Life has been really, really shitty lately you guys. Lemme know what you think. Things get slow for a tiny bit and it gives me a little time to help them figure their feelings out a lil, but then I've got a bunch of plot written for ADVENTURESSS.

Chapter 35

Bucky dropped down onto Clara's couch and flipped through the DVD cases she had handed him.

"I ordered Chinese," she said, shuffling into the room in soft slippers and a pajama set covered in little owls. "Have you had Chinese before?"

"Steve orders it all the time," he muttered distractedly. "What are all these?"

"Classics," she told him, curling into the arm chair next to the couch.

"Mean Girls?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, holding up the rather pink DVD case.

"Alright, maybe not so much that one," she giggled. "I threw that one in because I rather like it. But I think you'd like Fight Club."

Bucky studied the cover art, frowning at the description on the back. "I think I could take any of these kids with both arms behind my back," he muttered.

Clara stood again and crouched in front of the TV stand, pulling open the little doors to reveal rows and rows of DVDs. "I've gathered quite the collection over time," she explained when she glanced over her shoulder to see him watching her. She scanned the rows before pulling one out. "This is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine."

"Alien?"

"If you like that, you might like The Thing, but I don't have that one on DVD."

Bucky grunted noncommittally and she took the DVD back from him, popping the case open and heading for the player beneath the TV. A silence fell and he fought the urge to break it by asking how her session went.

She stood up as the screen came to life, previews for other movies beginning to play. "Did you talk to Steve?" she asked, returning to her chair.

"About what?"

"Therapy."

"After the weekend," he muttered, crossing his arms. He tried to focus on the ads, but he could practically see her eyebrows pulling together.

"What does the weekend have to do with talking to—"

"I did," he interrupted calmly. "I have an appointment after the weekend."

"Oh," she chirped. "Fantastic."

He frowned at her cheerfulness, finally looking over at her. "How was your session?"

Clara busied herself by tugging a knitted blanket off the back of her chair and pulling it over herself. "It went fine."

"Yeah?" he asked, but it came out like a challenge. He heard it in his own voice, and Clara looked up at him, hands stilling as they tucked the blanket down under her feet.

"Yeah." He noted the suspicion in her voice, and she was mentally begging him to drop it. The doctors voice in her head echoed, encouraging her to open up and tell him what had happened. Her own voice followed, her doctor tone reverberating through the walls of her own head. Bucky isn't made of glass, and keeping things from him helps no one…

Clara pressed her lips together as Bucky's eyes narrowed and she knew it was about to all tumble out, because she knew the minute he prodded even just a word more, she'd break and tell him.

"Alright," he finally said, returning his attention back to the TV. "I might not be a doctor like you, doll, but I know how to listen."

"Thanks," she sighed quietly, relaxing. Later, she promised in her head. She would tell him later. A plan started brewing in her head while she skipped through the previews to get to the main menu of the DVD. Maybe she could take him to iHop in the morning, somewhere public, that way he couldn't make a scene…

-x-

She woke to a loud thud, a sound that reverberated in the darkness and shook her bed enough to rouse her from her dreamless sleep. Disoriented, she wasn't even sure what had woken her at first, until she heard another thud and a grunt from the main rooms of her apartment.

"Bucky?" she called out, padding down the hallway and pulling her fleece blanket tight around her shoulders.

His metal arm glinted in the thin beams of line streaking in from between the curtains, and he froze, spinning towards her.

"Are you alright?" she asked slowly, noting the tension in the air, the feeling of something being wrong making her hair stand up.

Bucky let out a jagged breath, and then she saw his bunched muscles relax. "Clara…" She stood merely feet away from him now, the couch between them. He moved to push his flesh hand through his hair and she could see a subtle shake to his fingers.

"Are you alright?" she asked before backpedalling. "I mean—I know you're not alright, but—"

"I'm fine," Bucky sighed, but there was amusement in his voice. "I think I just fell off the couch."

Clara didn't hide her grin, but she dug her fingers into the cushions at the back of the couch. She'd worried that would be a problem for him. The length of him hadn't fit on the couch, and she'd hinted heavily that he'd be happier in his own bed. "You don't have to stay—alright," she sighed when he shot her a look again before moving to settle back onto the couch. "Were you having a nightmare?"

"It was nothing," he mumbled.

"Do…you want to talk about it?"

He froze. "Do I look like I want to talk about it?" She watched the regret melt his expression in the dim lighting when she raised her eyebrows in surprise at him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to sound the way it did."

Clara crossed her arms tightly around herself and moved around the couch, dropping down next to him once he'd sat him. She let her side brush with his, the contact helping to ease her own nerves. She found herself leaning into him. "I told you once, that I didn't expect you to do anything I'm not willing to do myself, remember?"

"Yeah."

"I'll trade you," she offered quietly, pulling the corners of her blanket into a tight ball against her chest. "I'll tell you about my nightmare if you tell me about yours."

When he didn't respond, she chanced a glance up at him. Bucky was looking down at her, a softness on his face that she'd never seen before. She wanted to reach up, trace the lines of his face with her fingers, brush across the stubble of his jaw…

She cleared her throat and looked back down at the coffee table, nudging a remote out of the way so she could prop her feet up. "So I was dreaming I was in that interrogation room they took me into, they were asking me questions in a language I don't understand, and when I didn't answer the way they wanted, they would hurt me."

"Did they do that to you?"

"They hurt me," she said vaguely before continuing. "After a while, I couldn't feel my hands anymore, and I think I might have even been missing fingers. They dragged me down the hall by my hair, but I couldn't scream. You woke me up before they could throw me back into the bloody pod."

Bucky let out a breath between his teeth and slouched into the couch cushions. "Clara, look," he started quietly. "I could tell you, but my nightmares are literally the stuff of nightmares. I'm not trying to diminish what happened to you, because no one should have to go through that."

"But what you went through was infinitely worse," Clara finished for him. She disentangled her hand from her blanket and found his flesh on in his lap. She pushed her fingers between his rougher ones. "I understand that."

His fingers folded around hers and he leaned heavily against his metal hand on the arm rest next to him. "It was a memory. I was in a kitchen, waiting for the target to get home. It was easier that way, not public where accidental witnesses were more common. I think it was in the eighties, if their kitchen décor was anything to go by."

Clara let out a soft chuckle.

"I was sitting at the kitchen table. I could hear his wife getting ready for bed, his son was supposed to be asleep, but he was awake and playing on the floor of his room. There was a floorboard up there he must have been sitting on that was loose, because I could hear it from the other side of the house." Bucky took a breath and swallowed heavily. "The target came home, and the son heard the garage door."

Clara's heart sunk, knowing how this was going to end before he could even get the words out. "The whole family, then?"

"No witnesses," he muttered bitterly. He glanced down at her, waiting for either the look of pity or disgust or even fear. But her sadness just seemed to mirror his own. Maybe that was worse, he decided. He didn't want to burden her with this anymore. "Steve called the therapist he saw when he woke up. I'm going to see him Monday afternoon."

"You said before," Clara said, genuinely brightening. "That's great. I'm happy you finally agreed to it."

Bucky only grunted in response. He ran a thumb over her knuckles, still dry. "You should go back to sleep."

"I don't think either of us is going to get much sleep for the rest of the night," she admitted. "I got a few hours, and that's a much better step than I anticipated."

"You should try, though. I'll be out here. You'll be alright."

Clara pursed her lips and frowned. "That's not really the issue, now is it?" she mumbled. "You can't protect me in my dreams."

"I can't protect you in reality, either," he retorted dryly.

She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath before standing, pulling on their entwined hands. "Come on then," she said quickly, before her nerve left her. "Might as well try to get some sleep together, then."

"I'm telling you, Clara, I'm not going to be able to—"

"Then just lie there and wake me up if I'm having a bad dream, yeah?" she interrupted.

He smirked up at her, unmoving. "What happened to wanting to do this alone?"

"Baby steps," she hissed, tugging again. "You can either go to your own bed or mine, Mr. Barnes." She felt heat creep into her cheeks when he raised a single eyebrow at her. Embarrassed, she dropped his hand and headed for her room. "Fine."

But she heard him push himself off the couch and follow her back to her room.