nightcathedral | (no subject)

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Apparently it doesn't matter to nurses or orderlies if you're Captain America or Captain Kangaroo - Steve had to ask about that one - if you're hurt, you're a patient, and if you're a patient, you get wheeled to the front door. He had to smile in the face of the scowling woman in nurse's scrubs who made the comparison. Her expression reminded him of his mother.

So he submitted. He probably would have tired himself out making the exit doors. He's still stitched, bandaged, bruised, scraped. Breathing too deep pulls at his insides.

The press is at the court-mandated distance outside the exit. He holds up a hand, getting the orderly to stop with a quiet "Please."

He levers himself out of the chair as the man protests, surprised, and walks for the door. It takes effort to regulate his gait, and he angles for steady and slow. Solid. He has to be Captain America, battered or not.

Standing and waiting for his ride, whoever it is - Natasha was vague - is hard. And hurts.

Being injured is really irritating.

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Olivia laughs, already heading for the phone now that she's sure Steve's not going to collapse (which was a legitimate concern a couple times there on the stairs). "Well I am glad to hear that."

She pauses, phone in hand, just to watch him, smiling faintly. He looks awful, more battered and exhausted than she ever wants to see him looking... but it's so nice to have him back on her couch, alive and in one piece. She really had worried, for a while.

"I'm glad you're here, Steve."

The call to the Chinese place doesn't take long - they know her and their usual orders, and it's still early, so the delivery shouldn't take too long. The instant she's done, she moves back to the couch and settles down next to Steve, careful not to bump him anywhere. She doesn't know what parts of him hurt, yet, so she's just going to assume 'everything'.

"I am too." It comes later than it should. It's more thoughtful than he intends. He searches for her hand without opening his eyes, twining his fingers through Olivia's. "SHIELD sent a short range surface-to-surface missile to try and blow me and Natasha up while we were in the process of finding out how dirty they were. They downloaded Zola into a computer. An old computer, rows and rows of databanks, but it was him, telling me Hydra was alive and well and that I'd gone down for nothing. They hit us there - blew up his databanks, but I know better now than to think he's really gone. Natasha said there was an AI on the little..."

He waves his free hand vaguely. "USB thing Fury gave me, that it kept rewriting itself to counter her commands."

Steve shivers, then winces. The thought of Zola out there in the ether, a malevolent, electronic ghost.... "The World Security Council is dead. Except Councilwoman Hawley. Natasha took her place to get close to Pierce. I guess it doesn't make much difference, except to their families, any more."

SHIELD is a wreck. If the Council is remembered at all, it won't be kindly.

"...Bucky shot me three times. Thigh, arm, stomach. Stabbed me in the shoulder. Tried to strangle me before then, during the fight that got on the news. I cracked and bruised a few of my own ribs getting clear of SHIELD, and, well." He gestures to his face with his free hand. "He almost beat me to death before he... remembered something, maybe. The look on his face - he had to have remembered something."

He looks at their linked hands. A deep breath. "I was ready to go down with him. If that's what had to happen, I was ready to do it."

Edited 2014-04-07 23:17 (UTC)

Her fingers tighten around his, not entirely voluntarily. A part of her understands - she knows how important Bucky was to him, and she knows what Steve will do for anyone he loves. But the idea that she was that close to losing him, that the only reason he's not in the river under tons of rubble is the man sent to kill him...

"He didn't kill you. He pulled you out of the water. Something must have come back."

She blows out a slow breath, trying to release some of the tension, and reaches up to run a hand through his hair, deliberately gentle. His hair's not long enough to really fall in his face anymore, but she hasn't fallen out of the habit.

"But please don't do that again. I've gotten used to having you around."

He likes when she does that. What makes you happy?

I'll add it to the list, Steve thinks.

"I won't. Not on purpose." There aren't that many certainties where he's headed, but he can promise that much. "Got to get someone to eat your leftovers."

He hesitates, then leans forward enough to retrieve a pen and pad of paper from the table in front of them, groaning a little as he sits back against the couch. The note he writes is short and simple: Fury's alive. He's gone after Hydra.

"If Bucky had really remembered, remembered enough to make a difference, he would have come back. You could say he's more dangerous now than before. Before, at least, we could guess which direction he'd come from."

She laughs softly, running her thumb down his temple. "I do. Not on purpose is good enough." The best she can ever expect of him, anyway. She's okay with that, because she wouldn't do anything else if she were in his position.

Olivia frowns at the notepad, and nods a little. She takes the pen and writes back, Will he be in contact?

Right. They're still having a verbal conversation. If anyone is listening. She's honestly not sure anymore. Olivia drops her hand, and leans against Steve's shoulder. "Okay. So he's off the leash and no one's pointing him anywhere. Where do we start looking?"

Steve closes his eyes, leaning into the touch. It scrambles his thoughts a little, but not in a bad way. "Mmh. I asked Natasha if her contacts might know anything. She said she'd check, but that I shouldn't get my hopes up. Maybe we can dig through some of the files we dumped into the world, see if there's anything there, but other than that...." He lets the problem hang. "You don't have to help me," Steve says, knowing she'll answer the same way Sam did.

He finally opens his eyes and sees her returned note. Steve takes the pen and jots, Who knows.

Olivia can practically see his thoughts going to pieces, and doesn't exactly mind. He could probably do with a little less thinking, right now.

Her lips pull into a wry smirk at his written response - not unexpected - before she turns her attention back to him. She lets her hand slide down the back of his head, fingers tightening just a little at the hair at the nape of his neck.

"No. But I want to." She tilts her head, still smiling. "You can't really think I'd let you do this by yourself."

He closes his eyes again, feels his breath catch and quicken. "Stop that," Steve mutters, without real feeling.

He sinks against the couch, against Olivia, the world narrowed around the spots her fingers touch his skin. It's extremely hard to focus when she knows exactly how to keep him from doing it. His eyelids flutter upwards and he says without thinking, "Am I a bad kisser?"

"Say it like you mean it," she retorts, and pointedly does not stop. If he actually meant it, she'd pull away in an instant, but when he just wants to brood about things he can't change right now... No. That's not happening right now.

Instead, she shifts, leaning against him a little more - at least, until that question comes out of the blue, and she pulls away again enough to stare at him. "What?" she asks, half-laughing. "Did I somehow give you the impression that you are?"

There is a warm tickle collecting into heat at the base of his stomach, which really only leads to one thing. It would be easy to drowse, it's so nice to feel safe, and so odd, but then the little patterns her fingers draw against the back of his neck and head pause, and he wishes he hadn't asked that question. He reaches back to put his hand over hers, at least keeping the contact in place.

"Natasha," he says, but that is not really an explanation, or rather it's half of a very good explanation. "We were running, and she kissed me to hide our faces from the people who were after us - and then she made it sound like...." Vague motions with his free hand. "Well. Like I could use work. Practice, is what she said. You don't practice kissing."

That probably shouldn't explain everything so easily... but it does. She bites the inside of her lip for a second, then presses her lips together to try and wipe the amusement off her face. The grin she manages to get rid of, but it stays in her eyes, bright and fond and still just this side of laughter.

"Ah. I'll forgive her under the circumstances... and you're fine at kissing. I like kissing you." She settles back against him, thumb tracing little circles at the top of his spine. "If you wanted to do it a little more, I'd like that too."

He touches the spot under his stitches regretfully. "Maybe not the best idea right this minute."

Steve kisses her forehead, lips lingering close enough that they brush her skin when he speaks again. "Soon, though. As soon as possible."

He rests his face against her hair, conscious of the blonde threads stuck to his mouth and caught on the sutures. "Can I sleep here tonight?"

She's not used to him actually being injured enough that it sticks. It's unsettling, even knowing that he's fine, will be fine.

Olivia lets out a soft, slow breath, closing her eyes for a moment, and nods.

"Of course you can," she says, without moving away from him. "You thought I'd send you home?" To bullet holes and broken windows and blood on the floor. Not a chance. She's not letting him go home until it's cleaned up.

"No," he says, then pauses. "I didn't think so. I - it's polite to ask. I could've gone to a hotel."

He's so tired. He should probably stop talking. So he does, letting himself relax against her - and that's all the invitation he overtaxed body needs to shut down. Steve fights sleep, briefly, as he realizes it's coming, forcing himself to sit up properly. He gives the direction of Olivia's bedroom a bleary stare. "I suppose that means moving."

It doesn't occur to him that the Chinese food hasn't arrived. Right now all he really wants is a pillow.

"You can always stay here. Whenever you need to."

She settles her arm around him, runs her fingers lightly through his hair again. She should maybe send him to bed. There's food coming, she's going to have to move to get the door. But she doesn't have the heart to force him up just now, and the solid weight of him on her shoulder, the reminder that he's here and alive, is too much to let go of right away.

"Stay here. As long as you don't mind me shoving you off when the doorbell rings..."

She's waking him up to eat either way. He probably needs the calories even more than he needs sleep.

He presses his face against her neck, realizes after about three seconds that he's going to get a mighty kink in his own, and shifts so he can rest his head in her lap. The couch is too small to fit all of him - his legs hook over and hang off the end - but it's comfortable enough. He sighs, enjoying the feeling of her hands in his hair, trying to remember something else he wanted to tell her.

Steve reaches up to run his thumb down the side of her neck, eyelids fluttering low, then shut. His hand dips and falls against his stomach. One last, fading grasp at consciousness, and Steve is out.

The dream begins innocuously, as they so often do. It constructs an unfamiliar space from memories. A Hydra facility that isn't one he knows, all scalloped industrial halls and a high-rise that could be Avengers Tower or the Triskellion, and is more accurately a little bit of both.

It's empty. It's empty, but he can hear people screaming. The pounding of feet and the hammer of gunfire. He runs, trying to find the source, trying to close in on the disaster, sure at each corner he'll come around the edge and see the massacre he can't stop hearing. Shapes and figures flicker in front of him, gone before they solidify.

Bullets tear across the hallway, throwing chips of cement and plaster into the air. Steve strikes out blindly and feels bones break under his hand as the hallway erupts in flames. Water swirls around his ankles, freezing, black. Sam is dead at his feet. Steve hoists Natasha over his head with one arm, metal fingers locked around their throat. He squeezes, once, and her trachea gives as the world drowns in water and the sound of arctic wind.

Steve throws himself upright with a yell, grasping at the side of the couch for his shield, sweat burning his eyes. He's shaking when he remembers where he is, where his shield is not, and who he-

Oh God, did he hurt Olivia?

Edited 2014-04-22 02:05 (UTC)

The flailing as he pushes himself up knocks her away and hard into the arm of the couch - not enough to cause any real damage, but she can tell immediately it's going to bruise. She's less worried about that than she is about Steve, wide-eyed and panicky and trembling. It's not a good look on him.

She gets up slowly, eyes locked on his, and reaches carefully for his shoulder. "Hey. Are you okay?"

He nods silently, scrubbing his wrist across his forehead, trying to orient himself again. He touches his own throat, remembering Bucky's grip as the man hurled him backward into pavement. "I'm fine. I'm all right. Are you? Did I - are you okay?"

Okay, he's not doing as good a job of centering himself as he'd like. Steve swallows dryly, both hands braced now against the couch cushions to hold himself up. He can feel a spreading warmth on his stomach that probably means he tore a stitch. "I'm sorry. I don't know what - it was just a dream."

"Yeah. I'm okay," she says softly, settling a hand on his shoulder and giving him another moment to get his bearings. "It's okay. I've done a lot worse waking up from bad dreams, you know?"

Only a couple times, but when she has nightmares, there's a distinct possibility the bedroom gets set on fire. What's a few bruises next to that?

"Do you need-"

The doorbell rings. Olivia rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, swallowing down a curse. Great timing.

"I'll get it. You stay here and breathe."

He nods, watching her go and wishing she wouldn't, which is silly, because someone needs to answer the door.

A sudden, paranoid part of himself demands to know why he isn't with her making sure it isn't Rumlow or another Hydra goon, and he tells himself firmly that Olivia can handle herself, first off, and second, she'll shout if something's wrong.

Steve turns to put both feet on the floor and his head in his hands, then hisses and sits up quickly as pain jabs through his gut at his slump. Ginger, Steve peels his shirt over his head to examine the bandages at his midriff. Sure enough, one sports a spreading red stain. He watches it for a few seconds.

"First aid kit, Rogers," he says, happy for something to do to put the dream out of mind, and struggles to his feet.

Edited 2014-04-23 03:23 (UTC)

No one is trying to kill her at the door. It was, she'll admit, a minor concern, but for once, nothing disastrous happens just when they're starting to relax. Maybe just this once, they get a break.

She tips the delivery girl, shuts the door, and isn't especially surprised when Steve isn't there when she turns around. She has a guess where he's gone. She sets the bags of food on the table and spends a moment unpacking them before cautiously following Steve to the bathroom.

"Are you alright?" she asks softly, hanging in the hallway just outside.

Steve finishes cleaning up - putting away the first aid kit, tossing dirty gauze pads and used bandages - before he opens the door and comes into the hall, drawing his shirt back on. His head pops through the hole, hair sticking up in all directions. He kisses Olivia's forehead.

"Pulled a stitch. I'm fine."

"Thank you for not bleeding on my couch," she murmurs softly, though she honestly wouldn't have been too upset if he had. She appreciates the courtesy.

Olivia flicks a glance to his abdomen even though she knows he's just patched it up. There's a little blood on his shirt, but she assumes it was from before he got to the bathroom. She's had worse, and she doesn't have his healing factor.

"Food's here, if you're still hungry."

"Yes," he says, relieved yet again to have something to do, and that it's something he wants. He is hungry, as long as he doesn't think about everything else going on.

He practically inhales the food, grateful (not for the first time) that Olivia knows what his appetite is like. Steve scrapes the bottom of several containers before he even slows, and by the time he's full there's very little left to stash in the fridge. He sits back against the couch, careful of his injuries this time, and rubs his thumb across a speckle of something gravy-like on his shirt. "Much, much better than hospital food."

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