Chapter Text
Steve felt himself waking up, drifting through that warm pink state between sleep and consciousness. He rolled over and reached out, smiling as his fingers encountered warmth and silky hair. His girl.
His girl wriggled closer and licked him across the face.
“Augh, Honey, why,” he grumbled. She thumped her tail, unrepentant. A soft laugh made him turn over.
“She wouldn’t do that if you didn’t let her on the bed,” said Sophie.
“If I don’t let her on the bed, I wake up in the middle of the night because she’s just standing there, staring at me.”
Steve stretched and Honey took the opportunity roll over and shove her head under his hand. He pet her while he examined his wife.
She was dressed in one of her understated and egregiously expensive suits, but her hair was in a soft braid and her blouse had a print of monkeys holding umbrellas.
Where does she even find these things? he wondered.
A suit, so not a normal day at the library. But the braid and the novelty blouse meant she wasn’t dealing with The Family Business, as she termed anything to do with Stark Industries or superheroing.
“Do we have a charity thing today?” he said, finally. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You didn’t get in until four,” she said. “And no. I have a library conference all weekend, remember?”
“Ah, shit, is it Saturday? The time change always throws me.”
He had spent the last week bouncing around Europe, chasing whispers and finding nothing. He sat up, earning a grumble from Honey. Sophie came to stand in front of him, smoothing his hair back. He looped his arms around her waist.
“Welcome home,” she said. “Find anything?”
“Nothing worth mentioning, no. What time is it?”
“A little after eight. My panel’s not ‘til 10, but there’s a breakfast thing and I oughta do some schmoozing.”
“Mmm,” said Steve, pulling her closer. “D’you need me?”
He felt her laugh ruffle his hair.
“That’ll give the cardiganed masses a thrill. They wouldn’t listen to a thing I said, they’d be too busy swooning over you. I don’t want you to get swarmed by middle aged women in glasses chains and sensible shoes. Anyway,” she continued, “I’m taking Leif.”
Leif, Sophie’s dog, sat by the door, looking patient, alert, and long suffering all at once.
Steve pulled back to give her A Look. She rolled her eyes.
“And Kevin, and Mari. I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to keep me safe in the dangerous waters of coffee klatches and panels on mental health services in public libraries.”
She bent down to kiss him, then pulled back to brush the worries from his forehead. He could see their mirror image in her face.
“Go back to sleep, love,” she said. “You can tell me everything later.”
He shrugged, the frustration that had ebbed in the night rising again.
“Nothing to tell.”
Sophie gave him A Look of her own, and he grinned. Her attempt at sternness was derailed by the umbrella monkeys.
“And I can think of better things to do when you get back,” he said, pulling her down for another kiss. She swatted at him.
“You, sleep. You,” she said, looking at Honey, “make sure he sleeps.” She disentangled herself from him.
“C’mon Leif, time to go to work.”
Steve listened to her footsteps across the apartment until the door shut gently behind her and her canine shadow. He turned to look at his own.
“What does she expect you to do, sit on me until I pass out?”
Honey, ever the opportunist, had rolled over again, paws splayed in the air and snoring. She looked obnoxiously comfortable.
“I guess another twenty minutes couldn’t hurt.”
“You Captain America’s wife?”
Sophie sat at a table, attempting to decipher the conference schedule. She’d sent Kevin and Mari on a food run, trusting that Leif would alert her to anything she needed to worry about. He was at her feet, ears perked but relaxed.
“Yep,” she said, unwilling to take her eyes off the schedule in case it rearranged itself while she wasn’t looking.
“What’s he like?”
It was about the four hundredth time someone had asked her that question. Most of the askers had been either earnest and wide-eyed or full of fluttery giggling, not asking her in a rough voice with a hint of Brooklyn. But they had all made her feel old, and she was tired and out of patience.
“He snores.”
The man in front of her made a soft sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
“He always did.”
It took a moment for the words to register past the color coded disaster in front of her. Sophie’s eyes flicked up to look at him, confusion warring with suspicion.
Nondescript clothing, baseball cap half hiding an unshaven face framed by longish brown hair. The shadows under his eyes and cheekbones told of being unslept and underfed, the tension in his jaw and the ashen pale of his skin spoke of pain. She focused in on his face to meet eyes half a shade lighter than Steve’s and a wry half smile and she knew .
“Shit.”
His smile quirked deeper.
“Tell him I said goodbye, will ya?” asked Bucky, just before he swayed and started to fall.