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“Now this is hideous,” Sentry says, ripping the cowl off of John’s head and looking down at it with an emotion bordering on distaste. It’s so un-Bob like, he’s taken aback for a moment. “Try a beret, maybe something else instead.”
They’re alone inside the penthouse, the others trapped outside near the helipad. John doesn’t know how Bob—no—Sentry’s doing it, holding them back. John doesn’t know when he got a grip on those telekinesis abilities of his, when he got so damn good at it.
“When I need fashion advice, I’ll ask for it,” he pants, shield up and at the ready in case he gets thrown out of the window and then back inside again like Alexei. John wouldn’t say he was bad with heights, but that was definitely something else.
He’s dealt with falls from airplanes less worse than that.
“Blond hair and blue eyes,” Sentry continues, ignoring him. He cards a hand through his hair, marveling at the color of it. “But I’m not sure if it suits me.“
He pauses, eyes sliding back over to John.
“You, on the other hand,” he starts, walking closer. “I think you do the combo justice. You know, I really was just trying to copy you.”
John takes a step to the side, not willing to let himself be backed up into a corner. They end up circling each other instead, behind the bar counter and the sectioned off couches, in between furniture, and it’s almost like a dance if he had to get poetic about it.
Cat and mouse, if he wanted to go the more animal route. He doesn’t like thinking of himself as prey, but there’s no way he’s winning a fight against a man who fancies himself a god and, unfortunately, has the power to back it up.
There’s a certain type of cuckoo that follows guys like that around, and they almost always proved to be the most vicious when it came down to it. John has seen—experienced—enough men going through the same thing in the barracks.
So he knows without a doubt that, sometimes, all you can do is lose a couple of battles to keep living long enough to fight another day. There’s no shame in being a coward, despite all the humility that comes along with the title.
But he’s got people out there, waiting for him. Banging on the metal and glass, voices muffled but calling his name in equal amounts concern and alarm.
John doesn’t remember what it’s like being a part of something—a squadron, a partnership, a family—but he wants to remember. Wants it so badly, he doesn’t care if they think him a bad husband and father. It’s not like they all had high expectations of each other in the first place.
Somehow, that just makes him want to fight harder for them.
They were in this together.
(And they were going to finish it together, Bob included.)
“Trying to copy me?” he repeats, squinting. He rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, warding off the oncoming headache while making sure to keep the other man in his line of sight at all times. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“You’re obviously trying to be something you’re not. Valentina was right, you know, when she called you Junior Varsity Captain America.” John spares an idle thought wondering where the woman is now. Not here, that’s for sure. “But I can relate.”
“What is that s’pposed to mean?”
“She keeps telling me that I’m going to be a hero. The best of the best, right? Made this suit for me and everything,” he gestures with a flourish to the rest of his outfit.
“Fancy,” John bites out.
“Exactly. But, well, see—I think I can be more than that. I don’t want to be put into a mold, like you were.” He stops, hand coming up as if cupping the air, folding all his fingers back except for one.
He arches his index finger in ‘come hither’ motion and John feels his feet slide off the floor, a sudden momentum pushing him in Sentry’s direction as if by some innate pull in the middle of his chest. Cursing, he brings his shield up in front of him.
But it’s useless.
Sentry takes the shield from him with little struggle, as if taking away a toy from a child, and John wiggles in affront within the invisible grip keeping him in place.
“There, no helmet and no shield. That’s much better.”
“Bobby, you bastard!” John yells, trying to flail, his arms and hands all but glued to his sides. “Stop this! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
A hand clamps tight over his mouth, soft calluses pressing against the skin of his cheeks as Sentry looms close, eyes glinting yellow for the barest of seconds. John swallows the lump in his throat, sweat trickling down the length of his neck.
“Don’t call me that,” Sentry demands, fingers digging in to the point of bruising. He lets go immediately, though, like a warning. “Don’t call me Bob, either. I’m—something else. Something greater.”
“Something greater?” John echoes, incredulous.
“Yes,” Sentry murmurs, hand skimming John’s beard before finding the edges of his jaw, tilting his chin up with ease. “Don’t you think so too? Because you could join me, if you’d like.”
John’s thinking comes to a screeching halt.
“I didn’t have the best parents growing up,” Sentry says almost wistfully, thumb rubbing small circles into the space behind John’s ear in his distraction. “You can read about it all in my file. I’m sure Valentina has it around here somewhere.”
“Is this supposed to be some sort of elevator pitch? Because you’re kind of fumbling it here, man,” John rasps, trying not to lean into the touch.
(It’s been so, so long after all.)
“And you,” Sentry’s eyes lock back onto his, a weird intense sheen to them that John can’t help but want to look away from. He doesn’t. “You’re a washed up ex-military man whose family doesn’t want him anymore.”
John leans back as if hit.
“Thanks for rubbing that in my face, moron—”
“But we could be one,” Sentry goes on, ignoring him. John slaps his mouth shut with an audible click. “A family. It’ll take some time, sure, but… we could make it work. You can think of it as your chance of redemption.”
He doesn’t know what to say, and still doesn’t even when Sentry gently lowers him to the floor, setting him free from his restraints. Then there are hands dusting him off, coming away covered in soot and sharp pieces of glass.
He doesn’t bleed.
John doesn’t know why but his eyes linger on the unblemished skin, innocent looking but just as impenetrable as his shield.
Sentry doesn’t take his silence well, licking his lips in a nervous little tick John can’t help but compare to Bob. “We’ll invite Yelena too,” he tries, voice less confident. He wrings his hands, and it’s kind of like whiplash, the sudden change in personality. “And the rest of them! I think it’ll be… nice, you and me and everyone all together.”
“You want to play house?” John laughs, taking a step back and out of the other man’s orbit. He runs both hands through his hair. “You have a god complex and you want to play pretend? That’s a load of fuckin’ bull.”
He holds up a hand when Sentry reaches toward him.
“No, no, no. Don’t.” John takes a deep breath. “What are we doing here, Bob?” he asks with his eyes closed, exhausted all of a sudden.
There’s no sound of footsteps, but it’s almost like a sixth sense, the way John knows with utmost certainty that the other man is standing right there in front of him. Can feel their breaths mixing between them, a dampness in the air.
“I just think we should all stop pretending to be people we aren’t,” Bob says quietly, and John feels one hand on his chest, tracing the shape of the star, the other coming up to land palm first on his nape.
This time, John does lean into it.
He opens his eyes, and this time he sees blue eyes staring back at him. “You’re right,” he says, waiting until Bob’s tilted his head to the side in confusion, almost like a dog. A grown man should not be able to do that, it’s—unsettling, almost cute, eerie. “Blond’s not your color, man.”
Bob bites his lip, waiting.
John lets out a sigh and shakes his head.
“You know this is wrong.”
The loose hold on his neck is comforting until it’s not (John doesn’t know what it says about him that he doesn’t quite mind).
“You will regret this,” Sentry tells him, nails biting into the hollow space right below his chin, rough and demanding, before letting go. The shape of his hand even as it leaves his skin burns like a poker straight from the fire, red hot and scorching.
Golden rimmed eyes glare up at him, their bodies close to touching, and then—
“Walker!” Bucky shouts, hauling John out of the way of a falling piece of metal. “What are you doing just standing there? Focus, god damn it!”
John blinks back into awareness, the setting of the penthouse melting around him to reveal the same penthouse, again, but this time there Valentina is behind the bar counter, sipping on a wine glass while scrolling on her phone.
Ava punches him in the shoulder, and John yelps.
“What was that for?” he hisses.
“We lost you for a minute,” she tells him, brow furrowed in something close to concern, though John doubts she’ll admit anything of the sort. “What happened? Did he do something to you?”
John looks up, narrow-eyed as he spots Sentry in the middle of the floor, a hard look on the other man’s face as he grabs the back of Yelena’s vest as if she were nothing but a kitten and throws her into the wall. He turns right as Bucky rushes him from the other side, catching the entirety of the force of the Winter Soldier’s metal arm.
There’s a flicker of eyes up toward John right then, he can’t tell what color they are, lashes fluttering in his direction, before Sentry is looking the opposite way right as Yelena jumps on him and hooks an arm around his neck as if that’ll do anything.
“Kind of,” John explains when she huffs at him impatiently. “I think he did the same thing he did in the compound. I’ll—explain later.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she says, tapping at the side of her head to pull up her mask.
John crouches down to pick up his shield, dropped who knows when, when Sentry had dragged him into that weird mental landscape. He grunts standing back up, reaching for his neck and feeling a dull yet sharp pain radiating from underneath his high collar. He pokes at it, curious.
“Also, what’s up with the bruises? I don’t remember you getting choked, I would have laughed,” Ava points out. John bites back a groan, realization setting in along with a hot sprinkle of embarrassment.
The damn bastard didn’t have to leave marks.
“I’ll also explain that later,” he grunts.
First, they’ve gotta get Sentry’s head out of his fucking ass. Bob’s in there, somewhere. John just hopes he’ll remember that offer of family when they can all finally calm down and hash things out.
(Bob won’t.)