Archive of Our Own

Given the way Bob’s life has been going for years now, it’s not surprising that it all starts with a blowjob.

Him and Walker haven’t put a name on what they’re doing. Some days it bothers Bob. Most days it doesn’t. His last serious relationship was—well, his memory’s fuzzy, but it was definitely before the summer with the chicken sign. The details of it are hard to parse. Everything’s fragmented. He was an addict then too, so it’s not like it’s surprising. Everything always ends up fragmented with him. Shattered mirror shards in his mind. 

So he can’t be too mad at Walker most days. He’s not fit for a relationship. To be honest, he’s lucky he’s fit for human company at all, because even that wasn’t true for a long time. But then Walker got divorced, served papers, not doing the serving, kind of funny when you think about it, so they’re in the same boat.

(Yelena likes to point out that each and every one of them is a loser, so in her eyes they’re probably all in the same boat.)

Bob will take what he can get. No, people keep telling him to think positively, so fine. Bob likes what he can get. Bob likes late nights with Walker, likes the feel of Walker’s hands in his hair, the sound of Walker’s low grunts and moans, the warm weight of Walker’s cock in his mouth. He likes his world narrowed down to a point. He likes everything weighing on him in the pleasant way like a blanket—sleep-heaviness without having to fall asleep.

Everything is fragmented and in flux and what Bob wants from Walker changes night to night to night, but on nights like these he wants his mind to be quiet, wants nothing but feeling. Walker can give him that.

“Shit,” swears Walker, tightening his grip pleasantly in Bob’s hair. “There you go… Little deeper. C’mon…”

Bob hums in assent and shifts in closer so his nose is practically buried in the thatch of blond hair between Walker’s legs. All curly and musky. The extra pressure against the back of his throat is worth the grounding sensation of Walker all around him, his senses of taste and smell and feel all overwhelmed with him.

Walker’s proud: “Good man.”

Bob Reynolds, good man. Bob Reynolds is warm all over. 

He feels like he should say something to get out the feelings that brings up in him, but his mouth is still full of dick, so he just kind of says, “Mmnmm,” but the vibrations must feel good as they tend to do so Walker’s flexing the muscles in his thighs and cursing again anyway. 

“Ugh, fuck,” Walker says, and it sounds like it’s through gritted teeth, “take it, fuckin’ take it, Bobby—”

Something about the words makes him shudder; he flattens his tongue against the vein on the underside of Walker’s cock, just how he likes it. But Walker’s strangely quiet in response. The odd reaction dulls some of the pleasant buzzing in Bob’s mind, and then he notices Walker’s hands have gone lax in his hair, his thighs lax next to Bob’s face. A hot flash of irritation from the sudden change rises in him, mixed with a distant worry why, and Bob pulls off of Walker’s cock to get some distance from it all. He starts, “What…”

Walker stares down at him. 

Bob blinks the tears from his eyes, but it doesn’t help him parse the look on Walker’s face. His eyes are wide and his mouth’s slightly ajar, but he doesn’t look shocked, exactly—maybe—it’s a look he shouldn’t really be wearing during sex.

“Uh, Walker?” probes Bob, resting a hand on his thigh. “Are you…”

Walker snaps to attention. “Yeah,” he says quickly, still looking at Bob funny. He clears his throat. “Yeah, just…”

His fingers flex their loose hold on Bob’s hair.

Bob stares back at him. He’s not sure what did it except for the fact that Walker’s looking at him like he did it, and he doesn’t think he’s done much of anything out of the ordinary. The hand on Walker’s thigh tenses. He feels apart from it. “What?” he says again, nervous.

“Nothing. I thought you were—just, nevermind. You’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” Bob agrees, blinking slowly, now not sure why Walker thought otherwise. But he doesn’t want to boil in unease anymore, not today. Maybe tomorrow. He wants what Walker can give him, wants all that warmth and heaviness, so he sets his other hand on Walker’s other thigh. “Can I—Walker—I want—”

Walker’s fingers tighten in his hair, which is answer enough for Bob to start leaning forwards. But still Walker says, “Yeah, fuck, Bob, of course,” and when Bob takes him back into his mouth, everything is quiet and hot and pleasant all over again. Walker comes down Bob’s throat with Bob’s fingernails digging crescents into his muscled thighs, and it’s good, so good that Bob forgets the intrusion.

Bob never forgets things forever. Even his worst episodes always snake their way back to him, no matter how long it takes—sometimes they even creep up in his dreams, half-truth and half-fiction, and he’s lucky if he can tell what’s which.

The thing with Walker isn’t so difficult. It comes back to him in the middle of the night after he’s slunk back to his own bed. He has a hand down his pants because he’s feeling at once too exhausted for more sex and too keyed up to sleep, and he’s thinking about if he should just force himself out of bed and back down to Walker’s room anyway. He thinks first that he probably can’t make himself get up because he feels heavy in an unpleasant way now, and then thinks that Walker might not even like to see him, and he frowns up at the ceiling.

He doesn’t like the way Walker was looking at him. Maybe he’d be less upset if he knew what about him was so pathetic that it made Walker think he was freaking out. 

Bob rubs his fingers and thumb together with his free hand. 

He hates upsetting any of them. It’s life, he knows, but they’re special to him. No one’s ever defended him like they have. Just a few days ago Valentina stopped by to press him on becoming the Sentry full-time, her voice dripping with honey, too sweet to bear: “I just don’t get the holdup. Don’t you want to save people? I mean, you have the power to help your friends, Robert!”

Bob’s eye twitched. Always the hero, huh, Robert? his father hissed in his mind, so he said, “I’m not…”

“Valentinaaa, what have I told you?” said Yelena through a smile that bared her teeth. “The deal is that we be your Avengers and you leave him alone.”

And Bucky said, with the dark look he always got around Valentina, “He’ll only be the Sentry if he wants to be the Sentry.”

And Walker said, irritably, “And you know his name is Bob.”

Bob thinks, oh. 

Sometimes when they step in to defend him, he feels ashamed that they need to instead of grateful like he knows he should be. Right now, he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. 

Walker hasn’t been so bad as he was when they first met in a long time. Bob kind of—

No, he’s keyed up. He’s all over the place. He can’t really trust his feelings right now. He pushes everything as far away as he can and shoves his hand back down his pants, thinking of Walker, of Walker’s low voice saying, Just like that. Ah, fuck, good man. Shit… Bob… Bobby…

After he moved to the Watchtower, Bob started setting alarms for 6:30. It was optimistic of him—it was and is a rare day that he gets to sleep by ten and stays that way the whole night—but he thought it’d give him some sense of order. 

Which it has. The sound of an alarm means he’s not in a lab or on the streets or in his father’s house. And waking up then means he gets to make a warm breakfast for the earliest risers (Walker, Bucky, Ava on her bad days) which he can put in the fridge for the later ones (Ava on her good days, Yelena, Alexei). It’s a useful thing that makes up for his so-difficult-to-control-they-might-as-well-be-useless powers, when he’s able to do it. 

Of course there are days when Bob can’t even drag himself out of bed, no matter what time. But on those days there will always be something like Alexei proudly bringing him a bowl of Wheaties and the New Avengers-themed box. And on those days, the alarm will always go off. So nothing’s as bad as it was.

Today isn’t one of those days. Bob’s still abuzz from last night when he wakes to the alarm, so he’s in the kitchen before any of the supersoldiers, watching pancakes sizzle and tapping his foot. He didn’t get many chances to cook before all this, so he appreciates it more than he appreciates alarms.

He always sets up four places at the table in case Ava makes it, and the excess food goes into the fridge. 

Bucky makes it just after Bob’s set everything out. “Appreciate it,” he says, patting Bob on the shoulder and taking the seat across from him. 

Walker’s next, dropping into the seat next to Bob. “Morning,” he tells the room at large.

Bucky grunts—kindly, he’s just a little less coherent than Walker in the mornings—and raises his cup of coffee. 

Bob says, “Hi,” and glances askance at Walker while his foot bounces double-time under the table. 

Walker looks bemusedly back at him. 

Ava staggers in next, clear dark circles under her eyes. She opens her mouth, then grimaces, like it’s a Herculean task to even gather the energy to speak.

“Bad today,” mutters Bob, hands twitching because it’s even worse than her usual bad days, and he gets up to press the plate and knife and fork into her hands before she has to take another haggard step.

She gives him a pained smile. Her “Thanks” is short but earnest. Then she’s gone, back to the quiet and comfort of her room. 

Bucky looks after her with a sympathetic wince. Walker frowns. 

Conversation is muted. Walker and Bucky talk a little, but Bucky’s got… something official that Bob probably knew at one point or another and has since forgotten, so he’s eager to scarf down his food and get moving. Really Bob is hardly paying attention, all abuzz and aflutter and alight and those sorts of fucking-stupidly hard to describe things. He focuses up enough to smile and nod when Bucky thanks him and heads off on his own.

Yelena and Alexei won’t be up for hours. Now it’s just him and Walker.

Walker scrolls through his different feeds as he eats, bouncing from app to app, closing and reopening. He lingers on headlines about himself. Brow furrowed.

Bob thinks of when they first met. Walker was a dick. He’s still a dick, but not in that way—if Bob made fun of him for being an asshole Captain America now, he might roll his eyes or scoff back. He wouldn’t choke him out. 

Bob should be glad for that. That he has such good friends.

The headlines aren’t all bad, not even mostly bad, but Bob remembers what he saw in Walker’s Void. He sets his fork on his plate and leans in close, looking over Walker’s shoulder as blatantly as he can.

Walker glances at him and, with some reluctance, shifts in his seat to let Bob look at his phone. “It’s not bad,” he says, like Bob can’t tell. “People have really come around. No thanks to Val, of course.”

“Well, yeah.” Bob smiles hesitantly. He watches Walker scroll down again, then says, “Kind of feels like… ruining your day, right? Looking at all that stuff so early.”

Walker pauses. His thumb hovers over the screen. “...Yeah, probably,” he admits wryly. “I just—can’t help myself.”

“Guess not,” Bob says, and he hooks his chin over Walker’s broad shoulder.

Said shoulder twitches. “Feeling friendly, huh?”

“It’s not like anyone else will be up soon,” Bob replies. 

“Guess not,” echoes Walker.

It’s not like Walker’s wrong, either. Bob’s halfway to the Sentry right now, insides all golden and glowing and warm—not literally. Figuratively. It’s a good place to be, feels nice, but he can’t be the Sentry because of It, so this has to be the furthest he goes, and after last night he wonders if Walker can be the stopper on the bottle.

Knowing he’s being cruel, Bob asks, “Why’d you go all stiff back then?”

Walker’s shoulders go all rigid, but he says, like he’s got no idea what Bob’s talking about, “When?”

Distantly Bob thinks that he’s kind of a terrible liar—nowhere near as good as someone like Bucky or Yelena. It’s reassuring. 

Bob smiles a half-smile and tilts his head. “When you called me Bobby.”

The lack of input has turned Walker’s phone screen black. It mirrors their joined image back at him: Bob and his smile that’s looking more like a smirk, Walker and his squared-off jaw. 

Walker looks at it too, meets Bob’s eyes in the reflection. It takes him some time to put his words together. “You hated it when I called you Bobby,” he says. He breaks the gaze. “Look, I know I’m not exactly—I’m trying to be less of a total dick, OK? It just slipped out, and I—”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, Bob,” says Walker, clipped. 

Bob cocks his head, pressing his cheek against Walker’s shoulder (so tense). “Why’s it not fine?”

“Jesus.”

“Walker—”

The phone hits the table with a clatter. Walker raises a hand to his face, like it’ll block Bob out, and it’s funny enough that Bob’s smile widens. “This doesn’t have to be something,” Walker says through his teeth. 

“You don’t even wanna look at me,” notes Bob, digging his chin into Walker’s shoulder. “Why? 'Cause you’ll look at me like you did last night?”

“...How was I looking at you?”

“Like I was a bomb about to go off.”

That does it. Walker shoves his chair backwards and stands; Bob lets him go. “A bomb?” Walker snaps. “Yeah, thanks a lot, Bob. What, is it so unbelievable that I don’t want to upset you because I care about you, like a normal goddamn person? Is that what you think about me?”

“That’s—” Bob shoots him a nervous glance. That’s not how this was supposed to go. “I didn’t mean—”

“Nevermind,” Walker mutters, starting to stalk off. “Nevermind. Drop it.”

“Walker,” Bob tries. His voice wavers more than he’d like, and Walker’s unsympathetic to it, refusing to look back. Bob tries again, louder: “Wait—John!”

Walker pauses.

“Look, I don’t really… I’m not used to people… looking at me like that enough to recognize it, okay?” Bob gets out, fiddling with his fingers. “I mean I was, I was, I was an addict, and then a lab rat, and people don’t really look at you that way if you’re… you know. I don’t know how to… see it and think…”

A silence falls, first around him then creeping out towards where Walker stands, shadow crawling over city streets. 

“Well,” says Walker, banishing it, “get used to it. You’ll be seeing a whole lot more of it nowadays.”

Bob smiles differently this time. Not that Walker sees it. Then he curses himself, because he had something to say, and maybe the only way to say it is to really say it, even though he hates that sort of thing. “Look,” he says, “um. Listen, listen. Last night, you didn’t—didn’t have to look at me like that because it didn’t bother me.”

The shift of Walker’s back under his compression shirt draws Bob’s eye more than he’d like to admit. He jerks his gaze upward to Walker’s face as Walker finally looks at him over his shoulder. “You don’t have to say that,” Walker tells him lowly.

“I’m not just saying it.”

This gets his attention. Walker turns fully to face him, crossing his arms over his chest. His biceps strain the sleeves. He takes a few halting steps forward, then says, “Bob, we all heard your dad—”

Bob jerks to his feet and his chair skitters away with a loud screech. Walker’s eyes flit to it and back to him.

“Walker,” breathes Bob, taking a step of his own, hands twitching, twitching, clenching into fists. “That was the first time in, in years that someone’s called me that and I haven’t thought about him. I didn’t even notice it at first. I mean, it was just me and you and… and…”

He keeps moving while he talks, unbidden. Walker does too. Suddenly they’re nearly chest-to-chest. Bob pauses, taking a deep breath.

“It was like it was just my name, for once,” he says. Like it wasn’t a brand his father had seared on him—like he was a normal person who could be called Robert or Bob or Bobby and wouldn’t flinch at any of it. Like he’d taken something back for himself. But that’s so much to say, and the idea of saying any of it sends him all abuzz again, liquid lightning in his fingertips. He simplifies it to, “Was nice. That’s all.”

Walker considers him for a long time. Finally, still unsmiling, he cups Bob’s jaw with one hand. “Nice. That’s all, huh?” he murmurs. “Bobby?”

Bob shivers. “Walker…”

He thinks it’s him who pulls Walker in first, but he doesn’t know for sure, doesn’t want to. Walker’s grip is iron-tight on his jaw and his teeth clank against Bob’s, and Bob really doesn’t care about any of it. Ever since the Sentry Project, his pain tolerance has been through the roof. But Walker must know that.

Bob lets Walker shove him against the nearest wall. He thinks about the first time they met again, Walker’s hand on his throat, and he’s all flushed and hot, but Walker’s mouthing down his throat before he can say anything. His beard is pleasantly coarse against Bob’s skin, and he murmurs, “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,” into his neck like a prayer.

Heat rushes through Bob like a flare shot off through the sky. “Shouldn’t,” he gasps out. “Shouldn’t here—”

“Probably not,” Walker agrees, and shoves the hilt of his palm against Bob’s bulge anyway. 

“Fuck—Walker!”

“Bobby,” mimics Walker, and he grins, baring his teeth. “What, change your mind?”

Bob breathes in deeply, trying to beat back the golden haze that’s setting in. “No. No, no. Maybe I just don’t want anyone else to see you like this.”

Walker’s grin changes, his blue eyes darkening. For a second Bob thinks he won’t let up and thinks that he’s fine with that. But Walker slides his hands down to cup the back of Bob’s thighs and hoists him up, pressing their bodies even closer together. And Jesus, it’s like magic, touching him sometimes, so Bob crosses his legs behind Walker’s back without even thinking about it. 

“Good man,” Walker says.

They stagger back to Bob’s room (well really Walker is staggering, so un-soldierlike of him) and barely make it inside the door because they can’t keep their hands off of each other. Walker shuts the door behind them with a loud slam, and briefly Bob is thankful that they all get in bad enough moods that slamming doors isn’t weird around here. Once he would’ve been tormented for making any noise. In his golden haze he manages to brush by the thought without its thorns gouging him.

Walker tosses him on the bed, and he topples onto it, laughing. 

“Lube’s already out, Bobby?” asks Walker, stripping off his shirt. “You know, you’re filthy.”

“I’m still—still loose.” Bob pulls off his own shirt haphazardly, says into the fabric as he does, “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

He gets the shirt off his head and tosses it to the side and Walker is looking at him like he’s a fresh piece of meat. Walker laughs like he does when he’s been challenged, would sound pissed if Bob didn’t know him—if Bob were in a worse mood, honestly—but right now he knows what it is.

Bob throws the shirt aside and lifts himself up to pull off the rest of his clothing. “Couldn’t help it. Too wound up.”

Walker’s belt hits the ground. “Could’ve come back to me,” he says lowly.

“Didn’t wanna bother you…” 

Or something like that.

“More bothered knowing you didn’t want to come.”

Maybe Bob’s laugh trembles a bit. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll, I’ll keep that in mind.”

The bed creaks as Walker moves onto it, and then he’s kissing Bob again and urging him to lay back. Bob lets it happen. Walker is a little more muscular than him from the serum he took, and even with it his skin is dashed with marks and scars. It’s practically golden under the light of the room’s warm lamp. His hands splay out on both sides of Bob’s head; Bob lingers on the shift and flex of his bicep, swallows, then closes his eyes. 

Walker breaks away from him, and then his cock is pressing against Bob’s, thick and heavy and slightly slick with precum. Bob sucks in a sharp, high breath through his teeth, his eyes flying open. 

The pink flush that’s risen on Walker’s face makes him feel so—he doesn’t even know—it’s so strong he almost closes his eyes again to banish it. Instead, he grins. Encouraged, Walker works his hand between the two of them so he can wrap his hand around both of their lengths.

“So hard for me, Bobby,” he notes, clearly making fun. “Jesus. I hardly even touched you.”

Smug bastard.

“Couldn’t help it,” Bob says again, fumbling for the bottle of lube.

“Gonna beg?”

“You’re such an asshole.”

Bob squirts a hefty dollop of lube on their cocks and is impressed by Walker only barely wincing at the cold. He takes it in stride, continuing to jerk both of their cocks off, slicking them up. Bob’s hips twitch upwards into his touch. Mid-kiss, Walker laughs into his mouth. 

“Think that’s enough?” Walker says.

For a moment Bob’s tempted to say that it isn’t—he could get drunk on the feeling of frotting with Walker, on the messy slick-slide of them pressed together, the heat of Walker’s skin. But the alternative is Walker inside of him, which he’s been craving for hours now, so—“Yeah, ‘s fine. C’mon, c’mon.”

He doesn’t particularly care about being prepped anyway. Sentry Project pain tolerance, accelerated healing. The bites Walker had sunk into his throat already feel like they were never there to begin with.

Walker loosens his grip on their cocks and pulls back. He wipes the excess precum and lube on Bob’s thigh, the shimmering mess tangling in his leg hair (“Ah, gross,” Bob says, somehow not turned off), and uses that hand to splay Bob’s thighs open wider. He presses in close, the tip of his cock resting against Bob’s hole, then takes a breath through gritted teeth and sheaths himself fully inside Bob in one thrust.

“Walker!” Bob jolts hard, his legs crossing behind Walker’s back and heels digging into him, desperate for some grounding. “Jesus, Jesus, what’s—” 

The bed groans as Walker leans on the hand he has pressed next to Bob’s head until they’re almost chest-to-chest. “You were talking pretty big,” he says, but the concern in it’s hard to miss. His hips shift and he starts to pull out. “Hey—”

It’s not painful. There are tears in Bob’s eyes, but it’s not painful. Bottoming is always a little overwhelming for him, and right now it’s what he needs, needs desperately, needs like air. More than air.

Bob tightens his legs hard around Walker’s waist, because he could overpower Walker any day if he wanted, if he really truly wanted. It buries Walker back inside of him and presses the lines of their bodies together and the want is so strong it almost swallows Bob up in its golden light.  “No,” he gets out. “No, no no no, you just surprised me. It doesn’t hurt. Feels good, Walker, please.”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got you. …Bobby, this is hot and all, but you have to let me move.”

“Oh,” Bob says in dull surprise. The name feels sweet and sticky as honey. “Yeah, okay.”

He loosens his legs’ hold. 

Walker, as promised, moves. It’s not very slow, but it’s not very fast, either, just a consistent, unrelenting rhythm. Sometimes Bob thinks he fucks like a machine. Maybe a soldier is the better descriptor. Oh, Walker would probably hate if he said that to his face… whatever, whatever. He doesn’t want to be thinking like that anyway—he doesn’t want to be thinking anything.

“I need,” he starts, and closes his eyes and leans up just a tad to catch Walker’s mouth in a sloppy kiss. 

“I’ve got you,” Walker repeats against his mouth. 

Kissing Walker is always a little rough. His beard makes Bob’s skin itch and he likes to bite at Bob’s lip, tiny pinpricks of something that would have been pain if Bob wasn’t what Bob is now. And he really likes to kiss, more than any of the people Bob has slept with in years.

But then Walker was married once. 

Bob doesn’t think about that. He lets the sensations wash over him, sunlight washing over a waking city: the weight and warmth of Walker’s cock moving in and out of Bob, the shift of his back muscles underneath Bob’s hands, the scrape of his beard, the press of his lips and teeth. He lets out little grunts every time he thrusts—sometimes a bit-off swear or a moan. And all Bob feels is him, and all Bob hears is him, and all Bob thinks should be him.

Should be. It works a lot of the time. But the buzzing under Bob’s skin and in between his ears just won’t go away.

He opens his eyes. His kisses slow to a stop, so Walker opens his, too. Walker still fucks him in his unrelenting, steady fashion. His brows furrow slightly. 

They’re so close together. God, Walker looks intense like that. There’s something Bob is thinking of that could make all that noise go away, if he knew what it was, if he knew how to vocalize it.

“Bobby,” murmurs Walker, lips brushing his. “Bobby.”

Oh, he sees now. The closeness and the intensity and—yeah. He knows what he was remembering.

Without any preamble, Bob takes one of Walker’s hands and places it on his throat. He leaves his own on top, not pushing, just resting.

It’s a good sign that all Walker does is take in a deep breath—he doesn’t pull out, and he doesn’t remove his hand, either. His eyes dart back and forth between Bob’s own and his hand on Bob’s neck. “What,” he starts, “what is this.”

Bob gives their hands a little squeeze. “Choke me?”

“Is this some kind of—what, did your dad—“

“What?”

“—because I’m not going to—“

“You, you dickhead, what the fuck? No, I just, I like getting choked while I’m—why would you say that?”

Walker seats himself fully inside of Bob again and stops there for effect. He pushes his face down close to Bob’s and sneers, “Bobby,” as if that explains everything.

…Okay, it kind of does.

Maybe it is about him—maybe not. Maybe Bob’s been looking for something to paint over all that, to make it so he can touched and be touched free of strain for just a moment. Maybe. It’s been a thing of his for a while. Bob doesn’t know that he wants to linger on the details. But Bob knows that Walker can fuck him into that pleasant thick haze, that unthinking quiet space, and he wants it, needs it, needs Walker’s hand around his throat. 

“I liked choking way before you came into the picture, okay, man,” Bob finally collects himself enough to say. “Sometimes I just like the—I don’t know. Just letting someone take total control and just… go all the way with it.”

Walker sets his jaw and looks down at their hands again: Walker’s on his throat, Bob’s hand on top of it. Bob gives it another experimental squeeze, trying to soothe, maybe. Walker’s hands are calloused and he has soft blond hairs on his knuckles and the backs of his palms. Sometimes he wears his old wedding ring. Today he doesn’t. Bob is happy about that, more than he should be, and too high on his golden haze to care about that.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Walker finally says. He says it quite decisively, like it should finish all this off, but his hand doesn’t move.

Bob’s not holding it there.

Baffled, Bob blinks up at him. “No, you’re not,” he agrees. 

“I’m not—I can’t hurt you, Bobby. I can’t fuck this up.”

“You’re not going to fuck anything up.” Bob shifts his hand to interlace their fingers. This is an awfully strange conversation to have with Walker still buried inside of him, but: “You’re not, you’re not going to hurt me.”

Walker curls his lip. The disdain on his face is kind of attractive. “You don’t know that.”

“What? ‘Course I do. You can’t hurt me.”

As if to protest, Walker opens his mouth again. Who cares? That’s it. That’s exactly what Bob has been trying to say this whole time. 

“You’re not listening to me,” he says before Walker can even speak. “You can’t hurt me. Don’t you get it? You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. You’re not gonna do it on accident.”

Silence stretches and stretches and stretches. It bends when Walker licks his lips and breaks at last when he says, “Well, I could—”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“But I—”

“You really couldn’t.”

Indignantly: “You don’t know that I—”

Bob does know. Bob bent Walker’s pseudo-Captain America shield into a taco and he’s kept it for a year. Bob—It, but, you know—Bob stabbed him through the fucking chest and he walked it off just to hold him. Bob knows first that he is borderline invulnerable, so Walker really and truly can’t hurt him, and second that he can make Walker do most anything if he just asks nicely enough. Not even that nicely. Asking via impalement was not nice. 

“Just squeeze,” Bob mutters, tired of the bickering. “See if you can do anything.”

Walker’s good at taking orders. Eventually, he usually does most things Bob wants to perfection, even when Bob isn’t asking for it out loud. Or consciously. So Walker licks his lips again, and when Bob doesn’t say anything else, he squeezes.

“Harder, will you? I barely feel it.”

Walker’s eye twitches. “Stop smirking.”

“Who’s—? I’m not—?”

“What, not feeling that either?” Walker says, a little meanly, and he grins himself when Bob’s cock twitches against his stomach. He tightens his hold on Bob’s throat.

The pressure is nice and grounding. Bob hums, letting his head fall back against the pillow. “Still doesn’t hurt. And I, I can breathe fine, you hear it.”

“I guess,” Walker says sourly. Most of the time, this means he agrees and is embarrassed about it.

“Harder.”

“All right, all right.”

Bob still breathes perfectly fine; he can feel the weight of Walker’s hands, the strength of his grip, but it just isn’t bothering him.

“Said harder, Walker.”

“Christ, Bob, that’s close to the tightest I can go,” Walker says, staring down at his hand around Bob’s throat, his pupils big and black. His cock twitches inside of him.

Bob smiles, jabs at him, “See my point yet?”

Loosening his hold on Bob’s neck, Walker brings his hand (and thus Bob’s, which is holding loosely onto his wrist) up to Bob’s face. His thumb brushes Bob’s eyelashes. They flutter under his touch, and, embarrassed, Bob’s grin fades at its corners.

“Your eyes,” explains Walker, unusually gentle—Bob wants to squirm. “They’re glowing. I must’ve been the first one to notice, back then.”

“Glowing?” He’d never noticed. His memories of the Sentry and It are all—some parts of them are so clear, others so jumbled. He remembers the Sentry’s hair and Its eyes, but not—

Walker taps one finger below his eye. “Gold.”

“Oh.”

They stare at each other. Breaths come in and breaths go out, unimpeded.

“All right, fine,” Walker finally says. He lets go of Bob’s throat and Bob’s hand falls away. Then he’s grabbing Bob by the waist and hoisting him off of his cock like he weighs nothing. He flips Bob onto his stomach. One broad hand lingers on his waist, thumb rubbing idle circles into his warm skin.

If Bob weren’t what he was now, Walker could probably toss him around like a rag doll. Like this, though, Bob probably doesn’t even need to turn back around. He could fling Walker through however-many-stories-it-is-to-the-floor without even raising a hand if he wanted it enough, because enough want could make him Sentry, could make him It, could make him anything.

The tip of Walker’s cock rests against his hole.

“Just don’t worry about it,” Bob is saying before a question even gets asked. “Take it. Just take it, whatever you want from me, Walker, just fuck me—hard, as hard as you can, and—”

“If—”

“If I want you to stop you’ll know,” Bob tells him. He has no patience for this. He’s boiling with it, about to spill over, lid all rattling, okay maybe the pot metaphor isn’t doing much but he needs Walker to finish him off more than he’s ever needed anything. “So don’t stop until I make you.” There’s probably something else to say. Something. Oh. “Unless, unless you want to.”

The hand on Bob’s hip pauses, no more pleasant thumb-circles, but Walker’s free hand settles back on Bob’s neck, so, fine, more than fine, great. Walker squeezes tight and shoves Bob down hard into the pillows. It’s exactly what he wanted: he groans into the pillows and he arches his back and his cock jerks hard between his legs. 

“I don’t,” says Walker, sounding like he’s watching the sun rise for the first time. It’s weird. “Bobby, you look…”

Bob makes some wounded noise, he doesn’t even know why, and Walker takes that as an invitation to slide right back inside of him. This time it’s a slow and steady push until he’s bottomed out, and he breathes in deep, breathes out heavy. And then he does exactly what Bob asked him to, good man that he is, and just takes him.

He’s squeezing Bob’s throat with his one hand and his waist with the other and he’s using the throat-hand to practically shove Bob through the bed and the waist-hand to force Bob to take his cock. He fucks him brutal and relentless and desperate, and he doesn’t talk or kiss or anything like he usually does. 

It doesn’t hurt because it can’t hurt. Bob thinks of how much it would hurt if anything could hurt him at all and it sends him dizzy and aching, how strong he is, how strong Walker is, all of it.

Soon Bob is practically sobbing into the pillows and it’s better than fine. He scrabbles at anything he can for a hold. Nothing’s what he wants. That’s better than fine too. Walker is everywhere: buried so deep inside him and moaning in his ear and on top of him and using him like a sex toy and strangling him. Exactly. Exactly. 

“Bobby,” Walker says, and it’s the only word he says, over and over again, “Bobby, Bobby,” until it sounds like nothing but white noise.

It’s his name. It’s his name from Walker’s mouth. Bob can’t imagine that it was ever anything else.

Walker shifts into a sit and he drags Bob with him by the neck so he’s sat in Walker’s lap with Walker fucking up into him. Really that’s what does it, more than the fucking itself, more than the heat and weight and touch and feel—it’s Walker manhandling him by his throat. It’s Bob letting him.  

The golden haze behind Bob’s eyes brightens and brightens and brightens and he cries out high and pitchy and terrible. Walker might be saying something—he can’t tell over the rush of blood in his ears—but he feels it when Walker spills inside of him, all so hot, everything so hot, filling him. He’s still making noise. 

Walker thrusts into him a few more times, short and weakening. The noise coming from Bob slows to a low painful whine and stops. The hot heavy golden haze in him fades away to almost nothing, slow but sure, and then the only thing left behind Bob’s eyelids is blackness so there’s no point in keeping them closed at all. He lets them flutter open.

His back is pressed against Walker’s chest. He’s all sweaty and kind of disgusting—there’s cum spattered on his belly and up to his chest, though of course he’s still hard. Walker’s still hard too. Super soldier serums and such. 

He’s never really thought about it until now, but does that mean the old Captain America…? Well, whatever.

Walker shifts the hand that was on Bob’s waist to rest on his stomach, his thumb now idly swirling in the mess that is Bob’s spend. His hand still lingers on Bob’s throat, but it’s loosened up. 

Bob glances at him. He’s looking back, face flushed, hair falling into his eyes. Bob reaches up to brush it back into place, then kisses him, soft and tender, just how he likes it best. It lingers. 

“Was that, was that fine?” asks Bob.

“Yeah. It was fine.” There’s an embarrassed pause, and then Walker says, looking a little more pink, “I liked that more than I thought I would. I think.”

“Oh! Oh, good! Good, good, that’s good… ‘cause it helped, I mean. With the, um, with the, uh…” Bob points at his eyes, which are presumably no longer golden, for lack of a better explanation. “You know.”

It did help. The buzzing and the haze are still there, because some days they always are, but he doesn’t worry that he’s going to burst into flames if he sits still for too long anymore. He has Walker on him and under him and all around him. It makes it hard to worry at all. 

“Huh,” says Walker.

Bob wipes some sweat from his forehead. “Really, it was—it was kind of bad and you helped. A lot. Thanks, um, thank you. Walker. John.”

He feels a bit like he’s digging himself into a deeper hole every time he opens his mouth, but Walker laughs against his shoulder, a little wry. Both of his hands come to Bob’s hips and he thrusts up into him experimentally, his thick cock bullying up against Bob’s prostate, everything too-much and too-sensitive and good. “Call me that this time, yeah,” Walker says. His voice is casual, but his eyes are wide and eager, shining beneath his blond lashes.

“John,” echoes Bob, testing how it feels on his tongue. “John, that’s—fuck!”

Walker grinds up into him, grinning. He turns to kiss Bob again, murmurs against his mouth, “You like that, Bobby?”

“‘Course,” he says, sinking back into that pleasant, dizzying place. “It’s, I, always. John.”

Walker’s face softens. It burns to look at, like the sun, but Bob doesn’t look away. It burns, but it doesn’t hurt. Nothing can hurt him anymore.

Nothing. Nothing. Even when he’s not the Sentry.

Well, Bob amends, as Walker starts thrusting into him again, maybe Walker could. He knows a lot of things and he’s seen a lot of things—ugly things—fucked up terrible things—but here he is still, close to Bob as anyone’s ever been. He sinks his teeth into Bob’s shoulder and all it is is a nice, pleasant weight. He could hurt Bob, but he won’t, and at least for now Bob thinks the certainty of something like that is just about as good as being invincible.