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Nightmares.
They take a toll on him. Even after all this time, there’s still many a night where you’ll feel him jolt awake and stay upright for a few minutes.
In an effort not to be too pushy, you usually don’t wake yourself up completely. You always make sure to remind him that you’ll never be bothered if he wakes you up to talk about it, or just to hold him and act as the anchor for a moment until he grounds himself again. But even with your reassurance, it’s not always what he needs.
Sometimes he just needs the silence, lets it wrap around him like a cocoon of what’s real that shields what isn’t. And on other instances, you’ll feel his weight leave the bed and hear his footsteps padding out the bedroom door to get some air.
You never hear him cry, never hear anything but a few shaky breaths the second he wakes up before he simmers down again. And there are times when you want so badly to sit up and ask what you can do to make things better. But he gets in his head whenever you do, starts to think he’s inconveniencing you, and you’d rather avoid that. You’d rather give him the space he prefers.
But tonight was different.
It’s a few hours past midnight, the starlight spread out across the black sky and filtering in through the blinds. Bucky’s head snaps up in the usual fashion, wary eyes darting alertly around your shared bedroom. The walls. The nightstand. His own hands.
He turns to his left to look at you, lying on your back with your head tilted away from him in your sleeping state. Your eyes are shut and your lips are just barely parted, your hair is strewn over your pillow with that effortless beauty he’s so used to seeing in you. Your frame rises and falls, you’re still breathing. You’re still alive.
His vision blurs, that horribly familiar tighten of his chest introducing itself yet again as he recalls what he just woke up from. What he’d seen before he was shocked out of sleep.
How your face had fallen when you heard his voice mutter three muffled words, after the equally muffled trigger words he tried so hard to fight. You knew you were done for.
And yet you’d tried. Tried so hard, started out soft as you tried to redirect him.
“Bucky? No… nonono, Buck, this isn’t you. Don’t do this, it’s okay, everything’s okay.”
But you grew very frantic very fast, that fear that was previously barred off breaking through and spreading onto your face as he’d sped up in his run towards you and begun to attack.
“Bucky, Bucky! Bucky, stop! Stop, it’s me!”
It was no use, he continued. He couldn’t physically stop himself, watching it all so helplessly. That’s how he ended up with his last visual of the nightmare before he snapped out of it.
Your dead body. The blood pouring out of your gaping mouth and down your chin. Your messed hair, the bruises on your body, all a component of what he’d done to you. Evidence of your attempt to fight back.
This hasn’t happened in so long. He hasn’t had a nightmare as graphic as this in so long.
He can’t sleep after that, can’t risk seeing that again. But he can’t stay awake, can’t let the pain of the illusion dig into his skin like a million needles. Either way, your screams are burned into his ears and your corpse is burned into his retinas. Nothing can fix this feeling.
All Bucky can think to do is shift in the bed and reach his human arm over to meet your shoulder, a warmer approach to waking you up - he’d rather die than see you flinch right now, even if it’s just from his freezing ass prosthetic. He wants to feel bad for doing this, but he can’t. He needs to see your open eyes, needs to hear your voice.
So he doesn’t back down, doesn’t retract his hand and instead continues to run it back and forth against your shoulder before you begin to stir. Bucky hears a faint hum from beside him as your head slowly moves to face his, your voice gentle and just above a whisper as it prods through the silence. “Hey, Buck. Bad dream?”
Your gaze finally focuses after a moment as you watch him nod stiffly, but your eyes open more once you see the shine of tears on his cheeks. That wakes you up real fast, a quicker inhale sounding throughout the room as you sit up and study his expression. You have an idea of what’ll help, since Bucky crying - albeit silently - isn’t a foreign concept to you.
You keep calm, words gentle so not to stress him out further. “Oh, Bucky, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
The next few seconds are wordless until you see him beginning to lift his arms up, slightly extending them in a silent ask for a hug. More like a plead, his wet eyes faced downwards and away from you like he’s ashamed of needing a thing from you.
Regardless of his hesitance, you scoot a bit closer before taking his lowered head in your hands and carefully pulling him into your chest. And he melts, completely surrendering to his pain and letting his quiet tears bleed into the front of your shirt.
Your fingers slide into his dark hair, your chin sitting atop his head apart from the few times you move to kiss his temple. No words are needed yet, the duet of strength and tenderness embedded in your hold saying so much more than words can.
What did he do to deserve you? Nothing, absolutely nothing. He doesn’t deserve love, much less your love, not after what he’s done. He’s a murderer, a killer, and somehow he has the privilege of being held. Being touched, being treated like someone that deserves love in any capacity when he doesn’t.
It’s like you can read his mind, immediately picking up on what silence means in this very second. “You know I love you, right?” you murmur into the crown of his head, “I love you more than anything, I never want you to feel like a burden.”
Bucky tries to counter this, his disagreement muffled against the fabric of your clothes. “I am, Y/N, I’m not worth all of this-“
“You’re worth everything to me, don’t say that.”
“You need someone better than me-“
“James,” you interrupt, your hands cupping his cheeks again and tilting his face up. His vulnerable eyes meet yours, so weak and desperate to feel like less of a monster. Your heart hurts for him, how lost he must feel even when he seems so sure.
“You don’t get to decide that. I know what I need, and it’s you. It’s always been you. You gotta get out of your head-”
“What if I can’t?” Bucky lets slip, his uneasy voice a teary whisper as he stares at you frantically. Fearfully. “It’s like everytime I get out, it just takes one more dream and I’m right back in again… you shouldn’t have to deal with this, with me.”
“I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want to, Bucky. I want to be the person you can cry with. You carry so much pain on your own, I want to carry it with you. You don’t think you’re worth it, I want to be the one to make you think different. I want this.”
Some space before you continue to speak, your thumb against his face and wiping at a soundless tear. “Things like this mean so much to me, the fact that you trust me to be here for you means so much to me. The fact that you trust me at all. You say it and show it plenty, obviously, but moments like these remind me that you love me. And they remind me of what I already love about you.”
He wants to let the words sink in, let the sound of them replace your dream self’s agonizing screams. But his mind is so clouded with insecurity, with the ‘what if’s. That fog of chance that tortures him is heard in his next words.
“I’m dangerous.”
“Not anymore, you’re safe.”
“I don’t-“ His voice cracks, and his face remains in your grasp but his eyes fill with fresh tears. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt me, Buck.” Your statement borders on a plea, like you’re begging him to believe you. And slowly but eventually, he does. He gives a faint nod of understanding, his gaze still bored into yours with a gentleness exclusive to your eyes.
“I love you.”
Amidst the darkness of your bedroom, Bucky can still see the small smile on your face that follows his words. “I know. I love you too.”
Silence, but less heavy. After a moment, you kiss his forehead and mumble a question as you pull him into you again. “You think you can get back to sleep?”
Bucky hesitates, unsure of whether he can or can’t, but he destresses when you answer for him. “I want you to try, okay? I’m not leaving, I’ll be here the whole time.”
And after those words, you feel him nod slightly against your collarbone before his arms retract from around your waist. Your hands stay in his hair, pulling in his face for a few more quick kisses until the both of your heads find their ways back to their pillows.
The light blue starlight pokes through the curtains and covers slivers of your faces. The last thing you do before you shut your eyes and drift off again is squeeze his hand softly and mumble an “I love you.”
He squeezes back. “I love you too.”
You can only assume he got back to sleep eventually, his hand never left the warmth of yours.