Chapter Text
With everything that had happened to them all it was no wonder that their sleep schedules were so messy. Most nights you could guarantee that there would be someone down in the labs working just to keep the emptiness away or on the couches in the common room trying to distract themselves from their past. Therefore, it was no surprise to Natasha when she walked into the common room at 1am that Steve was sitting there with his sketchbook and dark circles under his eyes.
She grabbed a ball of crème wool and a crochet hook from a basket by the wall sat down on the other couch trying to work out what had kept the patriotic captain up this time. She knew that he often had nightmares about his time during the war and from when Bucky fell off the train, none of them were a stranger to nightmares in the tower and she was sure that because his floor was directly underneath Clint and Natasha’s that he had heard her wake up screaming more than once.
As she sat down, she was pulled out of her thoughts when her favourite warm blanket was passed to her. Looking over at Steve she saw that he hadn’t looked up from his sketchpad but had clearly leaned over to reach the throw for her. She accepted it gratefully with a quite thank you and spread it out over herself so that it covered her as much as possible. She hated the cold, probably because it reminded her of her past, cold nights spent in dark concrete rooms, so she loved putting blankets all over the tower to use whenever the temperature dropped.
She settled down and started crocheting. She had recently finished making a scarf for Bruce and wanted to try and make a new blanket for Clint to add to one of his vent hideaways. The crocheting was a new thing, Natasha had been trying out lots of different crafts over the years to help quiet the thoughts in her head. It felt good to use her hands to cause something other than pain for once. As the fifth row of stitches ended, she heard footsteps and looked up to see tony walking in with a mug of coffee and a bag of M&M’S. Tony was usually particularly loud in a way that sometimes drove her insane, but he clearly was not himself that evening as he simply sat down next to Steve, took a sip of his coffee and pulled out a computer with some design schematics on it that looked far too complicated for Natasha to try and decipher in the middle of the night.
Steve reached over and pulled out a second blanket as silently as he pulled out the first handing it to Tony. She watched as Tony wrapped himself up like a burrito and practically snuggled into Steve’s side. Normally this would lead to endless teasing from Natasha and even blackmail if she felt like it, but she was tired and understood that on bad nights Tony needed all the physical contact he could get.
They all had different ways of coping when things got difficult. Steve liked to keep busy, he would work tirelessly at his art or in the gym for hours because he felt like if he ever stopped that the horrors of his past would come rushing up to drown him and he would never get back out again. Tony was very clingy when he had nightmares. Sometimes if Pepper was around, he would go and climb into bed with her but if she wasn’t he would usually find whoever was around even if it was just to sit next to them. He also had weighted blankets in most of the rooms around the tower. Clint liked cosy spaces, especially ones that were high up, hence he had taken all the larger vent spaces in the building and filled them with old Christmas lights, blankets and stashes of water bottles and non-perishable food. Bruce on the other hand was the undisputed ruler of self-care. The man could often be found doing yoga or pouring a cup of camomile tea but even then, he still struggled a lot with his guilt about things that the Hulk had done.
It wasn’t long before Bruce also appeared, likely looking for Tony to make sure he was alright when he saw that he wasn’t in the lab. When he caught sight of Tony on the couch he came over to the others.
“Is it alright if I sit with you?” Bruce asked gently.
Natasha appreciated that he respected her space. Sometimes when she was struggling, she didn’t want anyone near her and needed to be left alone but that night she felt perfectly safe with the others sitting around her and so nodded an affirmative.
Bruce grabbed a book on meditation and self-awareness off the bookshelf on the other side of the room and returned to sit next to Natasha, tucking his feet up into the couch cushions and opening the book about halfway through. Clearly, he hadn’t been sleeping well over the past few days as when she had first seen him pick the book up two days ago and Bruce liked to read things at a slower pace when he was reading to relax instead of to learn something for a project.
It wasn’t very long after that that Clint appeared at the door with blurry eyes and messy hair. Natasha was honestly just surprised that it had taken him this long. Instead of coming over and finding space on a couch he simply dropped onto the floor by Natasha’s feet and leaned into her legs. She found the weight of it quite relaxing and could feel the tension roll out of him as he sat there resting his weight on her.
As she looked around the room she realised that none of them were fine, they might never be really fine after all they had gone through, but they had each other and as long as they were together the sleepless nights didn’t feel so bad.