It was unconventional, but after sorting out what was going on, Nyx and Bucky had agreed to stay in the house. Together, but separate. Because despite how weird everything was, there was a baby that hadn’t asked for the unusual circumstances now surrounding her and neither one of the men wanted to bow out of the whole situation. It meant separate rooms, but thankfully the place was big enough that there had been a couple of guest rooms that were empty that they could use for now. It was an unspoken decision to leave the master bedroom that seemed to have so many memories of their other life together, alone.
Most nights, they managed to stay out of each other’s hair after dinner and Lucy’s bedtime routine. Occasionally they ran into each other when nightmares or the need to use the bathroom work them up, but it happened so rarely that they had managed to avoid each other until morning.
It was a little awkward, but for whatever reason, Bucky still didn’t feel weird about any of it. Whatever Vallo was doing, Nyx felt right to him, so he was sticking it out in hopes that his memories came back and he could understand why Nyx felt a piece of his life.
It probably wouldn’t happen that night though. A nightmare - a fun old one full of Soviet torture dungeons - had woken him from sleep and he headed to the kitchen, after cleaning up the mess he had made of his bedside table lamp. He was going to grab a beer and park it in front of the television to binge Netflix, before seeing that he wasn’t the only one up.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Vallo had been interesting to say the least. But it was nice at the same time. Even with the weirdness of not remembering the life he'd once built for himself here. A really good one from the looks of it. One that still somehow felt right, even if not knowing how it all came to be still left him a little unsettled.
All in all though there were worse things to keep him up at night than being handed a really nice house, a handsome man who he'd apparently married and one hell of a kid that he instantly loved more than anything. So while it all weighed on him, mostly in the way he couldn't help but feel like he'd let people down by missing so many things, it wasn't that which had him awake that night.
No, he had plenty else with the years of fighting, his own death. The latter of which he was lost in when he heard Bucky walk into the kitchen.
He snapped off the cap on the beer in his hand and offered it to Bucky.
"Looks like I'm not the only one," he pointed out and opened the fridge to grab another drink. "I - uh - don't usually sleep that much anyways," he added after a moment as he leaned back against the counter.
Taking the beer with a slight nod of his head, Bucky watched as the other man got one for himself before offering his bottle back to toast to their mutual sleeplessness. Nyx looked rough, probably mirroring Bucky’s own tired eyes, but it wasn’t as harsh as it could be under the soft yellow lights of the hallway lights that were bathing the kitchen right then. Bucky could easily imagine their other life right then, probably comforting each other after nightmares like he and Steve used to back in Blackpoint.
The memories of Steve, however, didn’t bring the usual pain of loss that he had gotten used to feeling. And that was curious, but he pushed it aside for now to focus on the husband in front of him.
“The same. I’m lucky that I only need a few hours to function like a normal person, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.” Bucky smiled, half and a little pained, as he added, “What a pair we make, huh?” He wondered if this was one of the reasons why he had connected enough with this near-stranger with the stupidly pretty eyes to marry him.
Nyx's thoughts couldn't help but wander to the proverbial elephant in the house in the shape of a currently unused master bedroom. He couldn't say he'd shared his space a lot in his life, his apartment in Insomnia not really the kind of place to have guests overnight, and he hardly stayed when he ended up in someone else's bed. He didn't quite have the frame of reference for that sort of intimacy but he thought about it now. The comfort that could be found in it on nights like these.
Among other things, which brought a bit of a playful smirk to his face despite the tired eyes. "I'm sure we found ways to make it less annoying," he said lightly, slipping into the default of make a dumb flirty comment.
He took a quick drink and then let out a breath. "I think I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I got enough for a normal person," he started, a small teasing smile at normal person, but it was a little more serious than the earlier comment. "Missions didn't really give much downtime, maybe catch an hour or two in transport. Off mission could never really settle, you know? Hard to get out of that mindset, or you'd get called back just as you did." He took another drink. "This might be the longest I've gone without fighting something since I was a kid," a pause. "At least if we're not counting the decade I was dead."
The temptation to lean into the flirting was always present, but it felt…disingenuous. This was a man that he agreed to spend the rest of his life with and dropping a line about how they could be spending their time instead felt cheap. That wasn't to say he was curious about that aspect of their life but hell, he hadn't even taken this man out on a date yet. It felt too much like they had skipped steps to get to the good stuff already.
But he was distracted from guilty thoughts of what Nyx might look like naked by that last loaded comment. “Is that what's keeping you up? The time you spent being dead?”
"Among other things," he answered. His gaze lifted to Bucky and he shrugged. "One thing leads into the other and then you're just lost in a bunch of shit ass memories you'd rather not have," a pause. "Seems like the kind of thing you'd get."
It hadn't been hard to pick up that Bucky had stuff in his past. It was the sort of thing Nyx would never wish on anyone, to have the kind of life that left you more than a little messed up, sleepless and feeling sometimes like a barely put together person - but it made sense to him that he'd gravitated towards it. Marriage was one of those things he'd never really saw for himself, marriage with someone who wouldn't get it, that would have never happened.
"What's keeping you up tonight?"
“Pick a trauma, I probably lived it and dreamt about it tonight,” Bucky said, smiling grimly and downing half his beer in one go. Leaning his hip against the kitchen island, he fiddled with the label of the bottle, trying to avoid looking at Nyx right away. “There was this chair that they used, to zap away all the thoughts and personality quirks that they didn’t want in their pet assassin. It’s not a new nightmare, but what was new was who was in the chair.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to figure out how this man had become so important to him. So much that he was in his dreams.
Or, specifically, this nightmare..
“You were in it and that didn’t feel so great.”
Nyx was quiet, patient as Bucky worked out what he wanted to say, not wanting to rush him in the least. He knew how hard it could be sometimes, to hash stuff out. To admit to the dark thoughts that ran through your head. And when Bucky did speak, his own heart sank a little at it, at how much he himself knew that hurt. To see those in your life being hurt, or worse, in your dreams.
He set his bottle down on the counter and cleared the few steps to the island to lean against it beside Bucky, shoulders touching lightly. "I'm sorry," he said. Not pity, camaraderie. Understanding.
He nudged his shoulder against Bucky's a little and settled his gaze out the kitchen window in front of them. "When the Empire invaded, my sister was killed. I would see it over and over - all the time. Awake, asleep… especially asleep." He paused. "For a long time it was her, now it's… my friends, my brother, our friends…. Lucy… You," he looked back to Bucky at that. "It doesn't feel so great," he echoed Bucky's words.
It was easy enough to see the pain in the other man's eyes. Life hadn't been kind to either one of them and it was the most fucked up way to have shared life experiences. Trauma bonding. How terrible.
But it made him appreciate Nyx more because he didn't shy away from it. Didn't hide his own demons and that, in turn, allowed Bucky to show more of himself.
And it was high time that Bucky gave a little bit more to this man that felt like home, even if he couldn't completely understand why. He reached out with his flesh and bone hand, holding Nyx's. “You should probably start calling me Bucky if you're going to be dreaming of me.”
Nyx gave Bucky's hand a little squeeze, leaning a little against the other's arm. "That mean you're not worried I'm going to stab you anymore?" he asked lightly, a teasing tone to the words. "I'll try to at least make them better dreams then, Bucky."
He turned into Bucky more, his arm sliding lightly around Bucky's waist. His hand in Bucky's was nice, but he found himself wanting more. Knowing almost instinctively the comfort that would come from the closeness. Wanting that comfort - not even because of a shared history neither of them really had a handle on, but just simply because of that moment.
His forehead dropped to Bucky's shoulder and he just took a moment to stand there in the quiet. It was easy, for that moment, to let that idea of who they had been slip away and just let himself fall into who they were right then and there. The feelings that crept in of their own accord.
Nyx knew it would be all to easy to give it to far more than this, and knew that wasn't where Bucky was at. So after a moment he spoke quietly. "Want to find something dumb to watch and I'll go check on Lucy?" he offered. He didn't quite feel like going back to an empty bed just yet.
“I’d heal even if you did,” Bucky said lightly, though there was a lot more meaning beyond what he was actually saying. At some point, he would have to start blindly trusting someone and if this felt right? Well, then it felt right. That feeling made it all too easy to wrap his other arm around Nyx, pulling him more fully into a hug that just felt good. It was intimacy in a way that he hadn’t known in a long time, at least in his memories, but felt perfect in that moment.
“Or maybe we can try to go to bed again? Together?” Nothing more than sleep, but he felt like Nyx understood enough about where his head was at, in that moment. Even if they didn’t sleep, he didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t want to watch something on the television either. Something told him that the ones that remembered Vallo had laid in bed together, just talking, before.
It was, really, what he had wanted all along, and he knew that as soon as Bucky put the suggestion out. His arm around Bucky tightened a little, and there was the faintest brush of his lips against Bucky's neck, a ghost of a kiss really. Something that could have even just been passed off as happenstance as he pulled back.
"That sounds real good," he said as he put some space back between them, not dropping Bucky's hand though. "You got full permission to kick me if I start to snore," he added, a little lighter as they headed back into the hall.