Archive of Our Own

There is routine to this.

He opens the lock, pushes in. Steps through. Pulls the key as he enters. The effort is familiar, even though it has been a long day.

He places the keys down on the bureau, nudges the door shut with the back of his foot. His work bag is placed on the hook under the bureau, the shopping bag gets placed by his feet on the floor, and he makes quick work of his coat, hanging it on the hook.

Winter in the city is crueler than he remembered: it's all cold rain, pouring in torrents, in buckets. He doesn't like that feeling, he thinks as he reaches to unwind his scarf.

The yawn that comes from his mouth is compulsive: he's worked himself to the bone even though most people are coasting on the coattails of the holiday season, the end of the year. He snaps the deadbolt shut and feels tired, like the only gift he can afford is a long shower and an immediate return to the confines of his bed, even though it's still far away.

“I thought I heard you come in.”

“I knew I was tired,” Steve says, aloud, “but I didn't think I was tired enough to imagine you were back.”

“You caught me, I'm totally a hallucination,” Jim sounds amused, and Steve turns around. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Steve replies. “Merry Christmas.”

“I guess it was, wasn't it?”

“How's the president?”

“Bruised up,” Jim gives a half hearted shrug. “Pissed off but there's no real damage.”

Steve watches him walk up, closes his eyes and feels Jim's fingertips and palms sliding around his middle. He places a hand on the back of Jim's neck, presses their foreheads together. Jim leans in, up, swipes a chaste kiss, beautiful pressure against Steve's mouth.

“I missed you,” Jim whispers, and lifts his hands to rest against the curves of Steve's face. “I missed you so bad this time.”

“Yeah?”

“Couldn't stop thinking about what you told me,” Jim says. “Couldn't stop thinking about you.”

Steve smiles. “I'm so glad things worked out. I'm so glad you're safe.”

This isn't what normal looks like to a lot of people, but Steve leans in anyway, pushes his mouth against Jim's, and chooses not to care.

“Captain.”

“Colonel.”

It had been a few hours since the battle, since the schwarma. Steve had spent most of the night in a SHIELD planning session on how to triage New York City's wounds, even though he's been up for way too long.

“We haven't been formally introduced, I'm afraid,” a hand extends, “James Rhodes, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force.”

“Steve Rogers, although I couldn't tell you for the life of me what my rank and organization are right now,” he smiled, and took Rhodes' hand.

Rhodes shook once with a firm grip. “I think I can fill in the blanks, Captain.”

“Please, call me Steve.”

Rhodes smiled, faintly. “Jim.”

“Stark told me about your assignment in the field,” Steve nodded. “I'm surprised you managed to get back for dinner.”

“Yes, well,” Jim's smile grew bigger, more genuine and childlike, “I secretly try using the supersonic capabilities as much as possible.”

“Does that have any side effects? You did fly halfway around the world in an hour and a half.”

It felt like a ratty pick-up line, after he'd said it.

“You're a military man, Captain,” Jim said, “you know the feeling where all the endorphins you could have ran dry a few hours ago and now you really just want a bed.”

“I am there, now, actually.” Steve groaned.

“Well then far be it for me to keep you from sleeping,” Jim nodded, and shook Steve's hand again.

Steve didn't mind, he was already thinking of the texture, how it was warm save for one spot. “That's a nice ring.”

“Thank you, “ Jim said with certain gentleness. “it was a gift.”

“Ever see anyone important get arrested?”

Steve's in the kitchen, putting the kettle on the stove when Jim walks in.

“No, not in person.”

“It's a little sad. I hope he rots,” Jim says, shrugs as he leans against the counter, “but it makes me feel a like a hypocrite. I was part of the way things went wrong.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, think about it, I've been trying to find the people who were doing this for so long,” Jim says like he can't believe it's over, “they were all under my nose the whole time.”

“Well, that's not going to do you any good,” Steve shakes his head.

“I know I shouldn't, I know it was complicated and some of it depended on me not knowing much of anything,” Jim says, “but I did everything that was asked of me in that thing and to know it was all part of some bullshit power grab is...”

His jaw clenches and he closes his eyes. Steve watches as he grips onto the counter like he wishes he could break it.

“They manipulated everybody,” Steve shakes his head, “not just you.”

“I keep thinking about it. I keep thinking that we might have missed something huge and we just don't know it yet. Maybe I've missed something, maybe I'm wondering how I didn't see I was getting played, how I didn't even question it.”

“You're a soldier,” Steve reminds him. “You might be an officer, but it's not like you can disput--”

“Or, you know, maybe I just miss it,” Jim interrupts, “getting manipulated that way.”

Steve stops. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“They called me an attack dog, Rogers, and that's exactly what I was,” Jim says, and Steve can hear the heat under the words, “I'm just some overglorified secret service agent in a tin can on a fucking power trip.”

“You're more than that. You know it,” Steve says, “Look, Tony's alive, you're alive, you did everything that was asked of you and you didn't have enough information to really make any decisions.”

“So I was just following orders,” Jim snorts.

“You were,” Steve nods. “They were corrupt orders that had very little to do with what was really going on, sure. But you were told to do something, and you did it. War's like that. War's always like that.”

Jim stops, breaks out into a breathless laugh, “Some days I don't think you know the kind of man I am, Rogers.”

Steve turns off the stove.

“Look, you've been in more theatres than I have,” he says, and feels every bit of seventy, every bit of twenty in the air between them. You've been through every single one, you've played your part to the best of your abilities. You really do have to calm down.”

“It just feels personal, this time.”

He walks up to Jim, takes him by the shoulders, by the Jaw. Jim looks like he's ready to fight him off, but it's all Steve can do to pull Jim in close and wrap him up tight.

“Don't do this to yourself,” Steve warns. “Don't.”

And he doesn't let go until Jim's wrapped around him, too.

Fund-raisers quickly became a springtime cliché, but the city needed all the help it could get. He’d politely asked to stop knowing how much it cost to attend one of these functions without being on the list, just seeing so many here ready to receive him was already staggering. The cost of a gown, here, could have bought enough medicine to save droves of people in his old life.

There were few uses for facts like that, now.

It was easy to get swept away from that reality, he just had to surrender to the wave of handshakes, courtesy waltzes, opportunities to pose for photos. It was that coy gaze that did everyone in, the nervously confident smile: Steve thought it was the very face of naiveté, and he took to wearing it like a mask. Sometimes, it reminded him of the USO tours, pretending to enjoy being of such pedantic service, there to make someone else feel better about their minimal contributions to the effort. So he’d wrap himself in the polite droll, lulled down until he could dance with any partner- no matter how drunken or stumbling- with little to no effort.

They gave him a new uniform, a perfect replica, and adorned it with metals in arrangements Steve had never seen before. He felt as though he was wearing his whole story on his chest, a superlative state of overkill, and he felt like a fraud when when he ran into Rhodes again.

“It's refreshing to see another man in uniform around here, Captain,” Jim said as they shook hands again. Another firm grip with a single shake. “You do the army proud.”

“Thank you. You don't look so bad yourself. Blues suit you.” Steve replied. “I haven't seen a champagne glass in your hand all night. Patrol in the morning?”

Jim looked as though he'd already heard that compliment several times, as if he could barely restrain a glib comeback, “I tend to keep sober during these kinds of things. People admit a lot during these kinds of affairs.”

“Like?”

“Well,” Jim paused, “you did just admit to watching me.”

“You stick out.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

There was a friction between them but it wasn’t venom. Steve knew venom.

He ran through the list of potential sources in his head, but came up blank. There was Stark and that whole thing about branches of service. Rhodes didn't seem like the type to pick sides.

No, he thought to himself. This was heat, tension, unfinished business they had barely even began and he needed more information before he could pick a position. He changed the subject before the moment would slip through his fingers.

“I've been meaning to ask you, is that marble?”

“My ring? I think it’s horn, actually,” Jim's hands unconsciously slid fingertips into the crease at the center of the ring. “Or bone, I can't really remember. It's for hunting.”

“You don't strike me as a man who would resort to a bow and arrow,” Steve shrugged.

Jim bit his lip and shrugged. “It's mostly family ties.”

There was a moment's pause, there, as if it were meant to be a glimmer of some magical recognition, some double meaning in the words. There was no common language between them, and Steve could feel an awkward sense of arousal, of intrigue curling in his stomach. He pushed it away, embarrassed by the revelation.

And then he was getting tugged off in another direction.

“You'll have to tell me the story another time,” Steve said. “It was nice to see you again.”

“Yes,” Jim nodded. “It was, wasn't it?”

It had been a challenge to find him after Steve started dancing again, but he watched as Jim bid Tony and Pepper his adieus before disappearing deeper into the crowd. He attempted to focus on the new yield of small talk with a newfound partner, but all he could really feel was an uncanny sense of disappointment.

He wondered if Jim was feeling the same way.

The flight register is laid out on the table, next to the tablet that gives Jim readings from the suit. Steve knows he shouldn't: it's technically classified, but he glances at the open page and reads the coordinates.

He's familiar with these numbers, he knows the regions they lead to by heart: mountain passes in Pakistan, fields of wheat and poppy in Afghanistan, the occasional Indian enclave. Each comes with its own red X, number in subscript. It took a little while but Steve figured out what that meant, too: failure to find anything of use in the investigation, number of adversarial strongholds shuttered.

The page tells a grimacing story, it seems. There's a blatant dip in numbers down to little zeros with frantic strikes through them. And then there are new coordinates, ones he's never seen before, that he can't remember, and he imagines eastern Europe, some place farther south.

“Where's this one?” Steve asks, pointing to a set that seems nowhere near the rest, marked with a bright red star.

Jim hesitates, “you know that's classified, right?”

“Good job keeping it from the press,” Steve says, stoically.

Jim snorts like he can't believe Steve has the nerve, “Miami.”

“Little early for spring break, Rhodes,” Steve does smirk this time, can't hold himself back from the joke.

“I wish,” Jim mutters. “Would you believe me if I told you it was an incredibly long story?”

“Does it involve Stark?”

Jim pulls the chair out from the table, sits down with his mug of tea and snorts, “blows my mind you still have to ask that question. C'mon, how long have you known us?”

Not long, really, Steve thinks, “when you put it that way, let me grab the scotch.”

The morning was bright and already humid: it was going to be a hot day. There was a a group milling outside of the Tavern, smoking their cigarettes and fumbling with the mechanically folded cuffs of their short-shorts. It was six in the morning, and it was too early for both.

He'd seen the menu last night, and couldn't figure out the reason why this was the place they decided to meet: it seemed overpriced and determined to get its patrons soused. Brunch, he thought. Somehow the most important meal of the week to a number of people he'd known, although the notion of getting up, of staying up, of being up this early to beat the crowd and get soused on the Lord's day was a little disconcerting.

And yet, he'd been grateful for the chance to see Jim again, and knew it would be different this time. Somewhere they could talk, somewhere less buttoned-up than before.

Steve pushed through the group at the door and walked inside. It looked like the sort of cafeteria Steve couldn't ever persuade himself to go into, in his old life, with mirrors and booths, with a neat line of vinyl barstools, jutting out along the wide wooden bar.

Jim looked up from where he had been sitting, reading from his tablet. Steve saw that ring again, glinting white on Jim's dark skin as he'd raised his hand.

There's an extra cup of coffee, an extra mimosa on the table.

“I ordered for you the minute I got here,” Jim said, “It was the only way we wouldn't have to wait for a table, but I told them to pump the brakes on bringing the food out, anyway. This is all on me, by the way.”

“You don't have to--”

“No,” Jim said, “it's only right. You grab the check next time.”

Stark had informed Steve that Jim was considering moving to the east coast, to offset the time he spent flying back and forth to LA. He'd gone on to suggest maybe they had enough in common to go apartment-hunting together, fusing together Steve's knowledge of old Brooklyn and Jim's savvy in 'new everything else'. Steve sat there, and tried his best not to act like he was completely insulted and completely sold on the idea at the same time.

“What are you reading?” Steve asked as he took his first sip of coffee, smiled dreamily to himself all the while.

“Typical cold war bullshit spy novel,” Jim sighed. “You read up on that stuff?”

“False flags and the 'Iron Curtain' and everything?” Steve nodded. “Natasha's been really helpful with that, actually.”

“I'd expect as much,” Jim nodded, “although I'd hate to see what she thought of me reading shit like this about precious mother Russia.”

Steve thought for a moment. “She's not like that. She knows better than to meddle in the affairs of a man named 'war machine.'”

Jim made a noise at that. “If we're gonna do this, really try for it, you gotta know there are other responsibilities I have to my country. That's the whole reason why I don't wanna go it alone, here.”

“And here I thought we were talking about dames,” Steve joked and nervously picked up the mimosa, found it bitter with the metallic tang of cheap champagne. Jim made a face at the accusation, “I mean, I get it. You're interested in --”

“I'm not interested in Romanoff,” Jim said flatly, “I mean, I like her well enough. I just don't want to give her a good excuse to kick my ass.”

Steve snorted. “Natasha's got a lot more ass that needs kicking than yours.”

Jim smiled. Steve noticed a few things already, carefully filed them away: Jim was carefully activated when Stark was around to tug at some hidden sense of adventurousness, but quiet and upstanding when he wasn’t. Steve thought he'd made some progress and built a little camaraderie since May, but it might have just been professionalism.

It was hard to imagine how they couldn't talk about something as simple as women.

“I get deployed a lot more now,” Jim sighed, “the Patriot program decided to move so I can't really be in New York all the time. I don't know what that means for finding something.”

“That doesn't worry me at all,” Steve shrugged. “If you end up living close, I’m sure all your stuff will still be there.”

Jim smiled at that, “My deployments last anywhere between a week and ten days, but the last big one was three months long.”

“Afghanistan?”

“Third time,” Jim nodded. “I wouldn’t leave you hanging if we end up finding something big enough for the two of us on some stupid stroke of luck.”

“I'm really, really not worried,” Steve shook his head, and pushed all the Brooklyn he could find into his voice all at once, “'sides, I’d know where you fuckin' live, 'member?”

Jim laughed out loud in startled shock.

“What, tough guy?” Steve kept it up before he'd broken, too.

“Alright, Stallone, can it.”

“Who's Stallone?”

“Sylvester Stallone, y'know, action movies? Talks like a meat head, has a lazy eye? Sometimes things blow up in the background? Rambo? Rocky? 'Adrian!'” Jim asked in a musty nosed voice. “None of it ringing a bell?”

“Nope.”

“We'll have to fix that.” Jim said with a hint of certainty that piqued Steve's interest.

“Would you mind,” Steve hesitated, “doing something for me?”

Jim shrugged. “Depends.”

“I like having a proword,” Steve said, and winced, “you guys still have those?”

Jim nodded.

“For when things are too much, or when they need to stop,” Steve explained. “I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out, and sometimes I'll need to slow down, or not be there anymore and sometimes its not viable to--”

“Steve, I get it,” Jim smiled. “Everybody can appreciate an easy out.”

“I mean, it's ridiculous, right?” Steve asked.

“Not at all,” Jim shook his head. “Is it painful to bring up the commandos?”

“A little.”

“Mind telling me one of the less painful stories?”

Steve's brows furrowed in thought, but okay, sure. “There was a period of time where we were in France, and we found this castle on the border. And it was early winter, so we took advantage and used it for shelter when we could. We were establishing perimeter, looking through every bit of this place when we found this weird little door in the basement floor.”

“Interesting.”

“That's one way to think of it.”

Jim looked as if he'd known Steve for years, sitting there, and it was unnerving to think of how well he would have fit in back then. “So what was it?”

“There was a pit under the basement, I guess. Jones suggested it was a room at the bottom of a long tunnel too narrow to climb back up from? I dunno, he called it an 'oubliette'. It had rained a lot that year, and whatever it was down there it had flooded to the top and frozen by the time we got there. So we did what any group of idiots would do, and used the damn thing as a base camp freezer.”

“Some guy probably died down there, you know,” Jim said.

“Probably,” Steve nodded. “They all contributed to the first ice cold drink I'd had in at least a year and a half, so really, who am I to complain?”

“I'll admit,” Jim stopped, chuckled. “That was not the story I was expecting you to tell.”

“It was a pretty happy memory, even if things were complicated,” Steve shrugged and let his eyes follow the path of a waitress, carrying a tray of food clear above her head as if she'd been doing it all her life. “It's not like they're simple now, but..”

“It's a good prosign,” Jim said to himself, “'Oubliette' as 'all stop.' I could live with it if you can.”

“I hadn't considered it that way,” Steve said, and thought about it for a moment. It was poetic, almost, just awkward enough to not withstand most conversations. “Yeah, I like that a lot.”

“Good.” Jim nodded. “Good to hear. Look, I've been meaning to ask...”

“About?”

“What's it been like for you?”

Steve looked down into his drink, thought about it for a second. “Things are different. There was a lot of stuff people didn't really want to talk about, where I'm from. There was always this feeling, that once we got over the hump, things would be so much better, easier. People would be more genuine, when we were done. We wouldn't have to be worried anymore.”

“Definitely not the case, Rogers,” Jim said. “People are ruthless, and most times you never get to see it until you're behind closed doors.”

Steve toyed with the idea of outwardly flirting at that point. Jim was becoming more attractive by the meeting, even though he didn't go out of his way to change demeanor. He acted as if Steve didn't need to be coaxed into things, and had a kind smile filled with the kind of warmth that had just a touch of anxiety underneath. Everyone has that now, Steve thought as he swallowed the words he wanted to say.

“So nothing’s changed,” Steve sighed.

Jim shook his head. “Not really.”

A full plate of food was placed in front of him, a gaudy omelet with ham and odd-cut hash browns, a full garden of spinach, chard and kale taking the last of the space up on the plate.

“Passable?” Jim asked from his comically large stack of French toast across the table.

“This is more food than I could have afforded to eat in a week, in my old body,” Steve said, “Am I really that predictable?”

Jim smirked and gestured with a strip of bacon before he shoved almost the whole thing in his mouth, “lucky guess.”

“You were in the paper a few days ago.”

“I thought,” Jim says, slowly, “we agreed not to chase the news while each other is away on business.”

It wasn't news. The article was another expose on the Iron Patriot program, and Rhodes career and everything that was stacked high on his shoulders. It was written by someone who believed he was owed more than Jim gave.

Jim would not become the sort of celebrity Stark was, and Steve wondered how many people Jim surprised by simply valuing his privacy.

Steve came to sit next to Jim, handing over the magazine. Jim scanned it for a moment, stared at the picture of himself floating in midair and clad in the suit from the waist down. He looked imposing like that, some vision of science fiction in dark skin and metal.

“Oh, that guy,” Jim snerks, “he didn't get it.”

“What was there to get?”

“That I'm not trying to be a hero.”

“You might not be trying but you dismantled an international terrorist organization and a conspiracy to--”

“I think I'm just tired of this 'Team America' shit.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asks.

“It's like,” Jim pauses and thinks for a minute. “It's like these puppets that go around blowing shit up and cleaning up everybody's messes and it makes no sense and I'm sure you'd find at least a little bit of it offensive. And boring.”

“I'll throw it on the Queue,” Steve says, “But what's with this 'being tired' thing? Every time we ever spoke about it, you've always wanted this.”

“I wanted the validation, sure,” Jim says, rubs a hand across his eyes. “But right now all I really want is to be War Machine again. Do shit my way.”

“It didn't test well, remember?” Steve teases.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim mutters. “It's not like Iron Patriot really gets anyone's motor going. People just see it and they have an opinion on America. It's Jingoism. It's astroturf.”

Steve stays quiet, tries to remember what that kind of thing means.

“Inauthentic for the sake of convenience,” Jim supplies without realizing it.

“But you got the stars and stripes now,” Steve says, and actually kind of means it. “That's gotta count for something, right?”

“As much as it pains me to say it,” Jim says, “it's more trouble than its worth.”

“How so?”

“You know how many times I've been called Captain America by people who should know better? The stars and stripes make everybody think you brown-nosed Tony until he gave you some sort of suit.” Jim says, and sounds a little sore over it. “You know how many people around the world wish they could blow up Captain America?”

“Is it a lot?”

Jim nods furiously. “It's a lot.”

Steve makes a face.

Jim reaches over, takes a sip from his mug. He looks down at it, sniffs gently. “This is, like, all scotch, isn't it?”

Steve shook his head, “I just poured it into whatever you had left in the cup.”

“Mmm,” Jim says. “I guess I like the fact that nobody really knows much about what I do. I prefer it that way.”

“Okay.”

“Until something comes up, and then I just don't want to die with someone else's name,” Jim says, and takes a long drink. “Sounds poetic now that I say it aloud, but I'm really just selfish. I know that.”

“You liked being your own legend,” Steve says.

“And I think it would be cruel to die thinking someone was doing it because they thought it was you in there,” Jim says.

“You're stronger than that,” Steve says. “We both know you are.”

“So,” Jim smiles, sips at it again, “you're trying to get me drunk on alcohol and compliments, then.”

“I don't know if it's worth using the word trying. Do you want more tea?”

“Not really,” Jim pauses, and then sips at it one more time. “Would you say it's presumptuous to consider the word 'succeeding?'

“Only a little.”

“So come over here and let this drunk hero make out with you already.”

Steve can feel himself blushing, but he leans in anyway. Jim tastes like oak and bergamot.

He sighs into Steve's mouth like he's glad he's finally home, and they splay out on the couch together, licking into each other's mouths and grinning.

“Oubl--.”

Jim was leaning against a banister, picking at his nails in a way that had become familiar since they'd started. He pushed his hand into his pocket and looked up, “you know I can't really tell if you don't say the whole word, right?”

“I just...I can't do this,” Steve said, and passed a hand through his hair.

“How can we make that better?” Jim asked.

“I just underestimated this, I guess,” he shook his head.

“You didn't think anything would change, Steve?” Jim’s voice was careful, like he was speaking to a potential flight risk. “World kept spinning when you didn't.”

“It just seems like it's too much,” Steve sighed, “and I know we agreed to go in on a place we could both have some space to stretch out in but--”

“If this isn't good for you,” Jim said easily, “we could go back to our original plan. Buying something was a good idea but we don't have to take each other up on it.”

They hadn't known each other for very long when Jim told him that, standing in a duplex that was older than both of them. One they wouldn't be able to afford without renting out the downstairs. He suppressed the urge to snap at the realtor, at Stark, at Rhodes for making him feel like this was just the way things were, like it was nothing new. It was all new. It was always new. It was never a thing that would stop hurting, because it was always and forever so damn new.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “You know that's not what I mean.”

“And you know I wouldn't mind if it were,” Jim said to him as he patted Steve on the shoulder amicably and made to walk out the door.

“You're lying,” Steve said, as he grabbed loose hold of Jim's forearm, and suddenly Jim was in his space, they were so close, and all Steve could think about was how they could just fall into it, that first brush of mouth to mouth and--

“Does it matter if I'm lying?”

Steve thinks for a moment. “Yeah, it does. It's a good idea, if we put together what we have and find something we can own. I want to go through with this. Trust me.”

Jim looked up from where Steve was still holding his forearm. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

“Help me get through this,” Steve said, “Please.”

Jim licked his lips, thoughtfully, and Steve felt the pull between them.

“If you can't say it right now, it might help if I say it for both of us,” Jim's arm slid from his grip, suddenly. “Oubliette.”

“I...” Steve said.

“You don't have to explain anything, Steve,” Jim said, and turned around, and walked away.

Steve watched him open the door and dawdle down the concrete stairs. Jim walked up to the realtor, standing there, shook his head as he said something low and simple. She nodded once, pulled out her phone and gave it to him. Steve could barely see the lines of Jim's face from this distance, but he could feel Rhodes' eyes staring, thinking. Wondering, maybe. Making up his mind.

Steve's heart was in his throat, and he knew they were waiting but he just...needed a minute.

“He looked at me right before they took him,” Jim says, quietly.

“Who, the vice president?”

“Yeah,” Jim nods, leans up to steal another kiss. “He gave me this look. It had haunted me for a bit, on the way back home, but I realize why, now.”

“Oh,” Steve runs his lips over the lines of Jim's neck and the cut of his jaw, “yeah?”

“He reminded me of these old villians in the cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid,” Jim says, his fingers sliding under Steve's shirt. “They always used to say 'I woulda gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids.' And it looked like he was going to tell me that.”

Steve smiles, bites gently at Jim's lip, “but he didn't get away with it. You stopped him.”

“I don't know if I can take credit for that.”

“Take credit where it's due,” Steve says. “You stopped him, he didn't get away with anything because you, James Rhodes, Iron Patriot, War Machine, stopped him.”

Jim pushes Steve back a bit, the bow of his lips twitching at the praise.

“You shouldn't be humble right now,” Steve says, and means it.

Jim falls quiet, like he's listening to something within himself. “No, I shouldn't.”

He had been too young for prohibition to mean much of anything, but it didn't stop Steve from finding every Speakeasy in Manhattan. The foray wasn't really ever related to alcohol, anyway.

Most of his adventures resulted in a sense of disappointment that people couldn't be bothered to reenact the real charm of the era, in dirty corners and weathered wooden tables and poorly restored bathroom stalls.

Rhodes was back in town, sharing a knotted, beaten table here as if they had all the time in the world between them.

“I'm sorry, this is really annoying,” Jim said.

“What?”

Jim put down his lowball of scotch and raised his hands to adjust the double Windsor Steve had tied haphazardly in an attempt to look modern than he actually felt.

Long before pitching the idea of shared space, Tony described Rhodes as the best wingman a man could have, even when he had no real reason to be. Jim had the power to carefully ignore things that were placed in front of him; he was as capable of making sound decisions that needed to be made as Steve could ever be.

Steve fidgeted with the sagging sleeve of his black shirt, the loose buttons of a vest he would likely never wear again.

“Why do you do that?” Steve asked.

“What?”

“That,” Steve insisted, “treat me like I'm normal.”

“I thought you would be sick of people who wanted to worship you, by now,” Jim returned.

“I am,” Steve nodded, and tried to go about picking his words very carefully, “but you seem annoyed at the prospect of having Capitan America as a friend.”

“Do I?” Jim smiled lazily.

“I mean, you know all the stories,” Steve shrugged.

“Yeah,” Jim nodded, “but those stories weren't for me, Steve. You know that.”

Steve thought he understood, maybe. The propaganda had been targeted to young men of a certain age and class, and he knew it was made for a certain race, too, “but you did believe, right?”

“I did, once,” Jim said, and smiled wistfully, “I stopped when I learned about that serum and all the people it killed before it got into you.”

“So Eli Bradley, then,” Steve nodded, and felt the guilt rise in his throat.

“It's not your fault,” Jim said. “I expect they didn't imagine the history of the serum would have any real bearing on your performance.”

Steve was on the verge of calling him uncharitable, but that wouldn't have made the statement any less true. They needed someone to lead the charge to end the war, someone who would work without relent. It was only logical to leave out the embarrassing back story.

Jim continued, pushing a hand against Steve's. “Lots of people don't understand what happened to you, and if we're being honest I'm not really all that sure either. But you do good work, and you've adapted, and I'm not planning on living with Captain America. I'm living with you.”

“You say that like you aren't that machine all the time,” Steve shook his head.

“I'm not,” Jim replied evenly, “and I want you to know you don't have to be the shield all the time. I'm sitting here, having a drink with Steve Rogers, a man who seems to be great at being more than the sum of his work.”

“I never let myself think of things that way,” Steve admitted.

“It's an invaluable skill in this age. So sit here, be Steve Rogers with me,” Jim shrugged. “Explain to me something the way Steve Rogers does. Be you. Please.”

Steve sighed, “I've been trying to find a place like this for a while, you know.”

“Yeah?” Jim asked. “Remind you of home?”

“Not like you think. Reminds me of France,” Steve said. “The boys woulda loved it here. Between the girls and the booze, they wouldn't'a been able to keep it together.”

Jim smiled, “I ever tell you how Gabe Jones was my idol when I was little?”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, amused. “What happened?”

“I was better at calculus than French.”

Steve chuckled at that, “You remind me of him a lot. You remind me of all of them.”

“I'm sensing there's a but coming, here.”

“I know all of them had incredibly full lives after I was gone, and I don't want to dig them up. They deserve better than that. “

“You loved them,” Jim said.

“They became family after a while, and you love your family, even when you know you'll never see them again,” Steve shrugged, took a drink from his glass. “Whatabout you? You've never told me anything about your family.”

“There isn't much to tell,” Jim sighed. “My father died when I was young, and I have sisters but we don't do much talking. It's just me and Mama, now. Tony gives me shit for it, sometimes, but she's all I've really ever had.”

“I'm glad you have her,” Steve smiled, “But I meant the other family you mentioned to me.”

Jim paused, sat back in his chair. Back into the shadowy corner he had been avoiding thus far, where his body seemed to disappear in the darkness if Steve didn't look too hard.

“Why do you want to know?” He asked.

“You've been trying to tell me something important,” Steve said.

“There's a chance,” Jim said with the kind of nonchalance that suggests Steve might have found a raw nerve.

“And there's a chance we have that something in common.” Steve said, easily. “I thought you wore that ring because it was an heirloom, or a good luck charm. I would have thought things had changed. Seeing as there's so much lavender around, nowadays, and it doesn't seem like so much of a big deal.”

“Is that what we're talking about?” Jim asked, his voice light like he didn't care. “That why it seems like you only own one tie that happens to be a very particular shade of red? That why you looked at me in that house we saw that one afternoon?”

“Maybe,” Steve smiled. Jim had chosen very carefully to ignore everything, then.

“Until a little while ago, service men could face court martial and dishonorable discharge for that sort of thing,” Jim said, reached down and flicked a finger over the hunter's crease on his ring.

“So why did you tell me?”

“People don't tend to pay attention to things unless they already know what they mean. You paid attention,” Jim said, like it explained everything. “Although I'll admit some part of it did come down to simply liking the risk.”

“Liking the risk?” Steve asked.

“I'm inches away from sexually propositioning a man with the face of a 25 year old but the views on race and sexuality of a 75 year old,” Jim said, shortly. “I'm sure you can appreciate the risk in that.”

“I swear to god, Rhodes, you don't even know how well you would've fit in.”

“I want you to determine where you think this should go next, Rogers,” Jim said with an unnerving certainty. “I don't expect anything from you. We can keep things light. We can keep things just like they are now, if you want. I don't have time to be a bad roommate.”

Steve snorted. “They accepted our offer, by the way. Came down a little on the price.”

“So we bought a house, then.”

“You have all the time in the world to be a bad roommate, now,” Steve said. “I put down our check, so I got a key. Walked back down there, and we only bought something that's technically house-esque, and it was large, and pretty terribly kept up. No wonder it was so cheap.”

“It doesn't matter,” Jim said, and raised his glass. “To making a home.”

“To new beginnings,” Steve replied. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Jim said as he clinked the rim of his glass to Steve's triangular monstrosity, before taking the last swallow of his scotch. “Finish your drink so we can go celebrate.”

“I forgot to tell you.”

Steve turns from the cupboard he's in, looks at Jim.

“Pepper can breathe fire now,” Jim nods. “Because of whatever virus the actual Mandarin shot her up with.”

“They shot her up with a virus?” Steve asks. “Does this have anything to do with that oiler explosion?”

“A little,” Jim nods. “So, they gave her this virus that all the supersoldiers had, they could all fabricate limbs like it was nothing.”

“And she can breathe fire?”

“Well, the Mandarin, when he was trying to get the patriot did. He was on the virus, so I'm pretty sure with training and some focus, she could, too.”

“I don't like thinking of you in situations like that,” Steve groans. “I know you've had training on how to deal with torture, more than she has or more than Tony had before he was kidnapped, but...”

“Trust me, it could have been worse,” Jim says. “They just hit the suit with things, shot at it.”

“Are we talking about the real mandarin, or the fake one?”

“So you have been watching the news,” Jim sounds amused. “The fake one was a fuckin' head trip. You saw the shit they put on tv, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Steve nodded. “That guy was creepy, and always seemed to come on right when I was watching something I actually liked watching.”

“He did come on later at night, didn't he?”

“He interrupted Scandal like, three times,” Steve shook his head. “National news is national news, but that's just rude.”

Jim snorted.

“What? I can watch soap operas if I want. Natasha loves that show and we talk about it over paperwork.”

“You both should just admit you have huge crushes on Kerry Washington so we can all begin the healing process, honestly,” Jim notes. “Anyway, the fake Mandarin was an absolute stoner. The real Mandarin was the head contractor on the Patriot Program. He's the reason why Tony was involved. He was the reason why the--”

“Why they blew up the mansion?”

Jim stops, sighs, “yeah. Tony told me Pepper killed him. Didn't even say why, although I'm pretty sure the guy had some old Vendetta with Stark, back when he was walking around like he owned the world.”

“Wait, say that again?”

“Virgina Potts killed a man in cold blood, because the man wanted Tony Stark's head on a platter.” Jim says, “not Iron man. Tony. I mean, she just destroyed this guy flat out, didn't even realize she was doing it, that's how Tony described it.”

Steve's met Miss Potts before, found her charming and wonderful and so very good for Stark's rough edges. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” Jim sighs. “Now she's as fucked up as the rest of us.”

They took the train to Brooklyn, to the house. They walked shoulder to shoulder in silence, restraint. It was raining, lightly, the last of Summer slowly washing away. Steve pulled his thin coat tighter around himself and rued the fact that they hadn't thought to take a cab.

“Is the electricity on?” Jim asked as they walked up the stairs to the front door. “I think I have a...”

He pulled out his Stark Phone and used the flashlight so Steve could see to fit the key into the lock, just barely.

“I hope so,” Steve said, “because that thing's dim.”

“Low batteries will do that,” Jim shrugged, and then they were pushing just into the atrium. Steve groped along the wall beside the door for a moment, trying to remember where the light switch was in hopes that it would work. He closed his eyes and traced the molding with gentle appreciation, until he felt it, and flicked it on. An exposed bulb on the ceiling buzzed quietly, and the room filled with weak light, casting unsettling shadows.

“Well color me surprised,” Jim smirked.

“Right?” Steve snorted. “Remind me, we settled on the third floor?”

Jim held onto the banner lightly, hopped over the weak stair at the bottom. “We did. Although I suppose the right thing to do would be renting it out. We could pull a lot of money from that loft.”

“We could,” Steve shrugged. “I guess.”

Jim stopped at the top of the stairs before turning, flicking on the next light switch. Another old bulb lit the way, as they took in the peeling wallpaper and tarnished wooden floor. Steve peered into the second apartment, sighed gently and continued up the stairs.

“Let's see what selfishness gets us,” Jim smirked, and pushed open the door even though it was barely on its hinges. He flicked on another switch, and an atrium light revealed a long hall of tarnished, exposed brick and a high ceiling, another dilapidated staircase that led, precariously, to the bedrooms. Steve watched as Jim walked through the space slowly, listened to the hollow tapping of Jim's shoes against rotting hardwood. “Hit the lights, would you?”

There was a bulb dangling from a wire suspended in the ceiling, and it turned on but barely threw any light into the room. He could see a long shadow of Jim's face when Jim turned to look.

“You're right,” Steve said, “We could get a lot of money for this.”

“Or we could live very comfortably like this,” Jim said, and the insinuation sounded so endless, so tempting.

“We could,” Steve smirked, and walked up to Jim, just to the edge of his personal space. Jim's coat was woolen and long, and his scarf was wrapped around his neck, tight, and there was no place to touch, no place to put his hands but he wanted, he wanted Jim's warmth, his taste. Rhodes hung his head and Steve watched the curve of his lips in their shadow. The rest of the tension between the two of them left over from the bar, the gala, every time they'd ever even seen each other was melting, chemically reacting into desire and Steve reached out and slid his fingertips against Jim's clean-shaven jaw.

It was second nature to ask, as it had been with any dame, as it had been with any sailor.

“Could I?”

“I think I would like that,” He could feel Jim's eyes on him, the pressure of that gaze sending tense shivers down his spine. Jim took Steve's hand, pushed it against his cheek. “A lot, actually.”

Steve smiled, and pushed up against Jim's mouth with sudden ease, kissing him softly, lazily in the almost-dark. A hand pushed Steve backward, a bit. He pulled away, loosened his grip and Jim took a step backward to the brick wall. He was looking incredibly unimpressed.

“I know you're not drunk so you're nervous,” he said, flatly. “C'mon, this isn't anything you should be nervous about.”

Steve took off his coat, loosened his tie. This felt like the only chance he'd get, and the thought chafed at him. He was breathless with determination, “this another part of you liking the risk?”

Jim snickered, “this is me wondering how good at this kinda thing you are, is all. Kiss me again.”

“I don't understand,” Steve said, “this about me being mean?”

“If that's all you can manage.” Jim shrugged, and stole a kiss right out from under him. It was a short, raunchy swipe of tongue in Steve's mouth, this sneak attack that was playful and gaudy and made Steve shiver. “C'mere.”

Steve leaned in, and the next attempt was a ruthless pairing of mouth to mouth, a flash assault. Jim kissed like he knew what he was doing and he spent no time being polite once he could feel the pull of this, themselves and each other.

“Take off your coat,” Steve said when he pulled away for air, and it wasn't a question, there was no 'do you want' involved. Jim paused, smiled at him and reached down for the buttons, flicking each of them open.

The coat was folded and dropped unceremoniously beside Steve's on the floor, and Jim flicked his scarf open with simple, easy movements, dropped it down, too. He looked at Steve as he undid his cuff links, rolled up his sleeves. He looked like he was getting ready for a fight.

“Why did you take so long?” Jim asked, like he was relieved it was happening. “Was it because you didn't know?”

“I wanted to be sure,” he replied. “That day in Bensonhurst--”

“And that gala in Harlem, fuck,” Jim gasped. “You looked too good in that uniform. Would've followed through, then, if you gave me the chance.”

“I'll wear it for you again, sometime,” Steve said, “I just didn't want to get it wrong.”

“I know,” Jim said, softly as he rested their foreheads together. “Thank you.”

Steve smiled awkwardly, and Rhodes reached for his hands, traced the skin that led to Steve's wrists.

“Want you around me,” Jim pulled him closer until there was no place else to put his hands except around Rhodes' waist, “yeah, like that.”

They kissed again, languid and slow and Jim's body arched up into his, subconsciously. Steve answered with an almost giddy burst of strength, pushing Jim back against the brick wall. He went willingly, let himself be pushed, grunted when he could go no further.

“I like it when you cooperate,” Steve flirted, pressed his mouth into the hollow of Jim's throat. He tasted soap and sweat and listened for that hitch of breath disguised as a soft laugh. He liked that idea, found himself longing to see Rhodes lose the tight-held control he imposed on himself.

“Don't get used to it,” Jim pulled him up, smiling, and took his mouth again while Steve pulled him in even closer, like he wanted them to merge. He pushed them even further against the wall. Jim anchored a hand at Steve's shoulder, lifted the other to rest on Steve's cheek, to turn Steve's head and capture his mouth.

He was hard, and Jim was too, and there was nothing left to do but this, but push against each other, but shove Jim back, back, offer no escape. It was intoxicating to be this close. A little extra pressure through the pads of his fingertips and Rhodes was just there in his arms, determined to lean in and give everything he had. Suddenly, his ass was in Steve's hands, fingers gripping at his backside through woolen trousers, warmed with body heat and arousal.

Their faces angled, their kisses blurred together.

“You know,” Steve moaned, “this is exactly how I thought it would be with you.”

“With me.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “Got a problem with that?”

Jim's legs parted a little, and his fingers caressed the hair at the nape of Steve's neck, nails sinking gently into the flesh there. The spike of pain was even more attractive, and Steve's hips pushed inward until they both knew how hard they were. Steve shoved a hand up to Jim's cheek, let his thumb slide over the wet heat of Jim's kiss-swollen bottom lip.

He could feel the skin under his thumb stretch into a well pleasured smile, “trust me, I have zero complaints.”

They fell quiet again, and Jim's mouth darted from under Steve's curious fingers to catch onto his lips, kissing him in punch-drunk bites.

“I want to touch you,” Steve said, as the pressure became too great, “I want to see you.”

“You do?”

“I want to know what's under this,” he said, as his fingers slid the tails of Rhodes' shirt just up to his waist, so he was still covered, so he was asking permission. “I want to put my mouth all over you.”

“Fuck,” Jim cursed, a hot burst of air like he'd been sucker-punched.

“Let me, tell me I can,” Steve felt his breath coming quicker, his mouth watering at the thought. This was wrong, he thought, it felt a little irresponsible and immature, but he wanted to be on his knees already, wanted to let Jim know this wasn't some temporary lapse in judgment. “I won't do it unless you let me. I'm serious.”

“I thought you just wanted to make me come,” Jim joked and kissed him again. His hands roamed, traversing down Steve's back and grabbing at the pockets of Steve's black jeans. “I know how serious you are. God, just thinking about it is sort of scary.”

Steve thought about asking why, but decided against it. “You like the fear?”

“I like a lot of things,” Jim answered, “and you can touch and taste and see whatever you want.”

“A lot of things?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Steve pushed the burgeoning spiral of insecurity in his stomach away, and kept going. He took Jim's hands, pushed them flat against the brick. “Like this?”

“Yeah, okay,” Jim said, and sounded amused. Steve smiled at that and leaned in to kiss him again, with sharpened edges and unflinching bravado, and listened for Jim hissing like he was trying to control himself. “Fuck, this is such a bad idea.”

“Is it?” Steve asked him, and brought his hands down to Jim's slacks to fiddle with the belt, the buttons, the zipper. He took a knee, and pulled the soft material down and admired the dark skin of Jim's legs and thighs in the dingy light. Jim's erection was packed away in his underwear, but there was reedy definition in the rest of him, and Steve had never considered what a fighter pilot's body would look like, the places where it had to be strong. He wanted to know every muscle and contour. Just the thought was killing him.

The underwear was thin, pulled tight against Jim's cock. Steve leaned forward to nuzzle against the fabric.

“C'mon, c'mon,” Jim moaned like he'd been taken by surprise.

Steve reached up and grabbed the waistband, easing it down narrow hips and compensating for how male bodies work when they're aroused. He sat back on his heels, and Jim looked accidentally gorgeous like this: leaning against a wall he couldn't find a handhold against, sleeves haphazardly shoved up his arms, pants shoved down. He didn't look disassembled in the least, no, he looked a little shy and frustrated, reaching down to run bitten fingernails across a spot on his hip like he didn't know where to put his hands.

“Don't do it like this,” he said, and his voice was shaking and hungry and Steve wanted to wrap himself up in it, “you can do this to me any other time, but you know how much I want this. Just tell me what comes next. Just don't make me beg, right now. Please.”

Steve found it impossible not to want to hear those words, and sounds again. He was coursing with adrenaline and desire, and made a promise to himself that he would see this through.

And he looked up, smiling.

“Trust me.”

Jim nodded. Steve leaned back down on his knees, and pushed his mouth up against sweat-sweet skin.

“And the president,” Jim says, softly, after they've given up on tea and settled on pure alcohol altogether. “Between you and me?”

“Always,” Steve nodded, and meant it.

“The president really thought he was going to die, there. And when he didn't, he told me to do something for him.”

“What?”

A moment of silence passes, and another and another and it looks like Jim's at war with himself, like he can't really breathe. Steve wrestles Jim's hand away from the glass, holds it in his own, the coolness of the ring a comfort against Jim's blood-hot skin.

“Trust me,” Steve says, coaxes.

“He told me to bring him someplace where nobody could see him, and I did,” Jim nods, doesn't look at Steve. “And he just knelt there and I thought he was gonna start praying or asking some kind of forgiveness. That's what I would do. But...no. He just sat. And cried. And I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what needed doing. So I just took my helmet off and knelt there and held him.”

“Seems like you made the right decision,” Steve shrugs. Jim looks up at that, doesn't really believe him.

It's that stupid suit, Steve thinks. He curses Stark, his genius and the things it does to the people around him. Steve always imagines that suit is heavy on the shoulders, dead weight on the back and the angles of Jim's hips. He knows Rhodes will meet his end in that thing. He has nightmares about it, sometimes. Nightmares about the War Machine bringing Jim's body back to him from halfway across the world.

“It wasn't the right decision,” Jim said. “It was stupid. It was presumptuous. It was weird to see someone with that much power sit and cry helplessly, and it made me feel like I had failed on every level of my job.”

“But you didn't,” Steve says, softly, “you would have failed if you let them kill him. There was a term for what you're going through, back when I was in Europe.”

“What was it?”

“The ten-thousand yard stare,” Steve says. “You're shell-shocked.”

Jim snorts, pulls his hand away. “That's an impolite term, nowadays.”

“I imagine it is,” Steve nods, “but you know I'm right. Did they give you anything, after this stuff?”

“After my debriefing I was given a commendation. They gave me a promotion to Colonel, some flippant orders to take time off for a job well done, and a bunch of people calling me 'son' and shit,” Jim says, hunching over on his elbows. “I'm full bird, now. That's kind of nice.”

“Not if it makes you sound like this,” Steve says.

“How do I sound?” Jim asks, looking at him curiously.

“Unraveled,” Steve admits, can barely bring his voice to say it. “Numb.”

“You know, there was a moment when I was unsure that I really could survive all this shit, and I was worried that I wouldn't ever see you again, or be genuine with you about the things I want,” Jim pauses, frowns. “I mean, that moment passed pretty quickly because I had to stop and punch someone unconscious and watch that shit-caked weasel-faced asshole steal my armor.”

The break in Jim's normal speech pattern is jarring and it makes Steve grin, “You know you're sounding more like them every day. I'll get the zoomie out of you, yet.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim grins, but it wanes quickly. “I just can't ignore it.”

“So, what's on your mind?”

“It's,” Jim stops. “It's stupid.”

“If it's got something to do with us, it can't be,” Steve says. “You haven't even said anything yet.”

“I promised myself I wouldn't be selfish, I wouldn't ask you to do this,” Jim says.

“Out of all of the days you could possibly say that,” Steve replies, “it might be good for you to be selfish today.”

“Okay,” Jim bites his lip. “I want you to take care of me.”

Steve wracks his brain trying to figure out what that means, what it could possibly mean, what it could say of him that he doesn't get the double meaning yet again. Then, it hits him, “you want me to be indelicate with you.”

Jim snorts, “hearing you say it like that never gets old.”

“I thought,” Steve's brows pull together and he tries to remember the last time, the time before that. “I thought we took that off the table.”

“We did,” Jim nods, “and I might totally regret asking for it the minute I get it. Everything's going too fast in my head and I'm not sure about any of it, and I know this won't fix anything, but I think I just need something to take my mind off it. I need to let Tony and Pepper and everybody else figure themselves out. So yes, Steve, I would appreciate it if you fucked the living daylights out of me.”

“So that's how you work up the nerve to do ask me if we can try having...that again?”

“I guess that's exactly how I work up the nerve.” Jim says, “it's not like you have to say yes if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Hey, now,” Steve points, “I'm not the one who's gonna be uncomfortable.”

“I'm just saying I want it to work, okay?” Jim shrugs. “I just expend my time and energy and focus on trying again. I think it would be nice, not thinking about anything but you.”

“I don’t know,” he says, even though he knows it sounds like a no.

“Well, it’s seven now, right?”

“Yeah.”

Jim gives a firm nod, “I'm gonna take a nap, I'd been waiting for you to get back. We could go and find some terribly unhealthy food later, sneak in a few rounds?”

“You know you deserve more that,” Steve says.

“I know,” Jim nods, and gets up, “but it'll do.”

Steve brought the steel coffee pot from upstairs down to their makeshift workbench, set down two cups. He poured himself a syrupy cup of bachelor pad coffee. It was cold and cloudy stale.

“I wouldn't drink that,” Jim said from over his shoulder, opening up one container and pouring grout powder into the bucket, “unless you made a new pot. I'm pretty sure I made it at least six hours ago.”

“Since when have you known that to stop me?” Steve asked, and took a sip. It was a little overly sweet, aged and burnt but he didn't really mind.

“I'm glad you've gotten your sense of depression-era living down to drinking suspiciously old liquids,” Jim admitted as he filled the bucket with a little water, picked up the stirrer and got to work. “It was sort of gross for a while.”

“I didn't expect that thing with the ketchup was going to freak you out as much as it did,” Steve shrugged. “Sometimes I can't adjust.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jim nodded. “This looks pasty, does this look pasty to you?”

Steve walked up to the sink, saw the grout, picked it up on the trowel, “It should work.”

“Mmm,” Jim said, and set his watch. He hesitated. “You look like something's on your mind.”

“A lot of things are on my mind.”

“Anything worth talking about?” Jim asked. He angled his wrist and smeared across the glass bricks in a smooth, gentle stroke, and Steve watched as red tones slowly disappeared under white and grey.

“This is the first time I've tried to make it with a man,” Steve said as he picked up the sponge, turned the water on. “And I never say anything until it's too late and...”

“Steve,” Jim said, gently, “Tell me what's going on.”

“I know you told me that the stories weren't for you,” Steve said, “but how much did you read?”

“I read about Major Carter, if that's what you're asking,” Jim said.

“It's not,” Steve shook his head and rubbed the sponge over Jim's work, cleaning the excess. “I loved her, I realize that now but that's not what I'm talking about. Nobody ever seems to talk about how I lied my way into the army, or how I almost flushed out every other day in Erskine's program. None of them talk about the war bonds tour.”

“Do you think they should?”

“Probably not,” Steve smiled, reached up to brush the sleep from the corner of his eye. “After the shows, the girls would always pick a few soldiers, or at least men that looked the part. They'd go out on the town and show'em a good time for, y'know, morale.”

“Morale,” Jim turned and furrowed his brow, “that what I think it sounds like?”

“Maybe,” Steve shrugged. “There were always a few guys who wanted to spend time with me, instead. They'd say they had girls back home, if they were smart. My original orders were to flush out lavenders, the ones that dropped too many hairpins.”

“What would happen?” Jim asked.

“They were shown the door and told to never come back,” Steve said. “And Uncle Sam made it very hard for you to get on with your life.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jim sighed. “So what happened?”

“I ratted out the rude ones and figured out which of them actually were saving themselves for something back home. And the others?” Steve stopped, swallowed the jagged edge of his humiliation and the heat that came with it, the pride. “I'd like to think it was fun for everybody.”

“You know there's a name for that, right?”

“I do, but would you believe me if I told you,” Steve nodded, “ that I've chosen to ignore it?”

Jim's fingers were caked through with grout, but that didn't stop him from passing a nervous hand over his face, up through his hair, running his nails over his scalp. “This changes a lot.”

“About your opinion of me?”

“No,” Jim shook his head. “My opinion of them. I never thought they would have made you a part of that.”

“I chose it, every time,” Steve said, and meant it. And while every time hadn't been bright and sunny and perfect, he didn't regret all the times he said yes. There was no reason to, honest.

“But,” Jim sounded small, “the circumstance.”

“Isn't the 'say yes' stuff we always talk about before making ourselves indecent all circumstantial?” He asked, because he really didn't understand the difference between the two.

Jim's watch went off, a tinny beep that seemed to punctuate just how awkward this was, “you're making a false equivalence.”

Steve sighed. This wasn't frustration, not embarrassment but, “it's funny how that works, isn't it?”

“How does it work now?” Jim replied, putting the coffee cup down and turning to pick up the trowel again.

“Not much different than it did, then,” Steve shrugged as he finished. “But the best times, back then, were with the men I could trust.”

“Oh?” Jim asked. “I didn't think trust would come into it.”

“Sometimes it did,” Steve said, wringing the sponge out into the sink, placing it down for a moment. Jim was turned to him, watching him, putting the pieces together in his head, “when they would tell me to obey.”

“Did you like that,” Jim asked. It wasn't a flirtatious question, “did you like being obedient?”

“I liked following orders, especially when my liking them was irrelevant,” Steve picked up the packaging for the grout mix, if only so his hands had something to do. “I still like that lack of choice, sometimes. I just haven't really found the time to go searching for somebody who wouldn't give me one.”

Jim was staring at him, scooping out the powder and turning on the faucet, trying to get the right consistency. Jim's eyes hadn't started to linger and his posture hadn't shifted, so he definitely wasn't aroused at the thought. They had been at this long enough for that to be obvious.

“I cultivated a knack for it after the serum,” he continued, “but I would be lying if I didn't say I thought I had a natural talent for it. 'Take the good and make it better,' like Doctor Erskine used to say.”

“You think it's worth calling a talent?”

“You haven't seen what I can do,” Steve smiled, and lifted the smaller trowel to the wall, pasting over the finer portions of tile. “I always sort of enjoyed knowing I was strong enough to withstand anything anyone could throw at me. The humiliation, the pain.”

“I thought Captain America didn't like bullies,” Jim countered as he set his timer.

“I don't,” Steve said, firmly. “They're unimaginative.”

“I don't think,” Jim stopped, made a face, walked over to pick up the sponge and wet it again. “I don't know if I understand what you want to give me.”

Apparently, Steve hit a nerve. The corners of his mouth turned up smugly for a moment, and he intended on continuing to push the issue, even if it would blow up in his face.

“Bucky used to do it for me,” Steve said. “He tied me up, let me squirm. Made sure I wouldn't choke, that kinda thing. There was some pain involved.”

“I gotta say, you really don't seem like the 'hurt me' type, Rogers,” Jim said. “Seeing as you kind of come into contact with pain all the time.”

“I guess,” Steve said, “it's sensation overload, mostly. Couple go-rounds with a cane, some wax when we could find it, I'm not too keen on things that are cold, obviously, but I really don't mind things that burn.”

“You know it's really odd to hear you say this stuff, right?” Jim asked. “You're telling me about the sex you had with your childhood best friend like it's some grand insight into who you are.”

“Bucky and I never had sex,” Steve shook his head and raised his arm to draw a long diagonal down the wall. “Sometimes he'd watch me jerk off or make me watch him do it. Sometimes he'd threaten to bring the rest of the commandos in, let them take me however they wanted.”

“He ever make good on that?”

“God, no,” Steve shook his head in relief, and raised his arm to cover the next patch. “It was a fantasy, a pretty good threat, I guess. Those guys didn't need to know. But you...”

“Me,” Jim said like he could barely find his voice.

“I would let you take me,” Steve said, and imagined the tide rolling in at his feet, just thinking about it, “if you wanted it. I don't think I'd have it in me to tell you that you couldn't.”

“You make it sound far more romantic than it should be, Rogers.”

The timer goes off again, and Steve slipped the trowel back into the bucket, put it down on the counter. Jim handed him the sponge, and he wiped the last little bits at the top clean. When he turned back, Jim's eyes were on him, searching for something.

“You regret it,” Jim asked, “telling me about this stuff?”

What an odd question to ask, Steve thought. “You deserve to know. What use could we be to each other if we don't know?”

“Then let me think about what I want,” Jim nodded, and took a gulp of coffee from Steve's cup and spat it out into the sink. “Fuck me, that's atrocious.”

It wasn't a yes, but it definitely wasn't a no.

Steve flicks on a light and picks up the remote to put the hi-fi on, turn the volume down low. The singer's folksy, charcoal voice is beautiful, a surprising change from Jim's favorite high flying jazz and encapsulating womb-like electronic music.

He sits back and opens his sketchbook. It's uncomfortable to draw Jim while he's around, but Steve's been working on this one for weeks, a picture of Rhodes laid naked under a sheet that gathers across his thighs and hips, stealing away a gaudy look at his crotch, his torso, the curve of a knee, calf, foot. His arm is folded over to shield his eyes from the rising sun, only managing to cover one of them. The form is lazy and open and effortless, and Steve has worked at making it look as natural as possible.

He likes the project. It lets him focus on reedy definition and sinewy muscle and arching, generous lines. It is an invitation, unspoken between subject and viewer. Steve is careful to cast shadow in the planes and twists of skin tones as they mesh together.

He abandons pencils for pastels. He smears henna and umber using his fingertips to score the definition of Jim's chest, his abdomen, his stretched obliques and core.

The last time Steve touched there in real life, the skin was warm and soft and he lost himself in the sensation like Jim was an idle belonging, pliable to Steve's every whim. He remembers touching everywhere, until Jim was moaning, shifting unconsciously, tipping his chest and pushing his thighs into Steve's hands. Steve had continued until Jim was hard, his control slipping through his fingers, and then there was nothing left to do but pull the sheet back and trace the lines of Jim's erection with his tongue. Steve had used his mouth well, that morning, brought Jim to orgasm's doorstep before the alarm went off.

The thought gets Steve's mouth watering, his eyes softening, his cock hard.

Jim comes down, sits on the stairs. “Everything okay?”

“You caught me trying to solve a problem,” Steve says, sounds nervous. “I didn't wake you, did I?”

Jim's lips bent thoughtfully and he pointed to the turntable. “Tracy could raise me from the dead. There was a long period of time where she was the only friend I had.”

They fell silent for a moment, listening to the music and Steve watches Jim's eyes close, his mouth bending around a wordless melody so soft it's hard for Steve to even recognize that he's singing.

“Is this before Stark?” Steve asks.

Jim nods, “there was a period of time where Tony and I had very little inclination to spend time with each other. I wasn't always his friend, we didn't always get along. And once we started getting along, what little reputation I had was sort of eclipsed by being his friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“People can be cruel,” Jim says, “when you don't look like them or act like you wish you did.”

Steve sighs; Jim's utterly undeserving of people underestimating him for any reason. “What happened?”

“Unlearning.” Jim's face stretches into a slow, enigmatic smile. “Nice thing about college: there are few problems either alcohol or collaborating to find new ways to blow things up can't fix.”

“So were your issues settled by alcohol or explosions?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Jim replies, scratching his fingernails against his scalp. He gets up, walks over to the bookshelf, rolls a finger over a group of his records. He stops, pulls out a vinyl and walks over to place it on the coffee table. “Although Howard Stark died thinking I was Tony's personal drug mule.”

“That's unfortunate,” Steve can feel his mouth turn up into a frown, “Howard always did get his kicks from thinking he was the only worthwhile person in the room. He was a great scientist and good pilot, but I'd be lying if I said he was a good friend.”

“Interesting,” Jim says. Steve closes his sketchbook, rests it in his lap to hide himself. “Look, I know we do this thing where you do everything I say, but you should know this isn't one of those times. I don't want it to be one of those times. This isn't on the table, and I'm--”

“I want this.” Steve says, and it sounds so good to say, “More than you know.”

“I spent a long time wondering if asking you for things like this would make me look like every other man who's ever been in your life,” Jim says. “But I figure I've spent the last two weeks unwittingly disinfecting the entire executive branch of government. All I really need right now is a nice meal and for you to figure out if you're gonna indulge me. So I'm gonna take a shower, and then we can go and find something to eat.”

There's no invitation there. Steve thinks its for the best, right now. “I'll be here.”

Jim stops, raises his face to Steve's again and kisses slower, more thoughtfully. Steve smiles on Jim's lips, slick warm skin.

“Good,” he says. “Don't go learning how to breathe fire while I'm gone.”

It's all Steve needs to make up his mind.

Jim's 'yes' came later, bundled with a new and creative torture: he demanded planning, negotiation, boundaries and protocols. The need to make so many decisions felt unlike any bondage Steve had ever seen.

Jim took note of every chafe in conversation, it seemed, every moment where things had to be unpacked and pulled apart to an atomic level. There were checklists, requests for clarification, teases of hypotheticals and potentials that kept Steve up at night in his own head.

After a few weeks of the treatment, Steve was swimming in his own fantasies. The practice of conversing on the topic had become academic, and he was being measured. The very prospect of this submission was being determined in some far off place, obscured from Steve's vision. That it was so out of Steve's hands was invigorating. It was almost perfect.

It had been a hard week for the both of them, the Patriot called away twice and Captain America clashing with some villainous organization trying to take SHIELD down from the inside. Steve had invited Natasha over for dinner, once he knew Jim would be back, but she declined, and by the end of the day there was a bottle of wine with a note on his desk.

“She's not coming?” Jim asked. “That's a bummer. Eh well, Maria always said there's never a reason not to eat another helping when company doesn’t come.”

“You used to cook for Mrs. Stark?” Steve asked, looking at the cast iron pot sitting on the middle of the stove. “Was she nice?”

“Maria was awesome,” Jim smiled. “Tony wasn't really good at cooking things, but she and I worked through Julia Child's first cookbook together one spring break. Killed a crate of wine between us, I swear.”

Rhodes prepared dinner with the care of someone who desperately wanted to find something he'd lost, a dish Steve had never heard of before but had bacon and garlic and potatoes and tasted amazing. And even though he was stuck with dish duty, Steve felt content by the time he'd finished, warmed through with the knowledge that Jim was doing alright, that equilibrium was back in some small way.

“If I would've known Natasha was gonna be a no-show, I wouldn't have gotten such a big chicken,” Jim sighed. “I mean, we ate it, but that was big enough to feed six people.”

“You should just be glad I had it within me to share,” Steve said. “I could easily eat a whole other chicken if you’re hiding it somewhere.”

“It’s your turn to overindulge me in the kitchen next time,” Jim said, flatly, although they both knew it wasn't Steve's favorite thing. “Speaking of which, where'd you say you put that bottle of wine Natasha gave you? This one's finished.”

“It's still in my bag if you want to get it out,” Steve said. “There was a note, but I couldn't read her handwriting.”

Jim walked into the kitchen, holding up a bottle in one hand and a note in the other. “Natasha gave this to you?”

Steve nodded, wiped his hands and took it from Jim, walked off to find the corkscrew.

“This is Russian,” Jim said.

“That seems more pretentious than she usually is,” Steve replied, pulling the cork out.

“Don't pour that into the glasses, yet,” Jim shook his head, pointing at the bottle. “That's from Tony's reserve.”

“She stole it?”

“She says she's sorry she kept us apart for so long, and said that Pepper gave it to her a while ago, but she didn't have the heart to open it. She's apologizing,” Jim says. “That’s sweet of her.”

“You know Russian?” Steve asked, as he picked up the wine glasses and ran water into each of them, grabbing a towel to carefully wipe them dry. “Wait, how do you know Russian?”

Jim folded the note and slipped it into his pocket and smirked at him, “Eto sekretnaya.”

Steve huffed, “now you're just showing off.”

Jim laughed, picked up the glasses. “Bring the wine?”

The record had stopped, and Steve found Jim over at their cobbled-together record collection, pulling out another vinyl. Steve walked over to the sofa, sat and poured a taste into his glass. The envy of the fact that Jim could be affected by alcohol had only barely waned, but he appreciated the fact that Natasha had given it to them anyway.

“I should be honest with you,” Jim said.

“About?”

“This thing we said we were gonna try,” he shrugged. “Ever since we started talking about what you want, this whole domination thing, it seems like it's all you're thinking about when we’re around each other.”

Steve's brows pulled together and he thought about Jim's words, “I am really excited about the idea, but I wouldn't say it's everything I've been thinking about.”

“You always look like you're craving something, and if you feel that way about it now, what will you do when we start?” Jim asked. “I just want it to be right. I want to make sure--”

“I know,” Steve nodded, but knew he was lying. He was sinking, almost hoping they had already begun.

“You think it's on purpose?” Jim asked, plucking the record from his collection, wiggling the vinyl out of the cover and slipping it onto the turntable.

“I mean, I know it's not,” Steve shrugged. He could feel an embarrassed smile creeping over his face, “but there's this ridiculous little voice that keeps driving me crazy with the thought that you might be trying to see how I react to things, y’know? Trying to cultivate the battlefield?”

“'Cultivating the battlefield?' There's a 'battlefield' now? I did not sign up for a 'battlefield,' Rogers,” Jim pointed, turning around to start the turntable and humming along with the first few bars of a 70's electric guitar. He came over to sit on the couch, pour himself a glass of wine. “What does that even mean?”

Steve hadn't realized how dramatic it sounded before it was out of his mouth, but now that Jim mentioned it, “I told you it was ridiculous!”

“That's some lizard brain shit,” Jim said. “How much porn have you been watching lately?”

“You think I have a need for that with stuff like this already on my mind?” Steve asks, and gets distracted by a melodic squealing line that makes no sense in the background. “Is that a man?”

“Yeah.”

“And this is from the 80s?”

“Early 80s,” Jim replied.

“I'm not, I just didn't know they allowed people to sing about coming in the 80s. I mean, that was pretty explicitly related to ejaculation, right?” Steve asked. “I thought you had to--”

“It's Prince, I'll explain later,” Jim shook it off and reached for the remote to turn the volume down. When he sat back, they were shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. “Don't change the subject, right now. If I'm gassing you up this much by simply just existing, how should I help?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you're gonna use whatever logic system you're using to tell you I'm spying on you to get you hot--”

“I know you're not, though.”

“I know you know, you’d better know because it’s obvious,” Jim said, “but if you're going to use it to fuck with yourself, how can I help?”

“I don't know if there's anything you can do to help,” Steve shrugged. He picked up his glass because he needed something in his hands, feeling more nervous about this than he had any right to, “I like the fact that you're making me wait. I like it a lot. Feels like you're researching me.”

“Researching you,” Jim repeated, but it wasn't a question and there was little request for clarification.

“My reactions and what I do and how desperate I get and how far you could take me,” Steve said, could hear the urgency in his voice. “Like you want to see everything about me and determine if I'm worth the time, y'know? Like you want to measure me.”

Jim looked pretty deep in thought, although it could be how he looks once he's squarely drunk, but then he was putting his glass down, smiling, “you're a genius!”

“What?”

Jim didn't bother to say, just stood and climbed up the stairs. Steve made a face into his glass, wished he could achieve anything other than a buzz. A choir organ struck a familiar note on the turntable, and for a moment even though this was his, he felt like an experiment in Jim's life, some supporting character.

And then Jim was barreling down the stairs again, falling into his spot beside Steve.

“Everything alright?” Steve asked him.

“Better than alright,” Jim nodded. “I promise I'm going to make it worth the wait.”

“I know,” Steve nodded. “Now explain Prince.”

The shower's been on for a while, so Steve dawdles upstairs and into the bathroom. He stops at the sink, the large swath of countertop that joins their two rooms washes the curly queue of a sketched nose off the back of his hand.

Jim's in the shower, and there's enough steam behind the glass that he just looks like a long oval in the center of the room.

“If I would have thought about it before,” Jim says aloud, “I would have gotten some haddock so we could make fish and chips, but the place with the good stuff is likely closed, isn't it?”

“I think it's late for anything from the place you're thinking of to have anything considered good stuff,” Steve says. He sort of hates that market, down by the docks, can't imagine where those fish come from or the glee Jim takes in cleaning them himself. “If you really want haddock a new seafood place opened three blocks from here a few weeks ago.”

“Heard anything good about it?”

“Not really,” Steve says.

“Mmm,” Jim replies. The shower cuts off and he steps out still wet and naked, reaching for a towel. “So tell me what's going on.”

“You said something,” Steve muses, “about feeling like you couldn't ask.”

“That?” Jim asked him, shaking his head. “I just didn't want to give you the impression that I expected this, or that I wanted you to perform for me.”

“You know you don't have to do that,” Steve says. “You don't have to put what you want secondary to who I was before. You can ask, you can relax. I don't mind it, you know, being that for you.”

“You don't understand,” Jim says, shaking his head as he bends over to towel down his legs, “I don't want it to be like it was when you used to do it.”

“Do you think you're like everybody else?” Steve asks, as he walks over and takes the towel from Jim's hands, using it to rope Jim in, running it over his back. “You think you deserve to be treated like some everyday Charlie in the trenches? You think that's what you are to me?”

“Aren't I just like every other soldier? Same demeanor, same mannerisms?” Jim asks. “Look, I meant I didn't need Captain America. I don't want the voice, I don't want to be told how I've done some duty for my country. I've been hearing that from people all week, and it's lost its meaning.”

It should hurt to hear that, Steve thinks. He leans in and presses his mouth against the hollow of Jim's throat. “You don't have to sacrifice for me, Colonel.”

“And I don't want you to have to sacrifice who you are for me, either,” Jim says. “I would rather just be with you. I don't need special treatment.”

“But you deserve it,” Steve replies.

“Why should that mean anything right now?”

When he quiets himself down, Steve can feel the desire that's still pooling in his gut, and he knows it as he pushes his hips against Jim's naked body, denim brushing against skin.

“I want this with you,” Steve says, “really, I do. It's just surprising that you would ask for it, after all this time.”

Jim kisses him, long and slow and decadent. “You really can't say it, can you?”

“Is that bad?”

“I suppose I could let it slide,” Jim says like he's a lush, a connoisseur. “if you make it good. If you take my mind off it.”

“And if I fail?”

“Next time you ask me to put you down again,” Jim says, “I'll spend all that time training you to say every word. Make sure you won't be so bashful anymore.”

“Oh god, please do that to me,” he says because he imagines molding his mouth for Jim, the two of them cutting through the resistance. “I'm begging you.”

“Maybe,” Jim says, idly.

“But that means we're going to have a 'next time', then.”

“We should,” Jim replies. “Even if this turns out terrible, we should keep working at it. I want this to be something we can do, even if we choose not to.”

Steve leans in, steals a kiss. “Absolutely.”

“Now,” Jim says, “tell me it's okay to take these clothes off of you.”

Leaning against the wall, Jim had been wearing a pair of jeans that had seen better days and an old USAF t-shirt. He was holding a pair of policeman's gloves in his hand, thin black leather looking like it had absorbed sweat, blood.

The dots were starting to connect in Steve's head.

“You've done this before, haven't you?”

Jim looked at him and cracked the knuckles on one hand like he was preparing to box. “and?”

Steve couldn't find the words, “I had assumed you took so long because you--”

“I'm not a fan of hurting the people I like,” Jim said, “but it's a big city, and I know the places to go looking for answers. Do something for me.”

“Alright.”

“Make up your mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really trust me or have you been using me to humiliate yourself?” Jim said. “Tell me what you expect I'll do to you.”

Steve thought about that, thought about how much this could have been incredibly unfair to Jim, who was nothing but patient and loving and understanding even when he didn't agree with things.

“I trust you, but I don't know what to expect,” Steve said.

“And what do you want me to do to you?”

Steve stayed silent, shoved his hands into his pockets. Jim let him, stayed there leaning, looking indecent against the wall.

“I get really mouthy whenever I'm on my way down,” he said, eventually, “don't let it slide. Be strict. I like choking, a little slapping, you can pull at any part of me you want. Immobilize me, it's been long enough that I don't know if I'll be able to stay still. Act like I have something to prove to you.”

Jim looked unimpressed. “And what could you possibly want that for?”

“It's been a hard week,” Steve said. “I haven't been allowed to fail. I want to fail so terribly there's nothing left but my inability to perform to your standards.”

Jim licked his lips, thinking, and the tension between them throbbed. Steve felt like he was aching for the approval.

“Discipline me.”

“Alright,” Jim nodded. “Sit facing me.”

“How?” Steve asked. “Should I kneel? Should I strip down first?”

“You should sit. Facing me,” Jim repeated, and didn't sound nearly as generous this time.

He sat with his legs crossed in front of him, he put his hands down on the floor, palms up, and straightened his back. Jim walked up to him took a knee with the sort of grace Steve had never seen out of him, leaning in until their foreheads were touching. Steve thought of grabbing for him, and decided it was not the right time for that.

“I trust you,” he repeated and meant it. Jim put a hand on the back of Steve's neck and pulled him close enough to take his mouth.

“Take a deep breath,” he growled against Steve's lips, “Address me as sir.”

It was easy to obey, “Yes, sir.”

“Tell me your safeword.”

“Oubliette, sir.”

Whatever Jim was in that moment, he paused and pulled away. Steve watched as his eyes softened, as whatever line inside him blurred, and Steve held his gaze, wondering if all this work had been so fragile it could be ruined with a single reminder of reality.

And then Jim was gone, the thing replacing him now up on its feet, standing tall and determined. He pulled out a notebook and took a moment to open to a page further inside than Steve had thought, picking up a pen as he leaned against the corner of Steve's desk.

“Tell me about your last superior officer,” Jim said, his voice sterile. Steve kept his eyes front, watched the pen move quickly in Jim's hand, stayed silent. “I'm waiting.”

“My last superior officer was Sergeant Barnes, sir.”

Jim wrote it down, “And how did you serve Sergeant Barnes, soldier?”

“However he wanted, sir,” Steve nodded. “His favorite thing to do was use me for boxing practice.”

Jim's pen paused, and he lifted his head curiously, “And you enjoyed serving him that way?”

“I enjoyed being used, sir.”

“Were you restrained?”

“We used facilities with low ceilings and rudimentary pipework that was exposed for other reasons,” Steve hesitated. “He made me stretch and hold still.”

There were more notes, notes.

“Permission to speak freely, sir,” Steve asked.

Jim lifted his head, “granted.”

“What are the notes for, sir?”

“I'm at my best when I'm holding myself and my program accountable,” Jim answered as easily as ever, sounded like every bit the officer he is, like he was talking about pilot trainees, like he broke people every day. “How else am I supposed to quantify your ability and measure your progress? Did you anticipate that your enrollment in this program was for your benefit?”

“I...”

“That was a rhetorical question, soldier,” Jim said lazily.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get up on your feet and take off your shirt,” Jim stood and pulled the gloves out from his pocket, made a bit of a show of pulling each one on. Steve made quick work of it while Jim walked around the desk, stood in front of him. Steve folded it in half, and then offered the cloth to Jim. “At ease.”

“Thank you, sir,” Steve replanted himself and slipped his arms behind his back. Even like this, Steve was always taller, but suddenly it didn’t matter. Not with the way Rhodes was looking at him.

It took up all the air in the room, that look, the way Jim bit his lip like he was thinking of something utterly improper. He pushed into Steve's space, stood close enough that Steve could feel the soft fabric of the shirt he was wearing, the hard cock in his jeans.

He was looking at Steve's mouth, and brought his just close enough for it to be a test of their will. “Are you thinking about it? What I plan to do with you?”

There was an second of contact, bottom lip brushing against bottom lip but as Steve leaned in, Jim slid out of reach, raising a hand into Steve's hair. He cradled the crown of his head and pulled like he was planning on ripping everything in his grip clean off Steve's scalp. The shot of pain was terrifying, invigorating.

“You like that, don’t you?” When there was no answer, Jim yanked Steve's head backward and suddenly there was the first glimmer that Steve had made the right decision, “You answer me when I ask you a question, soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve supplied and blinked like he was trying to see clearly , “oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought,” Jim sneered, and let him go. “It's only gentlemanly to withhold pain on the first date, but don't you go thinking I'll hesitate to correct that language in the future.”

“This is a date?” Steve asked mindlessly. And then Jim was pushing him down, giving him nowhere to go but to his knees, to his back, to the floor.

Jim straddled him, boxed his hands at his sides and leaned over. He shoved his hand against Steve's neck, and the pressure against his throat kept intensifying until Steve could barely breathe.

“You feel that?” Steve nodded breathlessly, “Answer me with words.”

This was it, the bottom falling out, the place where Steve couldn’t find Jim anymore without their ‘all stop’, without the one thing Steve had a choice in. It felt like a rush of salt water flooding into him, crashing against him like a rip current and pushing him down inside the place in his head that he’d been missing, craving.

It was exactly as he wanted, as he stared up at Sir for the first time.

“Sir,” it came out hoarse and bitter, “Yes sir.”

“Do you recognize all the air that each petty word takes up in your lungs?” Sir asked. His hand came down even harder, sealed off Steve’s breath, and it felt good to gasp and not be able to pull away. “Tell me, Soldier, do you think this is worth it?”

“Sir, no sir,” it hurt to say it.

“I don’t know how much of that lip Barnes took, but you are barely worth my time if you cannot control yourself,” Sir said like he was preparing to discharge Steve before he’d even seen how well behaved he could be. “All the things I could be doing if you just didn’t use up so much air.”

Sir pressed down harder. It felt like drowning.

“We both know you can control yourself, soldier,” Sir said. “You could give me all that air if I asked for it, isn't that right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Mmm,” Sir said, and didn’t look convinced. “Every time that mouth gets ahead of you, it would be in your best interest to think of this before you force me to remind you.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said, automatically. “Thank you sir.”

The hand disappeared and took the pressure with it. The person in front of him was somewhere between Sir and Jim when he got off Steve, but it didn't stop whoever was there from snarling in disgust at Steve's gasp for air.

“Get on your knees so I can see how well you serve.”

Jim laying on his stomach with the sheets pulled around his middle doesn't look romantic. It looks like he's tired and desperate for warmth, the center of his room, framed in dark wood and modern lines.

He sighs. “I guess the pub's out tonight.”

Steve places his things at the corner of the nightstand, pulls off his shirt and boxers and gets in under the sheets alongside. “You can teach me how to cook what you want for you tomorrow.”

“How presumptuous,” Jim murmurs.

Steve smiles, “you realize you aren't getting out of this bed tonight, don't you? You realize I won't let you? We've been paying too much attention to my needs and letting yours go unfulfilled for long enough.”

Jim turns over, kicks the sheets down and gets up on his elbows. “You're killin' me with this 'romantic earnestness' thing, here.”

Jim's body is smaller, lighter, the muscles cultivated from training for the pull of gravity on the body. Steve can only ever remind himself of this fact when they're like this. Service grief flares up a bit: Steve never imagined himself with an airman, before, with his calluses and perfect skin, so free from the scars of battle.

“You should be more patient,” Steve leans over and swipes his mouth against the crease of a hip.

“You don't think I know that?” Jim asks, keening, “don't put your tongue there, I'm ticklish.”

“Let me just show you how devoted I am,” Steve says, “and then you won't ever have to hear it again.”

“You're starting to sound like a bodice ripper,” Jim replies, flatly, and groans as Steve moves over a little, runs his lips against the soft skin of Jim's oblique.

“What're those?” Steve asks, and moves again, slowing himself down. Jim's hard, a long plump line curving from between his legs. Steve teases him, licks above the head, bends and sucks a mark into the skin.

“Cheap, pulpy romance novels,” Jim's sense of calm is transparent. Steve knows he's trying to hold himself back from broadcasting every desire he has. “They were popular in the 70s and 80s. My sisters were in the book club for a while. Only thing they could agree on, sometimes.”

“Cheap?”

“Yeah.” Jim says, softly.

“You read any?”

“One or two,” Jim admits, and might not realize he's spreading his legs to make room for Steve between them. “They were pretty bad. Too much indecision, too much ravishing. Way too much ravishing.”

“You don't think you deserve to be ravished,” Steve lets his hands map each muscle from Jim's waist to his thighs, pushing them up so he can see everything, “every once in a while, Colonel?”

“I hate it when you rank me in bed,” Jim grins. Steve's heard that line before, but they both know it's a lie. The act goes right to Jim's head, and Steve likes watching just how ungentlemanly Rhodes can be when he's no longer preoccupied with being humble.

He smirks and bends and drags his tongue from the root of Jim's cock to the ridge under the head.

“I'm sorry, Colonel,” he drawls, his voice low and breath hot and his mouth so tantalizingly close to where he knows Jim wants it. “I'm afraid you'll have to speak up.”

And then he's taking Jim into his mouth, to the root.

“Yes,” Jim gasps, and Steve's pushing, close to choking because he gets too far ahead of himself. His hands are sliding into Steve's hair, he doesn't hesitate to hitch his legs over Steve's shoulders. He acts like its second nature, beautiful and slutty, and Steve reaches up to roll his fingers over Jim's hole. “Oh, fuck.”

“So,” Steve lifts his head, “this is why you were taking so long in the shower.”

Jim looks down at him and laughs, warm and deep as he puts his head back and sighs. “Fully capable of taking care of myself.”

He slides his fingers across the slick lubricant still there, finding the change in texture.

“You seemed to have done a great job,” Steve teases, lunges up and pushes his mouth against Jim's. “I bet you had help. Decided to take care of the situation, right?”

“That's what I was in the middle of when you came up,” Jim nods. Suddenly, Steve's fingers are dipping just inside and Jim's making a sound Steve hasn't heard before and the opportunity is there, just staring him in the face.

He pushes Jim's leg up, leans down, slides his fingers away and puts his mouth there.

Jim reaches down and puts a hand in Steve's hair, tries not to grab but can't help himself, his body arching into it. The lubricant makes everything taste like nothing, but the reaction it causes makes up for it. He drags out the act of breaching, of kissing, of loving every moment he can have Jim like this.

“Did you imagine it was me?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Jim says, softly, “but not like last time.”

The last time was uncomfortable and blindingly pleasurable, watching Jim bounce up and down on him, teeth bared, all the tension in the room snapping like a spring pulled deliciously tight. It hurt for both of them. There was a sense of self flagellation to it, and Jim had looked gorgeous as he came, as he groaned on every step to brunch the next morning.

“Mmm,” Steve says, slipping his fingers back inside and leans down to run his tongue over the stretched-open skin, “how was it different?”

“Slower,” Jim moans, squirms at the pressure Steve gives him again. “More intentional.”

“I want to see you do it, next time,” Steve says, and then his mouth his back down again at Jim's endless skin, laying kisses in the valley of Jim's thighs, drawing his mouth open to suck at the base of Jim's cock. He thrusts his fingers, pulling them back slow enough to feel Jim's muscles clench. He hears Jim fold his hands into the sheets.

“You are good at this,” he laughs, breathlessly. It sounds beautiful.

“I am,” Steve nods. He runs his lips over the skin of Jim's drawn scrotum, coaxes it into his mouth just to hear Jim's sob of pleasure overdrawn. “I could be so very good at it for you.”

“Keep talking like that,” Jim swallows, “and it'll go to my head.”

“Maybe that's something I want. Ever think about that?” Steve uses his thumb to nudge Jim's balls aside and press a kiss to the unattended skin just behind it. He corkscrews a third finger inside, watches Jim's body lose control of itself.

“I don't know if I could handle that.”

“All the more reason why it begs experimentation, Colonel.”

He likes watching this, hearing it as he slides free from Jim's grip, replacing his fingers with his mouth again. He takes a breath and then dives in headlong, invading, burrowing, he just wants inside to sneak a taste or two. He relishes each twitch, each whimper and the way Jim's toes curl against Steve's back as he licks and swirls and prods.

“Jesus,” Jim groans, “I'm gonna come. Oh fuck, make me come.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks. “You won't hold back, Colonel?”

“I don't think I could if I tried,” Jim says, watches on. He doesn't realize he's offering himself up wordlessly, comfortable and effortless in the pursuit of this end. Steve catalogs the response to each stroke in his head, notes each vulnerability in the armor of Jim's stoicism, his introversion.

“Fuck!”

Jim's hands pull at the sheets, and Steve would be lying if he didn't admit to beaming, getting a perfect point of view as he decides to come, muscles firming, hips rocking, head falling back into the pillows. He makes a mess of himself, goes off like a fire hose with a strangled shout. Steve anchors him, takes care of it, just enough pressure and heat to keep him going until he's empty and shaking.

Steve sits back on his knees and looks up at Jim. Steve's so hard there's a good chance his erection looks threatening, but he sort of likes it that way. His thumb leans in, swipes at the wetness sitting in the outline of Jim's torso, smiles as he raises it to Jim's lip. He stretches out on top, feels a bit like a predator scenting his ensnared prey, and raises his lips up to Jim's ear.

“You're going to come again tonight,” he says as he slides the finger into Jim's mouth.

“My body's older than yours, Rogers,” Jim points out around Steve's thumb, “I haven't come like that in years.”

“I'll make you come when I'm good and ready, just you wait,” he says, and drops a line of kisses against his ear, his jaw, his collarbone. “Be more patient, Colonel.”

“Yeah,” Jim nods, “Okay.”

“This is important,” Jim said, his voice steady. “This test looks simple, but if you do not comply it will not be pleasant.”

He was already complying, Steve thought. He was naked and hard and tied up on his knees, blood red rope sprawling out in every direction. Each leg had its own hobble, the ring of rope around his waist keeping him still.

“You are being assessed on physical capability and mental discipline. Your performance here will serve as a baseline for agility, refractory time, and accuracy,” Jim droned. “During this exercise, you are to follow my orders quickly and accurately. You are to consistently hold the position that has been designated for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve replied. There was a rope at the crux of his sternum, pitching him forward, arms thrown backward for counterbalance. Jim tied those, too, at the elbow and the wrist, hung the knots with a rope that was tied up to something hanging above them. The thought of what that could have been was more arousing than it should have been.

Jim looked like danger, the way he was holding something in his hand. It was a long white barrel with narrow silicone feelers at the end, a cord that plugged into the wall. He bent down, and Steve watched his fingers as he bent each part carefully around Steve's cock, his balls. It felt weird, knowing he was completely unable to touch back.

“You are to keep count of the number of times you have come. You are to ask for my permission, each time. You are to call your safe word if you need to renegotiate the terms of this exercise. Have I made myself clear?”

The silicone was slick, Jim tied the barrel to stay still between Steve's legs, the weight of it pulling the rope around his waist even tighter. It was hard to concentrate.

“Yes, sir, I understand, sir.”

Jim's lips pursed.

“This is your only audition,” he warned, sounded unyielding. “If you fail, you will not have another chance. If your performance does not cover my mandatory minimum baselines, I'll send you home. Have I made myself clear?”

Steve felt buoyant, held like this.

“Absolutely, sir.”

Jim looked at his watch, and then bent down to switch the barrel on. Nothing happened, and Steve tried to prepare himself. He stood up and walked back to the desk, the notebook, writing something down and reaching for a box that had also been plugged into the wall, flicking that on, too. A rumble erupted from the barrel, traversing the range of silicone arms. Steve pitched forward, found pain exploding in his writsts already.

“Fuck!”

“Language, soldier,” Jim said, curtly, and wrote something else down.

The toy turned up a little more, a little more than that. It felt like calibration, and Steve closed his eyes as he felt another bright wave of submission pass over him, his resolve coming to crumble.

“Permission to come, sir?” he asked, and it felt like he was incredibly far away.

He could hear the pen scratching, “permission granted.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and shook. He settled into it, afterward, made the promise to himself that he would see this through.

“Now that we've gotten that out of the way,” Jim said, wryly, “you can start reciting the terms of this exercise back to me.”

There was a wave of panic, some attempt to remember the words Jim had told him, but he was drawing a blank.

“Sir,” He shook his head, “I have to say them back to you?”

Jim said, his voice carrying a sheen of sterility, “it is advised you make an attempt.”

His mind was blank with over-stimulation, with the endless shivers crawling up his spine. It didn't matter, though. None of it seemed to matter much at all. “I am to follow my orders quickly and accurately. I am to hold the position designated to me. I am to count the number of times I have come. I am to ask permission each time, sir.”

“See, wasn't that easy?” Jim asked him. “Again, please.”

Steve did as asked, over and over again until his voice was foreign to his own ears. The haze of his selfishness was overbearing, a fog coming in along the waves.

“Permission to come, sir?”

Jim waited a beat. “Granted.”

Another orgasm tore through him, and he let his head hang, unfocused his eyes down at his sore knees.

“Tell me the terms of the exercise again,” Jim ordered, immediately.

The pain of over-stimulation was brighter this time, it burnt sweeter. The torrent of Jim's rules seemed encompassing, even as Steve followed them, repeated them, let himself hear them over and over again. All he could think about, really, was this thin feedback loop his body had become in the face of the thing between his legs.

He would hold out this time, make it twenty minutes, a half hou--“Permission to come, sir?”

Jim stayed silent. Steve sobbed, as his his eyes rolled back into his head and he tried not to scream, to rip apart at the rope.

“Repeat the rules to me again,” he ordered.

He could feel his mouth making the words, his throat manipulating the air, but he couldn't hear them anymore.

“Permission to come, sir?”

“Repeat my rules again.”

It felt painful to hold onto this edge, excruciating to push it aside.

“Permission to come, sir?”

“Granted.”

Steve groaned and lurched forward, shaking with sweet relief.

“All that gossip I heard about you, Cadet,” Jim chuckled, quiet and terrible. “Apparently not an ounce of it was true.”

A moment for a swish of mouthwash and the opportunity to snatch up the lube that was still sitting in the shower, and then Steve's back in the bedroom, watching Jim lay there in the space between awake and asleep.

“Feeling any better?” Steve asks as he leans down, drags the cloth against Jim's skin and leans down for a kiss. Jim smiles, dreamily and sounds relieved as he rolls his tongue against the seam of Steve's lips.

“A little,” Jim admits, “but I could be doing better.”

“Oh?” Steve asks. “Anything I can do to help that situation?”

“Once things settle,” Jim says, like it's not obvious they're going to try having sex. Maybe it isn't, Steve doesn't really know. “I think I want you to really shut me up.”

“So,” Steve says, as he lays beside him, leans up on an arm, “you want me to be mean?”

“The fact that you always ask that says so much about our relationship,” Jim grins, takes the lube. He pushes Steve back, straddles his waist. He leans in and pushes his mouth against Steve's. Jim's a furnace, sleepy and lanky and gentle against Steve. “I think, once I'm warmed up, you could do anything you think will help.”

“Including the voice?” Steve grins, “I know how much you hate it.”

“Yeah.” Jim nods, but doesn't take the time to explain. He spends it reaching behind him, drenching Steve in lube. “Would you believe I'm nervous about this? I just want to sleep with you and I'm nervous.”

Steve reaches for him, holds him by the shoulders, “we're okay, we're fine. Whatever you want. Whatever you ask me for.”

Jim leans up into Steve's hands and he nods before taking them at the wrists, pushing them down to rest at his hips. “Help me?”

Steve slowly, gently cants Jim's body toward his, pushing him back and down and feeling the brush of wet skin to skin and--

“Oh.”

“It's okay,” Steve tells him, and blushes as he feels himself sinking in, “relax. Surrender to it.”

“Oh god,” Jim hisses, but he's already partway down, already stuffed up inside, hips working on their own. “Fuck you, oh.”

“Sit up a little.”

Jim places his hands on Steve's chest, his fingers spread out before he pushes himself upward, hands walking down Steve's torso, reaching to his sides. They both groan as he takes Steve with little effort, swallows him up to the root with a gasp.

“Well,” Jim declares, tersely, “you're still huge. It should be comforting to know nothing's changed, I guess.”

Steve laughs, his whole body tightening with giddiness. Jim puts his head down and groans, biting his lip as he focuses on the invasion. He slowly lifts himself off Steve's cock, gasping softly before dropping back to the root, fucking himself like Steve isn't even there. The pace he sets is just this side of torturous but that first hint of acceleration makes it all worth it, the way it makes their breath catch in their throats. He tilts his hands against Jim's hips, and Jim arches his back and groans the first time Steve hits the right spot.

Steve lifts a hand to slide fingers into Jim's mouth, and as they emerge wet with saliva he drops them to touch at Jim's nipple, circling the flesh until it pebbles up and Jim's clenching and shivering all over.

“Ticklish,” Steve murmurs, moves over to the other one. Jim nods like he's just barely paying attention, keeps rolling and gyrating and letting the silence speak for him. “Almost ready for me?”

“Yeah,” Rhodes says, softly, “think I can feel you in my throat.”

Steve rolls his hips, gently, the two of them learning this new part of each other. He closes his eyes and can feel Jim surrounding him, warm wet flesh.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” Steve admits, and hasn't experienced this kind of intimacy in a long time. “You're still tense. You have to let go.”

“You're the first person I've let get up my ass since the 90's,” Jim whines. “You're gonna have to give me a few minutes.”

“There's a very good chance you'll squeeze me off in the process,” Steve arches his hips and tries to get some leverage, tries to think of something that won't make him come so soon.

He finds Jim's prostate, instead. “Motherfucker, now you're just doing shit on purpose.”

“You really don't understand what I am going through right now, here,” Steve snipes. “I'm sorry, fuck I'm sorry but I have to come.”

“It's okay,” Jim nods automatically, even though he still looks more than a little pained. “I'll be here when you finish.”

“Could you make that sound any more of a chore?” Steve rolls them over, relishing the jagged sob Jim gives him when he lands flat on his back and full to the brim.

“I'll just lie back and think of England,” Jim smiles.

Steve leans down to kiss him, and takes his hands by the wrists, holds them in one hand and shoves them over Jim's head. He's hard again, his erection sliding between their bodies and it really has been way too long since either of them tried their hand at this.

“You'll think of this, Colonel,” Steve teases. He looks down and rolls his hips as slow as he can handle and knows he wants to hold everything off. “The next time, and the time after. That's why you don't want to let go of me, right? That's why you won't loosen up? Yeah, you wanna know every little bit of me, don't you?”

Jim bucks, weakly, closes his eyes and wraps his legs around Steve's hips and smiles, “Do we have to set some ground rules on talking in bed?”

Steve laughs, feels himself vibrating and starts moving faster.

Steve had kept asking, and the request kept being granted until the pleasure became rotten, a mind numbing torture that left him with the authoritative droll of his own voice.

Jim was no longer in the room, not really. He was enacting Steve's every request, exploring every avenue, but the things that made him recognizable were receding. He was standing taller, broader. He took it upon himself to prowl. There was a sheen of professionalism, cold steel in his tone.

This was Sir, again, a man who had a sense of responsibility to him but didn't find it prudent to show that hand just yet. Steve had requested a barrage, to be thrown back into the deep end, after all. A fresh, brutal wave of submission cascaded over him, and he grit his teeth and struggled through his mind hazing out, coming so close to orgasm again.

“Did Sergeant Barnes bother to train you or did he simply beat you up?” Sir's voice rang wide and deep and so different than the tone Jim had taken with him before. Steve's head was down but his eyes popped open wide at the words. He wanted to snarl, then, wanted to fight back.

Sir sighed, passed a hand over his face and turned away. “That was out of line, soldier. I apologize, have one on me.”

Steve watched as the hand dropped over to the dial, cranked it up high. The vibrations came quicker, harder, and Steve couldn't do anything but rut mindlessly until his hips couldn't work anymore, until his whole body was numb, until he was sobbing for it. Orgasm came as completely as it could have, and he had no choice but to let it take him away.

The oversensitivity it left behind seared into his skin. He had no way to fight it, no way to--

“Tell me my rules again.”

The words came spilling out, and Steve had no control of them. No, all of his power, what little stamina he had left was focused on holding off the next building thirst for orgasm.

“You are showing signs of fatigue,” Sir wrote it down. “Do you require assistance to complete the exercise?”

Sir didn't let him answer, turned the dial down to a low thrum and reached for another coil of rope. Steve watched him walk up, disappear from view as he settled behind him. Suddenly, he was being moved, pushed upward onto his kneecaps, head tilted even lower toward the floor. Rope drew his arms closer to his waist, and the knot was torqued until it felt like he was presenting himself for it, for invasion, for the next step.

He hated that he wanted it. He hated that he knew Sir was watching him want it.

“I am giving you an aide so we can finish. It is heavy, but small. The rest of this exercise will be judged on a modified scale to account for this.” Sir said, “have I made myself clear?”

“Sir,” Steve struggled, “yes sir.”

It was small and slick, and Sir went slow. Once it was seated, it felt like steel, solid and dense and cold, so very cold inside him.

“Sir, thank you sir.”

Sir got back up, walked back to the dial. “Now.”

The dial snapped back on, and Steve was up again, and didn't have it in him to keep quiet as he clenched down hard on the thing that had been shoved inside him. He moaned under his breath “Oh god, oh god Rhodes you fucking son of a bitch. When I get out of this goddamn position you put me in I will... fuck, fuck!”

There was a moment of tense, electrifying silence, and suddenly the contraption cranked itself higher. He shook, and watched as Sir approached him with sense of newfound menace, took him by the hair and yanked him back.

“You insubordinate maggot,” Sir snapped. The sting of impact on Steve's cheek was a bright flash, a line of fire across his jaw. “You listen to me and you listen good: I will only ever have one name to you, clear?”

He laughs, feels himself so deep under everything that he's almost down to raw nerves, acid and grit and all the ways he would goad someone on when he was small enough not to care, when he was reckless.

“What's so funny?”

He had nothing to lose.

“Some gentleman you are, hitting on the first 'date.'”

The vibration kicked up even higher, until it was numbing, stinging, pleasure-torture to shiver and crumple and fall in so deep he couldn't even remember the context for it, for this, for Sir.

He pulled, and twitched and his body lept headlong into another, drier orgasm this time. Suddenly his mouth was full of warm flesh, helpless to it as Sir pushed into his throat.

“I usually don't put out, either,” Sir was grinning down at him, “but don't you worry, I'll get down to your root, yet.”

“You are nowhere near focused, right now,” Steve says.

“I'm sorry, it's just this thing.”

“This thing,”

“This thing Tony told me about before I left,” Jim stammers. “He's working on something weird, something, I dunno, injectable. Like what the Mandarin had, but with armor.”

“Injectable armor?” Steve asks, and hates the fact that they're talking about this right now, sharing the same pillow, looking up at the ceiling.

“Knowing him.”

“But that's him,” Steve shakes his head, turns to look. Jim is nowhere near asleep, filled to the brim with nervous energy. Steve knows that buzz, that itch of waiting for the next fight, the next dreadful thing. He reminds himself that Jim has always been a soldier, even before he took the oath, that he can handle anything given to him, make it work, but, “the pentagon wouldn't take him up on that, right? I mean, they don't like the Patriot that much, do they?”

“I hate that word. Patriot,” Jim covers his eyes, sighs and curls his toes under the covers they've nested into. “And just thinking about it coming out of my pores, that's even worse than thinking about living in it.”

“How's it been working out for you?”

“It doesn't assemble like War Machine did. It does this weird swarm-and-lock thing when you put it on,” Jim says, softly. “It's tighter, lighter and faster. But thinking about all that is a luxury, once you're in it. You're responsible for everything, adding extra stress on yourself to panic over it is like painting a target on your back.”

“But that's not what you're worried about, I take it?”

“Yeah, I'd find a way to tolerate the things they made me do in the patriot, but the idea that it could be in my skin, under it? That you could cut me open and I'd bleed it? I don't think I'll ever be ready for that.”

“Would you do it for the War Machine?”

“It would sure as shit make the idea easier to stomach,” Jim mutters.

It's subconscious, but they both lean into each other a little, easy skin-to-skin. It’s comfortable, complete. Jim's eyelids are closed, and Steve leans over, pushes his mouth into the hollow of Jim's throat. He feels the soft moan under the skin, hears it like it should be heard.

Steve traces his lips up Jim's neck, his chin, until he's on his lips, the two of them kissing soft and slow. It hits Steve then, everything locks a little further into place.

“You like the idea of taking him off, don't you?”

“The patriot?” Jim asks. “It's the best feeling in the world.”

“Yeah?”

“Better than sex.”

“Must've been some terrible sex,” Steve jokes.

Jim smiles at that, brings Steve down for another kiss, “you could put your money where your mouth is, if that's what you're insinuating.”

“I suppose I could, couldn't I?” Steve snerks, “I got an idea.”

“Ready to go again?”

“I think so,” Steve nods, and pulls out the old gloves from his uniform, loud red leather. “Put these on.”

Jim looks at him, “and these are for?”

“Me,” Steve says with a shrug, “I still think this is something you don't actually want, and I'm holding myself back. So, trick me.”

“And gloves are gonna do that?” Jim sounds entirely unconvinced.

“You could put on the mask if you feel so strongly about it.”

“The gloves are fine,” Jim snatches them out of Steve's hand.

Steve smiles, bites his lip. “Lay on top of me. Your back to my front.”

Jim follows, wordlessly. They lay there, getting used to the feeling, their breath sinking up, their bodies close together. Jim's shorter, so it makes it a little challenging to line up just right, but once they're settled it's easy to kiss like this, just a simple turn, a twist and then parts of them are slowly wrapping into each other.

“I really want you to fuck me,” Jim says, softly.

“I want that, too,” Steve soothes. “You'll get what you want soon enough.”

His hands split Jim's thighs open wide and he reaches down, traces the line of Jim's half-hard cock and the weight of his balls just to get to that hole again, just to test the breach. The skin parts around him easily.

“I need the lube,” Steve says, and Jim reaches for it, fucks himself on Steve's fingers, squirming back and forth.

“I didn't realize the inside of these gloves were so hard,” Jim tries to sound conversational, but Steve knows better. “When's the last time you used them?”

“Not for a while,” Steve idly lubes himself up, pushes in long and slow. Jim stops, reaches up over his head and grips at the pillow above them, gasps at the sudden invasion, but Steve doesn't stop until he's fully seated, all the way to the hilt.

It feels new this time. Well fitting, symbiotic. Steve jostles the two of them a little, holds onto Jim's hips and tilts his own to make sure there's a good likelyhood he'll incite something like frustration.

“Tell me if you need to stop,” Steve says, thinly. “Tell me everything, I want to hear you.”

Jim nods, clenches up, hisses, “you feel even bigger when you act like you know how to use that thing.”

“Poor baby,” Steve teases dryly, rolls his hips.

Jim squirms, makes a noise Steve's never heard before. His breathing's picked up, he's become hard.

“Still want to get fucked?”

Jim plays it cool,” might as well.”

Steve chuckles under his breath and thrusts in, hears and relishes Jim's gasp. He slides out again, rolls his hips as he slides back in. He pistons, each movement as thorough, as professional as he can make it. Jim's cock bounces and strains and leaks with the lack of attention, and Jim's arms raise over their heads, catching onto the pillows, the sheets, anything they can. Like it would help, he thinks.

Steve warbles to a stop, rolls his hips long and slow, hammers in. The flesh around him clenches, moulds to him like it wants him to stay forever. He puts his head down on Jim's shoulder and smiles, drags his mouth against smooth dark skin, and trusts that he'll be able to do this proper. He pistons, deep in and out, resolved to wear Jim down.

“More,” he grunts. “Harder, faster, anything. Please.”

“Can't stand it like this, can you?” Steve asks, reaches to stroke all over Jim, trace the lines in his arms and the way his ribcage is rising and falling. He puts his hands all over Jim's hips and thighs, palms them handily and lifts, splits Jim open even wider and pushes in deeper, savage.

Jim turns and offers Steve his mouth. Steve raises a hand for it, holds him still and connects them like that, too. His free hand slides gently against the pillar of Jim's erection, just to see what will happen. He gets Jim's body coiled and springing into action, pushing back, frustrated little moans inside Steve's mouth punctuating everything.

He goes harder, quicker, pushes Jim's hips down on his dick until the moans are loud, unabashed, until he knows the pleasure's burning Jim up.

“Let me spoil you,” Steve says, and means it. “Let me ruin you.”

Steve liked being used; he'd admit it to anyone who had the gall to ask. Once he felt safe, he would imagine himself wading through a beach, his feet lapping at the water, the high tide rolling in quick.

It seemed like Sir was taking stock of everything he was worth, he could ever be worth, like this. And all Steve could do is sneak little breaths of air every time Sir pulled away, curl his fingers into fists and jam his thumbs into his palms to help his gag reflex. All he could do is stop thinking, stop everything.

Sir pulled away for a moment, and Steve whimpered before he could catch himself. It had fit so perfectly in him, the thing that had been pushed into his mouth to shut him up, tasted salty and briny and echoed of sweat, reminded him of Jim but stronger, leaner. Steve gave a fleeting thought to the fact that he didn't know if Sir had come down his throat, didn't know anything.

He opened his eyes, saw Sir standing right there, breathing rough, his cock hard as it sprang from his jeans, wet with Steve's saliva. He looked unnerving like that, staring down at Steve like he owned him.

Steve frowned for a moment, but his body snapped into another dry, painful orgasm and the frustration was gone.

“Sir, I can do bett--”

Sir made a face, took a moment to root around his back pocket for something, pulled it free. He extended his hands, moved to clamp Steve's nostrils shut.

“Sir,” Steve asked, “am I performing to you--”

Sir shoved back in, fucked his mouth and throat like it was nothing, moaned as Steve choked.

The tide eroded what little was left of him: he was down to the utter base of himself, inadvertently exposing it to Sir. He was choking, sputtering, sobbing. He was powerless.

Sir was above him, using him to evolve, speaking in a language Steve couldn't remember if he knew, feeling himself expand and contract with every new stroke. And then he was completely sealed away, pushed down into the sea. Sir had disassembled him, taken him to the very edge. He can't breathe, he can't think, doesn't want the privilege and has found someone who will take it away.

He's crying, sobbing, but he was glad he had returned home.

Sir stayed there until he was limp in Steve's mouth, then pulled away. The vibrator turned off, as if that could possibly matter now. Steve gasped for air, tries to hold onto the rhythm of being used as the object he was. It felt like he was dreaming, and he was suddenly so thankful for the rope holding him in place, even as it stretched and pulled him open and thin. His whole body tingled with it, being pushed, made to feel.

The clip on his nose slid away. Steve pressed his face into the naked skin of Sir's hip, resting his head there.

He heard Sir shucking off his gloves, putting his hands in Steve's hair, petting him, soothing him wordlessly.

“Please,” He sounded hoarse, like it wasn't his place to speak. “Have I passed, sir?”

Sir sounded like he would smile, “you surpassed my expectations. You failed well.”

Steve wasn't sure he could bring himself to care if that was good or bad.

“Turn me over,” Jim says, breathlessly, “turn me over, push me down, take me.”

Steve nods, rolls the two of them over and pulls out completely to reach for the lube. “On your knees, Colonel. I want your ass in the air.”

“We really need to work on your dirty talk skills,” Jim grumbles, but looks utterly sickened with pleasure anyway. Steve's fingers work more lubricant inside, pour more onto his dick.

“I've seen the War Machine tapes, you know,” Steve says. “I've seen how you fight. You're not afraid to get dirty when you have to. You don't stop until your foot's on the enemy's neck.”

“Is this supposed to be sexy?” Jim asks, breathlessly. He stretches out, pushes the leather of the gloves off his hands and out of the way. “Because seriously.”

“Seriously?” Steve takes him by surprise, shoves in to the hilt. “I'm gonna fuck you the way you fight.”

“What does that even mean?”

He uses the leverage of Jim's shoulders, picks him up and thrusts in deep, rough. Jim's fingers curl into the sheets.

“I'm gonna be methodical, relentless,” Steve says, and it comes out sounding like a snarl. “Grind you down to nothing.”

Another hard thrust, and another. Another and Jim's finally gasping, panting for it. “So shut up and fuck me.”

“You asked for it,” Steve grins, and buckles himself down into a quick-march rhythm. It only takes a few minutes to wear down Jim's sense of quiet, to turn careful breaths into long moans, sobs, pleas.

“There,” Jim says, flattens a hand on the bed, arches his back. He makes another unkept noise at the change in angle, turns push his mouth against Steve's. “Oh, oh god right there.”

Steve stays quiet behind him, relishing the limited view he has. He uses his legs to push Jim's together, uses his hips to cant both of theirs into a different angle, and Jim hisses and his whole body jumps.

“Fuck!”

“Colonel,” Steve teases like he's concerned. He's really, really not, not when Jim lets him stretch out, arms coming down like bars, like pillars. “I'm offended that you would think it's okay to use that kind of language. I haven't the finest idea what's gotten into you.”

He uses his legs to push Jim's together, changing the angle again, pull another sob from Jim's mouth. He let himself go, then, worked hard and fast until Jim is lost in his pleasure. He could feel fingers swiping distractedly at his own, a sex-stupid attempt to find another layer of intimacy. He smiled at that, rut harder, set himself on knocking Jim clean out of his head.

Jim was rambling, now. “Damnit, Rogers c'mon, touch me. Make it good, make me come.”

Their fingers linked together for a moment, and Steve can feel how wound Jim is, can see every exquisite line like this. It's the perfect time, he thinks, and he might as well gamble.

“When I'm ready,” he reminds Jim in a bitten off, focused snarl he knows Rhodes won't hear, all his focus on the pressure of his prostate. He knows that silent scream of overwrought denial well, how it drowns out everything else.

He eases to a full stop, slips his hands around Jim's wrists and flicks them to the center of Jim's back, pushing him down into a new form where his muscles strain and the light bounces off the sheen of Jim's sweat as he puts his head down and tries to break the hold.

“You know I'm stronger, right?” Steve asks, but Jim's squirming, trying anything he can. He's pinned, taken care of, given everything he'd asked for and has nothing left to do but rock back and forth, take and take.

“I don't give a fuck how strong you are,” Jim spits, pure venom in his voice. He sounds gorgeous, looks it, too, fucking himself on Steve with such limited space to move in, his hips pushing backward onto Steve as eagerly as they could muster. Jim's hungry for it, Steve thinks, he's ready to struggle.

Steve leans back, shoves in as fast as he could without breaking either of them. Another change in angle and he's now on Jim's prostate every stroke, and neither of them can breathe, mouths open and gasping for air.

He watches as every line of Rhodes' body shakes, vibrates through to the core.

Steve comes so hard his vision whites out, so hard his ears ring.

“I've broken you, haven't I?” he asked, sitting there to watch Steve soak in the tub two floors down, in the spare apartment. He held a mason jar in his hand, filled to the brim with iced chamomile tea. Steve watched him make it, dose it with the lavender syrup they made for a recipe a few days ago, added a splash of elderflower and gin 'for spice', whatever that means. Steve wasn't sure how that would taste even without the alcohol, stuck to orange juice.

Steve smirked, “You say that like it's bad that I'm still coming.”

“I broke Captain America,” he groaned, pitching forward, leaning over and putting his face on Steve's shoulder, running his fingers over Steve's neck. “Shield's gonna come and plug me over this one.”

“They'll just send you the bill,” Steve grinned, caught his hand and rocked back and forth in the water. He felt like he was on some kind of drug, sleepwalking through life. “Come in here with me, sir.”

He straightened up, away from Steve, then. “I'm not that right now.”

“I can't... remember what you are, though,” Steve admitted, and watched as he got up, pushed down his sweatpants and got in on the other side of the tub.

“You don't remember?” he asked. “You have to, c'mon, you gotta try.”

The word was far away in Steve's head, and Steve straddled the line between falling asleep and being entirely prepared for a marathon.

He cupped his hands and rolled them under the water, picking them up and pouring them over his shaved head.

“Can I,” Steve asks. “I want to...”

“What?” he asked.

“Can I touch you?”

“Of course you can,” he nods, “anywhere.”

Steve's hands were shaking, but he picked them off the rim of the tub anyway, spread them over the top of Jim's scalp, pulled him close for a kiss, soft and languid and slow. To taste him brings back memories that cut through the blissful fog, but Steve isn't in control of himself, just yet, and has nothing to do but shiver again.

“Are you going through another?” Jim asked, like he was amazed. “I broke Captain America.”

“They could send you a letter of warning,” Steve smiled at him.

“Smells like a demotion to me,” Jim replied. “Great.”

“We should try it again,” Steve said. “See if you can replicate conditions.”

“Yes,” Jim said, voice lilting with sarcasm, “because really my entire interest in this foray is related exclusively to adding my name to the long list of people who have written peer-reviewed articles on you. 'Stimulation and the Superbody,' get it published in some medical journal on sexual health.”

“I...” he stopped, breathed, rolled his fingers and palms over Jim's shoulders, “I like that idea.”

“I know you do,” Jim nodded, “I'll have to think of a way to put it in again. Maybe I'll take notes on how well you edge. ”

“Sweet talker,” Steve grinned. Even though the water was growing cold, he was still in the realm of spacing out his thoughts, rolling them between his palms and against Jim's skin. He was hungry for the touch, starving.

He could have slept for weeks.

“Did it work this time?”

“What?”

“Distracting yourself,” Steve shrugs.

“Oh,” Jim says, thinks for a moment as he stares up at the ceiling, “yeah, I think so. You do real good work.”

“I aim to please,” Steve smirks.

“Well, you did more than aim,” Jim replies, and leans over, kisses him before laying back down again. “Was it always like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“With the 'Charlies?' Y'know, in the 'trenches?'” Jim sounds genuinely curious, in good spirits. “Did I just get the USO special, Cap?”

“Nah,” Steve says, “better. Flat surfaces and rimjobs were two things I couldn't find and wouldn't offer nobody.”

“I imagined they took care of their star talent, y'know,” Jim says, turns to lay against Steve, pushing hair from Steve's forehead, “thought they woulda treated you like hollywood.”

“Most people just wanted a tussle with the pretty boy. Nothing all that big or important, comparatively,” Steve smiles. “You're a special case.”

“Yeah?”

Steve nods.

“Thanks,” Jim says, quietly.

“For what?”

“Not making a big deal of it.”

“What kind of big deal was I gonna make?” Steve shrugs. “Call you an American hero during the middle of sex or something? I'm sure you have a full throng of followers who are doing that. I don't have to waste my breath.”

“I'm sure a decent percentage of them would shut the hell up if they knew what I just did with you,” he says.

“At least a few of them suspect there's a good reason why you don't have an attractive blonde on your arm,” Steve shrugs.

“I mean I do,” Jim says, “but something tells me conservative talk radio wouldn't be too pleased with my definition of 'attractive.'”

“Pure cheese,” Steve laughs.

“That's pretty accurate,” Jim says, leans up and pushes his mouth against Steve's again. “Can you imagine, if they knew?”

“Well, to the press I'm a bit of a nobody lately, but you?” Steve flirts. “It would be quite the story, wouldn't it?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“Let's not tell anyone,” Steve whispers. “Want you all to myself.”

Jim looks utterly content like this, so close, eyes closed, hands wrapped around Steve's shoulders and incredibly, gloriously post-coital. “I like that idea. A lot.”

“Good.”

Stark was standing in the middle of the living room with a glass of whiskey in one hand and a wrench in the other.

“You didn't tell me you lived with him,” he said out loud, to nobody in particular.

Jim came out of the bathroom wearing two of the panels from the new suit, the little triangle glowing reactor-white, the helmet on his head, the mask obscuring his face, the rest of his body covered in whatever body condom Stark had convinced the DoD was necessary for conductive purposes. Steve shucked off his jacket, put down his hat on the bureau by the door.

“Is this some kind of military thing?” Stark continued. “Bunking up and complaining about XO's and 'sir yes sir's?”

Steve smirked at that, if only Stark knew.

“Because, I mean, both of you are way too butch to be dating, right?”

“Tony,” Jim sighed.

“Keep it one hundred with me, Honeybear,” Tony warned with his screwdriver, “you aren't puttin' it down on Gramps, right?”

The idea that Tony would be shocked was unnerving, knowing how close he was to Jim, hearing the way he always talked about the kind of man he hoped to see Jim with once Rhodes settled down.

“Gosh, I don't know what half the words in that sentence mean,” Steve said, dryly, “but I think we could safely qualify what's going on as 'dating.' Men date, right?”

“Of course 'men date,' Steve.” The visor flipped up, Jim rolled his eyes, “He just thinks we're pulling his chain.”

“What would be the point?” Steve asked. “Isn't he really good at doing that himself.”

“Amen to that,” Jim muttered.

“Hey, when I told the two of you to find an apartment, I did not mean for you to take that statement literally,” Tony snapped. “I bet you two do push up contests or some shit like that before bed at thirteen hundred.”

“Thirteen hundred is one o'clock in the afternoon, Tony,” Jim said tiredly, “now can we please get this fixed so I can take it off?”

“There was that one time where we went to bed at thirteen hundred,” Steve said, conversationally. The hand that didn't have a gauntlet and glove on it pointed at him in halfhearted warning. “What? I'm just saying that was a good one.”

“So, the two of you are having sex?! And his pelvis isn't broken and you haven't gotten punched in the face yet?”

“I thought it was obvious,” the little voice modulator said, and looked over in Steve's direction. “Wasn't it obvious, sugar cube?”

“Thought so,” Steve nodded once, his voice flat, “gummy bear.”

Jim turned back to Tony, “it was obvious.”

“How?” Tony asked. “How was it obvious?”

“Well, Tony,” Jim said, “when two men like each other very much they--”

“Hey, hey stop there,” Stark said, holding his hands up. “I do not want to hear about how the two of you cheat on America with each other.”

“You sure?” Steve asked. “It's a great story.”

Stark smiled like he was about to kick someone in the groin, “I think I'm fine, thanks.”

“Tony, just try to be a better sport, please,” Jim said.

“You look stupid in that outfit,” Steve said to him, pressed a kiss to the mask's cheek. “Come find me when you can take it off.”

“He's giving you the best pair of eyes ever, right now,” Jim replied, the voice tinny and weak through the mask.

“I bet you are, too,” Steve smirked as he chose to walk away, picking up his sketchbook and throwing a wave over his shoulder. “See you later, Stark.”

Jim had been gone for a bit when Steve found a new chair, beaten tanned leather. It was big enough to take up the last empty corner in the room.

Last night, Jim had assumed it like it was his property, and the idle words 'Don't fuck up my chair. Fuck my chair and you'll wish I go this easy on you.” rang, and it wasn't Jim he was thinking of, not really. It was the monsters they became when Sir assumed Steve was his to manipulate, to test.

Steve sat, turned on the lamp. The bureau was across the floor, tucked up against the other wall. Steve opened his sketchbook to the sketch of it he'd been working on, Sir's cabinet.

He reached down for a pencil, and set upon sketching the foreboding little lock at the center.

It's cold, Steve thinks, too late to go out in search of food. He looks at Jim, standing in his skivvies looking into the refrigerator.

“Any ideas?”

“Maria will haunt me for not making something utterly magnificent for the man I love, who just fucked me into a stupor,” he sighs, “but I did find ice cream in the freezer.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve asks. “Sit with me.”

Jim reaches into a drawer quickly, and soon he's climbing over the back of the sofa like a teenager, dropping into Steve's lap. “It's cold in here.”

“Says the man about to eat ice cream for dinner,” Steve points out.

“Dinner passed, like, six hours ago between the dozing and the fucking,” Jim reasons, “this is a late night snack. Hand me a blanket.”

Steve smiles, opens up a blanket and wraps it around them, bundling the two of them together.

“I want to move,” he says.

“Haven't we just done a shit-ton of moving?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head, “I want to relocate. We should move.”

Jim flicks off the top of the ice cream carton, sits it between the two of them, and gives Steve a spoon. “I thought Brooklyn was a good fit.”

“It's not,” Steve admits, “it's full of things and people I have no real passion to understand.”

And it's full of ghosts, he thinks, full of disappointing memories, modernity overruling the beauty Steve often found in squalor. His whole body seems to outwardly reject the claim and he rolls himself inward, toward the ice cream. Toward Jim.

“Where do you want to go?” Jim asks, quietly.

“Patriot program's in DC,” Steve asks, “right?”

“Mostly,” Jim nods firmly, once, “It's a busy place, keeps weird hours.”

“I don't mind,” Steve shrugs. “Things are sort of a pain, here.”

“How do you mean?”

Steve swallows his mouthful of caramel swirl, “it's just not right. It's expensive, and people are cold. There's a sense of style here that trumps actual desire. Everybody's concerned about the easy dollar. There's this ego, everybody has it, I can smell it. All these people trying to look poor and act rich.”

“But you'll miss it when you leave,” Jim says. “I don't want that for you.”

“I already miss it,” Steve says, “it left me behind.”

This is a shell compared to the place he grew up in. This is mohawks, forced Bohemia and cell phone emporiums. This is people that live their lives out like a talkie.

“I dunno,” Steve stutters. “I'm just done with here, I think.”

“Mmm,” Jim says, “So why DC?”

“Never been there before,” Steve says, “seems nice.”

“It's full of the same kind of people,” Jim says, “it's not like it's totally different. This is how people are now. They're insecure. And hollow.”

“I know,” Steve says, “but at least I wouldn't be comparing it to some place that I used to know. You wouldn't have to do so much traveling, we could really get something smaller this time.”

“And what do you expect we do about here?”

“We could rent it, I did the math, three tenants would cover the mortgage and give us extra cash,” Steve shrugs. “Or we could take or chances and sell it.”

Jim has been quietly sitting there, eating the ice cream until his side of the carton has an impressive dent. “Something smaller.”

“Wood floors, claw foot tub, cracked title. A kitchen we could renovate. A big bedroom would be nice, but we only really need one.”

“You know I love it when you talk HGTV to me,” Jim says, dryly. “No more commuter flights would be nice, but you have a job here, Steve. SHIELD isn't gonna authoriz--”

“Fury's been trying to get me out of New York for ages,” Steve says, “DC office has a pair of desks for me and Natasha the minute we say the word. It's sort of weird to think about how much they don't want us here, to be honest.”

“No more surprise vegan restaurants,” Jim says, fond of the idea.

“The other day I swore I saw a baby that had facial piercings,” Steve says.

“Was it Halloween?”

“Might've been, but that's beside the point,” Steve says. “I can't appreciate people who can't make up their minds about what's worth referencing and what isn't.”

“Finish this ice cream, or at least take it away from me before I eat it all,” Jim reaches for the tablet on the table, swipes away the data set from the Patriot's flight recorder. “Should I send an e-mail to Stark's real estate lady again?”

“I'm sure all you have to do is show up in someone's office and they'll jump as high and far as you want them to,” Steve shrugs between bites. “Mr. 'I saved the president.'”

“I hate you so much right now,” Jim replies.

“We should rent this time,” Steve says, sits back and eats, tucks his feet tighter, “we can get a nice view of the capitol from our bedroom, that way.”

“Do you think we're at the stage where we only need one?” Jim asks, softly. Gently. Insecurely, Steve thinks, and with good reason, they have put lots of carts before each prospective horse. It could end in disaster. "Bedroom, I mean."

“We end up sleeping in the same bed most nights that you're here, anyway,” Steve says, scrapes the bottom of the cardboard carton for the last soft and milky bite, “but I won't bring it up again if you're not ready.”

Jim sighed, and the room was overcome with a gentle sense of melancholy, the quietest of lover's quarrels.

“I'm a little conflicted,” he admits, “but you're right. And we can always find some place with bigger living space to organize so we don't bump into each other too much.”

“The only way we'll bump into each other is if I'm off duty and you're laid up,” Steve says, “we both know you won't be spending too much time on the couch with that new promotion to 'national goddamn treasure.'”

“Way to sound sore over that, dude,” Jim says, hands over the tablet. It's a picture of a beautiful view, floor to ceiling windows in a bedroom, glittering with lights and a far-off view of the capitol at dusk. “I'll ask for a tour the next time I'm down there.”

Steve imagines that space, kneeling there, waiting for Jim to decide what to do to him next. He imagines that space, sitting in the chair, drawing the cars passing by. He imagines that space, the bustle in the background as they decide to spend the day in bed.

The thought is nice.

“That's beautiful,” Steve says.

“And small,” Jim adds, “The novelty probably wears off quick.”

“But imagine it, imagine coming home to that,” Steve says.

“And you. Mostly you,” Jim amends.

“Imagine coming home to that and me,” Steve says. “You know you want it.”

“Yeah, I could see myself getting real comfortable like that,” Jim nods. “Fuck, it's five in the morning.”

“The diner opens at six thirty,” Steve shrugs.

“Tavern opens at six thirty,” Jim says. “We should stay up.”

“We could try to make it happen again.”

“It?” Jim says, laughs. “You can't even call it a third round?”

“That sounds even more indecent, honestly,” Steve admitted.

It is early December, and Steve's mouth is dry in the cold air. They are on the roof, bundled in Parkas and sitting wrapped up in blankets. Jim wanted to be up here. Pacing, waiting. Steve wouldn't have dared say no to being here, too, but it was wet, unpleasant.

There was a shaky offer for some scotch, a cigar. The tenant on the second floor wouldn't ever know it, but Steve even contemplated knocking on his door in hopes he'd had some of the sweet-smelling kush the guy would stand out in the cold to smoke in the backyard, if it would help.

Jim said no to all of that, he had to be sober. The Patriot was coming.

“Last time I saw him,” Jim said, softly, “he wouldn't listen to me when I told him I was worried about him. About the thing with the wormhole.”

They watched Malibu get torpedoed, the house break into pieces that lurched reluctantly into the ocean below. They watched it all on the news, sitting on the couch. They'd watched it—Tony's death a million times, it was on every channel, every gadget in the house buzzing with the notification, even while silent. Steve ached to turn them all off.

Tears streamed down Rhodes' face, uncontrollable, uncomfortable.

“I should've done more,” Jim said, quietly. “I should have taken care of him.”

He would be gone for weeks, he would find it within himself to avenge Tony's death. He was honor-bound to do so: trapped by his sense of loyalty and betrayal. Steve wanted to help, do his part, but Jim shrugged the offer off, this was his fight. He was the only one who could finish this.

“You know this isn't your fault.”

Jim wouldn't meet his eyes.

“Right?”

“I saw that video, that speech he gave at the hospital,” Jim said, tears cresting over again, “fucking Martini, always goading anyone he can get his hands on.”

“There was nothing for you to do,” Steve said, “The Mandarin.”

“I don't know why,” Jim groussed. “These 'lessons', all of this shit, what could it possibly have had to do with Stark? Tony didn't even vote, last election.”

“You're rambling,” Steve pointed out, and could see his breath, could taste the cold on his tongue. He had to claw his anxiety back, remind himself of Alpine winter just to avoid the panic of ice.

“Just,” Jim said, sounding close to breaking clean in half, “why? Why him, y'know? I can't understand it, Americans talk about this asshole all the time. Why Tony? What makes Tony different?”

They've already had this conversation three times. Steve knows there's nothing he can do but pull Jim in, hold him close.

“I just keep thinking it could be me, I'm what makes him different,” Jim shakes his head. “The Patriot's what makes it different.”

“You know that's not--”

“It could be,” Jim said, “it's a valid concern, isn't it?”

“It's valid,” Steve nodded, “but I don't think it's true.”

“Still,” Jim insisted, “we should get you some place safe, find my mother some place to hide. My sisters, like they'd ever want to talk to me.”

“This isn't your fault,” Steve said, “We both know it.”

“No,” Jim shook his head. “We don't know shit and maybe you've gotten too comfortable with the way that I hurt you but I don't want to be responsible for someone coming to--”

“You know you're better than dropping over something like this,” Steve snapped, and then immediately softened. “There's no proof this is related to you. There are no published links between the two of us, other than the house. There's no inclination for anyone to come knocking down doors here.”

“You don't know that,” Jim groaned. “Tony...”

“Tony barked up that tree, like he always does," Steve said, and shook his head. "I love you too much to let you think this is something you could have stopped. It's not. You couldn't protect him forever."

Jim paused for a moment, and though it made nothing better, he sat next to Steve. They'd only ever said it in the dark, a response to picking up the slack or doing the favor. It had always felt wrong to say it, and mean it like this.

Steve's heart hurt, because it was the goddamn truth.

Jim reached up and took off his gloves, rolled his hands together for warmth and worked the ring off his thumb.

“What're you doing?”

“Take it.” Jim urged him. “Our thumbs are about the same size, I think. Was gonna get you one for Christmas, but fuck that plan now, I guess. Wear it on your left, means you're taken.”

“I...”

“Rogers,” Jim sighed, “You can't understand how much I love you. I just don't want anything to happen to you because of it.”

They stayed like that, quiet for a long time. Steve wrapped the blanket tighter, feeling like his cheeks were burning, and reached around Jim's shoulders to slide lazy fingers over his shaved hair, smoothing out the curls. He couldn't go back, now. Not back downstairs, not back on this.

"It won't," Steve said. "Just, please. Keep coming back."

Brunch again, jiggity jig.

The train to Manhattan, to that tavern they like so much, is desolate: wheels clacking, lights flickering. They're the only two in the car, sitting across from each other.

Steve reaches down into his pocket, flicks his eyes up.

“I forgot to tell you,” he says, “This came in while you were gone.”

He pulls out a ring. It's black. Horn, there's a crease down the middle. A hunter's ring, even though Steve would never resort to bow and arrow.

Jim's eyes flick up. Steve holds up his left hand: he hasn't taken the ring off since Jim gave it to him that night on the rooftop.

“I didn't order it,” Jim says. “Didn't think to before everything happened.”

“I know,” Steve nods. “I did. I thought, seeing as you gave me this one, you deserved a new one.”

“This is the equivalent of buying me a new letterman jacket, I hope you know,” Jim warns.

“To be fair,” Steve smirks, “we both know you'd have me back by curfew if I asked you to. ”

“Yeah, I would,” Jim smiles back. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Steve says, “now shut up and put it on your finger already.”

“Bossy,” Jim notes as he leans forward, reaching for the ring, slipping it over his left thumb. He looks down at his hand. “So I'm taken by Captain America.”

“I think that's one of the blue movies I sat through, actually,” Steve says. “I have an idea. How about we get on the first train out of Penn, and go look for some place to eat brunch in DC? Get you a Hero's breakfast for saving the leader of the free world.”

The train emerges from the tunnel, creaking to a stop on the bridge to let another train through. The sun is cresting over the river, floods the windows with orange bright light. Jim squints, holds up his hand cover his eyes.

“I know this place two blocks away from one of the apartments we were looking at,” he says. “You work out the train tickets while figure out if I can get a last minute reservation?”

“C'mere,” Steve says, gently.

Jim comes to sit next to him, and Steve leans over, kisses him softly, long and languid and intimate.

They part and he breathes, “you don't know how glad I am that you're home.”

“Oh,” Jim says, “I have some idea.”

They lean into each other, propriety and inhibition damned, and don't bother parting until the train pulls into their station.