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He sleeps with Steve like they always have: lying close, Bucky pressed up against Steve’s back, curled together under the blankets. When they were young, Bucky could tuck Steve completely into the parenthesis of his body, and he would pull Steve into his warmth, pull the covers over their heads. Even in their drafty apartment on Coffey Street, they sheltered together, protected from the cold.
Their first night in Wakanda—before Steve went back to the Raft, before Bucky went under again, before Wanda Maximoff regrew his brain and Helen Cho regrew his arm—they had shifted around each other awkwardly, trying to remember how this worked. It was clumsy, and Bucky couldn’t lie on his left side because it hurt too much, even with the most advanced pain medications the Wakandan doctors could prescribe.
Then Steve moved down a little to fit his head under Bucky’s chin, and suddenly it was easy: Bucky nudged Steve so that Bucky could get his right arm underneath Steve’s neck, and they fit. In that moment Bucky wished to God that he had a second arm—metal, flesh, it didn’t matter—to wrap around Steve’s other side and hold him as close as he’d once been able to. But this was what he had, so this would have to do. Steve had reached up to put his hand over Bucky’s, and that was good—maybe that was all he needed.
+||+||+
Natasha hates being boxed in—that’s not news to anyone who has ever met her. She likes to sleep close, but the Black Widow, of course, always needs an escape route, so she’s always on the outside. She rubs her cheek between Bucky’s shoulder blades—her hair tickles if he isn’t wearing a shirt—and circles his torso with her arms. She holds him tightly and settles one leg between his, but if he shifts away from her, she’ll let him go immediately.
But he doesn’t move away, not once he’s used to her shape and her scent, clean shampoo and a hint of the perfume she likes—a little bit of vanilla, a little bit of something that might be lily. It’s light, almost innocent, and not what he would have expected her to wear, but isn’t that the way for Natasha.
They both sleep with a knife nearby: both automatics, although Natasha’s is small and slender and wickedly sharp, while Bucky’s is bigger and heavier, with a serrated blade. Bucky keeps his on the floor just underneath the bed; Natasha puts hers on the nightstand. Some nights, bad ones, she wears a tactical knife in a thigh holster that’s just visible under T’Challa’s Hertford College T-shirt, which has somehow become hers to sleep in. On those nights she grips Bucky so tightly that it hurts a little, but he’s slept through worse. He lets her hold on, and she’s always better in the morning.
+||+||+
T’Challa can’t sleep with anyone touching him. It’s not because of any kind of trauma or bad associations, and it’s not because T’Challa doesn’t like touch: during sex he’s demanding, fierce, uncovering Bucky with his mouth and with his hands, discovering something new every time and wanting Bucky to do the same to him. Afterwards, T’Challa usually stretches out on his stomach alongside Bucky and slings an arm over him. He likes to run his fingers aimlessly over Bucky’s skin, and he enjoys it when Bucky explores him as well, unhurried now that the urgency of sex is over.
The reason T’Challa can’t fall asleep in physical contact with another person is because he grew up the beloved only child of a royal family, and he’s accustomed to sleeping in a bed the size of a small apartment that he doesn’t have to share with anyone. As an adult, he can and will share—but not with anyone who is touching him at any time. Tracing fingers down T’Challa’s spine after he has fallen asleep results in irritated squirming and grumpy noises, and he’ll roll out of arm’s reach.
Whether they fuck or not, T’Challa likes a long kiss goodnight. He likes to be on top—not a surprise—and to bury his hands in Bucky’s hair before opening Bucky’s mouth with his. Sometimes the goodnight kiss is counterproductive, because it’s difficult not to want to fuck after being kissed like that.
Now and then Bucky will wake up during the night and find T’Challa sitting up and reading. The material varies: novels, cultural theory, physics journals, anything. T’Challa’s mind is vast, and so are his reading habits. When Bucky wakes to find T’Challa’s book light on, he turns over, curls up against T’Challa’s hip, and falls back asleep to T’Challa’s fingers making light circles on the nape of his neck.
+||+||+
As soon as Bucky turns off the light, Wanda curls into a tight ball on her side of the bed. Like T’Challa, she is explicit that she does not want to be touched as she’s falling asleep; unlike T’Challa, that preference fades after an hour or so. Bucky often wakes to find that the circle of Wanda has migrated over to nestle against his back.
She is one of the few people whose sleep is as disordered as his own. The first time she jolted Bucky awake by screaming Pietro’s name, he had no idea how to react: Should he wake her up? Would it scare her? He lay immobile and uncertain for several minutes until the misery and panic of her cries made the decision for him. There are people who are better at this, he thought. “People” meaning almost everybody. Sam would know what to do, what to say. So would Natasha and Steve. And that thought, ultimately, was what spurred Bucky into acting: he knew what Steve would do, because that’s what Steve did for him.
Bucky said her name quietly, then again a little louder, but still nothing stronger than you’d use in a normal conversation. When that didn’t work, he nudged her shoulder as gently as he could, and she startled awake, eyes wide and unseeing. She immediately rolled away from him, covering her head with her arms, and he could see her shoulders shaking and hear her sobs as she tried to stifle them. He found himself paralyzed again, and again all he had was what Steve would have done: Bucky reached over hesitantly to put his hand on her back and said, “Hey, it’s OK. You’re here with me, you’re OK.”
“It’s not OK,” Wanda choked out, but she turned over to face him. Bucky laid his hand on her shoulder like Steve did for him, just enough warmth and weight to ground him in the world. Wanda moved closer, the way Bucky did when he didn’t have conscious words to ask for what he wanted, and Bucky pulled her to him. She pressed her ear and her hand to his chest and left them there as her breath steadied.
Bucky stroked her hair, fine and silky-soft, and worked out some of the tangles that were inevitable if she didn’t braid it before going to bed. Wanda made a soft, contented noise, and the memory came to Bucky in a flash of clarity: lying on a narrow mattress with Steve, who was limp after a coughing fit, and filtering Steve’s hair through his fingers as the syrup began to take effect. Bucky had wanted to protect Steve then and was terrified that he couldn’t; he wanted to protect Wanda now, but the damage was already done.
She slept undisturbed in his arms, though, for the rest of the night, and maybe that was something.
+||+||+
Helen sleeps literally on top of him.
It’s not a problem for Bucky: she’s tiny, and he’s carried gear that weighs more than she does. He also likes how she smells: surgical soap often; coffee, when she and Natasha have been roasting the beans they buy at the market in Central Wakanda; clean sweat, when she’s been working out with Wanda, whom Helen calls her “wimpy twin.” There’s nothing wimpy about either of them, in Bucky’s opinion, but the name seems to amuse them.
He’s all bone and muscle, which he wouldn’t think would be especially comfortable as a pillow or mattress, but Helen professes otherwise: “The firmest there is!” she likes to say and wink at him.
When they go to bed for the night, she stretches out along his chest and hips and thighs, and kisses his chin (he has no explanation), and they talk about their days. Hers are mostly spent in the biotechnology labs working to adapt the Cradle for use in Wakanda’s hospitals. She speaks quickly and excitedly when discussing her work, and often Bucky is fortunate if he understands every third sentence. He hates to interrupt the flow of her bright, sharp mind, but she never gets annoyed when he stops her to ask for an explanation: she just thinks for a moment and then interprets herself into words regular people can understand.
When they’re ready to sleep, Helen shimmies down to lay her head on Bucky’s belly, just above his navel. She puts her hands on either side of his ribcage, like she’s making sure he’ll stay together during the night, and she immediately falls asleep. It always takes him longer, but he doesn’t mind. He rests his hands on her shoulders, cards his fingers through the dark fall of her hair, and wonders at his good fortune.
+||+||+
Sharing a bed with Sam is the worst.
How Steve can sleep with him and claim to wake up rested is a mystery, because Sam kicks, snores, steals covers, smacks his lips together, and rolls from one side of the bed to the other like he’s dreaming about flattening pavement. Bucky tries kicking him back; Sam doesn’t even wake up. Bucky reclaims some blanket for himself; it’s gone as soon as he falls back asleep. Bucky puts up a pillow wall between them; Sam rolls right over it.
Most mornings, Sam gets up to run with Steve, and Bucky uses the time to finally get some damn sleep. He needs less than most people, but he still needs some, for Christ’s sake. He loves Sam, and the sex is mind-blowing, but Bucky is almost always irritable for the rest of the day after sleeping—or futilely attempting to—next to him.
Sam gets back from running one morning, and Bucky is tiredly bumbling around the room, trying to find his boots but failing, trying to find his Wakandan language workbook and failing—just failing, in general. Sam sits down on the bed to take off his running shoes, then looks up and Bucky and says with some alarm, “Man, are you OK?”
Bucky throws him a baleful glare. He locates one boot under the desk; the mate’s whereabouts remain a mystery. “I couldn’t fucking sleep because some jackass was kicking me all night.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I tried.” The other boot, somehow, is behind the chair, along with Bucky’s shirt. “You just turned right over and kept snoring.”
“Yeah, I know I snore. You can always just poke me to turn onto my stomach.”
“You think I haven’t done that? It’s like poking a tree. A snoring tree.”
Sam laughs, but forces himself into a sober expression when Bucky gives him another dire look. “OK, OK, I’m sorry. Seriously, though, if it’s a problem, we don’t have to do the sleepover thing. We can have our sexy time, and then you can go back to your room, or I can go back to mine.”
This option had not actually occurred to Bucky. “You think?” he says. It seems kind of rude to just leave.
“Sure.” Sam draws Bucky down to sit next to him. “Some people just aren’t meant to share a bed. My parents had separate rooms my entire life.” This is shocking, somehow, and it must show on Bucky’s face, because Sam goes on, “My mom usually did the six a.m. shift in the ER, so she got up at four-thirty, and my dad was a night owl and a light sleeper.” Bucky is still dubious, and Sam says, “Look, why don’t we try it next week? I’ll come to you, and we’ll do whatever we’re inspired to do, and then I’ll let you get some actual sleep.”
Bucky thinks it over. He bites his lip. Sam won’t know this unless Bucky tells him. “It’s…You can stay for a while. After. That part’s good.”
“Yeah, it is,” Sam says, and kisses him.