July, 2015.

Krakow, Poland.

The pair of us went through periods of horrible insomnia. It was a combination of military training, weird schedules, and the ever-present need to be vigilant. The notable lack of air conditioning probably had something to do with it too. When the sleeplessness kicked in at full strength and we both got a little drunk with exhaustion, Bucky and I would lay in bed and whisper back and forth. We'd talk about meaningless things, like the color of the wallpaper in our apartment or the brand of laundry detergent we 'borrowed' in the communal laundry room in the basement. Other times, we would wax philosophically until the sun rose. Then one of us, usually Bucky, would get out of bed and start a pot of coffee. We'd let the cycle continue, sleepless nights and caffeinated mornings, until exhaustion would strike and we'd finally succumb to sleep.

~

Tonight, though, our joint insomnia had us wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

"What did you want to be when you grew up? You know, when you were a kid," I asked.

"What?" Bucky replied. He didn't look at me; we never really looked at each other during these conversations. We always looked at the ceiling.

"When you were a kid. What did you want to do for a living when you were a kid?" I repeated. I listened as Buck took a deep breath.

"I wanted to be like my father when I was really young," he said. "After he came home from the war but before I was old enough to realize how it had affected him. Then I don't really remember. What about you?"

The quick shift from talking about himself to talking about me was expected. There were still negligible gaps in his memory, and they were sore spots sometimes.

"Well, when I was really young, I wanted to be a veterinarian," I answered readily. "My parents gave me this set of toy doctor's equipment, and I'd line up all my stuffed animals for check-ups. They all had names and birthdays, and sometimes I'd get my mom to help me write little medical records for all of them."

"Your ma sounds like a good one," Bucky chuckled.

"She was," I confirmed. "One year I convinced her to put me in ballet lessons. I was in second grade. After one class I decided I wanted to be ballerina."

"How long did that last?" Bucky asked.

"About a year. Then Dad got stationed somewhere else, and I never got back into ballet lessons," I told him.

"I remember moving around. Indiana, Texas, California, Oregon. Finally New York," Bucky listed off. "Not the city though. We didn't move there until after Dad died. Ma's family was from the city."

"Hard to be a kid like that, isn't it?"

Bucky hummed some sort of reply, sounding just a little sleepy. I rolled onto my side and watched his eyelids flutter open and shut. I was surprised when he turned his head to face me, but I didn't move. A streetlight, shining through an uncovered window, barely illuminated his face with yellowy-orange light. It made his eyes a hundred different shades of brown.

"What else did you want to be? After a ballerina?" he asked.

"Go to sleep, Buck. I can tell you're tired. You're starting to sound drunk," I whispered. I reached out and pushed his hair out of his face, but he rolled to mirror my position in the bed and it fell right back over his eyes.

"I can tell you're tired too," he said. "You're being affectionate."

I stuck my tongue out at him, as if that would prove anything, and he grinned at me with a sleepy, half-drunk look on his face. I laid my hand in the space between our bodies, giving Bucky an opportunity to return the affection.

"Since you asked, I wanted to be an architect for a little while," I continued. "Then I realized there was a lot of math and physics involved. Then I wanted to be a teacher or a professor. I wanted to teach history."

"Guess you sort of did that," Buck mumbled.

"Yeah, I guess so. Working at the Smithsonian was pretty close to teaching history," I said.

"When you realize you wanted to become a medic?"

I huffed out a laugh. "When my recruiter showed me a list of jobs I qualified for and told me to pick one."

Bucky let his hand slide down to mine, and he turned my hand over so it was palm up. His fingers were warm and somewhere between soft and calloused. Sort of like mine. My mother would have called them gentlemanly hands.

"Did it make you happy?" he finally asked. "Being a medic."

"Did being a sniper make you happy?" I replied quickly. I curled my fingers into his and gave his hand a squeeze. "It was a job, you know. It might not have been exactly what I signed up for, but it was what I did. It's even come in handy a few times since I left the army."

Bucky closed his eyes, and I thought he had gone to sleep for a minute. He started to pull my hand towards his body at the same time as he scooted closer.

"Do you mind?" he questioned. His words trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished, but I knew what he was asking. I met him in the middle of the bed, turning onto my other side so that he could spoon me. Our hands came unclasped from one another, but it didn't matter. He wrapped his arm around my middle and made sure I was flush against him. "Gail, are you happy?"

I took a deep breath and contemplated pretending to be asleep. But Buck had always been able to tell when I was awake, so I nixed that idea.

"I don't think I've been able to answer that question since I was a teenager. Maybe even before then," I mused. "Should probably be on meds for it. For depression, but I never filled the prescriptions when I got them."

"I didn't know," Bucky said.

"I didn't either. It took crying in a SHIELD doctor's office because I couldn't sleep to realize that it wasn't just insomnia." I pushed myself further into Bucky's personal space, enjoying the warmth of him around me even though our apartment was already a little too warm to be comfortable. "It comes and goes. There are times when I've been genuinely happy. When I want to keep smiling until my cheeks are sore."

"When was the last time?" Bucky asked.

"I bet you'd love for me to say it was when you kissed me," I teased, elbowing him playfully.

"First of all, you kissed me," he corrected, and he began to laugh. "Second, I don't know where to go after that."

"I'm content. How about that?" I offered up. "Maybe I'm not smiling from ear to ear every day, but I like the company I keep. That counts for something."

"Considering how much time we spend together, it might count for quite a bit," he joked.

"Okay, yeah, it's time for you to go to sleep. You've surpassed drunk, and now you're getting giggly."

As if replying to me, I felt Bucky press his forehead into my hair and start to laugh again.

*

Author's Note:

Hi. I realize I've been away from Wattpad for quite some time, but I have tried to keep up with any comments or votes I received to this story or my other works.

Fun fact about yours truly, the author: I just graduated from university this past week. The last semester of my degree program is notorious for being insanely demanding at first and then being devoid of any actual school work the last month or so. Could I have written during that time? Yes. Instead, I slept and worked on decor for my apartment and found a dozen new series to watch on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (if you need recommendations, drop a comment).

Now, over the next month I will be getting ready to start my new job and move out of my mother's house and be a fully-fledged adult. Unfortunately, I'll be working night shifts once I start my job. I'm really going to try and buckle down and finish this story in the meantime. I'd at least like to make a dent in it.

Fun fact about the story: with Avengers: Endgame having been released, I do plan on furthering this story. I won't spoil anything for anyone by explaining that any more. If you've seen the movie and would like for me to clarify what I mean, feel free to send me a direct message.

Until the next chapter...thank you all for sticking around and being so loyal and reading this! If you made it through my novel of an author's note too, I'd also like to thank you for ignoring my multitude of run-on sentences. As a post on Tumblr once read, "It takes a lot of brain to make words go." And I've usually run out of brain by the time I get to my author's notes.

Anyway, thanks again and I hope you all enjoy!