Fandom One-Shots

Nightmare (Stucky)

ikikik this was all supernatural up to here but bear with me ok

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It began with a couple dancing in the night.
Their fingers intertwined as they stepped to the rhythm of some romantic song playing in the background. Step, step, turn, spin, repeat. The glimmering moonlight washed each grinning face in a natural white light as the darkness set in on their surroundings. It was perfect.
Too perfect.
There was the figure lurking in the shadows, waiting to make his move, waiting to shatter the pristine moment in which the pair stood. Then there was gunfire, and red. So much red. So much blood. There was a cry of distress, and there was another shot. Both lovers had fallen lifelessly to the ground in a matter of seconds. The killer made his exit, metallic left arm flashing in the newly sinister glow of the moon.
Mission complete-

The air around Bucky felt cold. He wildly whipped his head in all directions and examined his surroundings, only to be greeted by the familiarity of his bedroom. The ex-assassin attempted calming his frantic breaths and stopping the choked sobs emerging from him on the premise that it was all a nightmare. Just a bad dream.
It didn't help much. He figured the dream had some anchor in truth, as more and more unpleasant memories of his time as the winter soldier had begun to resurface lately.
It was a few extensive minutes before Bucky got himself relatively under control, but as soon as he did, he pivoted so that his trembling legs dangled off the side of the bed and slid onto the floor. His quiet, shaky steps followed the familiar path to a room across the pitch-black hallway.
"Steve." The brunette slipped through the half-open door, supposing the super soldier would have already woken due to him.
"C'mere, Buck, it'll be okay," Steve groggily muttered while sitting up and scooting over to create a spot for him. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Bucky sat in the empty spot and weakly shook his head. "I hurt- killed so many people. I remember all of them, somewhere in my head. And I hate going into detail."
"That wasn't you. Not the Bucky I knew before, and not the Bucky I know now." A hand now firmly rested on the cyborg's flesh shoulder.
"But I still did it," muttered the elder man as he shrunk away from the touch. "And who says I won't do it again?"
The blonde tried to carefully plan his next move. Sometimes, his best friend simply needed his encouragement. Others, he craved the warmth of a gentle hug. Others still, he rejected the smallest touch and insisted that he just needed to be near Steve.
Steve figured that the latter was a matter of Bucky not wanting to hurt him, but he thought it best not to address that too much.
"I do. Nothing like that will ever happen to you again as long as I can help it."
Both of the sleep-deprived men sat, almost calmly, in stillness among the night, unsure of what was supposed to come next, or who would be the one to end the silence.
Bucky ended up the first one to break. Unable to contain his distress for any longer, he suddenly curled into a heap of tears and faced away from the other man.
Steve took a deep breath and again placed a hand on his crying friend.
"You're not the winter soldier," Steve spoke up in an attempt to calm the man and ran a hand through his dark, chin-length hair. "You're not an asset. You're not a weapon."
Unconvinced, the former 'Fist of Hydra' turned to face the captain, who had also laid down sometime in the past minute or so. "Then what am I?"
There was no more than about a second before Steve answered, "You? You... are James Buchanan Barnes. Super soldier, Howling Commando, World War II hero, and, most importantly, my best friend." He dried the other's tears, pulled him into an embrace, and added on a muttered, "You're my entire world, Buck."
Yet another moment of quiet passed, this time for Bucky to calm himself again and force himself to believe the words. A halfhearted smirk crept onto the brunette's features as he contentedly rested his head in the crook of the blonde's neck.
"You always know how to make me feel better." What a bout of luck, he mused, that he and Steve had rediscovered each other after all those years.
"I could say the same about you. For sure," replied the younger, a plethora of simpler, happier times flooding his mind while his features displayed the same half smirk. "Now try and get some sleep, you idiot."