What Is and Isn't Mine
Tie a Yellow Ribbon Series - Part 1
He doesn't scream when the nightmare yanks him from sleep, but it's a near thing. He's shaking, he knows, but that's the extent of what he's aware of until he manages to get his brain back online.
It's dark. Probably late. The apartment is hers and the couch comfortable. The scene flickering on the television is not from the movie he'd been watching with Maria and -
Maria.
They'd been tired. Long days and longer meetings, consulting and a few HYDRA cells that just refuse to stay dead. They're closer now too. He feels it and every once in a while, he looks over to find a soft, surprised look on her face. Like he's not supposed to be real, but she's glad he is. In those moments, he wants to reach for her. He feels it like an itch down to his blood.
He never does.
They're friends. Good friends. Very good friends. It's been a long time since he's had a friend like her and he doesn't want to risk messing that up for something he may very well be imagining. But then he'll turn and look at her, and he's almost positive he's not imagining the affection in her eyes or the ease of her touch. And as he sits up on the couch he feels the itch grow stronger, a need slipping into his blood. The nightmare hadn't even been about her, but there is a yearning to find her, to just sit with her.
It's a yearning he gives into. Tossing off the blanket - so she'd left him here, because he definitely doesn't remember the blanket but he does remember the look of her, legs curled beneath her body, toes tucked behind his back. She's always telling him he's so damn warm for a man frozen for 70 years - he heads towards the door she's left pulled. A door he knows she always closes.
"Steve?"
His head hangs out of reflex. He hates the idea that he's woken her. He knows she has trouble sleeping sometimes, that she can't always stay in the deep sleep she needs and he abhors the idea of being at fault for her missing out on those quality cycles.
"Steve."
Her hair is ruffled, her face soft and she is so painfully beautiful. He swallows.
"Sorry."
"For?" she asks with a short laugh. She's hugging her blankets to her chest with one hand, the other runs through her hair. It does nothing to make it look less slept in, less rumpled. He likes her rumpled.
"You were sleeping."
She shrugs, then looks at him and he knows he's in trouble. "You weren't."
"Just woke up." He is not defensive. He has no reason to be defensive. Except that he's woken her up because of a damn nightmare he's had for years and he just-
He needs her.
He feels the knowledge settle like a weight, the same way it has every time it pops into his head. It's not that he doesn't like the idea of needing other people - he needed Bucky growing up, and his mom; Natasha and Sam in this incarnation of his life, though never the way he feels he needs Maria - but that he knows Maria doesn't. She is as independent as they come, almost starkly lonely, and the idea that she doesn't need him, that she could up and walk away at any given moment, terrifies the hell out of him.
"Steve."
It's quiet, his name, murmured with something in it that makes him respond. He doesn't realize he's moving until he's settling onto the edge of her bed, his back to her. She surprises him when she reaches out, when her palm settles flat against his back. His muscles turn to water, relax completely beneath her hand and she makes a sympathetic noise. He hears the bedclothes shift, then it's her whole front pressing against his back, her arms slipping around his waist. It's not a new position for them, though he'd been surprised the first time he'd tucked her against him and she'd come willingly. She doesn't really scream 'touchable', Maria.
"The ice?" she asks quietly because one vulnerable night when she'd been the one bolting upright on the couch - he hadn't moved, it was her place, he'd felt weird - he'd confessed to having them. It's not uncommon, he knows and even if he'd never experienced it, he's not stupid enough to think she's immune to them. Now at least. When he first met her, maybe, but he knows there's more to the woman curled up against his back than he'd first thought.
And it's the layers he's attracted to, the hard agent and the woman who can curl up against him like a cat. The warrior and the human being everyone forgets she is. He still vividly remembers the night she'd cleaned her gun while debating the reality of The Departed - "There's no way bad guys miss that often," he can remember her saying. He kept poking because he could and he liked seeing her riled – and waking up to find her face still relaxed in sleep. She is a living juxtaposition, a woman he cannot figure out and isn't wholly sure he ever wants to.
He wraps his arms around hers, absently runs his fingers along her skin. She rests her cheek against his back. He wonders if she can hear the way his heart continues to race, in part with the remnants of his nightmare, but now also because it's her. It's her palms pressed against his abs, her breath against his back. He can feel the way her muscles relax, the way he holds her weight. It's exactly what he needs.
"You're safe," she murmurs.
His hands tighten on hers. "I know."
And yet, he still wants to turn around, wants to wrap himself around her and the way she still feels warm from her blankets. He wants to wrap himself around this piece of his new reality that he feels so much for.
She hums against his back and he wonders absently if she's falling asleep on him. But neither of them move, stuck, as it were, because he does not want to do something she's not looking for, no matter how much his heart yearns for it. He'll take this, the way her body wraps around his, the comfort it brings him to have her here, her touch, her skin beneath his fingertips. Then she huffs out a sigh that, rather adorably, turns into what sounds like a wide yawn.
"Come here, Steve."
And she's moving away, his back cold now. Under normal circumstances, when he's not still battling the feeling of being trapped in a block of ice, making a sacrifice that had been the right thing, even if it hadn't been what he'd signed up for, he doesn't think it would send shivers along his skin. But then he turns and she's snuggled into her pillow again, her eyes locked on his as she tugs at the covers.
"Come here," she says again and it takes him longer than it should to realize what she's asking.
"Maria-"
"Steve."
And normally he'd give into that tone, but he swallows. "You don't have to- I have a bed."
"You do."
She doesn't push him, she never has. She just offers him the option and he isn't strong enough to turn away. The pillows, the sheets, it all smells like her and he knows she watches him as he curls up on the mattress. He leaves space between them, because that's not who they are, no matter how much she wants it, but she huffs at him again and reaches out. She tugs on his wrist until she's closer, until she can turn her back to him and wrap his arm around her body. He can't help the way he curls against her, but he's careful, makes sure that his arm stays across her stomach. Not too high, not too low. Because she's giving him this and he promises himself he won't take advantage.
But he can't deny that having her there, being able to bury his face in her hair, is more of a comfort than anything he can think of. It's a tie to this time, to this life, to the life that he has built for himself. She is a tether, one that he wants like this permanently. But he also knows her, knows that relationships are not on her list and he needs her.
So this, he tells himself, will be enough.