Chapter 17
Loki started having nightmares again.
Night after night, he watched himself stand in front of Tyr, a proud expression on his face.
“Did you do it?” Tyr would ask, crossing his arms.
And Loki would smile, raising a dagger, dripping with blood, to his lips.
He would wake up, gasping and drenched in sweat, again and again.
Sometimes he screamed.
Steve would come to ask him what was wrong, but Loki could never do anything but sit and stare in silent horror while Steve held him tight.
He hated waking him up.
The day Steve finally got him out of his bedroom to make cake, Loki decided to stop sleeping.
It just wasn’t worth the trouble it caused.
By the time Bucky demanded to meet up with him again, he hadn’t slept in over 48 hours.
He was totally fine.
Bucky took one look at him and cancelled their plans for the afternoon, practically shoving Loki onto his couch.
He muttered something about . . . oblivious Avengers? Loki didn’t know, the words were a little fuzzy at that point.
“Sleep. Now,” he ordered, draping a blanket across his lap and kicking up the recliner.
“Can’t,” Loki said, staring at the ceiling.
“The hell you can’t,” Bucky answered, sitting down on the couch next to him.
“I really can’t,” Loki protested, slurring the words as he leaned against Bucky’s shoulder.
He closed his eyes for a moment, felt himself drifting off, and jolted awake again.
“Maybe you should take your cat form again,” Bucky suggested, “That’s why you did that before, right? To sleep?”
“Too tired.”
“Then sleep!”
“No!”
“Well,” Bucky huffed, grabbing a remote to turn the tv on and wrapping his arm around Loki to draw him closer to lay on his chest, “We’re not moving until you get some sleep.”
Loki lasted nearly an entire episode of a show called M.A.S.H. before falling asleep, curled up in Bucky’s arms.
Bucky woke up to the steady patter of rain on the roof.
He glanced down at Loki, still asleep in his arms, a rush of affection filling him with warmth.
The feeling didn’t last long though, as Bucky remembered how Loki had shown up the previous night.
Bucky had been planning to take Loki to Coney Island before the 4th of July holiday crowd, but from the moment Bucky saw him—bags under his haunted eyes, slumped posture, his body almost swaying with exhaustion—Bucky knew that he hadn’t gotten any sleep.
What worried him even more was the fact that Loki didn’t seem to want to sleep.
Bucky knew it had to have something to do with the way Loki had left last time, why he suddenly stopped meeting with him, why he only answered his concerned texts with something along the lines of “I’m fine, Bucky, stop worrying about it.”
Something had happened.
He had yet to ask, the most important thing on his mind the night before being getting Loki to sleep.
Bucky sighed, debating on whether or not to get up to make breakfast.
He decided against it. He could accidentally wake Loki up, and breakfast could wait.
So he listened to the rain fall.
He’d always loved rain. Loved the way it seemed to soften the world around him, drowning out any and all worries with its calming beat.
He’d even liked thunder and lightning to a certain extent, though he began to like it a little less when Loki had admitted to his recently developed fear of it.
This morning, luckily, it seemed only to be a steady shower.
Loki shifted against him, drawing in a sleepy yawn as he woke up.
“Sleep alright?” Bucky asked.
Loki hummed, eyes still closed.
“Want breakfast?”
He hummed again.
“Sure.”
He shifted his weight off of Bucky, and stood up to follow him into the apartment’s kitchen.
Bucky opened a cabinet and started moving around a group of rectangular boxes.
“You ever had cereal?” He asked, setting a bright yellow box on the counter. The bold red letters written across its face read “Toasted Oats.”
“I don’t believe I have,” Loki answered, peering at the box’s nutritional facts, “The Avengers usually have eggs or pancakes for breakfast, though I have seen Tony eat something similar from a box. Fruity Loops, or something?”
“Fruit Loops,” Bucky nodded as he prepared two bowls of the cereal, “And eggs and pancakes? Every morning?”
Loki shrugged.
“The benefits of living with several cooks, I guess. Mainly just Steve, though.”
“When did Steve learn how to cook?” Bucky asked, “As long as I knew him, he was an awful cook.”
“I’m not sure,” Loki answered, “Perhaps Natasha taught him.”
“Oh,” a shadow fell over Bucky’s expression, “The Widow. How is she?”
Does she remember everything he taught her? Does she hate him for it?
“She’s good,” Loki said, “Intimidating, at first, but she is truly a good friend to those she cares about.”
“And that would include you?” Bucky guessed.
“I—“ Loki hesitated, visibly taken aback, “I guess.” He laughed softly, “Steve claims that she’s a softie.”
Bucky scoffed, barely suppressing a snort, “Don’t let her hear that.”
Silence fell between them for a few minutes, the only sound the clinking of spoons against cereal bowls.
“How is he?” Bucky asked, standing up to put his empty bowl in the sink, “Steve, I mean.”
He glanced outside. The rain had stopped by then, and the sun was starting to come out again. Bucky wondered if the weather would be good for Steve’s birthday, only a few days away, on the Fourth of July.
Before the war, they’d always celebrated Steve’s Birthday over the Fourth of July. While fireworks crackled in the sky, Bucky would tell him to blow out the candles on his cake. Every year, no matter how old they’d gotten, Steve’s eyes lit up as he blew the last one out.
“What’d you wish for?”
“Can’t tell; it won’t come true.”
He wondered how Steve would spend his birthday this year.
He missed most of Loki’s response, but he snapped out of his thoughts in time to hear the end of it.
“—will not leave me alone.”
“What do you mean?” Bucky turned to look at Loki, confused.
“He’s like some kind of Mother Hen,” Loki explained with a sigh, “I know he means well, but . . . “
“Must not be that much of a Mother Hen,” Bucky scoffed, and at Loki’s indignant glare, elaborated, “Sorry, but last night had to be the first time you slept in ages.”
Loki stared at him.
“Which, I have to ask,” Bucky pushed on, “Why haven’t you been sleeping? You disappear for weeks, and show up on my doorstep, looking like some sort of half-dead zombie. What happened?”
Loki told him everything. About how he’d made a mistake in trusting Tyr with the knowledge of astral projection, how Frigga had died, how Odin blamed Loki for her death. How he still blamed himself, despite Steve telling him it wasn’t his fault.
He told him about the nightmares, how Steve had started to wake him up from them every time he had one.
“It just,” Loki finished, “It’s just not worth it to try to sleep anymore.”
“So what? You never sleep again?” Bucky asked.
And yeah, when he put it that way, it sounded stupid, but what else could he do?
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“Talk about it,” Bucky answered, “I used to have nightmares a lot, too, but then I met you. I get to talk to you about the memories I have, the ones I’m missing, the ones I’m afraid to remember. Maybe it’ll help you, too.”
“Like this,” Bucky continued, making a vague gesture, “This is a good start.”
Loki nodded, feeling reassured, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
He thanked him, and returned to the Tower before anyone could notice he’d been gone.
Over the next few nights, he stopped ignoring Steve’s questions about his dreams. Instead, whenever he woke from a nightmare, as soon as he’d calm down, he told Steve about them.
His nightmares came less often after that.