Little Secrets, Little Bucky

Forever And A Day

"Baby, you need to rest," Y/n tried to reason with her baby. "And so do your uncles and I." They had been trying to persuade Bucky to sleep for over two hours at this point; it was well after 11:00 and everyone was exhausted. Bucky's caregivers had tried everything to get him to sleep, from warm bottles of milk to moving the mattress from Sam and Steve's room to the one that Bucky was sharing with his mama. However he remained insistent on staying awake, jolting himself every time his eyes began to slip closed.

"No," he said stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest from his spot on the bed. "Not tired."

"Buck, you're exhausted," Steve tried to explain. "You can barely keep yourself upright." Bucky shook his head defiantly, even as he almost tipped into the pillows.

"We'll still be here in the morning," Sam attempted to reassure Bucky. "And you'll be in the same room as us all night."

"No!" Bucky said, beginning to get upset by how hard they were trying to get him to give in. He knew that he wouldn't be able to fall asleep.

Y/n furrowed her eyebrows as she saw how worked up Bucky was getting. She took a closer look at his body language and realized that he was tensing up his muscles. She mentally chastised herself for not understanding sooner that pushing him to go to sleep would only make it harder. The pressure to fall asleep after such a stressful day was working him up and being overtired was a well known reason that babies struggled to sleep. "Alright, baby boy," she conceded in a soft voice. "You don't have to sleep, but we're still gonna rest for a while, okay?"

Bucky nodded his head, as long as his mama stayed with him he'd have agreed to just about anything. Y/n walked over to her brother and Sam, beckoning them to lean in. Bucky didn't like this one bit. His mama and his uncles must've been conspiring to do something, something that he wasn't supposed to know about. He whined in protest, kicking his leg out on the bed when he didn't receive a response. His mama and uncles all nodded to each other and Bucky whined again, reaching for his mama this time.

She picked him up immediately, knowing how important it was that she responded to his need to be held and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "It's okay," she cooed. "How about we go and get you all cozy?"

Bucky nodded yet again and she cuddled him close for a moment before taking him to the bathroom to get a new pull-up for bedtime. She changed him as quickly as she could, knowing that Bucky didn't want to be away from his uncles for too long, and her baby was incredibly grateful for it. Once she had set him down on the bed she handed him his comfort items and Steve shut off the light while Sam began reading a story from his phone.

While his mama held him close, Bucky could feel his eyes starting to droop. The room was dark and his mama was just so warm, he couldn't help but try and get even closer. He couldn't find the energy to pull away as the day's events finally caught up to him and he let out a little whimper at the realization that he was most likely going to fall asleep whether he wanted to or not. His mama just pressed a kiss to his forehead and he heard Steve gently shush him as Sam continued reading in a steady voice. By the time the story was over, Bucky was half asleep in his mama's arms and he felt her carefully laying him down on the mattress. He whined in protest and she shushed him, smoothing his tousled hair down.

"Mama stay," he mumbled sleepily, hanging on to her shirt as tight as he could in his half asleep state.

"I know sweetheart," she whispered, laying down right beside him, "I'll be with you all night."

He vaguely nodded his head, comforted by the way that his mama held him close, and before long he was sound asleep.

Y/n was woken up a few hours later by her bladder, and carefully extracted herself from the bed. She stepped around her brother's mattress on the floor and didn't want to wake anyone else, so she ignored the bathroom in her bedroom and went into the hall bathroom instead, using the light of her phone instead of the main light.