Chapter Text
It wasn't the cold that woke Steve up. He was used to a cold hand reaching for him in the night. But Bucky's cold metal arm was an entirely different feel from the small soft chilly hand that was currently wrapped around his left calf as an unknown body climbed into bed between Steve and Bucky.
Steve's eye shot open and he quickly took in the room. The dim room offered little visibility to most people, but Steve's vision could take in the whole room almost perfectly at any light level. Bucky lay next to him his eye still shut, but clearly not as asleep as he was acting. And in the middle of the bed a mop of brown hair could be seen attached to a young feminine body.
"Relax. It's just Darcy." Bucky mumbled next to him, without opening his eyes.
Darcy flopped between them on the bed burrowing under the blankets.
"What do you mean relax? What is she doing?" Steve whispered frantically.
"She sleep walks." Bucky offered, still not opening his eyes.
"Okay, but shouldn't we wake her up, or move her back to her own bed, or something?"
"Nah, leave her. It's fine."
"It's not fine. I'm naked."
"I told you to put pants on before you went to sleep."
"At no point did you say, 'hey put some pants on, some girl might crawl into our bed in the middle of the night'." Steve said crawling out of bed and retrieving a pair of pajama pants from their dresser.
"What fun would that have been?"
"You are such a jerk. Help me get her back to her apartment."
"Just leave her. It's fine."
"It's not right. She'll be embarrassed if she wakes up here knowing she crawled into the wrong bed."
Bucky snorted, "You've met Darcy, right? What exactly about her gives you the impression that she would get embarrassed waking up between the two of us?"
Steve was getting a little frustrated with Bucky's nonchalant attitude toward the situation. He hadn't even bothered to open his eyes yet, and seemed to be mocking Steve.
"Fine," Steve huffed, leaning over and gently grabbing Darcy to pull her closer to the end of the bed.
That seemed to get Bucky's attention, "What are you doing?" He said sitting up and glaring at Steve.
"I'm taking her back to her room."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Bucky cocked an eyebrow at Steve as he attempted to pick Darcy up.
For a second everything seemed fine. Steve managed to get her into a semblance of a bridal hold without waking her up, but before he could step away from the bed it felt as if all of Darcy's bones had left her body. She became a sack of slither human, slipped through his arms and fell to his bed.
Bucky chuckled softly and laid back down, "Told ya punk. Leave her, and get back in bed."
Steve glared at Bucky and attempted once again to pick up Darcy. This time as he stood up she managed to do an interesting bit of movement, flailing her arms, smacking him in the face, and falling gracelessly back into the bed on her stomach.
Bucky snorted, laid himself back down, and closed his eyes; in an attempt to go back to sleep himself.
"You know everyone in the tower is going to talk about the three of us sleeping together, if we let her stay here tonight." Steve said indignantly his hands firmly on his hips, and his eyebrows pulled into their patent pending Captain America is disappointed in you scowl.
"First of all, I doubt it. Second, those eyebrows don't work on me." Bucky smirked.
At that moment Darcy grabbed Bucky's left arm pulled into around her, and proceeded to snuggle the arm like a teddy bear. A cold, metal, the complete opposite of soft, cybernetic teddy bear. "My shiny," She mumbled in her sleep.
Steve's eyes widen in disbelief.
"She sleep talks to," Bucky said around a yawn snuggling into Darcy himself.
"You sleep too," Darcy said patting the bed with the arm that wasn't snuggling Bucky's arm.
"Are you sure she's not awake?" Steve asked skeptically.
He was answered by a soft snore from Darcy that was way too good to be fake, and a smirk from Bucky. "Positive," the latter offered, "now get back in bed, punk."
Steve carefully slid back into the bed, still very uncomfortable with the entire situation. As soon as he settled stiffly onto his pillow, Darcy made grabby hands at him pulling him over to use his shoulder as a pillow.
"Shoulder of steel," She mumbled, and then giggled at her own joke.
"She sleep snuggles, too," Bucky said as he shifted to get more comfortable and fall back to sleep.
As the other two fell back into deep REM sleep, Steve stayed stock still wondering about the oddity that was his life. It took him hours to fall back to sleep, and even then he woke to the slightest shift from the other two.
By 4 am Steve was ready to give the whole thing up and just get up for the day. Darcy chose that moment to sling her self over him and cuddle him like a giant body pillow, one arm still stretched out to hold onto Bucky's cybernetic one. All night Darcy had maintained some kind of contact with that arm, it was sweet and endearing in a way. Most people cringed away from it. Tony seemed obsessed with recreating the technology. Sam called it the metal arm of death. Darcy did none of those things while awake, and while she slept she treated it like her favorite stuffed animal. Which was sweet but weird, which pretty much described Darcy, in general.
Steve chose not to disturb the sleeping imp, and lay awake for another hour while she snuggled him. At 5:15 Darcy rolled over and burrowed into Bucky, and Steve made his escape. Quietly getting his running gear out of the dresser before getting dressed in the bathroom, so he didn't disturb the other two.
Sam had joined Steve on his run, and just before 8 am found the two men, stepping off the elevator and into the common room of the tower. Tony was sitting at the table by the kitchen area drinking coffee, and reading something on a StarkPad, a rumpled suit on with his tie hanging loosely around his neck. Pepper sat next to him looking slightly less rumpled but not as pristine as her usual self, although she had changed into yoga pants and one of Tony's old t-shirts. A comfy chair that sat to the side of the kitchen area was occupied by Bruce; who was drinking his morning tea and reading "The Cask of Amontillado". Before Steve or Sam could greet any of them Nat handed Steve a large iced coffee. Steve looked at the coffee in confusion and then back at Nat, "What is this?"
"It's a venti, iced, white mocha, whole milk, extra sugar, extra whipped cream, extra sprinkles," Nat offered with a smirk.
"And why am I being handed this?"
"Because Darcy gets grumpy without her morning coffee."
"So, that's where she ended up last night," Bruce commented without looking up from his book.
"Wait, you slept with Darcy last night, and didn't tell me? That's not cool, man. I want details," Sam put in.
"It wasn't like that. She just kind of crawled into bed with us last night and refused to leave."
"I'm sorry, what?" Sam said at the same time Tony said, "Yeah, she does that."
"What?" Steve and Sam said with varying degrees of shock.
"Darcy gets night terrors, so she tends to crawl into bed with people as a defensive mechanism. Doesn't have them if there's someone else in bed with her," Pepper explained, "She's done it with Tony since she was, what five?" She turned to Tony for confirmation.
"Four, when I got custody of her. She would wake up screaming I'd put her in bed with me. Holding her was the only thing that calmed her. After awhile if a dream started to go south she'd just sleepwalk into my bed. Made for a couple of interesting conversations with whoever was in my bed at the time."
"That's a little disturbing." Sam said.
Tony shrugged, "I will never claim to be a perfect parent."
"So how'd you know she was in mine and Buck's bed?" Steve turned back to Nat.
"Process of elimination. Tony and Pepper weren't home. I was on mission only got in this morning and we have a standing rule about her not surprising Bruce when I'm not home. Thor and Jane are off world, Clint is at home with Laura and the kids."
"Wait, so she has slept with all of you?" Sam asked incredulously.
"Ew, don't be gross. Not like that," Tony said indignantly.
"But she has slept walked into all of your beds?" Steve followed up.
There was a collective shrug from the other four.
"First time she crawled into our bed I hulked out," Bruce said.
"How'd she react to that?" Sam asked with a snort.
"She sort of slept through it. Drug the covers and the pillows onto the floor, and said, 'Hulk need sleep, too'. Then she made all three of us sleep on the floor." Bruce recalled.
"We now have a Hulk sized, Hulk proof bed. I do not sleep on the floor," Nat scowled at her own memory of the event.
"She did all that in her sleep?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, she sleep talks, and sleep cuddles too," Steve offered from his own experience.
"She's very situationally aware when she's asleep," Pepper nodded in agreement.
"She prefers Tony and Pepper, then Bruce and I, because Thor sleeps in the nude, and refuses to put on pants even when Darcy climbs in bed. She crawled into bed with Clint and Laura when she stayed with them on the farm. She climbed into bed with Heimdall and his wife and husband when she stayed on Asgard. She snuggled in with Bucky a few times while everyone else was on mission and away from the tower."
"So this is just a thing she does, and you all just roll with it and warn no one else?" Sam asked.
"Where would the fun in warning people be?" Nat smirked.
At that moment the elevator doors opened and a groggy looking Bucky stalked over to Steve, grabbed the coffee out of his hand, smacked him on the back of his head for his troubles, and stalked back to the elevator. "I told you, she gets grumpy without her coffee," Nat offered.
"This is why I'm not moving to the Tower, Steve. None of this is normal. I need normal in my life somewhere." Sam groused.