iavengesuperwholock:

bethofaus:

o-bucky-my-captain:

I WASN’T READY FOR THIS ROLLERCOASTER OF FEELS

So good! A much more introspective piece. Beautifully structured.

I shouldn’t be shocked that this inspired a drabble XD Enjoy guys.

——–

Steve sat in an old armchair, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window of your home. Lights off. Street dark and quiet. Only the moon cast a shadow over the studio apartment.

He’d left your bed and warm body sometime around midnight. It must have been a few hours since then at least. He just couldn’t quiet his mind. Couldn’t shake his doubts. It had been a while now since he left the Avengers behind in search of himself.

Of course, he didn’t leave them all behind. Try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to leave you. It felt like you were the only one who wasn’t trying to turn him into someone. Who wasn’t looking to him for some sort of guidance. You just looked at him like an ordinary man.

He needed that. To feel ordinary again.

The floorboards creaked behind him, and for once tension didn’t fill his body. His hand didn’t twitch for a weapon. There weren’t even weapons nearby. Your fingers brushed against his cheek and he knew you’d done this to him. Tamed his fighter instincts. Domesticated him.

Your arms came around his shoulders, one hand sliding down his bare chest as you rested your face next to his. “Can’t sleep?” you said.

He hummed an affirmative, his hands moving up to wrap around your arms. “I didn’t wake you?”

“No. I just rolled over and you weren’t there.”

“Sorry. You can go back to bed.”

You pressed your lips to his temple. “Not without you.”

With a smile to himself, he tugged on your arms until you shifted around the side of the chair and slid into his lap. His kissed your forehead as your nails scraped through his beard. He’d been vain enough to keep it when you’d confessed how much you loved it. There was one place, in particular, you loved to feel it, and the thought had his hand sliding up the inside of your thigh to trace along the edge of your underwear.

You hummed and shifted against him. “Talk to me. Then we can take those off.”

He chuckled and pulled you in tighter, his eyes shifting back to the street below. “I’m okay.”

“That doesn’t mean something’s not wrong.”

It took him a moment to pinpoint it. To figure out why he had this hollow feeling in his heart when everything he could have asked for was sitting right there in his lap. Then it hit him.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he whispered.

You rested your head against his shoulder and rubbed your hand along his chest. “You’re a lot of things, Stevie. For a lot of different people. To Bucky, you’re a friend. That kid from Brooklyn who won’t run from a fight. To Tony, you’re Captain America. A story his father left behind. And to the rest of the world, you’re a soldier. A hero.”

“And you?” Steve said as he ran his fingers through your hair. You looked up at him. “Who am I to you?”

You smiled and played with his beard once more. “You’re the man who could look past all the blood on my hands. Who saved my life. Gave me a second chance. To me, you’re just the man I love.”

He hadn’t realised how much he needed to hear someone say that to him until you did. How much he needed someone to love him as just the man he was. Your hand was warm against his lips when he kissed your palm.

“Who do you want to be, Steve?” you said as you brushed his hair back behind his ear.

He smiled at you and hoped that you could see in his eyes how much he loved you because he knew saying it wouldn’t be enough. “I just want to be yours for a while.”

You took his face in your hands and shifted until you could look at him dead on. “You are a good man, Steve. That’s all that matters. You don’t have a thing to prove to anybody.”

It hit him how well you actually knew him. It seemed you knew what he needed before he did. He realised that it didn’t matter who he thought he was. As long as he was with you, he was exactly who he had to be.