Disclaimer: I own nothing to recognize…
A/N: Well, this is actually a side story to my other fic To Have and to Hold, but you can read it as a stand alone one-shot too. It takes place after 2.10 – Ki'ilua and it's gotten too long to fit into an actual chapter and it's a little darker, edgier than THTH. Oh and there's smut in it too.
Tell me what you think!
It takes a few days for the nightmares to start. The funny thing is, if you can actually call something like that funny, which you really can't, that it's not him. It's her.
The bed is pretty wide, but Steve still comes awake in a flash, already reaching across the expanse. Kono has never demanded her space while sleeping before, but ever since they came back from North Korea somehow she always ends up on the other side of the bed. Steve lets her deal with it on her own way; he's a light enough sleeper when he needs to be.
When a simple reach doesn't work, Steve blinks sleep out of his eyes and actual sits up. Did she get up? That rock of moving weight didn't feel like she'd gotten up, but...
Oh. Crap.
Steve has about half a second to scramble over their bed to get an arm around Kono's middle, hauling her back onto the bed before she actually falls off. She thrashes under him, sleep-fighting him away like he's the source of her nightmare. Maybe he is, sort of. Frowning, worried, he gets her against his chest, ignoring the way she pummels, pushing her hair away from her sweaty face.
"Kono!" Steve says. "Kono, wake up. Kono, it's a dream! Wake up!"
The final bark of command finally gets through: her struggling slows, then stops, and she blinks her eyes open.
"What are you talking about?"
It's quite fascinating how Kono never sounds sleep-roughened when she wakes up. She is, Steve knows, and sometimes she doesn't even remember conversations. But she always sounds awake and completely annoyed.
Normally, it's worthy of a chuckle.
Right now, Steve shifts so he can cuddle her close, completely ignoring her grunt of frustration, stroking her hair and, yes, okay, heis rocking her a little, but he can't help it. Kono is such a contradiction to him, and she's always angriest when she's weakest, most helpless. It leads to a lot of situation neither of them are really pleased with, but the result is pretty unchangeable, the angrier she sounds, the more Steve wants to treat her like a damsel in distress, putting himself between whatever's bothering her, shielding her with his life.
Sometimes he thinks she thinks it's romantic.
Sometimes he thinks she's going to punch him for being an arrogant asshole.
Hushing lightly under his breath, Steve continues stroking her hair, thumbing under her eyes where moisture gathers, patiently waiting until her flushed skin cools a little and her breathing slows. He's got an arm around her waist, her body pressed up against his, and he's very careful not to look at the way his hand fits into the hollow above her hip because as weird as it sounds it's a turn on for him, it must be some dormant possessive thing, and right then, he doesn't want to be turned on. Just comforting.
He's not at all surprised when she goes limp after thirty seconds of this treatment. She may say that she hates it – and in daylight hours she does – but right now it's dark, and quiet, the room completely still, and for this one moment, she wants it.
"You okay?" he asks after a while.
"Anxiety," she confesses reluctantly. "It sucks."
"What was it this time?" Her hair is tacky with sweat but Steve doesn't mind.
"It doesn't matter, okay? It doesn't - that's the point of anxiety. The cause is irrelevant, or nonexistent. I just... panic."
Steve knows how much she hates being weak, or rather being perceived as weak, since Steve doesn't have to do a damned thing to those who happen to think that incredibly inaccurate label about his wife. But still, she hates it with passion that borders on craziness. So Steve stays exactly how he is, living and solid underneath her, letting her bury her face in his neck and remember how to breathe without hitching, to relax without the lingering worry of tensing right up again.
He's absently working out a knot on her shoulder when she huffs lightly against his collarbone.
"You know what would make me relax?" she asks, a lilting note of teasing in her voice. When she lifts her head her eyes are bright with amusement that isn't really so amusing. "Sex."
Of course it would. He's still laughing as he pushes her protesting frame back onto the bed, kissing her fast and fierce because she's right. It'll relax her into sleep and it'll give Steve a chance to do something he absolutely loves - slide his fingers deep into his wife, over and over, utterly in love with how wet and slick she gets after the first touch, the way she arches up with a gasp that makes her breasts heave just right. He kisses them, can't help it, licking over her nipples through the thin, almost nonexistent material of her top, thumb rubbing steady and perfect right where she needs it most.
A few minutes in her gasps and moans resolve into words, but they come so slowly that it takes nearly thirty full seconds for Steve to string them into a coherent sentence.
"I don't care," he says, then he laughs again, thick with happiness, sucking kisses on her neck, sleep and fear bitter, but it's fading under the clean taste of sex and want. "This is what I want to do."
"But I – I can't – touch you… " She argues breathlessly.
"Touch me later. Just let me, okay? Let me... " He negotiates and she arches, clenching hard around his fingers and he knows it'll be over soon. He's not giving her any options, no where to go but the hard orgasm that'll help her sleep, make her give hot and wet all around his fingers, body completely open to him the way no one but him ever really gets to see.
She comes with a cry that stabs right into the base of his spine deliciously, alluringly but he doesn't get hard. He doesn't want to, not know, when he can be gentle and cuddle his wife, easing her towards dreamless sleep with her head pillowed on his shoulder, her body sated and lax as she mutters curses under her breath.
"I like having sex with you," she complains.
"You just did."
"No, that was you being all... all Steve and male and annoying." She's pouting, and she means it, but her eyes are already falling shut and they both know it's not something she really objects to. Most of the time. "Tomorrow I'm gonna..."
"Do whatever you want, just like you always do." Steve presses a kiss to her forehead, then discreetly stretches an arm to the bed stand, freeing a tissue and wiping his fingers clean. Kono makes a dismayed noise and Steve chuckles, "No, you can't lick my fingers clean. You're asleep. Go to sleep."
It's only when her breathing completely evens that Steve lets himself shut his own eyes. He knows she'll wake him up with a blowjob out of punishment, knows that she'll find a hundred more ways to actually punish him throughout the day until she's satisfied.
Snug under the weight of his wife, warm and content with the scent of sex hovering like a tease off on the distance, like the ocean air he can smell, Steve smiles. He really can't wait.