Chapter Text
**
“Stevie?” Bucky asked, hesitantly. His suddenly uncertain tone and unexpected use of the old nickname made Steve stop his reading and look up.
Bucky had been adamant about going back in cryo-sleep until Natasha could find out how to properly undo the triggers of his brainwashing. Steve had not wanted to loose his friend so soon after finally finding him again, but it was either this or locking him up and reading Clint’s Russian dictionary out loud, and knocking Bucky out if he was triggered. Safe to say Natasha’s “operation; recalibration” was vetoed.
But short of begging, Steve had done all he could to convince Bucky not to do this, but to no avail.
Steve looked at Bucky, his friend was shuffling his feet and eyeing the patch covering the metal left on his shoulder before he met his eyes again.
“I’m not changing my mind,” Bucky started, probably seeing the hope in his eyes. “I just, I have a favour to ask.” Bucky stared down at his hand, rubbing his thumb gently between his ring and index fingers.
Steve set the medical files he'd been reading down on the table and walked over to Bucky’s seat.
“Anything,” Steve promised, glancing up at the doctor who approached the room and shook his head, as she wanted to enter. He really didn’t want Bucky to shut himself off again, not after finally asking for something, what he asked for now could not possibly be worse than cryo-freeze. Avoiding interruptions was important.
“On your way back from the prison, could you stop by my building in Bucharest and pick up my… plums?”
Steve blinked. “You jerking me here?” he asked bewildered.
“Nah, Punk” Bucky winced, having heard how stupid his own request had sounded. He shifted his eyes to the door and the doctor waiting there impatiently before he lowered his voice, “s’a code.”
Steve nodded. Leaning closer, pretending to check over the cover on Bucky’s shoulder and angling his head to obscure the view from the door.
“Same building, three floors below mine, third door. Ask for plums.” Bucky said, almost inaudibly, and Steve tapped his shoulder and stood up straight, moving back.
The doctor came into the room then and started fussing over Bucky, making the final checks before he was ready and Bucky settled for smiling at Steve over her shoulder.
“You know you don’t have to do this.” Steve said for the nth time.
“It’s my choice.” Bucky got up gave him a pat on the back, a thank you. “Take care,” he said, giving Steve a meaningful glance, making sure he knew that this did not just pertain to him but also to whatever these plums were.
Steve just nodded, feeling like talking would be difficult with a lump in his throat.
**
“T’Challa has given us permission to reside in his summer home.” Steve informed Sam as they made their way out of the prison, making sure the path was cleared for Clint who was supporting Wanda. “Natasha has the coordinates and she will be taking you there with your gear.”
Sam nodded and took off towards the Quinjet before suddenly stopping and turning towards Steve, who was ushering Scott out of the door.
“Wait, Cap, what do you mean ‘you’ and ‘your’?” Sam crossed his arms.
“I have an errand to run,” Steve smiled at him before running to the chopper stationed on the helipad, “I’ll meet you there.”
Sam scowled but Steve didn’t give him the chance to run after him, getting the chopper off the ground as soon as he could before zipping off in the opposite direction. Sam’s wings were with Natasha anyway. And Sam had enough sense not to jump without a parachute. He could see the Quinjet take off in the distance behind him as he made it for the mainland.
**
He scoped out the building for three days before he learned the routines of the cops stationed outside of it, waiting, as if The Winter Soldier to return for his spatulas and favorite coffee cup.
After that it was easy to break in.
He made his way quickly to the apartment Bucky had directed him to and knocked four times. There was no answer.
He tried again, and again, and on the fourth try, as his window of opportunity was getting smaller and he was debating just kicking the door in, he finally heard shuffling on the other side.
The door opened and a pretty little woman with big blue eyes and a birds nest of dark hair opened the door.
“Da? Ce vrei?” She asked in butchered Romanian.
“Prună?” Steve asked hesitantly in an equally butchered Romanian and glanced at the floor number again to see if he might have knocked on the wrong apartment.
She narrowed her eyes at him “Plum?”
“Yeah,” Steve said, noting her American accent and switched to English as well, before he slid both his hoodie and beanie off his head and removed his sunglasses. She sighed and opened the door wider.
“Come on in, Cap.” She gestured to her tiny space, which looked much better that the identical room Bucky'd been living in upstairs. “I swear I am usually more perceptive, but it’s like three in the morning and I was too tired to find my glasses.”
She goes over to the corner of the room where a big double bed takes up most of the space and digs out a phone and a hair tie. “Want some coffee?”
She gestures to her brightly painted kitchen and puts her hair up.
“No. Thank you.” He hesitates as the woman strips out of her pyjama trousers, exposing pale thighs and a scar going from her knee to her mid calf.
“I fell.” She tells him when she catches his ogling, and pulls on a pair of skinny jeans before turning her back and putting on a sports bra under her big tee.
“Ah, er.” Steve glances to the floor, suddenly bashful after glimpsing naked waist and the side of her breast. She was pretty, with curves for days and big lips, but he really wasn’t here for that. He was here for “the, ehm, the plums?”
“Chill, you’re getting it.” she waved at him as she pulled on a hoodie, then a leather jacket and zipped it up.
"You sure you don't want any coffee?" she asked again, he nodded. "Rats! I was gonna have you make it for the both of us..." she mumbled as she started throwing various items on her bed and getting a small over-the-shoulder bag to stuff it in.
“I don't function well before coffee, so your timing really is terrible. I reckon we got about three more minutes before the next shift starts patrolling. Oh! There’s a loose floorboard under the plant, mind moving it?” She nodded at the huge flowerpot with a tiny, green sprout. He nodded and lifted it up and off and easily found the hiding space. He’d grown up during the prohibition, and spotting a place like this was easy even before he could see colour.
Inside was a backpack and a small safety deposit box that he retrieved and set on her counter.
“Thanks,” she muttered and put her glasses on, having found them under her bed after tying her boots.
She opened the box and cleaned out the passports and money in there, shoving that into her small bag too, and then stuck her hand in the plant dirt and dug out a big plastic bag with various weapons. “Take the backpack.” she told him and he put it on without question. Mostly because he didn’t know which to ask first.
She washed her hands of dirt and stuffed the guns and knives on her person and pulled her hood up, stuffing the pepperspray in one boot and taser in the other.
Steve suddenly felt naked. He hadn’t brought his shield. It was probably with Tony, or maybe even General Ross. And though he doubted this woman could take him down, the way she handled the weapons with such ease was unsettling.
As she had predicted she was good and ready in less than three minutes, and where she had looked like Wanda on Sunday mornings when she opened the door, she now looked like Natasha undercover (and under radar).
“Let’s go.” She nodded to her window and took one last look at the room before opening it and gesturing for him to follow her out.
Once they made it to the ground through a series of jumps and small iron pegs hammered to the side of the building, they made it for the car he had parked three blocks away.
“Where are you taking me?” The woman asked as she put her seatbelt on.
Steve blinked at her. Confused.
"What?" she asked.
“What?” He asked at the same time. He thought she was taking him to whatever these Plums was...
She pushed her glasses firmly up on her nose and took in his expression before rolling her eyes.
“I’m the Plum, stupid. Jesus I thought you were supposed to be smart and shit. He told me you were smart and shit!” She laughed, “then again, his memory is like swiss cheese on his better days…”
Steve started the car and drove to the extraction point, frowning at the way she joked about him. Like she knew Bucky, like his brainwashing was funny to her.
“Who are you?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“Oh, yeah, he probably didn’t tell you. Paranoid as fuck, I’m telling you… I'm nice like that. You'll see, I'll tell you things.” She chattered away, ignoring the tension rolling off of him. “That safety-nerd… Always making me take different routes home and ingraining my getaway to be under three minutes, and I can’t count the times he popped up out of nowhere or melted away into the shadows because he didn’t want people to see us together.”
Steve shot her a look, wanting her to get to the point.
“Yeah, sorry, I know I talk too much.” She shrugged unapologetically.
“I’m Darcy Lewis.” She smiled and held out her left hand to him, wiggling her fingers under his nose so he could see the diamond ring sparkling there.
“I’m Bucky’s fiancé.”
**