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The grief was overwhelming, so intense it almost felt alive, like it was wrapping him in its clutches and squeezing all the air from his chest.
He thought he knew what it was like to lose people, thought that the pain upon coming out of the ice, of finding out almost everyone he had known and loved were gone forever and he alone was stuck in a world he didn’t understand, he thought that was the worst it could ever possibly be, the most pain he could ever feel.
But he was wrong, because this … this was so much. This was unbearable.
To lose so many people he loved and to lose them all at once — Bucky for the second time and then Sam and Wanda and Vision, not to mention the others he didn’t know as well but still cared about, like T’Challa and Shuri — he didn’t know how to deal with that. And on top of the guilt of surviving, on top of the grief of watching them disappear from existence, some right in front of his eyes, he also had to bear the weight of the knowledge that they had failed, that this time they hadn’t saved the world, that they hadn’t saved their friends, their loved ones, their colleagues. It was too much. It was all just too, too much.
That night, when he couldn’t take it anymore, when he couldn’t look out on the battlefield without seeing people dying before his eyes, when he couldn’t bear the pain on the faces of those who still remained, all of them looking like pale ghosts of who they had been just hours before, he mumbled an excuse that no one probably heard and disappeared down the hall. He found himself in the room T’Challa had given him to stay in before Thanos had arrived, looking just as he had left it — dirty clothes on the bed, a towel hung over a chair.
He locked the door behind him and sat on the bed, resting his head in his hands, and just trying to breathe through the pain that encompassed his whole being.
The knock came just after midnight, a series of raps that was quick but steady, and he knew who it was without even having to ask.
He let her in, his only solace, the one person left who could make this just a little bit easier.
They didn’t say a word, just laid down together on the bed, her curled up against his side, the fingers of her left hand clutching at the old t-shirt he was wearing, the touch of her body against him comforting, reminding him he wasn’t alone, that he still had her, reminding him that not everything was lost.
He turned his head after a while, to look into her eyes. She was always so good at hiding pain, at hiding fear, but even she couldn’t hide it this time. She stared back at him, so open, so vulnerable.
He dipped his head and found her lips. He hadn’t meant to, but he knew he needed to — he needed to kiss her or he needed to cry, there was no middle ground. The grief was finally about to spill over — he could feel it — and he knew once it did, it was going to swallow him up, and if he let it swallow him up, if he let it stop him from fighting, there was going to be no coming back, no moving on. So he found her lips and he kissed her, rougher than he normally did, and she wrapped her arms and legs around him, her fingernails digging through his shirt and into his skin as their lips moved together.
He pulled back after a while, helping her tug her clothes off, needing to feel the warmth of her skin against his and the beat of her heart under his palm and the sounds of her cries as his tongue and his fingers explored her.
Somewhere, after she came the first time but before the second time, her cries of pleasure turned into actual cries, and when he slipped inside her and she nestled against him, they both were sobbing. They moved together, their tears mingling as their lips met over and over, and they clung to each other as they each climaxed, staying there long after, as their bodies shook from grief and pleasure mixed as one.
They stayed wrapped around each other throughout the rest of the night. In the past, she had always slipped out of bed before the morning light, retreated back to her own room or her own bed, but this time was different. Everything had changed. They had changed.
He didn’t sleep much that night. Maybe not at all. She didn’t either. But having her there, next to him, in his arms, it felt like a little edge of the grief surrounding him had softened. And he felt something — just a pinprick, a notion — that maybe felt a little like hope.
In the morning, after the sun had risen, they came together again, slower and more gentle this time, and he kissed her silent tears when she started to cry and interlocked their fingers as he thrust inside her, and she smiled up at him and asked, in a voice so low that he could barely hear her, despite his super hearing, if they were going to be okay.
And he found himself murmuring back, whispering into her ear that they were still here, that they were going to be okay, that they were going to fix this, that they were going to make this right, whatever it took, they were going to make this right.
And she nodded and repeated his words back to him, her voice almost confident despite the tears, as though he couldn’t be wrong, as though he couldn’t be anything but truthful with her.
And when she said it, he believed her, because she made him want to and because he had to, because there was no other option, and because, most of all, she was a reminder, a reminder that not all was lost and even in the middle of tragedy, there was always something to cling to.