Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize…
A/N: Thank you for the warm welcome guys! I'm so happy that you like this little story of mine even if it's totally opposite of the actual show. I think there will be at least two more chapters. Or three. I'm almost finished with the whole story. Whatever.
Tell me what you think!
If you walk out on me
I'm walking after you
Another heart cracked in two
I'm on your back
/Foo Fighters/
...
Steve is in Stockholm when Jenna calls him, shadowing a mark through a series of boutiques in Östermalm. Nobody is supposed to have the number of the phone that's currently vibrating in his pocket, but Jenna has never really been one to play by the rules.
"Hey," he says into the phone, following his mark back out into the street, and turning up the collar of his thick wool coat with one hand against the brittle wind.
"That girl from Paris," Jenna says without preamble. "Her name was Kono, right?"
Steve stumbles over a loose cobblestone, has a momentary (and delicious) flashback of silky smooth thighs, and snaps "What?" into the phone.
"Was her name Kono Kalakaua?" Jenna continues, unruffled.
Steve splutters.
Kalakaua.
It sounds uncomfortably like a Hawaiian name. What are the fucking odds?
Fuck.
"We didn't get around to exchanging last names," he manages, and he can hear Jenna smirking through the phone.
"Tall, slender," Jenna says, undaunted, "dark hair, brown eyes, nice ass?"
"Why the fuck are you asking me this?" Steve hisses, ducking haphazardly through a crowd to catch up with his mark.
Also tries to ignore the butterflies going crazy in his stomach. Manly butterflies, with thigh holsters and shotguns of course.
"Because someone just stole a Klee from the Tate Modern in London," Jenna says calmly like she's giving update on the weather and Steve huffs.
"And?"
"God, you're thick," Jenna sighs. "And? Steve, it was her. Your one night stand with the nice ass and the sticky fingers is named Kono Kalakaua, and she's an art thief. She's wanted in half a dozen countries and there's an incredibly grainy photograph of her plastered all over the BBC right now, because she stole a fucking Klee."
Steve comes to a stop in the middle of the street, and three Swedish people walk straight into him. "… She's in London?"
Jenna sighs explosively across the receiver and Steve winces and keeps walking. He has a job to do: now is really not the time to be thinking of how it's only a quick flight to London from Stockholm.
"Is that really the only thing you retained from what I just told you?" Jenna asks and Steve can hear the eye rolling too. "And she's not going to be in London much longer. A bloody Klee, Steve. She's going to need to lay low for a while."
"Lay low where?"
There's a pause and Steve follows his mark into the lobby of a swanky hotel and takes a seat on one of the couches, while his mark heads for the elevators.
"You're gonna owe me," Jenna says, finally, but Steve can hear the sound of fingers tapping across a keyboard in the background of the phone call. Jenna has always been a sucker for a love story.
"Anything you want," Steve promises, loosening his tie with deft fingers.
"I want a crate of kanelbulle," Jenna says immediately. "Fresh kanelbulle."
"Done."
"I'll text you when I know more," Jenna says, and then. "There are cameras in the stairwells of that hotel, just FYI."
"Noted," Steve says, filing the information away for later, and recalibrating his getaway plans. He stopped questioning how Jenna knows what she knows a long time ago. "Thanks."
The job is done before midnight and Steve cleans the scene quickly and efficiently, and then walks straight out of the hotel into a cold midnight in Stockholm. His own hotel is located in Södermalm, and he walks there, willing the night air to cleanse his mind of the thoughts of dark eyes and sensual lips. He has no idea what he'd even say to Kono if he saw her again. Or if Kono has even the remotest desire to see him. The whole leaving while Steve was asleep and stealing everything of value isn't the best sign, but Steve has always been an optimist.
Yeah, sure.
.
.
Two days later, he's tramping aimlessly through Gamla stan when he gets a text from Jenna that says simply: 'Tokyo.'
He's speedwalking back in the direction of his hotel when he remembers that there are something like eight million people in Tokyo, and texts furiously.
'Tokyo is a very large city care to narrow it down'
He's back in his hotel, throwing things into his suitcase when Jenna texts him back.
'Shibuya.'
'STILL NOT HELPFUL'
'God, you're the worst 007 ever' Jenna texts. 'You are the George Lazenby of James Bonds.'
'Fuck you' Steve types while scrambling for the charger for his phone. 'I'm at least roger moore'
'In your dreams.' Jenna responds. 'Try Omotesando.'
Tokyo is really fucking crowded. Steve had been there once before, on a job, but the sheer bustle and noise is completely overwhelming. Shibuya is so packed with people that he knows that finding Kono is just not going to happen.
He puts out feelers though, as best he can, meets with his underworld contacts over sushi and the occasional cup of coffee, and asks if any of them have seen the art thief. None of them have, which means that Kono is good at hiding when she wants to be, or that Jenna's intel is wrong.
And Jenna is never wrong.
Steve spends two weeks wandering Shibuya, his heart jumping every time he sees a tall woman with dark hair, before he gets a text from Jenna that says:
'Belgium. Brussels. Musée Rene Magritte.'
So he flies to Belgium, because he's never been, and he's a big fan of chocolate and waffles. Brussels is beautiful, and he spends most of his time wandering through various art museums. He's in the Museé Rene Magritte, just like Jenna said when he sees her out of the corner of his eye: a flash of brown hair and knee length leather coat but by the time Steve makes it out of the museum, she's nowhere to be seen.
Jenna's next text says 'Barcelona, Las Ramblas', and Steve buys a train ticket and goes to Barcelona.
Barcelona is bright and warm, and Steve eats paella and drinks sangria and walks the length of La Rambla over and over again, examining the human statues and keeping an eye out for Kono.
He's been chasing Kono for over a month now, thanks to Jenna's help, and it's probably verging on creepy. At least that's what Danny shouts daily at him over the phone. Sometimes he puts him on speaker and gangs up on him with Mary Ann. On days like that Steve leaves his phone on the bed and goes for a walk and wonders when Danny will notice that he left.
He still doesn't know what he's going to say when he finally catches up to Kono – or if he will ever catch up to Kono, because damn, when that woman doesn't want to be found, she can't be found. Jenna is the best, and even she is working off of nothing more than educated guesses and grainy CCTV footage.
He's been in Barcelona for six days, working on his tan, and eating dulce de leche doughnuts from Lukumas when Jenna texts him in the middle of the night.
'Traced her back to London', the text reads. 'Trail goes cold at Paddington station, sorry.'
Steve thanks her and arranges for a half dozen fresh doughnuts to be delivered to Lori and Jenna's apartment in Paris before booking himself a plane ticket.
.
.
Steve loves London, loves the rain and the people and the culture. He's called it home for most of the past decade, and he keeps an apartment in Notting Hill for when he's not gallivanting around the world chasing pretty girls who steal priceless works of art.
The first thing he does when he gets back to London is take a cab to his flat, which is covered in a thin layer of dust, and smells musty. He throws the windows wide and takes the hottest shower he can stand, before lying down in his own bed and sleeping for eighteen hours. When he wakes, refreshed, he dresses and goes to buy himself a latte from his favourite café.
Refreshed, and happy to be home, he takes a cab to Paddington Station and stands still in the middle of the chaos, sipping a paper cup of milky tea and watching the people who walk by. If Kono was here when Jenna texted him that was already two days ago, and she could have gotten on a train and gotten the hell out of dodge, but Steve's instincts tell him that Kono's still in London. It's like there's an edge to everything that there wasn't before – London feels sharper, like a knife to the throat, and Steve revels in it.
And maybe it's because he's been living out of suitcases in hotels across Europe for the past month or so, chasing a woman who seems to be made largely out of Steve's memories and smoke, but the air feels charged, and it feels like it had in Paris, when they first ran into each other on that bridge.
And it really shouldn't surprise him when he's walking home later that night and familiar hands shove him against a wall and press a blade against his throat, but he drops his shopping all over the alleyway anyway.
Kono's hair is pulled straight back, away from her face, and her cheeks look more hollowed than they had in Paris. Steve's hands twitch at his side, eager to scoop Kono back into them, and Kono presses the blade against his throat and stares Steve down. She's terrifying, and Steve is painfully turned on.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear Danny's voice, calling him an idiot in at least four different languages.
"How long have you been following me for?" Kono hisses, and Steve swallows carefully.
"Since Tokyo," he says quietly. "Shibuya."
Kono's eyes darken, and she readjusts her hold on the hilt of her knife.
Steve tenses.
He's about sixty-five percent sure Kono isn't actually going to stab him, but it's always good to be prepared.
"Why?" Kono spits. "Why have you been following me?"
Steve opens his mouth, and then closes it, because what he's about to say makes him sound like a pretty huge idiot. Kono raises an eyebrow, and Steve looks down, away from her glittering eyes.
"Why did you leave in Paris?" He says, instead of what he'd been about to say, which is: 'I've been following you because I've got a really embarrassing crush on you, and I'd really like to take you on a date.'
That makes Kono pause, and she stares at Steve for a long moment before taking the knife away from his neck and stepping back.
"I don't do awkward breakfasts after one-night stands," she shrugs, and something twists in Steve's chest.
His heart, probably.
"It didn't have to be a one-night stand," he mutters.
Kono cocks an eyebrow at him, and says, incredulously: "Did you follow me halfway across the world because you wanted to ask me out to dinner?"
"No," Steve says balefully, and Kono smiles, a real smile this time, and it makes Steve's heart jump in his chest again.
"I'm flattered," Kono says, smirking, and Steve can't decide whether or not he wants to kiss her or go into his flat and die of embarrassment.
"Flattered enough to let me take you to dinner?" Steve asks, because false bravado has always been his defense mechanism.
Kono shakes her head, but she steps close to Steve, who tenses for another knife to the throat until Kono winds her fingers around Steve's neck and kisses him instead, and she's warm and tastes faintly of cigarettes and oranges, and she pulls away far too quickly. Steve blinks, dazed, and by the time he's collected himself enough to try to follow Kono, the she's already disappeared into the shadows at the end of the alley.
