nightcathedral | (no subject)

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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"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."