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This isn’t a safe house. It’s barely even a wooden box held together by rusted iron cladding, but none of them have the wherewithal to care. It's a place to lay low, very low, until they move out again.
Despite the searing heat of the desert sun beating down on his back, Clint refuses to step inside. Instead he disappears around the corner and a moment later the thwack of arrows carving against rock can be heard. He’s going to blunt the tips but nobody tries to talk sense into him.
Maria won’t push them for anything more than they’ve already given. Not this time.
Sam and Nat drag their feet from dusty earth to compacted dirt floor but Steve stops in the doorway, his bulky frame blocking out most of the light. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s wearing his stealth uniform, a blackened version of the Captain America suit that makes Maria’s throat contract. More likely it’s the storm brewing is his shuttered eyes that are mirrored by the rest of the team.
Maria had insisted on the camouflage precaution when they’d received their mission destination but even that wasn’t enough.
Most of the civilians hate him here, terrorist and farmers alike. His is the face of a nation too long at the core of their misfortune. Steve’s no stranger to hatred and none of the team was naive enough to believe it would be smooth sailing. Still it was a bitter pill to swallow as they threw rocks and debris at him while the insurgents took refuge among them.
But there had been ones who saw their salvation in him too. They were the ones who had grasped desperately to him as he grappled with the shipping container, its weight conquering him in the end.
Steve was the first in the water and the last to leave it. Only nineteen of some fifty of the children had survived first the fall and then the undercurrent that dragged them out to sea. Some might say that death would be a better outcome than the life of sexual servitude which awaited them on the other side of the Gulf.
All of it makes Maria want to unload her clip into something. Were it not for the team she’s holding together by a hair’s breadth, she’d be out there with Clint too.
She doesn’t stop Sam when he says he’s going to find water for them to clean themselves up. He doesn’t return until the sky is a blanket of stars and Clint has stopped his rampage only to sit with his back against a wall cursing to himself.
Nat tries to get them to eat but then she takes a bite of an apple, spits it onto the floor, and disappears into the darkness herself.
It isn’t until Maria shuts the door of the bathroom behind her that she hears Nat and Clint’s voices murmuring close by the hole cut in the wall masquerading as a window.
Maria sets the bucket of cloudy well water on the ground and places her sidearm on the floor in the corner. Her earpiece remains in place, awaiting a return call from a contact about where the insurgents could be operating from.
She tries not to let the acrid stench of bodily refuse get to her as she dips a cloth in the bucket and lets it soak. She doesn’t realise she’s wrung the cloth into a rigid stick and her knuckles have turned purple until a pair of large hands gently remove her fingers from their quarry.
She didn’t hear Steve enter and he doesn’t say a word as he scrubs the blood and dirt from her brow.
“There was nothing more we could do,” Maria says into his shoulder.
If only she could believe it herself.
His arms slip around her and she can’t tell whether he’s the one giving or receiving comfort. At this point she doesn’t care. All that’s running through her head is that she’s messed up the intel on this one pretty badly.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Without S.H.I.E.L.D's resources, she’s working on favours from former friends and even with the vastness of Stark's funds and JARVIS’ technological reach, it doesn’t make up for the human factor.
If she’d known there was a human cargo she’d have picked a different team. Each one of them is compromised to some extent in this situation.
Clint looked at them and saw his own children. Nat raged at the callous discarding of the one thing she could never have. Sam, who doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve but practically throws it at anyone who walks past, can’t even believe it’s happening.
Maria sees a poisoned past that she’s tried to exorcise with discipline and control. A failed endeavor if the churning of her stomach is anything to go by.
“It’s not your fault,” Steve whispers in her ear. His words vibrate against her cheek and only then does she realise his hands have snuck under her tank top to rest against the small of her back. His middle finger traces the ghost of a dozen injuries from the base of her spine all the way up to her shoulder blade. Shallow cuts that had seeped over time until they marked and damaged her soul.
She flinches as she has every other time he’s touched her like this. Incessantly prying into a past she can’t change and hurt he can’t retrospectively protect her from.
Her gaze locks on the doorknob, almost willing Sam to come in. Through the paper thin walls, she can hear Sam humming a nursery rhyme, his baritone thick with longing.
Steve’s breath blazes against her cheekbones and he places two fingers underneath her chin which she refuses to yield to him. She knows where this is going and as much as her body betrays her by melting into him, she can’t figure out what his stake in this is. Why the black is suddenly so much more fitting on him than the red, white and blue. And it’s not just because the contrast with his fair colouring is insanely hot.
It’s the way he unbuckles her belt without taking his other hand from the pouch of skin beneath her abdomen that causes the heat in the room to intensify. His thumb caresses the scar over her ovaries and she feels her knees buckling. Until now his focus has been on one thing: Finding Bucky.
Tonight, as she relents and tilts her head up, the moonlight reveals an intent more deadly than childhood friendship. A man besieged with terror at the thought of not being able to protect his own.
When did she become his to protect? To dream about? To hope with?
Maria’s thoughts scramble, warning her that this –that they – have gone too far. Neither of them has ever broached the topic of a future together. At first, her disbelief that she was waking up with Captain America in her bed had guaranteed an expiry date. After Project Insight Maria felt sure his manhunt for Barnes and the long months apart would temper their connection.
She had dismissed something Sam said months ago out of sheer denial.
“That shield is getting heavier every day. Cap’s finally catching on to what makes him happy.”
It never occurred to Maria that somewhere between magnetically charged sex and dissuading him from cuddling, Steve had started nursing the idea of children. Worse still, children with her. Children who don’t exist –may never exist – thanks to her surgery, but whom he is already unreasonably protective of.
To Maria, motherhood requires a certain amount of nice. Nowhere in any of her performance evaluations has the word nice ever been used. She’s a fixer, not a nurturer. Until now the notion of children has been an abstract concept stained by her father’s example. Contrary to popular belief, Maria doesn’t enjoy the role of bad cop. At least not all the time. She can't see herself as anything else with a man like Steve Rogers as a partner.
She needs to get out but his arms have caged her and he’s pressed her up against the flimsy wall. Steve brands her with searing kisses and claims her mouth when she unwittingly moans. He lifts her up by the waist and removed her shoes. Her pants and underwear are expertly discarded in a similar fashion. Not once does he allow her feet to touch the floor because even in this state of feral lust he doesn’t want her to get dirty.
It’s ridiculous and old-fashioned and dizzying at the same time.
It’s not fair, is all Maria can think as she undoes his zipper and then coaxes his erection into position. She wraps her legs around his waist and he settles easily into the cradle of her hips.
She inhales as he thrusts inside her, surprise still mingling with excitement that she’s being fucked by Captain America. Is he Captain America without the uniform? Or is he Steve Rogers, vigilante and powerhouse attempting to erase his failure by the most pleasurable means possible?
By now he knows exactly how Maria likes to be touched. By now she knows what comfort sex with Steve feels like. The first is raw and dominant, the second sweeter but no less intense. This is neither of those things and every time their hips meet, a thousand little electric shocks pulse through her. His teeth graze her shoulder and Maria shudders and then snaps her lips shut.
Soft tread outside the door stills her but Steve doesn’t let up. A grunt and then the blunt smack of leather against skin filters through the window. Maria fights to keep her eyes from rolling involuntarily back in her head as Steve’s thumb massages her nipple in tandem with his thrusts.
If she can hear Clint and Nat sparring, they can hear her and Steve fucking. They can be quiet when they need to be, especially Steve, but tonight he is a coil of pent up emotion and she has a feeling if the house fell down he wouldn’t even notice.
“Steve-”
He takes her mouth again, cutting off any protests. Frustration bubbles in her chest, the strength of which must be phenomenal to slice through the haze of want.
She hardly recognises the wall is giving way against her back. Not until Steve shifts them so that his arm becomes a barrier. The house isn’t going to hold.
It’s the thought of barrelling in on Sam with Steve still inside her that brings her mind back to reason. She grabs a chunk of the hair at the base of his head and yanks back.
Far from feeling any pain, his lips stretch into a lupine smile that hints at teeth. The last time he looked at her like that things got broken.
“I draw the line at exhibitionism.”
His face sinks to nuzzle at her neck and her senses are clouded by the musky scent of him.
“You know what? I couldn’t care less. Nothing they haven’t seen before.”
“Don’t get jaded on me now, Captain.”
Is it the teasing or the title that snaps his head up? Or perhaps it’s the truth? The curse of the modern world that is wearing even Steve Rogers down. He stares at her with eyes lost in a maelstrom of guilt that both irritates and endears. Maybe it’s this confusing mix of emotions and the fact that he’s still working her long and slow that makes her gasp.
“First you wallow in the past and now you’re shackled by the future. You make it hard to keep up!”
His hips cease mid-thrust but she feels the effects of the blood rushing violently to his cock as it expands inside her. His arms tighten, locking her into place. His voice is barely a whisper but it resonates from deep within the chest.
“But you still want to keep up?”
Is he asking her if she’d like to have children? Too many questions rear their ugly heads and a reply dies in her throat. But the fact that she doesn’t deny it is enough for him. They both know if Maria was vehemently against it, she’d have spoken up by now. Her silence is golden.
Steve’s expression morphs from pained to molten. His body becomes one part anchor to pin them in place without the proper support of the wall and one part battering ram. Never has the expression rough ride been as pertinent as it is now. She’s going to hurt tomorrow but in the moment, it’s all she can do to bite down on her lips as her nails dig into the muscles of his shoulders.
Steve impales her over and over again as the fire inside her mounts to unbearable levels. His calloused palm scrapes over her stomach and as soon as it eases onto her clit her body splinters into a wave of pleasure that drags her under and leaves her tinged with sudden sadness.
It’s only as she feel’s Steve shuddering inside her and his arms gripping her in vice-like tightness that she throws her arms around his neck and hugs him close. Partly to keep them stable as his comes but mostly to disguise the uncertainty in her heart.
It’s almost as though there's been a transference during sex and now she’s the one wracked with fear. Because oh God how will she ever keep her – their – children safe?
“Maria?” The voice in her earpiece shatters her lingering doubts. “I’ve got a location.”
They detach like perfect soldiers, leaving the bathroom is a state of further disrepair. If the others heard them, no fuss is made. In the face of a mission this personal, all jokes are set aside.
That is until Tony arrives to pick them up in the quinjet, and they file in bone weary but peaceful at the same time. All insurgents accounted for. The Stark Relief Foundation already working to re-home the children.
“So,” Sam says, rubbing his palms together. “Let’s talk about boys names.”
“Dibs on Natasha if it’s a girl,” Nat interjects. “That's not getting taken away from me again.”
She lets them have five minutes of bickering before she shuts the whole thing down.
For now.