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Darcy Lewis and 3 AM were not friends. They hadn’t been in a long time.
They were barely on speaking terms these days — at least, Darcy wished that they weren’t talking. Not when the familiar hum started in her joints and her hands felt like they were on fire. Her ultimate dream was to be so deeply asleep at 3 AM that’d she never have to consider what to do at this hour, and it left her wondering why her body turned on every ache and numb limb at this time of night.
But here she was. And 3 AM wasn’t getting any more interesting or comfortable staring at her ceiling.
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, her head swam as she tried to do the mental calculations of whether it was bad enough to take her pain killers. It wasn’t a simple yes or no answer — not when overuse led to some not-so-great side effects — so Darcy had to weigh her options.
She could take some pills, have a snack and get another few hours or sleep only to feel sick by morning, or she could just accept it as another early wake-up, camp out on the couch and hope the symptoms lulled long enough for her to sneak in a nap.
With the way her stomach was already gurgling, upset at even the thought, Darcy decided on the latter.
She scooped up her favourite knit blanket (the one her mom had gifted her before she went off to college), and locked her apartment’s door behind her before heading towards the common room. She tried to convince herself it was like she was a kid again — home sick from school and forced to watch bad daytime television. And honestly, that was more comforting a thought than she’d like to admit.
It sure beat hiding herself away in her room and suffering in silence.
Padding to the kitchen, she stopped in her tracks, realizing the light was already on. She approached, hearing someone rifling through the fridge, muttering to themselves. She stopped in the doorway, peering in to see Bucky shoot a glance through his curtain of hair, lit only by the lightbulb inside the fridge.
Any other day, she’d be swooning over the way his sweatpants slung low on his hips, with just a white tank-top covering his sculpted chest. But this morning — if one could even call it that — she wished she could sink into the floor and disappear before he saw her in this state.
But she wouldn’t have any luck in that department.
“Can’t sleep?”
Damn super soldiers and their haphazard sleeping schedules.
“Something like that,” Darcy mumbled, plopping onto the couch with her back to him and pulling a blanket into her lap, hoping she could engulf her… maybe even suck herself out of the room entirely, if she was lucky.
Anything to hide from what was looking like an awkward conversation when she was already feeling like trash.
And it seemed to work, for a few beats at least, as she clicked on the TV and found her favourite list of terrible and amazing 90s classics. She settled on a A Night At The Roxbury and tried to get comfortable, which took some maneuvering, a bit of blanket shifting and winces as the sore spots in her body made themselves known in painful pulses.
Bucky seemed to look her over a little closer as she did, brow furrowed as he stood in front of the microwave, heating some leftovers.
“You’re looking a little peaky there, Darce. You feelin’ alright?”
Of course he would ask that. Of course Bucky Barnes, the quietly caring former assassin, who she’d had a crush on for the last two years, could pick out her flush in the dark. Hell, for all she knew, he could see the heat radiating off her joints.
Darcy never was sure what kind of superpowers his version of serum had given him.
And so, not wanting to have this particular conversation at this hour, she burrowed her head further into the mountain of pillows near the arm of the couch and mumbled some form of “I’m fine.”
She’d hoped it would end there.
But Bucky Barnes was about as stubborn as they came, mulling over her answer as he continued to heat his food. The only sounds were the beeps and hums of the microwave, which Darcy could tune out with enough effort.
Three minutes later, Bucky knelt down in front of her, holding what seemed to be a rice-filled heating pack in the shape of a ‘U’. Apparently, it wasn’t food he’d been heating up.
“Here, try this,” he said, holding it out to her.
Darcy looked at him skeptically, about to ask how or what, or even why he thought it was any of her business (it was hard to stay polite with this much pain surging through her), but Bucky beat her to the punch.
“You’re all locked up, Darce. I can see it from the kitchen,” he explained, eyes and voice softening. “Please, just take it.”
That tone. She hated the saccharine taste of it in the air. Pity.
Part of her wanted to ask who the hell he thought he was or why she even mattered to him. But she couldn’t find the heart with the sincere concern shining in his blue-grey eyes. Her fingers brushing his as she begrudgingly placed it on her shoulders, feeling the weight of the beads and the warmth working its way through her skin.
Darcy hoped that would be the end of that, but Bucky was as stubborn as they came, refusing to leave his spot on the floor until she’d leaned back and readjusted.
“Does it help?”
Darcy nearly rolled her eyes, but smoothed her face and offered a more polite, “We’ll see.”
His brow furrowed in concern as he started, “You sure you don’t want me to get you—?”
“This isn’t something that a Tylenol is going to solve, Buck.”
She tried to wipe the venom from her tone, settling on something that sounded more akin to exhaustion as Bucky nodded. Not that she was trying to be mean or shut him out — Darcy was just tired of having to explain. She was sick of people trying to fix her with things she’d tried already, or would even do more harm than good in some cases.
You don’t owe anyone your time or your medical history, one of her therapists had reminded her after a particularly rough week. The words rung in her head in reminder as she fought back another wince at the jabbing pain.
“OK, I gotcha,” he said finally, sinking into his knees, trying to hold her gaze. She was pretty sure she’d never seen this shade of worry in those blues of his. “Is everything really alright, Lewis? I’m here, you know.”
The corner of her lip twitched as she offered him one last tired look. All the anger and frustration was too exhausting to keep up, especially when all he offered were those stupid, adorable puppy-dog eyes in response.
“I know, Buck. I’m fine, thanks.”
But even as he wished her goodnight and padded back to his barstool at the island behind her, she knew he had seen right through her fib.
And part of her knew this was far from over.
The next ‘day’ wasn’t much better.
It was Steve who found her sleeping in the living room the next morning. He’d caught her more than once during his 5AM workout and 6AM protein shake routine.
“Morning, Darce. What was on the docket last night?” he asked, knowing she was awake.
“Night At The Roxbury,” Darcy croaked, happy to brush it off as another movie marathon turned impromptu rest.
Anything to avoid the awkward explanation, as she wished Steve a good workout and trudged back to her room to get ready for the day.
The heat still radiated from every joint as she got dressed. It probably didn’t help that she was existing only on the couple hours of sleep on the couch, that familiar tired ache weighing down her every movement. Even something as simple as pulling a t-shirt overhead was a Herculean feat, and her whole pre-work routine required two breaks and one very determined (and exhausted) pep talk.
“Eight hours, body. Eight hours is all I ask of you,” Darcy muttered to herself, popping open her pill-case for the day and downing the handful with a glass of water. “Eight hours of solid work and I swear I’ll take you straight to bed. Hell, I’ll even eat real vegetables for lunch and drink water and everything.”
As if her body answered her prayers, the waves of pain dulled long enough for her to spend some time in the lab looking over paperwork. It wasn’t eight hours, but it was enough to keep her inbox below 1000 emails, and that was impressive in its own right.
But by the time evening hit, and she dragged herself back to her apartment on an upper floor of Stark Tower, it was almost worse than the night before.
Darcy’s hands were already red and swollen, well past the point of early intervention as the pressure built in her head and behind her eyes.
And just as the tears pooled in her lashes, Darcy realized it was time to break out the big guns.
But by the time she reached the medicine cabinet, it was clear that the real problem ahead of her wasn’t the pills or the pain — it was the piece of shit bottle the pharmacy stored them in. She couldn’t pry open the pain-relieving pills that lay infuriatingly inside a child-proof (and poorly-designed) container.
Normally they would have been in something easier to access, but she’d left refilling the prescription to the last minute and hadn’t transferred them yet.
Of course.
Of course, Darcy Lewis’ one lazy moment was her own undoing.
Thump, thump, thump. Darcy’s heart pounded against her ribs as she groaned, voice crackling into the dark, “No, no, no….”
Skin raw from the attempts, she was about ready to sink to the floor and cry. One look at the clock confirmed the one thing she’d already assumed: it was 3AM again. And she was definitely not asleep, and she was definitely not breaking into that bottle on her own.
But, worst yet, she knew there was only one other person who would be up at this hour.
Which meant Darcy Lewis was going to have to shove her pride aside and ask for help for once in her life. Her stomach churned, eyes flicking to the ceiling. “FRIDAY, is Sergeant Barnes awake?”
“Due to the Tower’s security protocol, I cannot confirm that request. Would you like me to page Sergeant Barnes for you?”
“Yes, please,” Darcy mumbled, not wanting to risk walking over to knock on the door herself, potentially making her joints feel worse. But every second she spent alone with her thoughts, the louder the pain rang out in her head.
It was like a gong, washing out every other thought in her head as each wave of pain vibrated through her. Impossible to concentrate or be logical or even hold a train of thought for longer than a few seconds.
Shit. How was she supposed to function like this?
Her specialist was going to have a field-day when she got back in town. There was no doubt Darcy would be put through another battery of tests and new medications. It had already been a year of this uncertainty, hopping from prescription to prescription, but nothing worked.
“Darce?”
Her head whipped around to meet those worried blue eyes in her doorway, standing stock-still in a pair of sweatpants and nothing else. Had Bucky run here? He wasn’t out of breath, but there was a frantic feeling about him, like he’d been expecting something a lot worse.
Not that this was going to be a cakewalk — for either of them.
The only thing holding the remaining tears back from spilling over onto her cheeks was her refusal to cry over something this stupid in front of an Avenger. So Darcy silently held out the pill bottle and hoped he didn’t make her say the stupid request out loud, because if he did, she was definitely going to crack.
Mercifully, he seemed to get the hint.
Eyes narrowed, Bucky grabbed the pill bottle, pried it open and read the label to even dole out her usual dose. Two tiny pills dropped into her palm and in that moment, Darcy was so grateful she could’ve kissed him.
By the time she swallowed them back, chasing them with a glass of water, thinking became a little easier and she saved herself the embarrassment.
She’d expected him to shrug off the experience and slink back to bed, but Bucky didn’t leave. He didn’t do or say anything, in fact.
Standing there in her living room, he studied her as if waiting for her to make the next move. What the hell could Bucky Barnes be scared of here?
Feeling a little like a deer in the headlights, Darcy’s lips twisted into the ghost of a grin and she put on her usual snarky tone. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m dying of? Make sure I don’t have some contagious illness? Shun me like a leper or something?”
There was some truth in her act — maybe too much.
It peeked through in the way her breath hitched waiting for his response, or the way her voice wavered, or that she couldn’t give up the stubborn show of pride for fear that everything would come crumbling back down on her and she’d be right back where she started: Alone. In pain. Vulnerable.
Her three least-favourite states.
It wasn’t like he would have been the first. Friends and significant others had proved her right again and again over the years — dropping her like a hot potato after too many cancellations to events or sick days or just inconveniences.
“FRIDAY would’ve told the medial team if there was something that serious,” Bucky mumbled, matter-of-fact.
Darcy’s eyes widened. How would he have known that? Had he been thinking about her? Worrying, even? Maybe? No. No, he’d meant it as a straight-faced joke or something, her completely logical brain concluded, even in the mid-flare haze.
“And it’s none of my business,” Bucky added, shifting his weight from foot to foot like he’d been caught. “Unless you want to talk about it, in which case, I’m all ears.”
There was something about the furrow of his brow, that unwarranted, concerned look on his face that sent a fire running through her. Bristling at the fact that she was practically a stranger to him, at the fact that he felt like she needed to talk.
Like it would even help.
The one thing Darcy Lewis was absolutely certain of was that she needed nothing except a full night’s sleep and for these pills to kick in.
“You don’t have to take me on as some sort of community service pity pet project,” Darcy huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.
It took a few seconds too long for the words to sink in, as his blue eyes darted between hers. Assessing, calculating, trying to find the cracks in her resolve.
Not that he would. There was none to find, as far as she was concerned.
Darcy Lewis put on a show like no other, after all.
For a second, she thought she’d won the round, when his gaze dropped to the hardwood, and after the words didn’t come.
If Darcy hadn’t been waiting on edge and listening intently, she might not have heard the soft words that followed.
“I take care of the people I care about. It’s what I do. What I did for Steve and what I’d do for you.”
All the thuds and thumps and crashes in Darcy’s head and body ground to a halt at those three little sentences. She gaped. The only thing her brain could process in the time that slipped between responses was the sound of the ceiling fan swooping overhead. Her face flamed.
“You didn’t seem this worried last night.”
She also hadn’t paged him to her room in the middle of the night, but that was neither here nor there. Fully expecting him to brush it off with his usual Bucky Barnes swagger, it shocked Darcy that he looked almost caught?
“Might have monitored the security feeds after I left,” he admitted with a guilty smile.
“Of course you have access to the cameras.”
“Perks of being a paranoid ex-assassin, I guess.”
They both huffed a half-hearted laugh at that one.
Bucky swallowed, adding in response to her silence, “But if it’s too much, I can stop. I can go—”
“Please don’t.”
Darcy could’ve slapped herself at the way the words tumbled out of her mouth, sounding much more desperate than they had in her head.
“I — I mean, I just… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull you out of bed for something stupid like this. And I didn’t mean to be a total bitch about it,” Darcy mumbled, avoiding his gaze.
“Hey,” Bucky stepped closer, arm outstretched but nowhere near touching her. She appreciated him giving her the space she needed. “We all say and do stupid things when we’re in pain. Just be glad you didn’t trash millions of dollars worth of military tech.”
Darcy couldn’t help but let out a watery chuckle. Her thumb reached up to swipe at the tears before they fell down her cheeks, hoping he didn’t notice. Or at least that he wouldn’t call attention to it, but she could hear the pity in his tone as he murmured her name.
“Darce…” he sighed, retracting his hand and shaking his head. “I’m serious, though. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but you should tell me when you’re in pain, or if there’s anything I can do to help, OK? Promise me that?”
Every reason for shutting him out and putting on the tough girl act crumbled right before Darcy’s eyes. That dejected look, the concerned furrowed brow, the soft voice she’d never heard him use with anyone else.
Maybe it’d been harder to see through the blinding pain, but here, in the dim light of her apartment, it was so, so clear to her.
“Yeah — Yes. I promise,” Darcy replied, stiffer than she’d like. She licked her lips and reaching out towards his hand. It was ice against hers, and she might have let out a little sigh in relief before she added, “Thank you.”
His fingers closed over hers, so lightly Darcy thought she might have been imagining it. Eyes narrowed, he pressed the back of his flesh hand to her cheek before so fast she didn’t register the movement.
But she could sure feel it, sparking to her toes.
“Jesus, you’re burning up, Darce. Let me get you some water and a cool towel or something.”
Darcy was breathless and tongue-tied in his wake, still in disbelief that he’d just touched her face.
Maybe a fever explained her scattered thoughts, the way her eyes dragged across his lips and committed them to memory. For once, the pain wasn’t at the forefront of everything, reduced to a dim white noise as the medication kicked in.
Darcy did the only thing her body knew to do in these kinds of situations: sit down. It wasn’t the most graceful execution, but it felt a little more marshmallow-y than usual.
But she didn’t have time to bask in the softness as Bucky stormed back into the room with a tall glass of water and a hand towel that had already dripped across the hardwood. Despite the pain medication, the thought of sitting water on wood gave her a headache.
“Here.”
Bucky handed Darcy the glass and waited for her to take a swig before moving it to the coffee table.
“Lean back a little,” he instructed, setting a knee on the couch and craning over her with his entire body, which she was pretty sure was carved marble at this point. Definitely a work of art. Bucky breathed a chuckle as she stared up at him expectantly, “And close your eyes.”
Darcy’s face flamed as she twisted her lips into a stubborn not-smile. She let out a little gasp at the cold water dripping into her hair as Bucky set the cloth on her forehead.
“I’m glad you’re not fighting me on this anymore,” Bucky muttered, getting a raspy chuckle out of Darcy. “It’s OK to ask for and receive help, doll.”
Doll. She liked that, the way it sounded in his mouth. The kind words pooled together, her eyes stinging as she fought to keep them closed. Opening them would only expose her and getting caught — catching feelings — whatever this was — was not in the cards.
Even after nibbling them shut, her traitorous lips could help but ask the question.
“Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
Darcy turned the words over in her head twice before she finally came out with it. “You said you take care of the ones you care about — you care about me?”
“‘Course I do.” Bucky said it like he was explaining one plus one equalled two. There was a rumble in his chest and he shifted on the couch beside her. “What is it you’re afraid of?"
And Darcy was pretty damn sure he meant more than just the help. Her eyes flew open, landing on the worry lines around his eyes, the way his hand was already gripping hers and that beautiful, stupid and slightly reckless furrowed brow.
She couldn’t lie to that.
“Nobody fights this hard for nothing, Darce.”
After everything Bucky had done tonight, he’d proven she could trust him with the truth.
“I have an autoimmune disease. Rheumatoid arthritis.”
Darcy watched the flicker of recognition cross his face, but it was the silence that hurt more. The reminder that she and only she could really explain this — that she hadn’t done this speech in at least a couple of years now and was feeling rusty and exposed.
“My body attacks itself and causes inflammation. So sometimes when I push myself too hard or go through stress or my hormones go off, my body flares,” Darcy scrubbed at her face. “And uh, you’ve seen what that looks like up close.”
She couldn’t help the mortification that slipped into her tone.
“Darcy…” His eyes locked on hers, and she was certain he could see the shame there. “You look surprised that I’m here.”
“Still here,” she clarified. “Because you haven’t left yet. You can, I… I wouldn’t blame you…”
Bucky shook his head.
“Darce, if I had the choice, I wouldn’t leave you again, ever. Not unless you told me in no uncertain terms to go,” he said, the faint glint of teeth in the dark. “And even then, I might not listen.”
“So stubborn,” Darcy muttered and Bucky hissed a laugh.
“You’re one to talk.”
A beat of comfortable silence fell as Darcy peeled the towel off of her forehead and sat up a little. Her eyes trailed the gunmetal arm drawn into a nervous fist. Maybe Bucky understood more than she realized. She could feel the familiar tingle and shivers run through her as the pain medication took full effect.
And, had it been another night with another person, Darcy might have blamed the next line on her meds, as if it was some kind of delusion.
“I was serious. I care about you Darce. None of this changes that.”
Her eyes tracked his hand down to where it lay gently on top of hers, knowing better than jostle her swollen fingers. The more she looked at it, the louder her pulse hammered in her ears.
Holy shit. No. No — she was definitely dreaming this.
“Darcy? You’re looking a little—?” Bucky started, opening his arms as if to bring her closer.
Her brain made a split-second decision, that if this was a dream, she was going to take full advantage and see how far she could push this dream-Bucky.
And if she was awake and conscious and not hallucinating?
Then that would be morning Darcy’s problem, as far as she was concerned.
“I don’t understand why or how or even what, honestly, but I’m not going to turn down help right now,” Darcy babbled, scooting across the couch so she could feel his body heat under her head.
Bucky chuckled, the sound echoing in his chest as he slung an arm around her waist, “This alright?”
Darcy managed an affirmative grunt as she soaked in the sensation.
Weighted blankets, who?
She could have sworn he pressed a kiss to the top of her head as he hummed, “Get some rest, doll. We can talk in the morning.”
But beyond a warmth she couldn’t quite explain and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, Darcy couldn’t remember much of anything else.