Bucky Barnes One Shots

6. Monster

Setting: a year after TWS

{ Note: trust me, I know everyone does Bucky + nightmare one shots, but honestly, I don't mind reading/writing them, even if it is an overused plot. }

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You'd been introduced to The Winter Soldier when he was still, well, The Winter Soldier. It was only after a few weeks that he became Bucky to you. He was a strong man and not just physically; he'd managed to overcome Hydra's compulsion—with your help, of course. That was what had brought the two of you together.

You'd been his girl for seven months now, the only thing he truly took pride in.

"Look at my girl," he'd spin you around, the biggest smile you ever did see on his face. "She's perfect."
Of course, he did this with the watchful eyes of the Avengers on you. He just loved showing you off.

Despite how happy you and Bucky were together, things didn't always run smoothly. Bucky had nightmares—bad ones. They were a normal thing; even normal people got nightmares. However, normal people tended to have scary dreams where monsters would attack them, but Bucky was not normal. He was trying to be, but the truth was, he would never be normal. Buck had nightmares in which he was the monster.

You often stayed the night at Bucky's and Steve's shared apartment just so you could shake the sleeping man from his night terrors. Before you started staying overnight, you'd enter the apartment any given morning and find everything neat and in place—that is until you pushed the door open to Bucky's room. He somehow managed to kick his comforter off of the bed along with every single one of his pillows. Sometimes, books from his bookshelf would be strewn about the room, the covers bent and ripped and pages removed.

Since you'd started spending the night, (not in his bed, are you kidding me? You aren't married; Steve would die of a heart attack if he knew) Bucky had been able to calm down after waking from his night terrors. You would always do the same thing: sit by him on the bed, stroke his hair until he started to calm down, then let him rest his head on your chest until he fell asleep again to the soothing sound of your heart beat.

This routine worked well...for a while. However, one night, after you'd borrowed a blanket and pillow from Steve's room, (obviously Bucky's a blanket/pillow hoarder, be realistic, the guy probably didn't sleep in a real bed while at Hydra, can you blame him??) you curled yourself up on the love seat in the corner of Bucky's room. You'd fallen asleep rather quickly due to the silence and also just the comfort of being in the same room with Bucky.

It was well past three in the morning when you woke up to the sound of Bucky mumbling things in Russian. You couldn't understand anything he was muttering but when you got up from the love seat and rushed over to his bed, you could see sweat beading on his forehead and it looked like he was struggling to breath.