Deaf and Tired
Bucky didn't wake up screaming, like they do in the movies. He didn't sit bolt upright in bed, like he used to during those long months after D.C. Instead, the screams ended as soon as his eyes popped open, and he lay in the dark, breathing like a racehorse in a thick sheen of his own sweat.
He bit the comforter, curled his arms around himself, and shivered. The dreams were too close. They still lurked in the darkness, groping to sink their cold claws into his back. He had to find something to distract him. Something real, to pin him down in the here and now.
He could wake up Steve. It would be easy; he was just in the other room. He always fell right back asleep, when Steve was there; the warmth and the steady rhythm of a heartbeat always drove the memories of ice and blood away.
But no...no. He'd woken him up three times in the past week already. Steve never slept well to begin with, and he was working so hard; he needed to rest.
So Bucky slipped out of bed, bare feet sinking into the carpet, and took a walk.
The city skyline of Manhattan was beautiful this time of night. Traffic was sparse, and most lights were dim, allowing just the street lights and the occasional lit window to pierce through the darkness. Bucky wandered around, no one destination in mind, tidying up mugs he'd forgotten to put away or books Steve had left on the couch.
One of the dishes slid and fell over in the sink. Bucky caught it just in time, but the CLANK of ceramic against metal sounded loud in the silence.
Steve's snoring stopped in the other room.
Okay, change of plans. He wasn't staying here. Slinking into the elevator, he pressed the button for the Common Floor out of habit—yeah, he could have asked JARVIS, but he didn't want to talk at this time of night—and watched the doors slide shut.
Nobody slept on the Common Floor. He could wander around, maybe scavenge the kitchen, or put on the TV as white noise without disturbing anybody.
The floor underneath him stopped moving, and the elevator doors crept open.
Bucky didn't step through.
He felt, more than saw, that he wasn't alone.
He scanned the room with his eyes, left to right, searching for motion. It was unsettlingly close to what the Soldier would do, but, oh well. Training died hard.
Ah, there it was: a lone figure, hunched over the communal table by the kitchen.
The square shoulders said it wasn't Natasha. The stooped posture said it wasn't someone feeling well.
The haircut, silhouetted against the lights in the far windows, said...Clint.
Bucky took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh.
He wasn't the only one who had nightmares around here.
He didn't bother being quiet as he stepped out of the elevator, but Clint didn't look up. He was too busy staring at the table, both elbows in front of him and both hands wrapped over the top of his head.
Damn. Bucky felt his heart sink.
He didn't really want to get in Clint's space. He'd clearly come down here to be alone. But the coffee machine was right behind him, and hey, who knows...maybe, like Bucky, he needed a distraction.
So, making no effort to be particularly quiet—just so Clint would know he was there, and could ignore him if he wanted to—Bucky stepped up behind him and reached for the coffee pot.
Clint jerked in his seat.
Bucky recoiled. His elbow hit the counter-top, and his hand went reflexively for where he kept the knife in his belt.
There was no knife, of course. He was wearing only sweatpants. Still. Reflex.
Clint stared at him, breathing fast like someone startled, and though it was dark, Bucky could just barely see that his eyes looked swollen and bloodshot. "Oh." He put his head in his hand. "God. Okay."
"You all right?" Bucky frowned. His voice rasped oddly with sleep and disuse.
"I didn't see you." Clint was speaking oddly. He didn't answer Bucky's question, and his voice was bit too loud, the consonants slurred, as he waved a finger at his ear. "I don't...have 'em in."
Oh. Oh.
Right. Hearing aids.
Bucky had gotten so used to seeing the little flesh-colored, button-sized machines that he'd forgotten about 'em. Clint wore them all day, of course, but he wouldn't at night. You don't go to bed with those things in your ears.
Bucky took a step back, and before he knew what he was doing, his fist was at his chest and drew a little circle.
"Sorry."
Both of them stopped and stared. Bucky frowned. Clint turned around in his seat, and his hands flew.
"WHERE LEARN SIGN YOU" were the four motions he rapidly made, but it was the quizzical, unbelieving look on his face that really communicated what he meant. "Where the heck did you learn that?"
Bucky blinked. He couldn't remember. Sign language just came naturally, like English, or Russian, or a thousand different tongues he never remembered learning.
He reached up with one hand and mimed wiping his forehead. "Forgot."
They both were silent for a while. Bucky's eyes wandered to the coffee machine, the counter, his feet...anywhere except looking at Clint.
They both knew "forgot" was shorthand for Them.
Clint huffed up a little laugh, but there was pain in his eyes. Bucky could imagine what he was thinking: how odd, that people like HYDRA would teach their brainwashed assassin the language of the deaf. Not even the Russian variant, either—American. That was uncharacteristically kind of them.
Maybe they had an operative in America who had to communicate in sign. Bucky doubted it; that would seem out of character, considering the roots HYDRA had in twentieth-century German eugenics.
Maybe it was so that the Soldier could intercept signed messages from his enemies in the field. Now that would be devious. You think you're safe, communicating in a silent language that the enemy can't detect; all the while, a dark figure in the shadows is reading every word on your hands.
Whatever the case, it sure was a funny thought. But it didn't seem funny enough to chase the darkness away. Clint once again slumped over the table, raking his fingers back through his hair.
Bucky put some water on the coffee machine to boil. He knew that making noise made little difference, but he was careful to keep his movements visible, taking long, slow strides around the table and pulling out a chair.
They sat there, in the darkness, across from one another, for a few long moments.
Clint was an Avenger. Bucky knew that much. Before that, he'd been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and before that, a kid without a father. Separated from his family, bouncing from home to home—and getting kicked out of most of them—before he finally got himself a job as a carny when he was way to young to even be working.
Bucky could only imagine the things in Clint's head that could keep him up at night.
In a way, they both sat there in the dark with their own demons.
Clint stared balefully at the table. Bucky didn't bother disturbing him. He wanted to know what was going on in his friend's head—wanted to know if there was any way he could help—but he wasn't gonna demand attention if it wasn't available to be given.
Besides, they couldn't talk if Clint couldn't see him.
After a few long moments, Clint looked up. He must have felt Bucky looking at him. The expression on his face was still mournful, but a little more cognizant, almost quizzical.
So Bucky took the opportunity for conversation.
In one small motion, he twirled his finger by his temple and then tipped it towards Clint. "THINKING YOU," he signed, with a gentle frown to soften the question. "What are you thinking about?"
Clint sighed. He shut his eyes, tucking his forehead into the crook of his elbow, rapidly finger-spelled something, and then dropped his hand to the table.
It took Bucky a moment to parse out the letters. "L-O-K-I."
Bucky bent his head.
Ah.
After a moment, Clint lifted his forehead out of his elbow. His inhale sounded wet in the nose. He crooked one finger twice, pulling it away from his forehead, and splayed his hands over his ribs.
"Nightmare."
Bucky's eyes lost focus. He could still hear the screaming at the corners of his consciousness...he could still see the red on his hands...
He had to drag himself back to reality, ignoring the heartbeat pounding in his ears. Clint's hands had been at his chest, so he'd easily wrapped his arms around himself.
Bucky twisted his first fingers together until the points touched. "Hurts?"
Clint echoed the sign, but not small like Bucky did it. He scowled, and his hands started way wide apart, both fingers shooting towards each other with an angry ferocity before they met at his forehead and he buried his face in his hands.
That, Bucky thought, was almost more eloquent that he could put it in English.
He hadn't been there for the Battle of Manhattan. Not in his right mind, at least. Word was that They had planned to deploy the Soldier if the Chuitari got too close to HYDRA's holdings in D.C., but the Avengers had contained the situation before that happened.
He'd heard the stories, though. He caught a glimpse of the security footage. He knew what the Scepter had done to Clint.
Bucky understood. Though he hadn't been there, on a gut level, he got it. He knew what it felt like to watch, like some kind of awful dream, as your body did what you'd never want to do—as you hurt loved ones, turned on friends, killed people—how it felt to wake up and realize the blood on your hands wasn't your own.
That was pain. Pain past that of a physical ache. Pain that was in your head, and only in your head, but it made you wish your skull would explode just to be rid of it.
Bucky only had shapeless, shifting faces to blame for what had been done to him. Every face blended into every other—that was the point of their programming, to make him forget what people look like, to forget how to care—and though a few stood out, like Pierce, Rumlow, Zola, there were dozens, maybe hundreds, that he couldn't recall.
Clint, though? Clint only had one face. One face to receive all the concentrated power of his anger and hatred and pain.
The face of a sneering Asgardian god.
Bucky could only begin to imagine how much Clint hated him.
In a way, Bucky thought, with the shadows pressing heavily on his head bent in the darkness—in a way, their demons weren't so different, after all.
Bucky reached across the table and offered his hand. He didn't say anything. He didn't sign anything. Words, whether on his lips or on his fingers, wouldn't do anything here.
He just laid it there, palm up, and left the option open for it to be rejected.
It wasn't.
Clint reached forward and gripped his wrist, held on tightly, and Bucky returned the grasp.
It was an act of comfort. Of sympathy. Of defiance, and stubbornness, and bull-headed hope. In spite of everything—in spite of everyone that tried to take it away from them—they were here. They were in control. They were alive.
After a moment, each could feel the other's steady pulse.
The water in the coffee pot had boiled a long time ago, but Bucky wasn't in a rush. He'd meant to distract himself—to grab a hot drink that would scald his tongue and drive the memories of ice away—but this was more important.
It was more important to know, and to be told, and to tell someone else—you're not alone.
Bucky felt sheepish now. He had something to say, but he couldn't. Clint seemed calmer, and maybe open to talking, but he hadn't let go, and that left Bucky with only the metal hand free.
The metal one.
The monstrosity. The weapon that had been welded to his body while he was awake.
It felt odd to do this. Sort of like going against everything it had been built to do. A thing designed to tear flesh from bone, limb from limb, life from a body, and here he was, using it to talk to a friend and comfort him.
Well, he thought, with a little puff of defiant pride in his chest, screw HYDRA. They tried their best to mess him up, but they failed. He got out. Who were they to tell him what he could do with their stupid arm, anyway?
So Bucky picked up the metal hand—the silver fingers clinking softly against each other when they touched—and slowly signed five letters, with a quirked eyebrow.
"P-I-Z-Z-A?"
Clint laughed. It sounded thin and weak, and his nose was clogged, but it was still the best noise in the whole darn world. He nodded, propped his head in his hand, and mouthed, more than said, "Sure."
So they spent the wee hours of the morning eating microwave pizza and chatting on their hands about anything and nothing.
The sun rose, bright and clear, and the nightmares stayed far, far away.
fin
A/N: Small off-schedule piece today! Peter's Pentad will be updated as usual, but I'm procrastinating on writing the last chapter. Apparently I'm in a mood for angst.
Clint is deaf in the comics, and in the Remembered AU. I headcanon that he has some residual hearing—thus the hearing aids, which do nothing if you're completely deaf—but I haven't been able to write anything about it until now.
I've spent most of my life learning and forgetting ASL. The language has its own grammar structure that, honestly, makes a lot more sense than English in a lot of ways; things like location, direction, and prepositions can be indicated by where you place and move your hands as you sign, shaving off what might take four or five words in English. Cool stuff!
There are several different signs for pizza (a lot of them regional), but Bucky doesn't know any of them. HYDRA's vocab words didn't include fun things like food. So he finger-spells instead.
Reviews are microwave pizza with friends. Thanks for reading!