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December 2nd, 2015; Stark Tower Infirmary
In the silence there was stillness; a rush of air and then nothing. Steve felt the humidity of his sweat pull at the gauntlet before it slid from his hand following another small tug. The coolness of the air was the first sensation Steve felt in his sore digits, and he took a breath at the sudden relief, stretching his fingers to expel the rigidity of his joints. He tossed the gauntlet to the side where it sat on the small hills of the white, sterile sheets of the hospital bed.
Each breath the captain took was labored, the pace of his inhalations difficult to control. He found himself staring blankly at the contrast of the crimson gauntlet as it rolled into the dip his weight made in the mattress. The red-on-white reminded the soldier of the mutants just as much as it returned his mind to memories of the flag.
His hand hovered over the gauntlet. Did he want to pick it up? What was he doing? "Steve." The voice that spoke his name carried the familiar nuance of harshness, a rough, demanding undertone that Steve didn't think would ever go away. The accent was familiar too, now that Steve had spent a week growing used to it. The soldier took a sharp breath and lifted his gaze at the easy sound of his name.
The flakes of white, crispy ice looked at him under tufts of silver that were softly furrowed as they always were. The runner wore light-grey sweatpants that curved in inevitable ruffles around his calves, fitting his muscular thighs loosely enough to let him run and breathe. Over it all, he wore a rich white cotton shirt that bent slightly with the curves of his pectorals, revealing faint traces of muscles in his crossed arms through the lightly-colored cloth.
Steve felt his breath halt in his chest when the ice of Pietro's eyes flicked onto his, catching him taking in the image of the runner's own body. Steve could have sworn he saw shock pass the runner's eyes, then amusement. He suspected that what must have been a prolonged glance at Pietro's figure was probably a nice long gander in the runner's own world.
"Can I help you?"
"No," was the one-word response the runner snapped in reply and his eyes grew gelid as they had been before. "You can't. People have tried. My sister-"
Steve's eyes were cold on the mutant's. "You know what I mean, Piet." With his uncovered hand, he pulled the Captain America hood from his head, immediately feeling the frigid air of Stark's in-tower infirmary nip at the sweaty blonde locks.
Pietro's focus faltered for a second, falling to the ground in something like modesty. The runner dragged his ice-cold gaze back to Steve's eyes. "I know I do."
And for a moment, the descent into silence was the only perceptible occurrence in the room. Steve thought mutant's face looked about as void of emotion as one of those Greek statues Clint had taken him to see at the museum a few weeks ago. None of the stone bodies had worn smiles, or frowns. There was no laughter, no pain. Only deep thought had been etched into the delicate faces.
The the flakes of ice didn't move from Steve; not even when the captain worked to unbuckle the strap of his other gauntlet, or when the soldier glanced away just to avoid the cold stare.
The captain felt the hold grow loose around his wrist and the glove came off easily, most of the humidity having already been expelled at the removal of the buckle. A gust of cool wind coursed toward him through the air, and the empty room on the hospital bed dipped with Pietro's weight.
Steve did his best to ignore the eyes, and cast his gaze to the other end of the sterile room to see both of his gauntlets on the smooth, steel hospital table that sat there. His shield, gleaming in the brilliant light of the room, was propped against one of the legs of the table, yards away from where Steve had dropped it to the ground upon his entrance. For a moment, his mind failed to produce words to speak.
"You seem fine."
Steve had to wipe his amazement to fully grasp the comment. "Fine?" spat the soldier. The word tasted acidic, sharp on his tongue, and his eyes turned cold with resentment toward the mutant who had his elbows rested on the cotton over his knees, the fingers of each of his hands laced together in the gap between them.
There was hint of a scowl pushing the runner's top lip as he eyed the soldier and Steve could sense his stare was carrying a warning somewhere behind it. "Yes."
Steve grit his teeth and bent over his knees, working at the titanium buckles that kept his right boot secured to his leg. Any glance he shared with the mutant from then on was a long, hard glare from his own eyes. The mutant didn't quite return the glare but instead responded with a scowl that by the third glance, had revealed something like guilt from behind the walls of ice. Silence had fallen once again.
Thoughts charged into Steve's conscious, the memories still fresh, the images of any traitor he'd ever met still clear as diamonds in his mind's eye. Steve peeled the tongue of the boot from his leg, his fingers moving to loosen the laces when the tongue wouldn't move far enough. When he noticed that his gaze had risen to Pietro's eyes, it was too late. He hesitated to part his lips when the beads of ice locked him into place. "I've been worse," said the soldier. He cleared his throat and averted his gaze to tug harder on the laces. "Much worse."
He could feel Pietro's eyes on the back of his head, and couldn't honestly say he'd been expecting the runner to respond, "So have I."
Steve felt his back straighten at the response, but only very slightly. He found himself training his eyes not to look at the man, willing his lips not to speak. Steve moved to pull the tongue of his boot once again and this time felt it shift forward from the Kevlar of his suit, allowing air to circulate around the sore leg.
He couldn't sense a falter in Pietro's posture or in the gelid gaze that was locked on him. At the thought of those cold, white eyes focusing on him, Steve felt his throat tighten around the air he tried to breath. It was anger, it was hatred that had his mind screaming for air. It was also something else.
From beside him, the captain could hear Pietro breathe a soft huff of amusement. "I caught you staring a while ago," mentioned the runner.
Steve snorted inelegantly in response to the mutant, bracing his hands around the boot to pry it from his leg. With one tug, aches were sent down the nerves of his calf, his foot. He grit his teeth against the discomfort and with the loosening of another piece of lace, the boot slid from the limb, letting the air of the room cool him.
"Did you?" the soldier asked sarcastically. He leaned over his knee to work at the other buckle and allowed himself a long, judgmental glance at the mutant's stark-white hair, the trademark wings it curved into at the sides. He returned his attention back to the boot on his foot, telling the mutant, "A lot of people stare at you."
From the corners of his eyes, Steve saw Pietro's silver brows inch up his forehead in realization. "Oh, so it's the white hair, huh?" The mutant bounced the heel of his green suede shoe and moved his fingers together in a nervous habit. For a moment, Steve's fingers slowed in loosening the grip of his boot and he just watched the mutant, his blonde brows furrowed over ocean-blue eyes. The mutant caught the soldier's stare and was quick to avert his ice-white gaze, even quicker to speed up his nervous movements to a pace impossible for that of a natural human.
The captain gave the tongue of his boot a push forward and peeled the bright red shell from his calf following the tug of another lace. "That," began the soldier, "and the resemblance."
Steve only noticed the silence the room had fallen into when the sound of his boot coming off became the only audible thing happening in the room. He glanced to his side, no longer seeing the nervousness, the rapid bouncing of heels against sterile floors with blinding speed. The image of Pietro was cold again, gelid like the ice in which the soldier spent years of others' lives being frozen, contained. The soldier watched the mutant's jaw clench tighter and tighter as his sharp features bent in anger, guilt.
"We did not know," was the runner's grunted response. Then he tore his eyes from the captain, pulled them away as if he was rethinking ever sharing a word with Steve in the first place.
At this, Steve was supposed to feel his stomach tie in knots of guilt, of some kind of anger at himself or someone who wasn't Magneto's spawn. Admittedly, everyone had been a little pissed at the mutants. No— that was an understatement—there wasn't a single S.H.I.E.L.D agent or Avenger who hadn't felt betrayed when they found out what secrets the twins had been hiding. Depending on how you looked at it, they were innocent. Steve understood how it felt to be timid, reluctant to reveal things, but at the same time, everyone knew that the consequences of the twins' cowardice were too rough to forgive.
Here, as Steve sat in silence on sterile bed-sheets, Banner was raging on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s aircraft carrier in the very space Loki once stood to taunt them. Hawk and the Widow were many flights away in Europe, where all contact to the teams had reportedly been lost. And Stark? The last Steve had seen the billionaire was when the Iron Man armor was being forced from his body by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who detained the genius before the battle had ended. Even if Tony was the only person on the squad who was entirely unafraid of Dr. Banner, Steve could easily title his battle against the Hulk one of the worst struggles of his life, even if he had spent the majority of it "doin' time as a Capsicle."
This time when Steve felt the bile rise in his throat, felt ire wreck his breaths, he didn't feel guilty for it. The twins' gutlessness made them disloyal, and in turn, depleted their worth as Avengers. Steve couldn't think of a time when his hateful words toward Stark, the blasts the genius disproved early on in the Avengers' first assembly, ever rang truer.
The quotes sounded cold and harsh in the soldier's mind, though in these circumstances, perhaps not hateful enough to reflect his true disdain.
"Why are you still here?" was the question the soldier hissed at the mutant to break the silence.
"The only thing you really fight for is yourself..."
It took a moment, a brief side-glance of pale blue before the mutant made his mind and let his shards of ice collect on the ocean blue of Steve's glare. "I had a motive for coming here to you."
"Not the question." There was a snarl in Steve's voice; a douse of impatience, a whisper of force as it wrenched past the lips he had tightly shut. He was glad to see the runner perk a silver brow, though the wide crystal eyes refused to look at him. "I want to know what you and Wanda are still doing here."
The harshness in the soldier's voice only served to strike him as unnecessarily cold, and for the short moment Steve could contain the mutant's attention, a nearly imperceptible pang of hurt glazed over the crystal eyes. But just as soon as it arrived, it was replaced by resentment. "Fury is not impulsive enough to drop us," the runner denounced, searching the soldier's eyes with a cold gaze of his own for a reaction.
Anger boiled hotter in Steve's throat. Something about the arrogant lift in Pietro's back wiped away whatever guilt Steve felt about his coldness, the words he spoke hatefully to Pietro. When he glared into the ice of Pietro's eyes, he could feel anger clench tighter around whatever air he could force into his lungs. "I don't see why we need you," flared the soldier.
But even as he locked his gaze, there was no hurt that showed in the pale blue of the orbs across from him. "You—you don't see...," the runner quit on his words and the ice fell to the captain's boot, the red strewn across the tile in a maze of battered Kevlar restraints. Steve saw something like disappointment reflect in the mutant's knitted brows of silver before a cold glance touched his aquatic blue eyes.
There was a pause. A sharp burst of air slapped Steve's face and made the sweat in his unruly blonde curls stick closer to his forehead like dried glue.
He was gone, the soldier realized. It was about time.
Steve let his fingers play at the titanium buckle of the belt at his waist, his eyes taking on a glazed mien as he lost himself in the void of space beside him. His mind wanted to fix things before he lost them for good. He wanted to mend this before it all ended, like it would for everyone, and had for the ones he loved. His soul, however, the merciless soldier that had long ago become a part of him, strongly disagreed. Pietro was a good man, but the coward he'd seen too many of his soldiers become.
"You may not be a threat, but you'd better stop pretending to be a hero..."
Steve had never intended for the words to apply to himself even if he had just saved hundreds of lives in Manhattan.
With a click, the belt went slack in Steve's grip and snaked over the white sheets, clattering when it hit the ground. Steve felt his heart throb, could barely stand the churn of emptiness in his stomach. He didn't make a move for the utility belt.
Instead, his eyes roamed in soft ocean-blue over the sterile, white countertops, glossing over the tile floor he clinged to with his toes through the socks. From the outside, anyone could tell by the slow rise and fall of his abdomen, toned beneath the Kevlar, that the soldier was breathing. Deeply. For what must have been the hundredth time that day, he had his thoughts to collect.
He was thinking of mutant twins and badly-chosen words all the while the other side of his mind preferred to focus on traitors and the good decisions he made in separating from them. An almost imperceptible thunder of footfall diverted his attention successfully. He tried to shout through the air the words 'what do you want?' but suddenly the wind grew thick and he was choking on the roughness of his own voice.
He felt hands wrench around his corded wrists, could see blurriness, no evidence of anything around him for a moment before his back was slammed into the hospital mattress and his vision lost itself behind the darkness of his eyelids crushing shut.
When again he opened them, his bearings came in a strike of awareness, almost suddenly, like when a bullet hits flesh and the sting is the only pain the victim can comprehend in that moment.
The throbbing pulse in his temples made light swoop in his field of vision, a symphony of flapping bedsheets rousing his attention like Steve had never heard a breeze before. The bed's metal shafts whined and creaked beneath his impact against the mattress. The noises only served to infuriate him more.
The soldier thrust a fist to the face above him only to have the punch knocked away by something smaller, more agile and firmly-placed than it was tough against his wrist. He analyzed the glare of dilated pupils that hovered inches from his own murky blue eyes, could feel muscled legs straddling him to the mattress, a hill of heat against his groin that made him twitch slightly with the pressure.
Steve almost wanted to count the breaths against his face, wanted to feel every inch of the mutant press closer into his body with every breath they forced. He could feel the sharp, steamy breaths fanning against his parted mouth, the ache of unwanted trembles lurching down his spine.
And then the runner bucked against him with a strangled gasp of scalding air over Steve's lips.
The captain hadn't been paying attention to the way he wrenched a wrist from Pietro's grip.
He pulled from the contact, swinging the hand around the runner's slim waist, grabbing the taut muscles his fingers ached to touch. The other's groin slammed against his, and it shook the captain's world from focus, vibrating in a white-hot jolt of pressure between his thighs.
The young man's arms slipped from beneath him and he fell with his chest against the soldier, his hands moving somewhere to his sides to cling to the sheets on either side of the captain's head. A shower of silver hair fell into the soldier's face and shadowed his eyes from everything but the cloudy dilated pupils that hovered above him.
They were close together; their muscles tightening; their abs pressing; the tips of their noses brushing together as they breathed eachother's musty air into their choking throats. The mutant squeezed his eyes in ecstasy and uttered a moan above Steve's parted lips as the soldier shuddered for breath.
A symphony of hot, mewling breaths resounded an inch away from Steve's lips, and the soldier shuddered for air as he kneaded his hand through the mutant's silver locks, pulling Pietro's lips so they settled flush against his. The runner's lips were thick with sharp edges he could nibble and tug with smooth teeth.
The movement brought fog to the runner's mind, and for a split second he was oblivious to the smooth, full lips of the captain moving against his mouth; the dilation in those cyan blue eyes that inevitably fluttered shut as he moved his lips against him.
The soldier swept his tongue over the bottom lip of the runner, and the smaller man responded immediately, craning forward and invading the captain's mouth with his own slick tongue. The soldier's guttural moan vibrated between their mouths. An ache stirred low in the captain's stomach.
It was something that made him weaker under the mutant. It was the powerful legs that kept him pinned against the mattress; the bulging, throbbing pressure that radiated a heat against his groin and kneaded hard against his member with every tug that was made against him. It was the hard, fast way those lips were smothering his that made the captain's bruising hands ache for more skin to grope.
There was red creeping up the runner's pale skin, and Steve didn't notice. In the window of the door not twelve yards away hid the most beautiful face Pietro had ever laid eyes on. Her lengths of hair were wild, tangled with dirt and rubble but shaded with the color of sun rays in the morning sky. She was the new Avenger, still wearing a tattered X-Men uniform as she held gauze that leaked blood as it dripped from the edge of her plump mouth. The parted lips, the wide, emerald-green eyes that peered directly at Pietro's face. Her gaze was wide as two green moons.
Pietro moved to get off of the soldier, and the woman tuned in a brisk step. Steve lifted his back from the white hospital sheets. Pietro didn't make a move to fight the grip on his thigh. His body was rigid atop the captain, almost a statue in Steve's arms with hands that had themselves wrenched around the other's corded wrists in the silence.
Steve felt the mutant tense in his hold as he bowed his head into the crook of Pietro's sweaty neck. The iron grips on his forearms relaxed; the rigidity of those muscled legs dissipated into a trembling stiffness, comforting, warm 'round Steve's waist. With every moist kiss along the runner's neck, the silence in Steve's ear quickly became shuddering breaths that encouraged goosebumps along every inch of his own sunkissed skin.
Pietro was impatient. The chills; the slow, easy kisses Steve was sucking into his skin. He wanted him to get on with it already, and he pressed a kiss into the stronger man's shoulder to strangle a moan into Steve's wet flesh.
When the other man pulled his chest against the Captain America suit, Pietro hadn't been expecting the pleasure that followed the pressure of their groins together, or the groan he echoed as his teeth rushed to find the soldier's. Pietro hated himself for this. He hated the twitch of his groin at the tremble of Steve's torso; he hated the sensitivity and the pleasure of their groins churning against each other. A shudder quaked his body at the groan let into his ear, and smooth, heated teeth scraped hotly over the skin of his reddening lobe.
This wasn't right. This was wrong. He shouldn't be doing this. But unfortunately for Pietro's pride, there were reasons he wasn't stopping himself. Maybe it was the bulge that tinted his sweats; the fingers that were pulling the material down an inch with soft movements.
"Rogers," was the name Pietro breathed into the gap between their wet mouths. Their heads were tilted together, the captain's eyes closed in bliss as he worked his hand past the runner's sweats.
The both of them pressed into eachother's touch, reveling in the contact, their eyes squeezed shut and their sweaty skin a hot, powdery red.
The pleasure was growing heavier between Pietro's legs; warm, thick, scalding pleasure inside of him. His stomach wrung within itself, the pressure rising and twisting and growing until the pleasure was white-hot and they were both right there and they couldn't stand it; they couldn't take it anymore and white hair burrowed into the captain's tensing shoulders, muscles clenched into sweaty knots and teeth were grit heavily. Moisture flooded the fronts of sweaty clothing and lingered, spiking, flowing, dripping in powerful waves.
The silent air was broken with the men's strangled moans.
Pietro slowed against the soldier, who buried a hand in the disheveled white tendrils of hair with drunken fervor. The kiss Steve pressed to his mouth quickly opened to something more; something deeper that Pietro couldn't control this time. The runner's mind was in a haze too deep to allow him thoughts or feelings, or anything more. What little air he could breathe was air that scalded as it entered.
His hand clung to the sheets under the captain's shoulder, and the runner watched his crystal tears flow over the man's smooth cheek. It traced the outline of their swollen lips, slid past the barricade of their mouths. A strong hand cupped Pietro's chin, and his lips were pulled away.
Pietro felt wetness being thumbed from his cheek.
He felt the man beneath him vibrate with speech, and through the fogginess of his thoughts, a whisper strained through in the form of a silent question.
The girl appeared behind Pietro's closed eyes. The one in the X-Men uniform with the busted, plump pale lips. Something in Pietro wanted to wrap around her and steer her in the opposite direction. He was sound asleep too soon for the thought to linger.