Inktober Day 14: Ideal Afternoon
Fandom: MCU AU
Word Count: 1314
Notes: Trying to bang these out and ended up visiting my MCU altiverse.

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I stretched my fingers out, burying them in the thick grass, the bright sunlight glinted off the chrome, the hand reflecting the blue of the nearly cloudless sky arching high above. The late spring heat enough to encourage one to wear short sleeves and possibly shorts, though I generally only wore those when working out these days. The former I currently wore. The latter I did not. No, I preferred denim; so an overpriced pair of jeans covered my lower half.

A hand settled atop mine, fingers tracing along the ridges on the back of mine. I lifted our hands up, fingers twining together and pressed my lips against the back of hers. I had always appreciated the fact that she didn't care one of my arms had been replaced with an artificial one. An extremely high tech one, admittedly, but still not real flesh and bone.

"Want another–"

"James, if I eat another bite I'm going to burst."

She had hardly eaten a thing. Unlike myself. I'd been starving and had killed off a fair amount of the meat, cheese, and fruit that had been packed into the basket. We'd finished one bottle of wine and part of the second. Supposedly there were some sweets buried in there as well, but I doubt we'd be indulging in the near future. Least not if I couldn't convince her to stay a while longer.

"You thinking about running out on me, doll?"

"And if I said yes? I do have a lot of work to do," she told me, sounding at least half serious.

I knew she had a ton of stuff to deal with for the new gaming console release, all of Cyko did, but that's not why Hattie had come to me. No, she'd been worried that her boss hadn't been out of the building in ages. When I'd learned that Rinn hadn't come up out of her cave for fours days I'd decided to drag her out one way or another.

I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. "Yes, you do, but you promised me the afternoon." I tipped my head up to see the sun still well above the tops of the mountains and guesstimated it to be about two in the afternoon. "I'm pretty certain that means until I can see stars overhead."

"Technically you can see one right now."

I chuckled softly even though I knew she was trying to irritate me so that I'd let her go back inside. "Laurin, when was the last time you went out?"

"I went out just–" She stopped, face scrunching up in an endearing manner as she thought about it then sighed heavily. "I guess that meeting in Prague."

"So a few weeks." Not good. She had made it too far for any of us to allow her to backslide.

"Not on purpose. I think." She shrugged. "I just wasn't needed for some of those meetings and–"

"And you have a lot of work to do. No one is denying that, but you need to be cautious. I know how easy it is to fall back into old patterns. This one is not good for you." We all worried about her, but it had somehow fallen upon my shoulders to keep her on the straight and narrow. Not that I minded all that much as it meant I got to spend time with her outside of jobs for her or her company.

And I liked spending time with her.

She ducked her head down avoiding my eyes. "I've had a rough couple of weeks," she admitted.

Meaning when she had been able to sleep it had been disturbed with bad dreams, which had encouraged her to avoid sleeping and she tended to do that by working harder as a distraction from the images in her head that just would not go away. "Thought we agreed to help each other with things like that."

"You were working for some of them and… and I was hoping to get through it myself," she told him, sounding guilty.

And instead, she'd backslid and gone back to hiding and avoiding everyone. "Doll, you never have to go through another night alone if you don't wish to."

"James I can't impose–"

I set my fingers, my metal fingers over her lips, silencing her remaining words. "You can. If not me Steve, If not Steve, Sam or Wanda. You know this, or should. We're in this together." I moved my hand to her cheek, her eyes drifting shut even as she frowned ever so slightly, fine wrinkles appearing between her brows signally the confused emotions that she currently experienced.

"But we're not. Not really. You guys do your thing and I do mine and we only occasionally meet in the middle." Those green eyes opened and bore into mine, waiting for the challenge to her words.

I found that middle ground. "Not talking work here, doll, talking life, friendship."

She huffed out a breath and sat up, arms wrapping about her legs as if suddenly cold. "The work needs to be done. They have to be ready."

I sat up and scooted next to her, shoulder to shoulder, a reminder that she did not have to go through this alone. My skills might not help all that much, but I could hold her hands when she had her moments of doubt. "You'll figure this out."

"I haven't in a decade, I doubt another year or two will make a difference."

So that was the current cause of her distress. She'd given up on trying to save herself and had instead turned to making certain everyone else would be set up for life. "Ah, darlin' I'm so sorry." I remained still and waited. It took a few minutes, but she eventually uncurled from her tight ball of misery to coil her arms about me and bury her face in the side of my neck. "Sorry I've screwed up your ideal afternoon efforts."

"Hey now, don't be saying that. I got to spend it with you didn't I?" A luxury she granted to only a select few.

She pulled back slightly to look me in the eye. "How is it you are so kind after all the horrible things that have happened to you?"

I had no clue, but she had a point, my heart hadn't hardened during the long years of torture and memory wiping. I still wanted to see the world as a place for hope. Still wanted to grant and fulfill that emotion in others. So I pushed the pain and anger and hurt aside and did what I could to ease those same feelings in everyone else. Those I cared about anyway. "I always thought Steve was that shining beacon of hope."

She snorted. "He has nothing on what you can do."

I wanted to take those words at face value but knew I had changed far too much from the man I once had been. "You're biased."

"Yes, I am. Doesn't make it any less true."

I kissed her temple, lingering longer than I should simply because I wanted to touch her. I could easily turn this into something of a distraction for both of us, but she needed to talk, to vent the emotions she'd been bottling up the last few weeks, else she would retreat into that dark place in her mind that few of us could reach. Best to nip another incident like that in the bud.

"You and me are gonna go out, together, at least once a month."

The confused look on her face made me want to laugh. "A date night?"

And suddenly it became noticeably warmer even though the strength of the star above hadn't changed one whit. I blushed, I hadn't intended the suggestion that way, but apparently part of me liked that idea quite a bit. "Would that be a problem?"

She leaned forward to press her lips gently against mine. "No. Not a problem at all."