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It was with a feeling of confusion and a little bit of terror that Steve jolted awake to the sound of music blaring from the other side of the wall. For a short moment, he wondered why what he was pretty sure was Breaking Benjamin was blaring from inside his art studio. Then he remembered. The room next to his bedroom hadn’t been his studio for over a week now, and as he shook his head to clear his mind, he realized that the girl who now claimed the room as hers wasn’t sleeping. Again.
Rolling over, Steve saw that the clock was just past midnight, and had to hold back a sigh. He'd started to wonder what kind of routine the girl had had with her biological father, because it seemed almost impossible for her to go to sleep at night, even though he tried to make sure she didn’t stay up past nine.
“Show me how it ends it's alright / Show me how defenseless you really are” the singer sang as Steve rolled out of bed, catching a glimpse of his messy hair in the mirror as he made his way across the room to peek out into the hallway.
“Sinthea!” he yelled, leaning forward a bit to be able to reach her door and knock on it. “Sinthea, it’s past midnight!” No answer. The singer kept singing his depressive lyrics as Steve knocked again, not sure if he was being ignored or if the girl on the other side of the door simply didn’t hear him.
Not holding back the sigh this time, he stepped out into the corridor and opened her door. He knew she hated it when he came into her room uninvited, but she wasn’t giving him much of a choice right now.
He’d barely opened the door before the music went quiet, and he was met with an angry glare from the girl sitting on the bed, freckled arms wrapped around her legs.
“What?” she asked, the annoyance in her voice a stark contrast to the muffin-patterned pajamas she was wearing.
“It’s past midnight,” Steve explained calmly. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged, and Steve made sure to smile. He wasn’t completely sure shrugging was a nervous tic of the girl’s, but the evidence certainly kept pointing that way.
“I’m not mad,” he reassured her. “Can’t sleep?”
Another shrug, followed by a soft “Nah.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“That’s alright.” Steve gestured into the room. “Mind if I come in? I don’t think I’m all that tired either, now that I think of it.”
Sinthea looked up at him with a skeptical gaze, but the refusal that Steve was expecting didn’t come. Instead she patted the mattress next to her on the bed.
Steve sat down next to her, marveling a little at how soft the bed she had chosen was. Maybe it was a leftover from his time in the army, but he always found it easier to sleep in a harder bed. Sinthea’s bed felt like sitting on a cloud, and he almost couldn’t stop himself from bouncing a little.
“You should probably get me a pair of headphones,” the girl suggested. “That way I can listen to music without waking you up.”
“You’re a smart girl,” Steve nodded. “Smarter than me.”
“Don’t I know it,” she grinned while swiping her bangs away from her face.
“I could cut those for you, if you want,” offered Steve.
“You can cut hair?” The disbelief on her face almost made him laugh out loud.
“I’ve cut my own, I figure it can’t be that much harder to cut someone else’s.”
“Yeah but.” Sinthea gestured towards his head. “Yours is like. Short.”
“And once again, you make a good point.” Steve pouted a little, hoping the girl would find it funny.
“Can you tell me a story?” The question caught him off guard, and he blinked, not sure he had heard her right.
“A story?”
“Yeah, like a bedtime story.” Insecurity flashed across the redhead’s face, and Steve internally cursed at himself.
“Of course I can tell you a story,” he reassured her, and she gave him a little smile. Once again, he found himself realizing that the girl he had taken into his home was absolutely adorable when he smiled, and it took quite the amount of willpower to not reach out and ruffle her hair. Touching her without asking would probably ruin the moment they had going on right now, and that was the last thing Steve wanted. “What kind of story do you wanna hear?”
“I dunno. Something scary.”
“Oh?” Steve scratched his chin. “I’m not sure I’m very good at scary stories. I think I can do funny pretty well though.”
“So make it funny scary then.”
“Your wish is my command,” Steve replied, giving her a quick salute that resulted in a little laugh from her. One point to me, Steve thought happily.
“Alright Captain,” Sinthea got out between giggles, “go on and scare me then.”
Steve cleared his throat, doing his best to look serious before starting to speak in a deep voice.
“Once upon a time--”
“Really? That’s a cliché.”
“Hey, who’s telling the story?”
She rolled her eyes, but stayed silent, which he took as a signal to continue.
“Once upon a time, in a country not so far away, there lived an… owl.” The girl’s eyebrows shot straight up, but she still didn’t say anything, so Steve continued. “It was a special owl that only came out at night.”
“Okay,” came the interruption. “But that’s just all owls.”
“Alright alright.” Steve held up his hands. “Then it was a special owl who only came out during the day. Better?” She nodded. “You see, the owl wasn’t hatching eggs like all the other owls, it was hatching plans of world domination. While the other owls slept in their nests, the owl plotted and planned.”
“So was it going to take over the world of humans or just the world of owls?” Sinthea asked, her voice betraying the fact that she was struggling to not burst out into laughter.
“That remains to be seen,” Steve replied in a mock serious tone.
“You have absolutely no idea how to tell a bedtime story, do you?”
“I think I’m doing fine!” Steve insisted, a little bit more defensively than he had intended. “It’s a good story!”
“Yeah.” Now she did laugh. “Maybe back in the 1800s or whenever you were born.”
“1918!” It was to hard to keep sounding serious and not join her in laughing at this point, but somehow he still managed to.
“...wait, really?” The laughter faded and she looked at him, green eyes blinking. “You’re that old?”
“I was asleep for most of it,” he shrugged.
“You know, this explains so much.” There was a glint in her eyes that told him she wasn’t as serious as she sounded. “So were there a lot of villainous owls around back in the dinosaur era then?”
“Oof.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. So you fought the owl with… the Invaders, right?” She nodded to herself. “Bucky and the Human Torch and Toro and… Namor, right?” Steve was the one to nod now.
“It was a difficult battle,” he confirmed, letting out a soft sigh as if he were reminiscing about it. “I almost didn’t think we’d make it.”
“What did it have, guns?”
“Laser cannons. And very sharp claws.”
“Sounds terrifying,” Sinthea confirmed, sliding down the wall a little to be in more of a laying position.
“You getting tired?”
She nodded once again, and Steve was pretty sure that he caught her stifling a yawn.
“Wanna go to bed?”
A shrug, followed by a nod. Steve got up from the bed to give the girl some space while she crawled beneath the blankets. He was just about to step out of the door when she spoke up again, making him turn back to face her.
“Hey though.”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t you gonna ask how old I am?”
“How old are you?” Steve asked, humoring her, already pretty sure the girl was somewhere around twelve.
“Ten.”
Steve felt his heart skip a beat. For some reason, taking care of a ten year old seemed a hell of a lot more daunting than to take care of a twelve year old. Damn.