in the midnight hour I can feel your power

[notreadytocomply]

(Prompt: 02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.)

---

If Bucky were being honest with himself, the reason he's still awake would be the memories come to gather at the window of his mind in dark, foggy silhouettes against a backdrop of screams. Luckily he's lying to himself and blaming his rumbling stomach -- which is true, but not the real reason for the season.

Sleeping never comes easily for him when not induced behind glass sparkling with cryogenic mist, and tonight is no exception.

So Bucky shuffles off to the kitchen at 2:14 a.m. in pursuit of a midnight snack. The shitty apartment is eerily quiet, no sirens in the distance for once. For a moment it feels too out of place, as if Bucky were looking at the scene from afar--

But then he comes back to himself just as his hip bumps the handle of a pan sitting on the edge of the sink -- of all places, why couldn't the culprit (Bucky) just put it two inches farther into the sink? -- and

CLANG!

Bucky sets his jaw, ready for the inevitable oncoming reaction waiting to burst through the door in a flurry of fifteen-year-old spunk.

Comments

[witchplz]

"Like creepy voyeurs?" One rather unladylike snort later, she lightly pats his cheek, er, cheekily.

"I think...if there's something you can do to help, to help people when these bastards inevitably try to rise up from the trash, it could help you, too. But! But..." And she's slow, patient, makes sure she catches his gaze.

"Don't spend your entire life on revenge. Living is so much better. And yes, this is still a thing you call life."

[notreadytocomply]

"I don't want revenge," his voice is soft, eyes focused on something else entirely, something only he can see. "It's all I've done for seventy years, and not even my own. I'm tired."

Things he wrestled with, things that like tonight, kept him awake -- she makes so much sense in her approach to it. Even if she's young, she certainly isn't naive.

"But what about when I go back? When my brain takes me back? Is that really living?"

[witchplz]

"Go back? There is no going back. Even after that, those little hiccups, that's still progress. You're going forward, into the future."

Rahzel brightens; her entire frame seems to brighten like the sun, to hear that. She's so relieved: revenge is idiocy. It's pointless.

"You'll find your own way of living. Time is the only thing that's certain, really."

[notreadytocomply]

The future...right. A future that will somehow involve Steve Rogers, if their meetings so far have been any indication. Either way it's a future in which Bucky knows no one.

Except the little fireball beside him.

"Brownies are what make the future worth it." He smiles down at her, blue eyes meeting blue, and for a second he sees--

But he swallows and clears his throat and the moment's gone.

"So have I been good enough to get one yet? Or are you just gonna keep being a brownie tease?"

[witchplz]

He's changing the subject, he's pulling away from her, and Rahzel isn't sure, for a moment, if she should allow this-- if she should let him move on...so she grips the hem of his shirt in her hands and turns to press her forehead into his shoulder. Quietly, quietly, sighs.

"Brownies make everything better. Everything!"

If he can still smile like that then maybe everything really will fall into place. Smiling right back, she fetches that brownie, finally, and presents it to him.

"Here-- might be ice cold, though."

[notreadytocomply]

His eyes fall shut at the contact, the simple gesture that shouldn't have undid him as much as it did. Letting himself get too close to opening up about things she shouldn't have to hear about could quickly go south.

"I'm sure your annoyance at me made 'em extra good," he flashes a grin, an actual unconscious reaction, before he bites in.

"Oh shit. Alright, kid. Touché, the boxed brownies are a hit."

(If he doesn't think too hard, he can see something lingering on the periphery of his mind, a favorite sister offering him chocolate batter on a spoon. But the second he tries to focus on it, it's gone.)

[witchplz]

A laugh bubbles out of Rahzel, happy and pure. She loves to see the things she makes enjoyed by others, she likes seeing this man with that frown turned upsidedown.

So she, too, takes a brownie and digs in. Its like heaven, even when cooled.

"Ahhh, these are awesome~ Rahzel-sama did it again!"

[notreadytocomply]

He laughs, a real belly laugh, at her pride. He's gotta admit they're the best brownies he can remember tasting. But he knows even it won't put him to sleep -- not unless she put crushed up sleeping pills in -- but it's nice to feel some form of comfort.

"You've got some tricks, I gotta admit."

A pause, then:

"Got any that'll block out dreams?"

[witchplz]

That laughter is even more of a relief. If he can laugh, he can live. He can move on, even when he gets boggled down by the chains of his mysterious past.

Rahzel quickly finishes off her first brownie and goes for a second.

"I've got the perfect remedy! Infomercials. Get ready to be a couch potato, buster."

[notreadytocomply]

"God, no, do we have to?"

But this time he doesn't protest as he follows her. He just grabs the entire pan of the remaining brownies with his left hand because what is patience. But when they're this good...

"I can only take so much Billy Mays."

[witchplz]

"Heeeheee~ Yes, we absolutely have to! Especially if you're going to get all belly-achey about it."

Rahzel grabs his other hand and starts to drag him to their drab living room.

"But he can help!"

[notreadytocomply]

He rolls his eyes, oh so inconvenienced by Rahzel, and plops down onto the shitty, sagging couch. In his one of seven sins, greed, or gluttony or whatever, he grabs a second brownie as he props his feet up on the table.

"He can help by not being on my tv."

He casts her a sidelong look, nudges her shoulder.

"But I've already had a little help of my own."

[witchplz]

"Too bad-- he's here to help everyone get those pesky stains out, without any scrubbing!" She motions as if scrubbing a particularly stained shirt, hint hint, your laundry is just as gross, Mr. Barnes.

But when he nudges her, Rahzel nudges him right back, gently, and grabs the remote.

"It's what friends are for and all that."

Her heart feels warm.