Middles

Kono wakes up in the middle of the night to an empty bed. It's not an unusual thing because there are some night where Steve simply doesn't sleep, or sleeps for a few hours and gets up and then comes back in the morning. But after the news they had gotten yesterday, she worried. He hadn't slept much the night before but he had stayed in bed with her. That's how she knows that he had only gotten a maximum of 3 hours. She had thanked god that morning that it was a day off because his mind was clearly preoccupied with the orders he had recieved from the Navy.

Throwing aside the covers, Kono gets up and pads out of his bedroom and slowly through the upstairs landing towards the stairs. There's a small lamp on in the living room which guides her to him and she spots him sitting at the edge of the couch, hunched over with his elbows on his knees.

She whispers his name but he doesn't react and she gets the feeling that he didn't even hear her. The lamp is on the other side of him but it throws enough light for her to see the chain and tags hanging off it in his hands when he runs a thumb over it repeatedly. She has never seen them before and if she is honest, she had a feeling that he hadn't shown her or mentioned them because he didn't want her to know. She didn't know why but there was some things she didn't question.

Kono rests a hand on his back and he freezes for a moment at the touch. She brushes it off when he relaxes again and she sits down next to him, body turned towards him with her eyes fixed onto his face. All she can see are the sharp lines that make up his chiselled features because the harsh yellow light from the lamp doesn't do much to soften them.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks him softly. Steve shakes his head once. "Ok." she relents easily and rubs his back. "Are you coming back to bed?"

Steve doesn't reply this time and Kono is sure that he didn't even hear her, if the way his hands tighten and clench around the dogtags are anything to go by. Something was definitely going on in his head, that was for sure, but she didn't know what. That is, until he turned to look at her. His usually clear blue eyes had been darker than usual ever since he had gotten the call, but right then, she could tell there was more to it. They were glassy, haunted, and scared.

Her hand on his back stops and she can feel his heart pounding through his shirt. She would be lying if she said that she hadn't been waiting for this moment, but truth be told, she had put it to the back of her mind a few months earlier. She had expected something after the North Korea incident, but there had been no time for them to even pause before they caught another case at home and Steve would never take the time to simply work through what had happened. Then came the stuff with Shelburne, Joe, the Yakuza, having to deal with Jenna's death and Wo Fat on top of that, and all after escaping jail months before that.

Any other person would have broken down ages ago. Kono knows that she herself would not have managed to cope so well for so long. Even her undercover stint for IAB had left her shaken and stressed out to the point where Steve had recommended her to see a professional. She had turned it down, saying she was fine, but he had made it compulsory, telling her that she wouldn't be allowed back onto the team until she agreed. So she did and they had fought over it. Rather she had argued with him and he had simply stood there and taken it.

But he had been right and it had helped her immensely. So she had recommended that he do the same after a bout of insomnia that lasted for a week, but he had insisted he was fine talking to her. The problem was that he though he did talk to her, it was never to the level that would help. But the insomnia vanished and they moved onto other cases, other worries and other things. Slowly, Kono pushed it to the back of her mind and over time she convinced herself that everything had gone back to normal. Ignorance really was bliss.

She slides her hand over his to loosen the grip they have on the tags, and it falls to the floor with a metallic tinkle when his hands grip her hand instead. Steve's eyes are focused back onto his hand and she can hear him swallow repeatedly and clear his throat before he whispers,

"Tell me not to go."

"What?" Kono asks because she's not sure if she has heard him correctly or not. He turns to look at her again, brow furrowed in thought and eyes piercing into hers.

"Tell me not to go." he repeats quietly but in the silent night and from right next to her, the impact of the words are louder than a shout. His eyes cast downwards before she can reply and there is a more urgency to his words now. "Tell me not to go, and I won't. If you tell me not to, I won't."

It becomes clear from the words that seem so foreign, caught in the middle of begging and hysteria dressed in calmness that only Steve could, that this was it. The call to active duty was the final straw and Kono didn't know why or how it had suddenly happened, but it had finally become too much for him.

"Ok." she assures him, rubbing his back soothingly even though she's not even sure if he can get out of it. If anyone could, it would be Steve.

He shakes his head gently before Kono can question him. She can hear his breathing become more erratic and his eyes catch hers as he speaks and the glassy look shatters into liquid and she realises that what she sees are now tears.

"Say it."

"Don't go, ok?" Kono says immediately, fighting away her own tears when his begin to catch on his eyelashes but never falling. "Don't go, don't go." she repeats and he nods, leaning into her.

She pulls him to her, allowing him to rest his head on her chest and she presses her face into his hair, gently stroking it with her hand in hopes to get him to calm down. Her other hand grips his as tightly as they grip hers.

"Don't go. You stay with me, ok, baby? Stay with me." she whispers whilst lifting her head up to rest her chin on his head and willing her tears away because she can feel his breathing slow into something more regular against her skin. "Stay with me. Don't go, just stay with me." she repeats and she's not sure whether she's telling him for his sake anymore, or if she's now saying it to keep him together.

A/N: The response to this fic has been marvellous! I did not expect it at all. So much so that it gave me a bit of a self-conscious moment, or moments, where I changed this chapter about 3 times today. First it was an entirely different plotline, then it was something a bit similar but very short, and then finally I settled on this. Even then, this chapter made me it's bitch. But I think I've tamed it... And of course, the prompt was 'Middles' and I used it very loosely here. I hope it still qualifies though.

Just to explain - this is set a while after Joe leaves. I'm not going to say when, that's up to you, but it's in time where it's all festered up inside of him. With everything that's happened, I can't shake the feeling that even someone like Steve would have a breakdown in the end. He is only human, after all. Even if he is a very hot and sexy and kickass one at that.

Thank you all for the reviews and alerts from last chapter. I do hope you enjoyed this one as well. Please do let me know what I'm doing right/wrong.

Many thanks to Tiana-P again for reminding me of the things that Steve's gone through this season alone, and putting up with me all day when I had several mini-meltdowns over this chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything you might recognise from the tv unfortunately.