[oom] I'm right here beside you

[from_the_outside]

 Sleep is a joke.

It's not just the intel that she stays up sifting through, blue light straining her eyes; it's not just the coffee she drinks, trying to keep her brain sharp and her thoughts on track. 

It's time.

Minutes that slip away, that she can't get back. Hours that tick ponderously past. She lies alone in her bed and can't close her eyes because if she does, if she sleeps, it's another night gone, another night closer to the day Bucky goes back under and –

So she stays up and works. 

It means that when she waits for him in the morning to come find her before they meet with T'Challa and the others, her skin is pale and translucent and she has that sick feeling of an all-nighter, fatigue poisons running rampant through her bloodstream – but she has a list of observations from her analysis, and two mugs of coffee kept warm on the credenza: one pale with milk and sugar, the other black and as strong as her little coffee maker could handle.

Comments

[from_the_outside]

"Bucky," she says, very gently, after another moment of silence, "don't you think I'd rather be there so you don't have to be alone with them in the middle of the night?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, and says nothing.

[from_the_outside]

"I would," she says, when it's clear he won't answer. "You wouldn't want me alone with my nightmares, would you?"

They aren't as bad as his, maybe, but she's done her fair share of waking up, gasping and covered in sweat, over the last week. Over the last month. "Let me help."

[nerves_of_ice]

Very, very quietly, he tells her, "You don't deserve yours."

[from_the_outside]

"Bucky."

There isn't any pity in her eyes as she watches him, as she lifts her hand to gently stroke it over his hair, just a deep well of sympathetic understanding. "You don't deserve them, either."

It's quiet but firm, her eyes steady on his like she could will him into believing her. "You're a good man. I know you don't see it that way, but you are. You deserve to be able to sleep."

[nerves_of_ice]

He meets her eyes, not trying to evade her gaze, and shakes his head, but doesn't argue beyond that.

[from_the_outside]

Her mouth twists at that shake of his head, but she just spreads her fingers into his hair and leans forward to press her mouth to his temple before sitting back again.

"Will you be able to sleep, if I stay with you tonight?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I guess we'll find out." One corner of his mouth quirks up in a rueful hint of a smile. "I'll try. Is that good enough?"

[from_the_outside]

She palms his jaw and touches her thumb to that ticked-up corner of his mouth, smiling slightly herself. "It's a start."

Archly: "I'll just have to make it a little easier and do my best to tire you out."

[nerves_of_ice]

He chuckles, very slightly, then turns his head and kisses her palm.

[from_the_outside]

Her smile presses dimples into her cheeks, and she leans forward to kiss him, lightly.

"You know, I kept track of every time I made you laugh for real in Greece," she says, when she leans back again. "And after you sent me on that museum run in Berlin. It felt like winning the damn lottery whenever I managed it."

[nerves_of_ice]

He blinks at her, eyes wide and startled.

"You did?"

[from_the_outside]

"Sure. It was a good way to gauge if you were relaxing around me. Also, it seemed like a pretty specialized skill: getting the Winter Soldier to lighten up and laugh."

She tips her head at him, pert and more than a little pleased with herself. "And you know I like to pick up new skills. Plus, it was cute."

Okay. So maybe that last one was the main reason.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I guess it would be pretty specialized, at that." He tightens his arm around her in a slight hug.

"All things considered."

[from_the_outside]

"Hmm."

She sounds amused as she runs the fingers of her left hand through his hair. "Yeah. But I really think it was the cute thing that made it irresistible."

[nerves_of_ice]

This time the look he gives her is unquestionably skeptical.

[from_the_outside]

"What?" she laughs. "I had working eyes back then, too."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Uh-huh." He sounds skeptical, too. "Whatever you say."

[from_the_outside]

She just laughs at him and his skepticism. "Boy, you do not like it when I call you cute, do you?"

This is the second time he's made faces at her about it.

(It's cute.)

She lifts her hands from his head and chest, respectively, and holds them up in surrender. "Fine, next time I'll keep it to myself."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Mostly because I'm not," he points out. "I mean - kittens are cute. Puppies. Things like that."

[from_the_outside]

"You're entitled to your opinion," she says, airily, in a tone that adds but your opinion is wrong.

"But don't worry. I also think you're handsome. And a whole lot of other things."

Occasionally still a gigantic pain in the ass. But hardly for the same reasons. "And only sometimes puppy- or kitten-adjacent."

[nerves_of_ice]

He slides his hand up her back and tugs at a lock of her hair.

Almost as an afterthought, he adds,

"Cat, if I had to pick."

[from_the_outside]

She runs her fingers through his hair from his forehead all the way along the curve of his skull, smiling.

"Don't you mean 'wolf'?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Sure," he agrees, as he tips his head slightly back into her touch. "Obviously."

"But cats are okay, too."

[from_the_outside]

"I could see you with a cat."

A little furry thing to keep him company, to sleep at his feet and annoy him into paying attention to it? It might be just what he needs. "It'd plague the hell out of the goats, though, probably."