Chapter Text
When Steve first heard of his mother’s death, he was three finals away from finishing the school year. He was contacted by the receptionist of the state sponsored dialysis center, concerned that she had missed her latest appointment. He’d called back, then called his mother, then called Sheila, who had two kids and lived next door but still found time to drop off extra loaves of bread or cans of condensed milk, claiming she'd accidentally bought too much at the store. She didn’t pick up, so he left a message and got back to studying. When he got a call back a few hours later, it was from the police.
Steve felt then what he felt now. Pain, lightly buried, because work was to be done, because now he not only had to memorize local small business tax law, but also acquire a lawyer for what could barely be called her estate. He didn’t have time to grieve, all he could do was finish one task, and start on the next. Trust in himself, trust that his feet would take him to the right place.
Today, that place is this room. Their room, the only one that Bucky meant for Steve to know about. He swipes the card and lets himself in, the lights flickering on in an instant. The room had recently been tidied, both of their beds creaseless and tucked, the curtains on the windows open wide to enjoy the Dubai sunset over the Arabian Sea.
The pile of shopping bags he hadn’t finished packing were arranged neatly on the desk by the window. Steve approaches them now, thinking of the thousands of dollars he spent just this morning on clothes and watches and other pretty things for his friends. It felt especially useless now, a complete waste of money and time.
He got something for himself, despite telling himself he wouldn’t. It was his least expensive purchase, a little sculpture that he found in a small shopping stall tucked into the corner of a market. It was a fragile, mismatched model of an old-fashioned ship, made from the wood of salvaged shipwrecks. The artist had dried each piece, and bent each into a loose shape, gluing them haphazardly so that pieces stuck out at wrong angles and holes were left in the hull. It struck Steve when he saw it, and he examined it for so long he’d jumped when the shop’s artist politely asked his impression. He told him it was beautiful, but specifically in the way a tragedy could be. A ship built from failures, destined itself to be a failure, yet still deciding above all else to call itself a ship. A monument to the ones that tried and failed, a piece destined to go the way of what made it. It would do what it was made to do: sail the sea, and sink.
Steve leaves it where it was, in the sea of pretty things, and lies down in bed. He lies there for what feels like hours, watching the waves crash onto the shore out the window far below him.
What kind of man am I? Steve asks himself.
Steve’s struggles have always been decidedly first world, his experience limited to the vantage point of a Brooklyn native trying to carve out his own space in a city without it. While he knows his problems are very real, on the scale of the rest of the world, they were downright trivial. Sure, his medical problems would have caused him a long, slow death left untreated, and one day his luck would run out and he’d end up with a STD that couldn’t be cured, but he’s never had to worry about being shot, or starving, or freezing to death, never had to worry that his basic needs would never be met, even when he and his mom were at their worst. He has the freedom to have more complicated problems than ‘am I going to live to see tomorrow?’
Even living so much larger than Steve has ever seen, Bucky has to face those types of problems every single day. One wrong move, and he’d be gone in a snap. Maybe that’s why he lives like this, Steve thinks, buying lavish vacations and expensive food and clothes and things. Bucky spends out of his ears because there’s no guarantee he’d made it ‘til tomorrow. It could have been just as easily Bucky that was injured like that other man was, or even worse, that could have been Bucky's death. Saving didn't seem to matter if tomorrow wasn’t a guarantee.
When Rumlow attempted to violate Steve, it was Bucky that responded, not Steve. What could Steve do? He could crawl through a legal system, get a restraining order, and just hope that Rumlow would stop being a crazy obsessive asshole and listened to it. It was Bucky that fixed it, that met Rumlow at a level Steve, before today, didn’t understand. It’s so easy to just think about Rumlow as just simply being there, then gone. It wasn’t until Steve saw that room at the other side of the hotel that it all clicked into place.
Bucky kills. Bucky has killed for him. Did it without blinking, and will do it again.
Is Steve okay with that?
He has to be.
If Steve stays with Bucky for the long haul, Steve’s going to enter a world of death. Of blood, and of pain, and whatever else world Bucky operates in. His very life would be in danger, every choice shrouded in levels of paranoia.
And yet.
Steve rolls over to face the wall. On no planet would Steve consider leaving Bucky. Without him, he’d go back to fucking anything with a dick and a semblence of good looks, let himself get passed around the rugby team until he can’t feel anything anymore. And he can’t do that anymore! Too many nights having too many regrets. Too many mornings waking up sticky, in a foreign place, crawling home and trying to sleep off the hangover he shouldn’t be having because of his medications. He’d eventually drive himself into a hole far too deep for anyone to fish him out. But he’d be safe, he’d be free, he could live on his own terms, and like that ship destined to sink, he could go out with everything he had, knowing that he tried his hardest and did his best and lived the life his mother asked him too.
Steve could now see the change that’s been coming for him ever since Bucky graced his doorstep and offered to take out his trash. It was waiting for him, the question he’d been tasked to answer, to guide his path to the future.
The Devil? Or the deep blue sea?
The sun has long set by the time the door to the room opens. Steve has the brief, delirious thought that it wasn’t Bucky, and he jumps in his bed and turns towards the door.
It is Bucky. He’s not looking at Steve at all, but Steve can see the hardness in his face, a new danger in his body that Steve had either not noticed before or not fully understood until this day.
How, Steve thinks, was this the same man who made love to him for days over the Indian Ocean? Who whispered ‘I love you’ into Steve’s hair, who made him coffee and laughed at his own bad jokes? The one who said he was addicted to Steve, would give him the whole world?
Bucky pulls his suit jacket off his body with a huff, and tosses it with surprising carelessness on the opposite bed.
“We may have some trouble leaving,” Bucky says, working on the cuffs of his shirt. “The police are here, though they are trying to keep the disappearance quiet for now.”
Steve stares at him as he continues to pull off his clothes with single minded focus.
“I can try to throw my influence around,” Bucky says, “but there are more important men here doing the same thing. Optimistically we will be okay, however, we should prepare to stay here for the time being.”
“So we’re stuck?” Steve asks.
Bucky sighs. “For now.”
It’s Steve’s first time speaking in a while, and he realizes that he’s angry. “Did you know this was going to happen?” Steve asks. How far did Bucky plan to go, right under Steve’s nose?
“It was a possibility,” Bucky rubs his eyes, still not looking at Steve.
“That we’d get stuck at the end of our vacation at our hotel because the police would be investigating the kidnapping, your kidnapping, of a princess? You considered that possibility, huh?”
“Yes,” Bucky says.
“And you were just gonna, what, pretend you had nothing to do with it?!” Steve’s nearly shouting now, but Bucky still seems to be so careless about it all. Steve hates it, wants to dig into it, wants to fight, wants to clash, wants to bring the blood to the surface and watch it spill.
“Yes,” Bucky says tonelessly.
“And not tell anyone?”
Bucky sits down on the bed to pull off his shoes. “And not tell anyone.”
“Not even me?”
And now Bucky looks at him. “Not even you.”
Anger boils under Steve’s skin, underneath it, hurt.
“You should have told me,” Steve says. He can’t pinpoint his anger, it’s flowing, in waves, in a thousand different directions. “That you were going to be doing something like this”
Bucky lies down on the bed with an exhale of complete exhaustion. “Would you have wanted to know?”
He can’t believe him. “That you were gonna kidnap a woman and cause an international incident on our vacation? Yes!”
“Why?”
“ Why? !”
“Yes!” Bucky finally snaps. “ Why . Why would it have mattered? You have never asked to know about any of my other work. Been none the wiser to all the kidnapping, murder, extortion, and laundering I have done in the time we have been together. So why would this have made a difference?”
“Because I should know these things! This was supposed to be our vacation, but instead it's become an international crime scene!”
“I told you I had work. This is my work.”
“I don’t care, Bucky, dammit, I should know about -”
“You aren’t family!” Bucky shouts, and it stops Steve in his tracks.
“What?” Steve finally says after a stiff silence. The word barely gets out of his mouth.
“You. Aren’t. Family. You are not a Zola, nor a Barnes. You are my boyfriend.” Bucky is breathing harshly, his eyes calculating. “All of the previous ones who made it this far before would have taken a glance at that room, the guns, the blood, all of it, and simply walked away, would have erased the image from their heads. The other bosses, the ones that prefer whores, you think hookers say a word when the man they’re blowing shoots off someone else's head? You think they stop what they’re doing for a single second? Ask for an explanation? You think ,” Bucky takes a breath. “That being my boyfriend entitles you to the right to understand the inner workings of the most expansive crime network in this hemisphere? No, Steve, no. You are not one of us, you are not part of us.”
The room is silent. Steve feels a prickling behind his eyes, and he bites down hard on his own teeth to stop the tremble in his lip. Bucky’s face only hardens as he watches Steve fight tears.
Finally, Bucky tears his eyes away from Steve to instead stare at the opposite wall. “I did this to myself. I keep trying to...” Bucky trails off, the thought ending somewhere in his head. Steve looks down to his lap, as Bucky tries again. “I made a mistake, telling you everything about what I do. You should have never known.”
“You didn’t make a mistake,” Steve says. His voice is quiet, but no less firm.
“Why?” There’s no anger in his voice anymore; a soul deep melancholy had taken its place. “Why do you have to be part of this?”
Steve furrows his brow. There’s still something more, something he’s missing in all this.
“I’m going to shower.” Bucky says suddenly. He jumps off the bed and goes into the bathroom, closing the door gently behind him.
And that’s the thing, Steve realizes. Bucky’s not angry. Rather, Bucky doesn’t get angry like that. He thinks before he speaks, even when he is furious. He doesn’t yell, especially doesn’t cut down people he loves. While Steve charges ahead, Bucky steps back and takes in the whole picture. While Steve comes in fists swinging, Bucky strategies and strikes with brutality and efficiency.
Steve frowns. Because that’s what Bucky just did. He calculated, and he struck, right at Steve, and he tried to make it hurt. Bucky’s trying one last time to drive him away.
Why did he have to be a part of this?
He’s gripped, suddenly, with images of their future, flashing quickly before his eyes. He sees Bucky crawling into bed, unexplained wounds on his chest, Steve unable to ask why. He sees himself running the shop on his own time, joking with Sam and Nat, living in obliviousness, while Bucky shoots and gets shot at, while he rescues children and emigrants, while he secures the supplies to cure the sick. He thinks, with a thumping, pounding heart, of coming home to a shared house one day, only to find out that it will forever be empty Bucky because some thug got lucky with his gun that day. Of losing Bucky, and never knowing why.
His ever present anger takes another form at that last thought, then grows and grows until it’s all that he can think of. It possesses him, that unbidden fury, fueled by the idea of anyone hurting Bucky. Another image forms in its powerful wake, a sudden one, hinging on the slight insanity and the complete sincerity that guides Steve’s life.
It’s the image of himself at Bucky’s side in that hotel room, stitching up a wound on his back as Bucky goes about counting money. It’s them cleaning their guns, twin gold stars on the handles, loading them together. A little part of him, one that gnaws at his desire to be great, paints a picture of a better, stronger version of himself, fighting alongside Bucky like his grandparents, a family legacy of brandishing weapons and killing evildoers and protecting those that need help. Steve could do that, could be that. He could be great. He could change the world.
He could make sure no child goes motherless, because they couldn’t afford insulin.
Steve bursts into the bathroom like there was fire at his feet. Bucky’s leaning over the bathroom sink, and he looks up at Steve with surprise.
“I want to be.”
“You... What?” Bucky looks at Steve like he’s never seen him before in his life.
“I want to be part of the family,” Steve says. “I want to join.”
Bucky straightens up. “Steve.”
“I don’t care what you’re going to say next,” Steve says. “I made up my mind. I’m not going to pretend, I’m not going to hide. I want to help.”
“I can’t ask you to do this.”
“You aren’t asking,” Steve says. “And neither am I. Look. You know me. You know I would never leave you, but you also know I’d never let you do this without me.”
“Steve…” There’s no fight to Bucky’s voice, and Steve realizes Bucky must have known a day like this would come, that he couldn’t fight against that inevitability either.
“You want me to live a lie,” Steve says. “Pretend like none of this is happening, right? But we can’t do that forever! You knew it would come to this,” he almost accuses, but it starts to fall into place. Bucky’s sorrow, his calculated strike, his frustration, all of it.
He’s struggling with the same exact choice as Steve.
“I don’t know which is worse,” Bucky finally says, none of the earlier fire in his voice. “You in my world, or you out of it.”
Steve can finally see it, see the way Bucky is barely holding it together, the way the same decision that’s weighed on Steve is weighing on him, too. He’s human, Steve remembers.
“I mean fuck Steve, you could have your life, your business, your friends, and we could just be as we were. You could be happy that way. Safe. You could be safe. ”
Steve comes to his side. Bucky's face is anguished, his voice having cracked on the last word. His fingertips are white where they grip the counter.
“I don’t want that,” Steve says. “I want to go with you.”
Bucky exhales, and his whole self seems to shrink with it. “It’s not up to me, isn’t it,” Bucky admits.
“It’s not,” Steve confirms.
Bucky turns to him, serious. “Once you enter this world there’s no turning back. Do you understand? Your life is going to change. You will never be the same. Is that something you’re willing to sacrifice, truly, Steve?”
The warning was there. The devil stood before him. But there was nothing left for Steve behind him, nothing but an endless blue world where he’s destined to sink.
And to be loved, Steve thinks, is the greatest feeling in the world.
“I’m with you,” Steve says, and he cradles Bucky’s face in his hands, and he turns his face towards him, so that he can see the sincerity,the strength, behind Steve’s eyes. “Until the end of the line.”