justindulgeme | Nightmares and Daydreams

Maybe it's because of the ocean sounds that Steve just can't sleep soundly.

He's usually quite good at staying over in unfamiliar places, relaxing in even the most uncomfortable conditions, but tonight his usual ease is elusive. He lays awake past midnight listening to the settling of the house, to the waves and the dull sound of the girls watching a movie elsewhere in the house, of Tony working on something instead of sleeping across the hall.

He tries counting, measured breathing, lying in different positions, tossing away his pillow and then adding an extra one. Nothing helps so he sprawls onto his stomach again and tries to push aside the lousy over-stuffed feeling in his brain. Staring into the wall, the weight of a long day pulling at his body, he does finally become bored and exhausted enough to drift off, but his dozing isn't very restful.

He's always a breath away from waking, the faintest noise disrupting him, or worse, nosing it's way into his awareness without fully rousing him. He lays a while in this fitful state of exhaustion warring with hyper awareness, drifting between awake and dreaming, before the movie ends, the ocean calms, Tony crawls in to sleep, and finally, finally, it's quiet enough for Steve to fall deeply into rest.

He's out perhaps an hour before the nightmare starts.

It's a familiar moment, one he's relived more than enough times already, but every once in a while when something else is bothering him that old wound aches like new and this is what he sees when he closes his eyes. Bucky slipping away from him, Bucky shrinking smaller as he falls...

Steve's motions feel sluggish, weak, too slow, and it seems that his friend's fingers slip from his grip faster than ever...

There's a stab of pain in his wrist, a jolt as his side smacks into something hard, and Steve wakes up shouting on the floor beside his bed, surrounded by the wreckage of his toppled side table and broken lamp.

Threaded | Flat

Tony likes the water. He doesn't like being away from New York, but nothing is getting settled. Banner came to stay for a little while before mentioning something about Africa. And Steve's been working with Pepper on his sketches for the conceptual drawings for Stark Industries. It meant that Tony didn't have to be near Steve too much.

Not with Banner taking up his time and Pepper taking up Steve's.

And that's good because after the disastrous day at the fair in Brooklyn...all bets are off.

Tony's been good. He's suffered nightmares pretty much alone, or just medicated himself half to death until he passed out in his workshop.

It was good for awhile, until Pepper noticed how off Tony was being and immediately packed him --- and Steve -- up for another R & R trip.

"Pepper, I don't--"

"You came back in a great good last time. Steve in a better one. Now both of you, go."

And so, sequestered again with a man he can't keep his eyes off of, Tony drinks himself into oblivion for the first night.

And the second?

The second he's back to a habit he hasn't had in almost a month. He's not even sure why he's there, pressing his face against Steve's shoulder, relaxing--

And then being pulled from sleep by--

"Rogers? Cap?" He blinks over the edge of the bed, reactor illuminating his face. "Sorry."

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