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Barnes, as far as Sam can tell, is about as armed as a tank and just as deadly. He has guns and knives squirreled away so neatly Sam doesn’t want to think about where he must be hiding them. And that arm — his own personal wrecking ball. The point is: the dude has weapons oozing out of his pores, but every time Sam and Steve get near him, the most they can expect is a very human fist to the mouth and maybe some full-body bruising from getting thrown around like rag dolls.
So it’s weird. It’s weird and it’s got Steve in knots that can’t decide if they’re happy or sad. And it’s the reason Sam ain’t calling anyone by some dumb code name — Barnes is Barnes, all the way. Or he’s going to be someday soon, and Sam’s just getting the jump on him.
They’re in Detroit and they’ve lost him again. They’re only marginally banged up, and in his head where Steve can’t give him a disapproving look just for thinking it, Sam thinks this whole deal isn’t up to the Winter Soldier Gold Standard. He’s grateful, glad even, don’t get him wrong — he does not want to be Barnes’s enemy in earnest — but there’s something frustratingly half-hearted about going after this guy and losing him after neither party really puts up a fight, and doing it over and over again. Sam isn’t a half-hearted kind of guy. Sam’s all in or he isn’t in at all — just the way he’s wired. And here he is, watching Steve peel an undershirt off his body and hiss at the scrape on his shoulder — the very tame, barely respectable scrape that’ll be gone in the morning — and he wonders just what in the hell they’re doing. Or, he knows, he’d just like Steve to be straight with him about it. Metaphorically, of course.
“So, you and Barnes, huh?” he says. He’s down to his own undershirt and boxers, lying back on his hotel bed and flipping the remote up in the air and catching it, over and over. On the other bed, Steve turns halfway toward him, and Sam gets an eyeful of rippling muscle: trapezius, deltoid, serratus anterior, latissimus dorsi, rectus abdominus. You’d think he’d be immune by now, weeks into this cross-country chase and enforced close quarters, or hell, after years of being in the army with a bunch of soldiers whose bodies could give Steve’s a run for its money, but you’d be wrong. Sam’s only human. It would take something from beyond the natural world to keep him from noticing Captain America when he strips off in front of him.
“What do you mean?”
Sam shrugs. “Man, y’all are dancing around each other like Fred and Ginger. Just kiss already.”
Steve laughs, surprised, and he turns all the way around to fix Sam with a wide eyed look as he pulls on a clean undershirt.
“That shit don’t fool me,” Sam says after clicking his tongue. “You’re from the generation that had so much sex, the baby boomers took over the world. So real talk, Steve: you and Barnes. What’s up with that?”
“The way I see it, you’ve guessed already, so if I just say ‘yeah,’ I think that’s as good an explanation as I owe anyone about it.”
Sam raises his hands in surrender.
“I come in peace, Cap. But I can trade you secret for secret.”
Steve stands to do some stretches, and Sam looks up at the ceiling, as much to stop seeing Steve as to start seeing nothing at all.
“Yeah?” Steve says. “And what’s that?”
Sam swallows. “Me and my wingman.”
Steve moves and Sam knows because the atmosphere rearranges itself around him. He’s sitting on the edge of his mattress, leaned over with his elbows planted on his knees.
“Sam,” he says, and he’s so damn gentle. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Truly.”
Sam sits up and tries on a smile. He knows by the look on Steve’s face that he gets it wrong. He bumps their knees together in the space between their beds.
“Sometimes pain is how you know you’re alive, right?”
“Just wish it didn’t hurt so much,” Steve says.
Sam snorts. He jerks his chin at Steve’s shoulder and says, “You want Neosporin for that or something? I mean, it being a serious scratch and all. Barnes must have meant business today.”
“He’s chasing himself,”’ Steve says. “He’ll get there eventually, and I’m gonna be there when it happens.”
Sam nods. “I know, man.”
“You don’t have to come,” Steve says, leaning in. “You could walk out that door.”
Sam’s breath catches when he sees the tip of Steve’s tongue sweeps quick across his full lower lip. Steve’s eyes have gone half-mast and dark.
“Pity sex from Captain America?” Sam murmurs, hedging into it on an easy flirt, keeping it light just in case he’s read this wrong. He can’t help but lean in too, and the words seem to flow from his mouth right into Steve’s.
“Got another secret for you: I been eyeing you up since the first time I lapped you. Then things got…complicated.”
“What about Barnes?”
Steve smiles, a little sad.
“If you don’t mention him, I won’t mention Riley.”
“You’re just mad it’s been seventy years since your last fuck.”
“How long’s it been for you?”
“Too damn long,” Sam growls, and he wraps his hand behind Steve’s neck to plunder his mouth. Steve gives as good as he gets, and he clutches convulsively at Sam’s shirt to haul him closer, to kiss him deeper. Sam grunts and shoves his knee between Steve’s thighs. Steve makes a strangled sound, not unlike a moan of pain and relief all at once, and pulls away.
“Sam,” he says, quiet, eyes cast downwards. How such a boulder of a man could make himself seem so small all of a sudden throws Sam off balance for a second or two, and he feels his insides seize up with a twinge of tenderness. They’re leaning close again in between the beds, and Sam can feel Steve’s body heat rolling off him in waves. Sam swallows and hears his throat click.
Keep it together, Wilson, Riley’s voice murmurs—wry and fond and still far too real—at the back of his mind. Sam smiles through the sting of it and squares his shoulders.
“Look, Cap, we don’t have to…whatever it is we’re inching around here, okay?” Sam rests his hand on Steve’s, which has found its way onto Sam’s right thigh. Steve’s eyes are still downcast, but his broad thumb is rubbing tiny circles into Sam’s skin and Sam can hear him breathing, slow and deliberate, through his nose. “We can hit that diner across the street and then watch some crappy TV and call it a night, no problem. Just say the word, man.”
“Do me a favor, would you,” Steve says, voice steady but thick. His hand tightens on Sam’s thigh.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t call me Cap when I’m about to do this.”
Steve closes the space between them and catches Sam’s lower lip in a firm kiss. It stays chaste for a split second, and then Sam’s body catches up, catches fire. He opens his mouth against Steve’s and the kiss turns slick and wide, sending a solid thud of lust through Sam’s core.
“Aw hell yeah,” Sam rasps, drawing Steve into him with his left hand and running his right up into Steve’s hair. He tugs it just a little at the base of Steve’s skull, which elicits a soft groan, and Steve opens his mouth against the side of Sam’s and shuffles himself closer. Sam pulls Steve bodily on top of him as he leans back into the lumpy motel pillows, letting himself melt into the comforter with all of Steve spread above him, heavy and firm and searing hot.
“Wanted this,” Steve murmurs, sucking down Sam’s neck towards his chest, his big hands clutching at Sam’s shirt and his breath coming faster. “Wanted you, Sam, I—”
“Oh, you got me.” Sam laughs low, pulling Steve back up to kiss him again and throwing all thoughts of taking it slow out the window as he grinds his hips up into Steve’s solid frame. Steve gasps into Sam’s mouth and pushes down onto him, the hot line of his erection catching and rubbing on Sam’s hip. Sam gives a groan of satisfaction at the friction and urges Steve onto his back. Steve’s hands immediately fly to Sam’s ass and dig in, pulling them flush again.
Sam cocks an eyebrow at him even as he’s winding fingers into Steve’s hair and dipping to suck at his reddened lower lip.
“Well I sure wasn’t staring at the back of your head every time I lapped you,” Steve breathes into Sam’s mouth, hands still kneading at Sam’s ass, and Sam feels Steve’s grin against his mouth as he kisses and sucks it away.
“Oh, so that’s how it is?” Sam smiles when he pulls back and Steve’s grin returns in an instant, wide and just a little dirty. Steve’s face is flushed a rosy pink, and the flush blooms all the way down his long neck and disappears under his undershirt. Sam would rip it off him with his teeth if he weren’t too turned on to even care about getting the rest of their clothes off.
“That’s how it is,” Steve says, then tilts his neck back in invitation and runs a hand down the front of Sam’s boxers, the other settling at Sam’s hip. Sam’s cock gives a twitch and he leans into the touch, mouth falling open and eyes falling closed. Steve rubs at him through the thin fabric, tracing Sam’s length with the heel of his palm.
“God, Sam, you’re—get down here,” Steve says, then bites down on the beginning of a curse as Sam falls on him and grinds down in earnest. Sam feels Steve clutching at his ass, his sides, the back of his neck—feels him running his fingers along the hem of Sam’s boxers and hooking a muscular leg around his waist while he pants into Sam’s ear and starts to fuck his hips up into Sam’s in little staccato bursts, over and over again like he can’t help himself. Steve’s making soft hitching sounds that are quickly turning everything to white-hot static inside Sam’s head.
“Yeah, baby, come on,” Sam growls, moves a hand down between them to palm at Steve’s cock through his sweats. Steve lets out a helpless moan and bucks up hard into Sam’s hand. Sam kisses him deeply, eating the moan out of Steve’s mouth and filling it up with his own as he pumps Steve through the thin fabric and humps against Steve’s hip, not giving a single fuck that they’re probably gonna come in their pants.
Steve’s panting his name softly, hips stuttering into Sam’s as Sam turns his hand and presses their cocks together through the fabric of his boxers and the damp front of Steve’s sweats. Pleasure spikes up through Sam’s gut anew and he snaps his hips once, twice, opening his eyes as he feels his orgasm coalesce at the base of his balls like a hot coal.
Beneath him Steve looks wrecked, flushed everywhere, eyes flinty slits all but hidden under the fan of long lashes, mouth open in a twist of pleasure. For all his breadth and hardness he looks—delicate. Pried open. Like something that could shatter and snap under the wrong hands. Sam surges up against him, wants to hold him together with his lips, his body, his come—with anything and everything he has.
“Steve, fuck, just—yeah.”
Steve drags him into another filthy kiss before he locks a vice-like arm over Sam’s back and stills, sobbing out a long breath and shuddering under Sam and Sam’s there, coming in long, hot pulses across Steve’s lap, come leaking out of the slit of his boxers and soaking into the spreading wet spot on Steve’s ruined sweats. Sam slumps to Steve’s side, not caring that his face is mashed against Steve’s shoulder and half his weight is bearing Steve down into the mattress. Steve can take it.
Their breath is loud between the hotel room’s four thin walls. Steve’s arm comes up around Sam’s shoulders, and Sam can feel the plump press of Steve’s mouth in his hair.
“Gotta get out of these clothes,” Steve murmurs. Sam can only grunt in response. Steve’s hand strokes idly along the skin of Sam’s arm. He should have figured Steve for a cuddler. That works for him. Riley had always indulged his need for contact after sex, even if he made fun of him a little. Sam closes his eyes and breathes Steve deep. It’s nice. It’s comforting. It’s completely unlike Riley, and that – that doesn’t hurt like Sam thought it would. Or, if it does, it feels like a clean burn, like he’s getting out of this changed but intact, like he’s allowed to remember Riley without the mantle of grief hanging from his neck.
Eventually Steve pats him on the bicep and eases out from under him. His body is still flushed as he jerks a thumb toward the bathroom and says, “Just gonna…”
“Sure, man,” Sam says. “Do what you gotta do.”
Steve pauses, eyes sharp, and he swoops down to press a kiss into Sam’s mouth.
“This doesn’t have to be anything but…what it is,” Steve says, his expression guarded but his eyes still warm.
“Two buddies helping each other out?”
Steve stands, runs a hand through his hair. It does nothing for the way it’s sticking up at hilarious angles.
“Comfort,” he says. “Touch. Affection. Nothing grand, but nothing insignificant, either. I’d – I’d like that. With you.”
That seems doable. Ideal, even. Sam knows he’s no good for anyone right now, because he takes his grief, and his return to the states, and all the circumstances of his emotional life right now one moment at a time, but this, he can do. He smiles and rolls up into a kneeling position. He reaches up and puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders, frames his smooth neck with his palms.
“You know,” he says, “I’d like that, too.”
Steve’s smile has relief in it, and he spends more time giving Sam thorough, drugging kisses before he pulls away with another semi in his soiled sweats.
“Jeez,” he mutters, and Sam laughs.
“I can’t believe I’m banging someone old enough to have a centennial soon.”
“Be careful with that talk, sonny-boy, or I’ll have you over my lap.”
The laughter feels cool and freeing, and Sam throws himself back into the mess of his sheets.
“Promises, promises,” he says. “Take a damn shower, Rogers.” He sends Steve off with a smack to his ass. Steve full-on squeals at the slap, and Sam feels like he might cackle forever.
Steve retreats into the bathroom, but before he shuts the door, he sticks his head through and says, “We should both sleep on the other bed. It’s clean.”
“Well.” Sam looks at Steve’s bed, but also at the room at large. They didn’t exactly splurge on their accommodations. “Cleaner.” But he gets up and he shucks his slick boxers, using them to dab at the mess in his pubes. He can feel Steve’s eyes on his ass, and he throws his best sexy look over his shoulder. “See something you like, soldier?”
“We better not mess up the other bed,” Steve says, but his face is going steadily pinker with embarrassment, like they didn’t just rub off on each other ten minutes ago. Sam peels off his t-shirt while he’s at it, and he bounds over to the bathroom and pushes the door open.
“We’ll make sure,” he says. He watches Steve swallow, and that lush mouth of his opens to drag in a breath. He steps inside and closes the door behind him.
End