DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

WORD COUNT: 1618

Three o'clock in the morning was a terrible time to go to bed. It was dark enough to still be considered night, but you only had a small handful of hours before the sun was up and you were supposed to rise with it.

Darcy stumbled out the door of the lab, trailing behind Thor, who was carrying a sleeping Jane. The tiny scientist had passed out on her desk, which Darcy had taken as her cue to finally call it a night. She'd called Thor down, and the big guy was being very gracious about being woken up in the middle of the night to cart his girlfriend off to bed. The Thunder God lives on a different floor, and since Jane has more or less moved in with him now that he's back to living on Midgard more or less full-time, he takes her to his apartment, leaving Darcy in the elevator, about to fall asleep on her feet.

Once the elevator opened to her floor, she trudged out, counting the doors on the right – one, two, three, three, four – until she reached hers. The door wouldn't unlock, for some reason. Her key card wouldn't work. Luckily, she had experimented with breaking locks after she got locked out of her apartment one time too many. So she let herself in. She dropped her bag and her phone on the kitchen table, shuffled to her bedroom, and collapsed on the bed.

"GAH!"

"AIIII!"

Darcy shrieked at the top of her lungs when her bed moved underneath her, and actually shoved her onto the floor. She landed on her ass, falling back and whacking her head on the floor.

Then someone was on top of her, and something cold and sharp was pressed against her throat. A rough voice growled something in a foreign language in her ear. It took her dazed, sleep-deprived, and terrified brain several seconds to realise that she knew that voice, and a few more to remember who it belonged to. "Bucky?"

The other voice stopped abruptly, for about two seconds. "Darcy?" Bucky pulled the knife away and bolted mostly upright, still straddling her. "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Wha…"

Bucky blinked down at the girl still lying prone on the floor. His heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst right out of his chest. He'd actually been sleeping soundly, for once, until a sudden weight pressing down on him had made him think he was being attacked, and he had reacted accordingly.

However, staring down at the most… civilian person in the entire Tower, now lying on his bedroom floor where he'd thrown her, a whole new kind of dread was creeping up on him. "Darcy? Are you okay?" He swallowed. "I didn't hurt you, didn't I?"

"Wha…" She did not sound uninjured.

"Darcy?!" He leaned back over her, trying to see if she had a head injury. His night vision was pretty good, but he was still having a hard time seeing. "J.A.R.V.I.S., hit the lights!"

Darcy screwed her eyes shut and winced as the lights turned on. "Noooo…" she moaned, "Too bright. Lemme sleep!"

She didn't seem to be injured, so Bucky leaned back. "Wouldn't it be better to do that in your own room?" he asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I am in my room," Darcy protested, blinking and looking around. She blinked even more as she clearly took in the knives on the bedside table and the complete lack of clutter. "Aren't I?"

Bucky shook his head. "You've got the wrong apartment, Doll." He then cocked his head as a thought came to his mind. "How did you get in here, anyway? I know for a fact that the door was locked."

"I got the wrong… huh? I thought I counted the rooms? When I got out of the e-e-elevator…" A huge, jaw-cracking yawn interrupted her mid-word, and it was then that Bucky realised that she wasn't dazed from him knocking her down. She was tired. Very tired. "And I got locked out of my apartment so many times, I learned how to crack the locks. I could do it in my sleep."

"From the look of you, you did do it in your sleep."

"Blame Janie. And Nat. And Tony Fucking Stark. Nat made me get up at five to do training crap, which was a hell of a lot of running today, then Janie had to rearrange the heavy equipment but made me do all the actual heavy lifting, and then Tony 'borrowed' me to run around New York looking for a birthday gift for Pepper with him even though we all know he's going to ignore me and buy something ridiculous online, and then I got back to the lab and Janie had me running around some more getting coffee and shit, and I think this is the first time I haven't been standing or walking since I got outta bed, and damn your carpet is so soft."

Bucky blinked at her. "That's a hardwood floor, Doll."

"Mnnnn…" Darcy moaned and yawned again. That long, rambling sentence had probably tired her out even more. She shifted and squirmed a little, like she was trying to get more comfortable, and Bucky finally realised that he was still straddling her.

He jumped off her and set the knife still in his hand on the table. "I don't think the floor is the best place to fall asleep, Darcy."

"Ugh, I don' wanna get uuuuup…" she groaned.

Bucky sighed. "Alright, then."

Darcy gave a little squeak of surprise as he picked her up off the floor in a bridal carry. "Oh, you're even softer than the floor!" Bucky, who had started out the bedroom door with every intent of taking her to her own apartment, stopped in his tracks as she nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck, reminding him that he also wasn't wearing a shirt. Or pants, for that matter. The weather was hot enough that he'd stripped down to his boxers for sleeping. And he wasn't comfortable with leaving his apartment in his underwear carrying a barely-conscious Darcy – or, possibly worse, potentially being seen coming out of her apartment in his underwear.

So he set her down on his bed and started hunting through his dresser for pants and a shirt. He quickly found something suitable, but by the time he turned around, Darcy was already fast asleep, hugging his pillow and snoring very softly.

She looked so tired, he couldn't bring himself to move her. Grateful that Steve was out for the night, he grabbed a few extra blankets, he pulled the covers over her and moved out to the living room, where he got himself settled on the couch.

He was woken at five oh one in the morning by Darcy's phone ringing, and hurried to answer it before it woke her up.

"You're late." Natalia sounded casually unconcerned to the untrained ear, but Bucky had trained her, so he could hear the thick undercurrent of annoyance running beneath it.

"Darcy's calling in sick today," he told his former student bluntly, "You, Stark, and Foster ran her into the ground yesterday, and she accidentally stumbled into my apartment and fell asleep within seconds of lying down on a bed. She'll wake up when she's gotten all the sleep she needs."

Natalia was silent for several seconds before responding. "I'll let Doctor Foster know. How'd she even get in? There's no way you left your own apartment unlocked."

"You know how people say they can do things in their sleep? Well, apparently that's almost true with her and lock-picking."

He heard an impressed-sounding hum. "I'll have to get her to show me how she did that. Once she's awake, I mean. It could be one of the methods I already know, but I'm still curious."

"Only after she wakes up, and gets a proper meal into her. Somehow I don't think she had much time to eat yesterday, either."

"I made sure she had a light breakfast after the workout," Natalia defended herself.

"Good. I'm still going to put something together for her."

He could practically hear Natalia's smirk. "Good for you, Yasha. They say the way to a man's heart is his stomach, but it doesn't hurt with us girls, either."

"I'm not-"

Click. Natalia hung up before he could finish protesting, for the twelfth time, that he wasn't sweet on Darcy Lewis, dammit!

Sighing, he went to check up on her. Thankfully, neither the phone's ringing nor his conversation with Natalia seemed to have woken her up. She was still cuddling his pillow, although she had kicked the covers off and was now sprawled all across the bed. Her face looked several years younger when she slept, no stressed-out scowls or cocky smirks when she was at rest. For the first time since he'd met her, Darcy actually looked… peaceful. Content.

Bucky shook himself, realising that he'd been standing there in the doorway and watching her sleep for at least five minutes. He turned, shutting the door behind him, and made his way into the kitchen to make breakfast for the both of them.

Because that's what friends do, after all. He and Darcy, they were just friends…

Yes, friends do make breakfast for friends, and let super-exhausted friends crash at their place. But 'more than friends' do that, too, don't they?

Next up: Concussion