Steve Rogers/Captain America One Shots

The Sun Still Rises

Your eyelashes fluttered softly against the warm skin of your cheeks, as your eyes opened slowly. Squinting in the darkness that engulfed the bedroom, only to be broken by a thin streak of light coming from the bathroom. It was pale; like that of the moonlight streaming in through the closed shades. But it fell upon the bed in a single ray that woke you from your dreamless slumber. 

It was always a dreamless sleep now, for five years you had yet to have a single dream. Nightmare or other, all that found you when your eyes finally shut for the night, was blackness. A black hole you found your subconscious falling into night after night, lost in the painful cloud of nothingness. But as your hand stretches out gently to your right, you know for him it's different. 

Opening your eyes wider at the feel of the cold and barely crumpled sheets, you lean forward on your elbow. Looking at the side of the bed that was once taken up by a body of warmth and comfort. Staring at the empty white sheets that seemed to call his name, even as he wasn't anywhere in the room to be seen. This wasn't the first night you had woken to his side of the bed left abandoned and chilled by his absence, and you knew it certainly wouldn't be the last. 

Unlike yourself and your bleak filled sleep, Steve was plagued by dreams. Vivid images that ripped him apart from the inside and crushed his soul, only to wake him up with a loss for air. Memories twisted into horrific nightmares, that seemed to nearly kill him in his sleep. You had heard the many times he woke up gasping and clutching at the sides of the mattress, his strength almost threatening to over turn it. He didn't experience the dreamless nights that you did, and you saw in his eyes that sometimes he envied your numb subconscious. 

The dreams were worse than the blackness you saw night after night. And because of that, Steve declined to share any of his visions with you. 

Sliding your legs swiftly over the edge of the bed, your bare feet touch the cool hardwood flooring beneath you. The sensation sending a slight chill up and down your body, only to cover your skin in goosebumps that sensitized your entire body. Tiptoeing over to the chair sitting in the corner of the room, you reach for the sweatshirt thrown haphazardly across it. Slipping your chilled arms into the warm and welcome fabric, that smelled deeply of Steve's aftershave and the soap lingering from his morning shower. It warmed you to your very core, seeming to ease all the unease caused by your dreamless sleep. 

He claimed the things he dreamt were nothing you needed to know about, but you saw the way the nightmares tormented him. The way they left him aching and tortured, no matter how well he tried to hide it. And most nights, he did. He would calm his breathing and wrap his arms around your body once again, lulling you back into your still and motionless sleep. He comforted you... when he was the one being torn apart piece by piece, night after night. Steve would always protect you, that was the nature of his being. But you always wondered... who was protecting him?

The bathroom was bathed in a pale florescent blue light, that shone faintly above the main mirror. But it wasn't the light that made you pause in the doorway, it was the man hunched over the sink. You could see the white growing on his knuckles from the way he clutched the porcelain sink. With a tension that threatened to crack the material straight down the center. His head hung low as he gazed down at the counter top, and you could see through the thin material of his white tank top, the muscles in his back were as rigid as they could be. He held his tension in his shoulders, and from the reflection in the mirror, you could see the tension spreading across his face as well. 

"Another dream?"

Your voice seemed to echoe in the dead silent bathroom, and the sound causes Steve to raise his head slowly. Looking into the mirror to meet your gaze, from where you stand leaning against the doorframe. And even as distance and pale lighting affects the quality of your glance, you can still see the anguish swimming in his eyes. The blue seeming to crash against itself like an angry tide.