive this in five seconds. It can’t be worth more than $15.”
“It’s not about how it looks. It’s about how it makes you feel,” Natasha intoned smugly as two security guards broke down the door. The one on the left was the one Steve had punched earlier, sporting a nasty bruise on his cheek, and the one on the right was a positively fierce woman with blue hair.
“Oh fuck, I think we forgot about the guards,” Wanda muttered with an impressively convincing tone.
“Hands on your heads, fuckers! Don’t move! The police are on their way,” The blue haired woman shouted, and the man translated in Xhosa. The guards only had two handcuffs between them, and the man cuffed Bucky and Nat, while the woman cuffed Janet and Wanda. The woman tried to interrogate them, but everyone refused to respond until their lawyer was present. The guards didn’t attempt to remove their pantyhose.
The blue-haired woman’s walkie-talkie blipped, and she answered it. “Go for door.”
“Police are about to enter the second floor. Over.”
“10-4. Over.”
The handle turned, and Bucky had to physically restrain himself from jumping up in joy or showing any type of reaction on his face other than ‘shame’ at being caught.
“Alright, what seems to be the issue here?” the cop asked.
“We caught these four trying to steal this painting from Mr. Thanos’ personal art collection.”
“Understood. I’ll take them into custody in the back of my car below, and then Mr. Thanos should come to the station to give his statement, assuming he will be pressing charges.”
“Of course he’ll be pressing charges. These four should be imprisoned in solitary.”
The officer nodded, holding onto the four of them by the handcuff links. “Don’t even think about escaping.”
Bucky groaned as realistically as possible, and Nat struggled weakly. They were escorted off the property and into the back of an unmarked police car. As soon as they were safely inside, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Your ass looks cute in those fatigues,” Bucky exclaimed, leaning his face toward the opening in the partition.
Steve blushed, giving him a kiss through the window. “I was really hoping I wouldn’t need them when I packed them, but now I’m glad I did.”
“What happened?!” Wanda demanded.
“As soon the chopper landed, I grabbed a phone. I didn’t bring mine on the heist because I knew Fury could track me. I called T’Challa-- which took a painfully long time to convince the mainly Xhosa-speaking phone tree that I knew the King and had to speak to him immediately-- and begged him to get me a patrol car and to redirect any outgoing calls from the estate to Bruce’s phone.”
“But how did you know we wouldn’t just escape without detection, and you were raising suspicion by arriving?” Bucky questioned.
As Steve started to drive away from Thanos’ estate, he glanced back at Bucky in the rear-view mirror and raised an eyebrow. “You, escape without detection? Doubtful.”
Bucky couldn’t deny that.
The flight back to DC was in two days. Steve dropped everyone off at their respective hotels and returned the car to the Wakanda police force. Bruce gave Bucky updates while him and T’Challa ran interference, and Steve and Bucky spent the last hours of their time in Wakanda nervously waiting to see what would happen.
They stayed inside their room, Steve ploughing through mountains of paperwork and routinely assuring his boss that everything was fine and above board, and Bucky anxiously circled between checking the news on the TV and his texts. Neither of them brought up the touchy subjects-- what the heist meant for Steve’s career, what they were now, or what they would do when they returned to DC.
Steve seemed to be acting almost overly kind and accommodating. Bucky would feel bad if he didn’t know that Steve was just making up for being difficult earlier. The night after the heist, Bucky had only barely mentioned that he was hungry before Steve ran out to some restaurant and returned with enough food for a family of four.
Both of them were too anxious to even consider initiating anything physical, and Bucky had been distantly worried that their night together might have been a one-time thing. However, that night, neither of them made an attempt to sleep anywhere other than the bed, and during the night they migrated from their respective sides to gently spooning (Bucky being the big spoon, the paunch of his stomach filling up the hollow in Steve’s back as he wrapped his arms around the officer).
He was woken by a gentle hand shaking his shoulders, and Steve’s crystal blue eyes greeted him. “Good morning. Thanos is on the headlines.” He was holding out his phone.
Bucky immediately grabbed it, scrubbing at his eyes until the small black text came into focus. “WAKANDAN BILLIONAIRE ANNOUNCES BANKRUPTCY” the title proclaimed.
“‘Following a theft on Thanos’ uninsured millions, the billionaire filed for bankruptcy in a desperate attempt to keep his possessions.’” Bucky read aloud. “That fucker.”
“It’s was lucky his money was in diamonds, after all. If it was in cash, it might have been insured.”
Bucky continued to read the article, but there was no mention of what would become of Thanos’ medicinal empire, or to whom his holdings would fall. He handed the phone back to Steve. “I can’t risk a call to T’Challa. We’ll have to wait for him to call us.”
Steve nodded. “The flight’s at 4 p.m. I guess we’ll have to hope he calls us before then.”
Bucky turned on the TV, flipping between various channels singing laments about how terrible it was for Thanos’ entire fortune to be stolen, since the man had been nothing but a shining philanthropist and medical innovator. Steve left again to return with breakfast, and neither of them mentioned the fact that Steve seemed to trust Bucky enough to leave him alone in the apartment. Bucky was so happy with the recent development of things, but he was also terrified that it was all the calm before the storm, that it was only a temporary contentment before things went south forever. He’d been so sure of the outcome of things before, only for everything to be torn away from him and for things to turn out worse than he could have ever anticipated.
That had happened the last time he’d done a job, in fact. He’d seen the end of the tunnel; the light was in sight, and he’d let down his defenses in relief. Just then the police arrived and caught him directly in the middle of the college exhibit with all the evidence they needed to put him away. The only rectification of the situation was that his friends were able to go free, and he wouldn’t give that up for anything.
So he wasn’t about to assume that just because Thanos had claimed bankruptcy that they were out of the woods yet. But even more frightening than the possibility of being caught before he ever left the country (which he’d pretty much been counting on, anyway; nothing mattered, as long as Rebecca was safe) was the possibility that once they returned to America, everything between Steve and him would fade. Perhaps incarceration should have been the more concerning issue, but Steve had done so much for the team, and Bucky couldn’t have pulled off the heist without him. He’d set aside his presumptions and risked his safety (and possibly even his job) to defeat Thanos, and that was something that Bucky wouldn’t have thought possible just a week ago. They’d gotten close so quickly in the (mildly) cramped space of their hotel room, and what seemed to be blossoming between them was trust conducive to any relationship.
Not to mention how Steve made Bucky feel. He’d had such an amazing time when they’d been together. Probably the best sex of his life, in fact. In college, he’d only just discovered he was bi, and he’d been experimenting with everyone that’d been interested. It had been a time of fascinating discovery and adventure, but certainly not one of skill or satisfaction. And the sex in jail had been lackluster, to say the least. Steve seemed perfectly attuned to all of Bucky’s sexual desires, like every fantasy in his head had been sculpted into one man. And maybe best of all, Steve hadn’t even seemed put off by Bucky’s weight (which, judging by how tight his pants were, had only gone up since their flight a week ago).
He put the thoughts out of his mind as Steve returned with a complimentary breakfast from the cafe adjacent to the hotel. Bucky recognized a few items from their meals before, but he was so hungry that it was mostly a delectable blur of courses.
Toward the end of his third plate, he was just starting to get really full (and in need of unbuttoning his pants entirely) when Steve offered the rest of his breakfast.
“Oof, I dunno, buddy. Not even sure I can finish my own.”
Steve, oddly, was a little red, even though Bucky was perfectly comfortable in the balmy temperature of the room. “Come on, I’ve seen you eat more than that,” he challenged.
Bucky sat back a little bit in the one desk chair the room had provided. A small coffee table was on the floor between them, and Steve was perched on the edge of the bed. “Maybe so, but that’s when my pants were… well, looser,” he admitted.
Steve’s eyes flicked down toward his waistband before returning to his eyes. “So unbutton them.”
Bucky chuckled a little awkwardly. “I’m not trying to come off like a complete slob, here.”
“You’re not.”
“Oh no? You wouldn’t call me eating myself out of my pants slob-like behaviour?”
“No,” Steve replied, avoiding his eyes by looking out of the window. “It seems like vacation-like behaviour.”
“Not sure I’d call this a vacation,” Bucky countered, not quite sure why he was even arguing. The food was good, and if he was being honest with himself, he probably had room to finish both their dishes, if he pushed himself a little.
“It’s a vacation from being in jail,” Steve shot back, frankness starling Bucky a little.
But he laughed, accepting Steve’s plate. “Touche. I could eat a hundred meals and never make up for that travesty of a meal plan.”
“Guess you better get started, then.”
Bucky found it difficult, once again, to gauge Steve’s meaning. His tone seemed flirtatious, but Bucky couldn’t be more confused. Who flirted over food?
His dick was definitely on board, though, and when his brain couldn’t think of a response, his hands and mouth took over, loading up another forkful of food and curling his mouth around the bite suggestively. Steve’s mouth fell open as he took in a quick breath, his eyes fluttering. He swallowed audibly.
Confused, Bucky might be, but stupid, he was certainly not. It seemed- against whatever reason he had left- Steve wanted Bucky to eat more, and all Bucky knew is that he’d do anything to keep Steve’s interest.
Just then, Bucky’s phone rang, making him jump. He checked the screen. “It’s Bruce. Should I take it in the…?” He trailed off, not knowing how much privacy he had while Steve’s cop equipment was in the room. Steve gestured to the hall and Bucky left the room, shutting the door behind him and accepting the call. “Barnes. What’s up?”
“It worked.”
Bucky let out tension in his body that he didn’t even know he’d possessed, relaxing immediately and leaning on the door. “Thank god. What happened?”
“Well, I’m sure you saw that he claimed bankruptcy this morning. He also sold 63% of his shares to keep his estate. He still holds a large part of his company, but with T’Challa and his deal yesterday, T’Challa is now the primary shareholder of all Thanos Inc. accounts.”
“...Which means?” Bucky prompted.
“Which means that T’Challa owns vibranidimaldryl, and as of a business report that will be posted in twenty minutes, that I may or may not have had exclusive access to, he plans on distributing it to the open market so that all hospitals can administer it to their patients at their own discretion.”
“Holy shit, there is a God.”
Bruce laughed. “There just might be, pal. I also heard through the grapevine that an anonymous contributor donated 258 million dollars to a fund dedicated to giving all patients free access to the drug, regardless of insurance.”
Bucky shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “That so?”
“Mm-hm. That’s one twelfth of 3 billion dollars, Buck.”
“Oh yeah? Math was never my strong suit.”
“You know, you could have told us this was all for Rebecca. I would’ve worked for free. Everybody would have.”
“I know, Bruce. You’re all excellent people. There’s more than enough money in that fund to support all the people with Rebecca’s condition, and you deserve your cut. I just… I just wanted her to be happy.”
Bruce chuckled. “Well, we’re all happy, now. Everyone except Thanos.”
Bucky grinned. “Amen. I’ll drink to that.” He paused, watching a bird fly across the mid-morning sun in the distance. “You have a safe flight.”
“Yeah-- hey, Buck, I wanted to talk to you about that. I know we’re in the clear here, but I was thinking, it might be best for you not to go back to the U.S, you know? I mean, I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did for all of us last time, but I don’t want you to take the fall again. There’s no way that your parole officer is gonna overlook the fact that you just ‘happened’ to be in Wakanda while the country’s largest business man got robbed.”
Bucky thought for a moment. While his parole officer might just overlook the fact, he couldn’t deny that the rest of the entire American law enforcement wouldn’t offer him the same courtesy. “Yeah.”
“I’m serious, Bucky. Don’t get on that plane. I don’t care what you do-- fly to Romania, or something. Just get far away and under cover. Build a nice life for yourself. I don’t want to see you on that flight, okay?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“We care about you, Buck. You’ve done more than enough good to make up for one mistake. You deserve your happiness. Just run far away.” Bruce sighed. “Whatever, man. I know you’ll make the right decision. Just… be safe.”
“You too.” Bucky hung up.
Maybe Steve had gotten to him, or maybe it was just his pessimistic past, but Bucky had never actually considered not ending up in jail. It didn’t seem possible that there could be an outcome that involved him living somewhere free and happy.
And honestly? He didn’t know what happiness looked life, if it didn’t involve Steve.
He opened the door and stepped back inside the room.
“Well?” Steve demanded immediately.
“We’re good to go. T’Challa owns Thanos Inc.”
“Okay… so why don’t you look like a guy who just successfully pulled off a heist?”
Bucky shrugged. “I dunno. Never been successful before, I guess. Not used to the feeling.” He began to pack, avoiding Steve’s eyes. He could still see him out of his peripheral vision, and he was giving him a look dangerously close to pity. Bucky fucking hated being pitied.
At just after 2, Steve gathered his things. “Well. Guess we should get an early start to the airport.”
Bucky nodded, following him out of the door and down to the lobby, where they checked out and the very helpful cashier hailed them a taxi to the airport. Steve was excited, high off the idea of returning home and bouncing with energy. They exited the taxi and collected their bags, and Steve started confidently toward the doors of the Wakandan airport. It was so strange, standing exactly where he’d stood one week ago.
Steve turned around when he realized Bucky wasn’t with him. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Bucky tried futilely to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m not… I’m not getting on that plane, Steve.”
Steve visibly deflated, arms hanging limply at his side as he dragged his luggage back over to where Bucky stood. “What? What do you mean?” he asked, his voice high-pitched and young-sounding.
“Come on, Steve. You had to know this day was coming. I’m a criminal. I can’t go back to America, not now.”
“But… you’ll be violating your parole,” Steve muttered dumbly.
Bucky felt angry, angrier than he had a right to be. “Yeah, no shit. What did you honestly expect would happen? You know why I came here, and now I did what I meant to. I can’t just go back and let them arrest me.”
“So you expect me to let you run away?”
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” Bucky responded, his voice dangerously even.
“You asshole,” Steve spat.
“What?” Bucky asked, bemused.
“Was this your whole plan? Seduce me so I could let you escape? What did you, do research on me to find out my type?”
“What? No! Steve, that wasn’t-- that was never… I’m not trying to make you do anything. Falling in love with you wasn’t part of the plan.”
“You can goddamn say that again,” Steve exclaimed, setting down his suitcase to put a hand on his hips. “So, what’s your plan now?”
“I don’t know. You should run, too. I can get someone to cover your. You should be safe-- your twelfth of the 3 billion is being wired to you now, so you could retire and live in Europe, if you want.”
“I don’t want the fucking money, Bucky!”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know. I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“Well, call me fucking naive, but I kind of thought that me sacrificing everything to help you with your stupid little job would mean something.”
“It did, Steve, I swear, it means the world. That’s why I don’t want you to get caught.”
“Well, why don’t we not get caught together?”
Bucky’s brain was trying to keep up with the rollercoaster of emotions. “What do you mean?”
Steve sighed. “You told me that our emotions make us stronger instead of weakening our judgement, right?”
“...Right…”
“Right. So I’m trusting my emotions. You know what they’re telling me right now? They’re telling me that I love you, that I finally have a chance at happiness for the first time in my life, that I finally found something that I fucking believe in, and I’m not going to give that away, not for anything in the world. So I don’t care where we go, federal prison, Canada, Iceland, Europe or whatever-- I’m not leaving you, not ever again. We’re stronger together, and--” Steve’s voice broke, tears springing to his eyes. “And I don’t want to ever be without you.”
Bucky was stunned. “You’re saying… you’re saying you want to run away together? You’d give up being a cop, for me?”
Steve chuckled through his tears. “It’s not like I had all that many delusions of grandeur about it in the first place. We did a good thing, I believe in that. And I did more in one week of criminal activity than I ever did on years on the force. So, yeah, I’m done with being a cop.”
“Wow, okay.” Bucky processed for a moment, and then stepped forward into Steve’s space, brushing away his tears “But, you mean, you really want to go somewhere with me?”
“Well, yeah,” Steve said, leaning his head ever so lightly into Bucky’s touch. “If I’m not mistaken, you said that you love me.”
“Fuck, I did, didn’t I?” Bucky laughed, realizing that he only seemed to be honest with Steve when he was angry. It was something worth looking into. “But, I, uh, think you said you love me too.”
Steve grinned, proud of himself. “Yup. Whatcha gonna do about it?”
“This.” Bucky leaned forward and kissed him deeply, tasting the salty tears on his top lip and feeling the slight stubble that he hadn’t shaved away yet. He pulled back to look in the blond’s eyes. “And I’m gonna buy two tickets to Iceland.”
“Iceland? Who says I want to go to Iceland?” Steve quipped.
“I do. And you said, anywhere I go, you’ll go. So, I pick Iceland. And you’re coming with me.” He tugged Steve toward him with one arm until they were flush, Bucky’s full belly from lunch pressed into Steve’s perfect abs.
“And where exactly did you get money for plane tickets?”
Bucky wielded a burner credit card. “My twelfth was already deposited in an offshore account. I only have $300,000 remaining, but I think that’s enough for two tickets and to buy us a sheep farm.”
“Sheep, huh?” Steve smiled and kissed Bucky again, lightly. “I guess I always liked sheep.”
Bucky relaxed into the kiss, letting himself relax fully. He felt perfectly safe with Steve, and not even his fear of the future would keep him from enjoying this moment.
“Hang on,” he said, remember something Steve said in the heat of their argument. “What did you mean, ‘do research on you to find out your type’?”
Steve blushed. “Oh. That was dumb. I just mean… it occurred to me, you’re so perfect that I thought it couldn’t be a coincidence. Like maybe you found out what I was into so you could con me into letting you go.” He reached around Bucky, fondling his ass, not caring about the string of travellers around them.
“I mean… I’m flattered, but I could stand to lose a little weight,” Bucky remarked, depricatively. “You’re not still worried about me conning you, are you?”
“No way! Even if you are, it backfired, because now I’m just going to follow you to Iceland. And I don’t think you should.”
“Don’t think I should go to Iceland?”
“No! Don’t think you should… lose weight. I mean, you don’t need to.” Steve was blushing and looking down at Bucky’s middle.
He resisted the urge to suck in. “I’m pretty sure that’s factually untrue, but are you trying to say that you don’t want me to?”
Steve avoided answering. “I think you should do whatever you want to do.”
Bucky shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Not what I asked.” He titled Steve’s chin up until they were eye to eye, then in dawned on him. “Wait. You’ve been giving me your food for weeks. Do you like me fat?”
Steve’s eyebrows drew together. “Hell, I like you, Buck. I’d like you if you wanted to go back to the way you looked in college- which, your long hair really does it for me, if you feel like bringing that back- but, yes. I do like you like this. Which… I kind of thought you knew.”
Bucky laughed. “No, I didn’t know. We make a lot of assumptions. We should… we should probably work on communicating better.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah. I’m a little rusty on that, but I want to do my best. A relationship can’t last if we don’t communicate?”
Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so we’re in a relationship now?”
Steve’s eyes went wide. “I mean, not if you don’t want to--”
“Steve,” Bucky interrupted. “I’m joking. I love you. Yes, I want to be in a relationship.” He checked his phone. “However, we should probably get a hurry on to the Iceland flight if we want to get out of the country today.”
Steve shook himself into action, picking up his suitcases again. “Yes. Absolutely. Let’s go right now.”
They entered the building, and Bucky used his burner card and a fake name to purchase one-way tickets to Iceland. He noticed Steve casing the building, as he did with all structures. It made him a little sad, but he also felt safe knowing that Steve would certainly notice any type of security that might be onto them.
It felt too good to be true, boarding their 5 pm flight to Iceland and ordering a ridiculous sized first-class meal at Steve’s request, then drifting off to sleep as he watched the sunset while flying over west Europe.
Right before he dropped off, Steve worked his hand into Bucky’s, and he gave him a soft squeeze. He wasn’t going to worry about what felt too good to be true. After all, he deserved a happy ending, didn’t he?