Chaos Incarnate

You were the one who had picked the ancient pool hall in Brooklyn. It looked like it hadn’t been renovated or changed much since the day it was built. The tiles were vintage, German phrases hanging from the ceiling on painted wooden boards. It kind of smelled like a dirty gymnasium, but the clientele leaned retirement community, and nobody gave the four Avengers in the back a second glance. Maybe the tattooed female bartender did, but she got over it quick, just acknowledging them with a nod, knocking a few beers off the tab.

“This place is a gem,” Sam was saying, sweeping his eyes around the perimeter, leaning back in his chair. Relaxed. Soft oom-pah-pah music played from a crackling speaker by the bar. Your foot crawled up John’s leg again, reminding him of all the ways you would comfort each other later, debriefing in your shared bed. You never judged him for getting a bit uptight around Barnes and Wilson. “How’d you find it?”

You heard Sam’s question a half-second late, distracted with John’s foot under the table. Sitting up, you ran your fingertip idly around the rim of your glass. John frowned; that was a nervous tell of yours. The question seemed so innocuous…

“Came here a few times,” you said, noncommittal, flashing John a weird smile. “A hundred years ago, in a previous life, when I worked for the man.”

That was code for when you worked with SHIELD, when you were managing field operatives, running comms, long before a drop of serum ever hit your blood stream. John knew about that era of your life; you had never tried to hide it from him. You were such an open book…

A sick feeling was building in his gut. He sat up straighter, recognizing the twitch in your jaw. Another tick. Your attention had switched to Sam, focusing there, a tight, imploring quality to your gaze.

Sam ignored it or didn’t see it, huffing out a dubious laugh. “I don’t think so. Not their style.”

Their. Your SHIELD colleagues. So, whose style was it?

You shrugged again, fidgeting with your glass, now very aware that all three men were staring at you. Bucky suddenly coughed out a dark laugh, drawing some quiet, inner connection.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense,” he said. His eyes got softer and sadder.

Meanwhile, John’s eyes ping-ponged between everyone at the table. “Sorry. I’m lost. What makes sense?”

“That Steve would come here.”

Sam said it so matter-of-factly that at first it didn’t register. The name sank in letter by letter, each one colder and sharper than the last. John knew everything about you. Everything. He gulped down a bitter mouthful of nothing, pinning Sam with a look that could melt vibranium.

“Steve,” he repeated, almost choking on it.

Sam cleared his throat. Bucky pressed his lips together.

And you. You looked anywhere but at John. His foot retreated from yours under the table as his entire body encased itself in ice. Steve. Steve Rogers. Captain Fucking America. The first one. The real one. The beloved one. There was no quaint explanation for why this information had never been shared between you. John was turning a strangled shade of purple as he looked back to Sam.

“Yeah, man,” Sam said quietly, as if he was embarrassed on John’s behalf. There was an implicit warning buried in that tone. “He referred her for the program. And they—”

“Dated. Briefly.” You were the one to twist the knife. That made sense. That felt right. John couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move.

Softly, apologetically, Bucky mumbled: “I thought you knew.”

John shook his head. “No. Guess I’m the last to find out.”

“It was like two months,” you hurried on. Under your jacket, buoyed by your unimaginable strength, strength that rivaled and perhaps surpassed John’s, your chest pumped. Faster, faster. “We had brother-sister energy. It was never going to work.”

Two months. Brother-sister energy. It didn’t matter. John had already pictured you in his arms, kissing him, falling apart at his touch, moaning his name. The bigger, better, nobler John. The perfect soldier and hero he could never be, according to the world and his own screaming mind, a mind that had spun up and was now going at warp speed, tangling itself against another problem.

Another question, another wound.

“What program?” he asked, taut.

By now, the other men at the table were sharing constant, fiddly glances, like they were trying to silently communicate which secrets to share or how to vanish while the two of you hashed this out. And in that pact, they had decided on nothing, leaving you to explain. You had never gone into the specific details of your serum, what generation, what lab, what team… Bucky had vouched for you when you joined up, mentioned a program John didn’t recognize, and it hadn’t come up again. The subject had always made you go quiet, and John got the sense there were bad memories buried there.

Now he had a shovel, now he was ready to dig up graves.

“Project Residuum,” you said, so quietly John had to strain to hear it. Your cheeks hollowed, your eyes withdrawing to a dark place, haunted. Your finger worked through the condensation left behind by your beer, drawing shapes.

“Horrible shit,” Bucky mumbled, giving you an assist that John wasn’t interested in acknowledging. “Ugly shit. She doesn’t need to go into it, man, she—”

“I think she needs to go into it,” John stated flatly, crossing his arms, sitting back in his chair. Staring. Spiraling.

“John—”

“It’s fine,” you said, interrupting Bucky before he could try to help you out again. “It was in Geneva. They had a recreation of the Erskine formula, but it was a volatile sample. And yes, it helped that I knew Steve, but he told me not to do it. He warned me not to do it. But the lab team thought I was a good candidate, that I could handle it.” Your eyes blinked shut rapidly, tongue darting out to wet your dry lips. “They were wrong. The radiation they used to activate the injections almost killed me. My skin was peeling off in sheets. They drilled a hole in my head because of the swelling. They gave me an emergency transfusion of Steve’s blood, it stabilized me.” Your eyes met John’s across the table, and his stomach lurched, trying to be in six places at once, none of them at that table learning that information. “The project was a failure, buried, written off as a cancer drug test gone wrong.”

He wasn’t proud of it, but it was the fact that Steve’s blood had been hiding in your veins that almost made him puke on the floor right there in the pool hall. In the German pool hall where Captain America himself had taken you, John’s girl, on a date.

John stood abruptly, nearly knocking the table over.

“I need some air.”

You caught up to him three blocks away from the pool hall.

John didn’t slow his stride, he was going to fly out of his skin if you tried to touch him, he just knew it, could feel the hurt converting to rage at a rate he couldn’t control. You walked beside him for a while, taking the measure of his pain.

“When were you planning on telling me?” John demanded, biting it out, hoping every word was sharp enough to draw blood. “Maybe never? Did you like that everyone was laughing behind my back, feeling sorry for you, sorry that you had to settle for the downgrade?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw you flinch. Good. He veered off the sidewalk toward a shallow park carved out in front of a public school. A drunk couple stumbled by, laughing; he wanted to strangle them. Hands on the back of his head, he paced, every step working him up into a hotter froth.

“You know that’s not what I think of you,” you said, calm, calmer than you had any right to be.

John whirled on you, snarling, hand in a fist and that hand prodding toward you, just shy of your face. “I don’t know anything. Not anymore.”

“John…”

“No. This is fucking crazy. You know that, right? You know that this is fucking crazy?” He slapped both hands against his face, letting them drag until they were tangled in the collar of his shirt. It was too cold to be doing this outside. He didn’t care. He needed the crisp bite of the wind, or he was going to boil alive. And anyway, you both ran hot, hot because of the serum in your veins. That thought ratcheted up his anger to a new level, one that he felt in every cell of his over tuned body.

It was petty. Given everything he had learned, fixating on this felt childish, but it was the nexus, the thing he would never forget, the thing that made him want to vanish into the night.

“Did you fuck him.”

It was a question, but it came out like a death sentence.

“No.” You answered in that same collected voice, the one John was really beginning to hate. But then, you were the better person, of course you were, they wouldn’t put Captain America’s precious blood into you if you weren’t pristine. Perfect.

“Liar.”

John finally stood still, glaring at you across the space of three huge park tiles. He looked you up and down, weighing something, how much he needed to fuck up, maybe, how badly he wanted to transgress; acting out was what he did, what everyone expected. Right now, he wanted the worst lies about him to be true. He wanted you to hate him so he would have an excuse to make the break clean.

“It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Steve Rogers was a gentleman.”

John’s eyes flared, the roar in his blood boiling over. “As opposed to what?” When you didn’t answer, John ate up the space between you, looming. “As opposed to what?” he asked, in a searing whisper. “What I am? Second rate. A disgrace. A mistake.”

You winced with each suggestion. That was when you tried to reach for him, cup his face.

John tore away, backing up, head cocked as a warning. And then the worst thing of all happened, worse than finding out Steve Rogers had touched you, worse than knowing you probably were stronger, faster, smarter, worse than the caustic burn of a secret…

You looked afraid. Afraid of him. Afraid of what he would do to you.

His shoulders fell, his knees almost buckling as his voice broke on the next question: “Why?” he wiped one hand across his face. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out like this? In front of them?”

Your brows lifted and your mouth lingered open for a while before you gestured at him. “Because of this reaction, John. Because I love you too much to hurt you the way you want to be hurt. He didn’t mean anything, you mean everything.”

“Bullshit.” It was too close to the target, grazing his heart. John couldn’t have that. He could have humiliation, he could have pain, he could have loss, but he could not have mercy.

“I knew you would never let it go. Steve. The serum,” you replied softly, resigned. “It’s just this thing with you. That’s why. I didn’t want six mediocre dates and a bad experiment to tear you up inside forever. It didn’t seem worth it. And I guess I’m selfish, okay? I just didn’t want you to push me away, so I made a calculation, and I’m sorry it was the wrong one.”

“Sorry you got caught, you mean,” John sneered, shaking his head. He had already decided to self-immolate, already doused himself in the proverbial fuel, now he just needed to be courageous, light the match, give this train wreck the flaming end it deserved. John was already disappearing into the shadows, turning away, because if he saw your face after he said it, it would burrow deeper than anything he had learned that night. “And I’m sorry, too. Sorry you had to settle for such a piece of shit after bagging the real deal. I bet that burns you up inside, how close you came to being with Captain America. But don’t worry, sweetheart, you don’t have to put up with a loser anymore.”

He didn’t see you, but he heard you. Just one sound. One deep, pained gasp. Like he had slapped your face, like he had rammed you with a shield.

When John finally made it back to the Watchtower, your things had been moved out of his room. He had walked all night, manic, until dawn broke across the city and the sunlight reminded him that time existed. Where he had gone, there was no time, just suffering.

In the cold light of day, when he finally turned back and aimed his feet toward the tower, his anger burned out, leaving behind ash he could taste in his throat. John stared around at all the missing things, all the holes you had left behind—the side of your closet where you kept the outfits you wore out on dates with him, the empty outlet where you charged your electric toothbrush, the ergonomic pillow you needed after a neck injury. Your nasty, beat up house slippers that he was always giving you shit about. Your laundry basket. Your phone charger. Your favorite fleece blanket. The picture frame with your childhood dog and your family.

You.

He had worked up a pretty good “please for the love of God forgive me” speech as he walked home. There was no one to say it to, no hand to clutch, no eyes to search, not even a note explaining where you had gone.

And the fucked-up part was that he was starting not to care about the Steve Rogers of it all. Your system would have cleared that DNA from your cells years ago. Even more fucked up, John had made love to you the morning before; if anyone’s DNA was meaningfully present in your body, it was his. In the space you let him occupy. In the home you let him make. You were the closest actual thing to the life he had envisioned for himself—a symbol of courage and freedom, maybe a person who could’ve wielded the shield honorably, and unwittingly, he had been drawn to that person, to you, and willingly, he had thrown the dream away.

The room was spinning.

You always heard him out. Not this time.

This time, he had gone too far.

Everyone always left.

I didn’t want you to push me away.

He had to find you, had to make it right. When he turned, Bucky was waiting for him in the open doorway, the glaze over his eyes suggesting he did not want to stare at the pathetic half-empty bedroom, the aftermath of a disaster.

“I know,” John said, before Bucky could warn him not to make things worse, weirder, more awkward for everyone. “I’ll clean this up. I’ll apologize; I lost my head last night but I—”

“Good luck with that, man. She’s gone.”

Bucky’s voice was flat. Cold.

“What do you mean gone?”

He shrugged. “Vanished. Didn’t tell a soul what she was up to. Phone number is disconnected. Yelena’s on it, but if she doesn’t want to be found, or she doesn’t want to come in, we can’t force it.”

John could find you. John could force it. He swept past Bucky, charging out into the hallway. A metal hand closed around his wrist, drawing him up short. Bucky’s eyes burned into him, his grip tightening until John felt his bones creak.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“I did this,” John said quietly, a tremor in his stomach warning him that he was going to be sick. “I…broke this. I’ll fix it.”

“Maybe the best thing you can do for her is to let her go,” Bucky said, loosening his hold.

You were the one who had picked the ancient pool hall in Brooklyn. It looked like it hadn’t been renovated or changed much since the day it was built. The tiles were vintage, German phrases hanging from the ceiling on painted wooden boards. It kind of smelled like a dirty gymnasium, but the clientele leaned retirement community, and nobody gave the four Avengers in the back a second glance. Maybe the tattooed female bartender did, but she got over it quick, just acknowledging them with a nod, knocking a few beers off the tab.

“This place is a gem,” Sam was saying, sweeping his eyes around the perimeter, leaning back in his chair. Relaxed. Soft oom-pah-pah music played from a crackling speaker by the bar. Your foot crawled up John’s leg again, reminding him of all the ways you would comfort each other later, debriefing in your shared bed. You never judged him for getting a bit uptight around Barnes and Wilson. “How’d you find it?”

You heard Sam’s question a half-second late, distracted with John’s foot under the table. Sitting up, you ran your fingertip idly around the rim of your glass. John frowned; that was a nervous tell of yours. The question seemed so innocuous…

“Came here a few times,” you said, noncommittal, flashing John a weird smile. “A hundred years ago, in a previous life, when I worked for the man.”

That was code for when you worked with SHIELD, when you were managing field operatives, running comms, long before a drop of serum ever hit your blood stream. John knew about that era of your life; you had never tried to hide it from him. You were such an open book…

A sick feeling was building in his gut. He sat up straighter, recognizing the twitch in your jaw. Another tick. Your attention had switched to Sam, focusing there, a tight, imploring quality to your gaze.

Sam ignored it or didn’t see it, huffing out a dubious laugh. “I don’t think so. Not their style.”

Their. Your SHIELD colleagues. So, whose style was it?

You shrugged again, fidgeting with your glass, now very aware that all three men were staring at you. Bucky suddenly coughed out a dark laugh, drawing some quiet, inner connection.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense,” he said. His eyes got softer and sadder.

Meanwhile, John’s eyes ping-ponged between everyone at the table. “Sorry. I’m lost. What makes sense?”

“That Steve would come here.”

Sam said it so matter-of-factly that at first it didn’t register. The name sank in letter by letter, each one colder and sharper than the last. John knew everything about you. Everything. He gulped down a bitter mouthful of nothing, pinning Sam with a look that could melt vibranium.

“Steve,” he repeated, almost choking on it.

Sam cleared his throat. Bucky pressed his lips together.

And you. You looked anywhere but at John. His foot retreated from yours under the table as his entire body encased itself in ice. Steve. Steve Rogers. Captain Fucking America. The first one. The real one. The beloved one. There was no quaint explanation for why this information had never been shared between you. John was turning a strangled shade of purple as he looked back to Sam.

“Yeah, man,” Sam said quietly, as if he was embarrassed on John’s behalf. There was an implicit warning buried in that tone. “He referred her for the program. And they—”

“Dated. Briefly.” You were the one to twist the knife. That made sense. That felt right. John couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move.

Softly, apologetically, Bucky mumbled: “I thought you knew.”

John shook his head. “No. Guess I’m the last to find out.”

“It was like two months,” you hurried on. Under your jacket, buoyed by your unimaginable strength, strength that rivaled and perhaps surpassed John’s, your chest pumped. Faster, faster. “We had brother-sister energy. It was never going to work.”

Two months. Brother-sister energy. It didn’t matter. John had already pictured you in his arms, kissing him, falling apart at his touch, moaning his name. The bigger, better, nobler John. The perfect soldier and hero he could never be, according to the world and his own screaming mind, a mind that had spun up and was now going at warp speed, tangling itself against another problem.

Another question, another wound.

“What program?” he asked, taut.

By now, the other men at the table were sharing constant, fiddly glances, like they were trying to silently communicate which secrets to share or how to vanish while the two of you hashed this out. And in that pact, they had decided on nothing, leaving you to explain. You had never gone into the specific details of your serum, what generation, what lab, what team… Bucky had vouched for you when you joined up, mentioned a program John didn’t recognize, and it hadn’t come up again. The subject had always made you go quiet, and John got the sense there were bad memories buried there.

Now he had a shovel, now he was ready to dig up graves.

“Project Residuum,” you said, so quietly John had to strain to hear it. Your cheeks hollowed, your eyes withdrawing to a dark place, haunted. Your finger worked through the condensation left behind by your beer, drawing shapes.

“Horrible shit,” Bucky mumbled, giving you an assist that John wasn’t interested in acknowledging. “Ugly shit. She doesn’t need to go into it, man, she—”

“I think she needs to go into it,” John stated flatly, crossing his arms, sitting back in his chair. Staring. Spiraling.

“John—”

“It’s fine,” you said, interrupting Bucky before he could try to help you out again. “It was in Geneva. They had a recreation of the Erskine formula, but it was a volatile sample. And yes, it helped that I knew Steve, but he told me not to do it. He warned me not to do it. But the lab team thought I was a good candidate, that I could handle it.” Your eyes blinked shut rapidly, tongue darting out to wet your dry lips. “They were wrong. The radiation they used to activate the injections almost killed me. My skin was peeling off in sheets. They drilled a hole in my head because of the swelling. They gave me an emergency transfusion of Steve’s blood, it stabilized me.” Your eyes met John’s across the table, and his stomach lurched, trying to be in six places at once, none of them at that table learning that information. “The project was a failure, buried, written off as a cancer drug test gone wrong.”

He wasn’t proud of it, but it was the fact that Steve’s blood had been hiding in your veins that almost made him puke on the floor right there in the pool hall. In the German pool hall where Captain America himself had taken you, John’s girl, on a date.

John stood abruptly, nearly knocking the table over.

“I need some air.”

You caught up to him three blocks away from the pool hall.

John didn’t slow his stride, he was going to fly out of his skin if you tried to touch him, he just knew it, could feel the hurt converting to rage at a rate he couldn’t control. You walked beside him for a while, taking the measure of his pain.

“When were you planning on telling me?” John demanded, biting it out, hoping every word was sharp enough to draw blood. “Maybe never? Did you like that everyone was laughing behind my back, feeling sorry for you, sorry that you had to settle for the downgrade?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw you flinch. Good. He veered off the sidewalk toward a shallow park carved out in front of a public school. A drunk couple stumbled by, laughing; he wanted to strangle them. Hands on the back of his head, he paced, every step working him up into a hotter froth.

“You know that’s not what I think of you,” you said, calm, calmer than you had any right to be.

John whirled on you, snarling, hand in a fist and that hand prodding toward you, just shy of your face. “I don’t know anything. Not anymore.”

“John…”

“No. This is fucking crazy. You know that, right? You know that this is fucking crazy?” He slapped both hands against his face, letting them drag until they were tangled in the collar of his shirt. It was too cold to be doing this outside. He didn’t care. He needed the crisp bite of the wind, or he was going to boil alive. And anyway, you both ran hot, hot because of the serum in your veins. That thought ratcheted up his anger to a new level, one that he felt in every cell of his over tuned body.

It was petty. Given everything he had learned, fixating on this felt childish, but it was the nexus, the thing he would never forget, the thing that made him want to vanish into the night.

“Did you fuck him.”

It was a question, but it came out like a death sentence.

“No.” You answered in that same collected voice, the one John was really beginning to hate. But then, you were the better person, of course you were, they wouldn’t put Captain America’s precious blood into you if you weren’t pristine. Perfect.

“Liar.”

John finally stood still, glaring at you across the space of three huge park tiles. He looked you up and down, weighing something, how much he needed to fuck up, maybe, how badly he wanted to transgress; acting out was what he did, what everyone expected. Right now, he wanted the worst lies about him to be true. He wanted you to hate him so he would have an excuse to make the break clean.

“It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Steve Rogers was a gentleman.”

John’s eyes flared, the roar in his blood boiling over. “As opposed to what?” When you didn’t answer, John ate up the space between you, looming. “As opposed to what?” he asked, in a searing whisper. “What I am? Second rate. A disgrace. A mistake.”

You winced with each suggestion. That was when you tried to reach for him, cup his face.

John tore away, backing up, head cocked as a warning. And then the worst thing of all happened, worse than finding out Steve Rogers had touched you, worse than knowing you probably were stronger, faster, smarter, worse than the caustic burn of a secret…

You looked afraid. Afraid of him. Afraid of what he would do to you.

His shoulders fell, his knees almost buckling as his voice broke on the next question: “Why?” he wiped one hand across his face. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out like this? In front of them?”

Your brows lifted and your mouth lingered open for a while before you gestured at him. “Because of this reaction, John. Because I love you too much to hurt you the way you want to be hurt. He didn’t mean anything, you mean everything.”

“Bullshit.” It was too close to the target, grazing his heart. John couldn’t have that. He could have humiliation, he could have pain, he could have loss, but he could not have mercy.

“I knew you would never let it go. Steve. The serum,” you replied softly, resigned. “It’s just this thing with you. That’s why. I didn’t want six mediocre dates and a bad experiment to tear you up inside forever. It didn’t seem worth it. And I guess I’m selfish, okay? I just didn’t want you to push me away, so I made a calculation, and I’m sorry it was the wrong one.”

“Sorry you got caught, you mean,” John sneered, shaking his head. He had already decided to self-immolate, already doused himself in the proverbial fuel, now he just needed to be courageous, light the match, give this train wreck the flaming end it deserved. John was already disappearing into the shadows, turning away, because if he saw your face after he said it, it would burrow deeper than anything he had learned that night. “And I’m sorry, too. Sorry you had to settle for such a piece of shit after bagging the real deal. I bet that burns you up inside, how close you came to being with Captain America. But don’t worry, sweetheart, you don’t have to put up with a loser anymore.”

He didn’t see you, but he heard you. Just one sound. One deep, pained gasp. Like he had slapped your face, like he had rammed you with a shield.

When John finally made it back to the Watchtower, your things had been moved out of his room. He had walked all night, manic, until dawn broke across the city and the sunlight reminded him that time existed. Where he had gone, there was no time, just suffering.

In the cold light of day, when he finally turned back and aimed his feet toward the tower, his anger burned out, leaving behind ash he could taste in his throat. John stared around at all the missing things, all the holes you had left behind—the side of your closet where you kept the outfits you wore out on dates with him, the empty outlet where you charged your electric toothbrush, the ergonomic pillow you needed after a neck injury. Your nasty, beat up house slippers that he was always giving you shit about. Your laundry basket. Your phone charger. Your favorite fleece blanket. The picture frame with your childhood dog and your family.

You.

He had worked up a pretty good “please for the love of God forgive me” speech as he walked home. There was no one to say it to, no hand to clutch, no eyes to search, not even a note explaining where you had gone.

And the fucked-up part was that he was starting not to care about the Steve Rogers of it all. Your system would have cleared that DNA from your cells years ago. Even more fucked up, John had made love to you the morning before; if anyone’s DNA was meaningfully present in your body, it was his. In the space you let him occupy. In the home you let him make. You were the closest actual thing to the life he had envisioned for himself—a symbol of courage and freedom, maybe a person who could’ve wielded the shield honorably, and unwittingly, he had been drawn to that person, to you, and willingly, he had thrown the dream away.

The room was spinning.

You always heard him out. Not this time.

This time, he had gone too far.

Everyone always left.

I didn’t want you to push me away.

He had to find you, had to make it right. When he turned, Bucky was waiting for him in the open doorway, the glaze over his eyes suggesting he did not want to stare at the pathetic half-empty bedroom, the aftermath of a disaster.

“I know,” John said, before Bucky could warn him not to make things worse, weirder, more awkward for everyone. “I’ll clean this up. I’ll apologize; I lost my head last night but I—”

“Good luck with that, man. She’s gone.”

Bucky’s voice was flat. Cold.

“What do you mean gone?”

He shrugged. “Vanished. Didn’t tell a soul what she was up to. Phone number is disconnected. Yelena’s on it, but if she doesn’t want to be found, or she doesn’t want to come in, we can’t force it.”

John could find you. John could force it. He swept past Bucky, charging out into the hallway. A metal hand closed around his wrist, drawing him up short. Bucky’s eyes burned into him, his grip tightening until John felt his bones creak.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“I did this,” John said quietly, a tremor in his stomach warning him that he was going to be sick. “I…broke this. I’ll fix it.”

“Maybe the best thing you can do for her is to let her go,” Bucky said, loosening his hold.

John couldn’t let you see that it was breaking him apart. Alone. You alone. Zero room for error. No backup. Most importantly: No John. If you knew how fucked up he was about it, it would just rattle you, and if you were rattled then you could make a mistake, and if you made a mistake—

“John, I can hear you breathing.”

He stared at the back of your head, statue still in the middle of the room while you packed your small allotment of personal items. Extra socks and underwear, a single softcover book, a plastic bag of toiletries…

“I’ve been to Zangabad,” he said. ‘Been’’ was the wrong word. Survived, maybe. Endured. If he let himself get near those memories, he’d have to feel the hostage bleeding out against his chest, the blistering sunburn on his cheeks, the sand that had trickled into his boots that was rubbing his heels raw.

“I know.” You kept packing, your voice steady.

“Twice.”

“I know.”

John’s hands flexed against his legs. “I should be the one doing this.”

“And yet.”

You were almost finished stuffing your shit into the duffel. John had to make himself useful or he was going to scream. He went to your closet, pulled out the well-worn Custer’s Grove High School Bears sweatshirt of his you had stolen and made your own, then crossed back to the bed, looming for a second before carefully folding the sweater and placing it on top of the bag.

He wrapped his right arm around your shoulders, pulling you in close, pressing a kiss to your left temple. “It’s freezing at night.”

One more thing, just one more thing…

He fished out the spent bullet he kept on a chain around his neck, the one he had taken out of your shoulder on a mission that felt like it had happened a thousand years ago. In reality, it was just last month. Sighing, he draped it over your head, letting the lucky charm dangle over your chest. You turned and faced him, taking his hands.

“Jonathan.”

He winced.

“Yeah, okay,” he muttered, venting a stale breath at the carpet. “I’m being too much.”

“I’ll be back in three days,” you assured him, more patient than perhaps he deserved. “It’s nothing I can’t handle; you know that. And yes, you’re being too much, but it’s okay, I’d be a mess if you were the one leaving on your own.”

John pulled you into his embrace, kissed you, grateful for the permission to be as crazy as he needed to be. His mind was a maze of intrusive thoughts as he fell with you onto the bed, tearing at your clothes, the lucky charm bullet cold against his cheek as he kissed his way down to your breasts. What if this is the last time? What if I never get to feel this again? When he pushed inside you, the noise you made was only satisfying for about five seconds. He needed more. You clung to him, nails burning down his shoulders as he pummeled you into the mattress.

Afterward, after he had shouted his terror into the pillow while he spent inside you, you held him like two hundred and seventy pounds of spidering glass. Like a single wrong word would make him shatter. The orgasm didn’t help. He felt closer to you but not close enough. You were telling him something, pushing his hair back from his forehead, murmuring into his ear; John wanted to focus, wanted to hear it, but he couldn’t. He was gone, in the nightmare, in the haze of memories that all tasted like blood and sand.

When you were showered and dressed, kissing him goodbye outside the quinjet, you were kind enough not to point out the obvious truth—that they couldn’t send John, that it wasn’t fair or tactically sound to send a war vet back to the nexus of so much boiling pain.

Instead, they sent you.

John was pretty cool about it for the first six hours. He worked out until he couldn’t think. He helped Bob fix a busted hinge on his closet door. He forced himself to make a balanced dinner and only stress ate three peanut butter cookies. But once night came around and darkness fell and the tower went quiet, once it was well past the time you should’ve landed and texted him, the quiet made the whispering anxieties louder and louder.

He sat on the edge of the bed, glaring down at where your mollifying ‘landed safe’ text should’ve been. The last thing in the chain was a picture you had taken after a workout, glistening with sweat, eyes hot in the mirror because you knew the little shorts and bra set would drive him crazy. He had hearted the picture, no other response required because the minute you walked through the door he had pinned you to the wall.

Check in when you can, he typed. Too cold, maybe. Too dad. He sighed and rolled his shoulder, realizing then how bunched up his entire body had become.

Everything okay?

Too paranoid.

He looked at the picture again, gears turning. Maybe the most nonchalant thing he could do was just get you back. He tried to imagine your roles reversed, him being the one landing in a foreign country to work in total secrecy for three grueling days. How would he feel if a hot picture from his girl came through, a little gift from halfway across the world? John stood before he had even completely decided to do it.

John Walker, who had married his high school sweetheart, who had never joined a dating app, swiped right or left, or sent a racy nude in his life, John Walker who would have scoffed and rolled his eyes at doing exactly that until he was faced with the agonies of a long, lonely night and nothing but his trauma for company.

When he got to the full-length mirror next to his closet, the prospect of posing struck him as innately humiliating. What was he supposed to do with his hands? God, or his face? Horrible. Briefly, he considered asking Ava and Yelena for input, then came to his senses and whipped off his sweatshirt before he could overthink it. He felt like a weird lumberjack in just his jeans, so he took those off, too. Socks, obviously, could not be part of this. John kicked the pile of clothes out of frame, standing there in his black boxer briefs and a stunned expression like a man who had been shaken down for everything he owned.

John sidled closer to the mirror, clamped his hand above it, took a deep breath in to make his chest look as wide as possible, and took the picture. It wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened, so he sent it to you. Then, already stripped to his underwear, he shuffled to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and got into bed.

In the cool, shadowy emptiness of the bedroom, he stared up at the ceiling, then groaned and checked his phone. Nothing. He forced himself to put the damn thing on the charge cord, closed his eyes. A few hours later, he clawed his way out of a nightmare, panting as he shot up in bed. He wouldn’t dignify the dream by dwelling on it. Instead, he reached for his phone, convinced that by now you would’ve responded.

Nothing.

Nothing.

You should’ve landed hours ago.

He waited until his alarm went off at 5:30AM to text again, because the panic building inside him had nowhere to go but out through his thumbs. That stupid fucking picture was right there, too, his own dumb mug smirking back at him while he typed out a frantic: Can you check in with me, please?

Yes, it sounded overbearing. Yes, it sounded irritated. And yes, he knew that he could go to Bucky and demand to know if you had made contact via the jet or the satellite phone, but he wasn’t ready to let the entire team know that his heart beat to the rhythm of your wellbeing. He checked the tracker app, finding your little green dot on the map. Green. Green was good.

But if green was good, why were you icing him out?

John dragged himself out of bed, exhausted. He phoned in a few laps at the pool, showered, shoveled egg whites into his mouth until it felt like he would puke, then allowed himself another glance at his phone, even though he knew there would be nothing there, no change, because he had changed it over from silent mode to vibrate to full sound notifications.

Noon came around. Everyone was somehow busy, even Bob. John seemed to be the only person in Manhattan with nothing to do but worry and spin out. You were usually so communicative, texting him nonstop, dumb memes, selfies, weird shit you found in the bleakest corners of the Internet. And now, the first time you ventured out alone on a mission, you suddenly couldn’t give him even a “hey what’s up?”

Baby. I need you to message me.

John felt like he was losing his mind. Why was this so hard? If the mission had gone sideways, Bucky would tell him.

Wouldn’t he?

“Jesus Christ,” John groaned, pacing in front of the common room television like he was afraid to stand still.

When twenty-four hours of no contact came and went, John hit his limit. He was actually so sweaty, just all day, in a way that deodorant was not invented to handle. Someone finally came back to the tower around dinner time. Yelena. She found him at the bar, on his third whiskey and fifth peanut butter cookie.

“Why are you wet?” she asked, taking the last cookie in the plastic tub before John could polish them off.

“Long day,” was all he managed.

“Her first time away, yeah?” Yelena tilted her head to the side, then rubbed his forearm sympathetically. “She’s a big girl, John. She’ll come home in one piece.”

His eyes squeezed shut at the word home.

John’s attention slid slowly across the granite to the phone lying face up next to his tumbler of bourbon. Yelena’s eyes followed.

“Everything good?” she asked.

“Yeah,” John muttered. “Fine.”

“Wanna talk?”

“Not even a little bit.” John took his whiskey and his phone and retreated across the common room to her shouted protestations.

“You don’t look fine, Walker. Like, you seem terrible actually. I’m here, you know?”

He raised his glass to acknowledge that but didn’t turn around. The emptiness and the anxiety collapsed in on him the second he was back in his bedroom. He couldn’t get drunk, but something possessed him, a cold, mean streak that he knew had come from the pit growing in his stomach. Knowing didn’t make it easier to deal with.

He had lost so many people, so many good people, and the fear turned to bitterness, and the bitterness turned to the sickening swirl of rejection. John slammed the glass down on his nightstand, pacing again as he texted you furiously.

Do you want me to beg?

Is that what this is?

Hot, stinging pressure built behind his eyes. Fuck, he was going to actually fucking cry.

Someone knocked on the door, yanking him out of his masochistic pity party.

“Hey, man, you awake?”

Barnes.

John shoved his hands into his eyes until it hurt, then rearranged his expression into something neutral, opening the door with a casual twitch of his eyebrows. He had already analyzed Bucky’s tone a dozen ways just in the time it took him to move from nightstand to door. He listened for the folded flag in his voice. He listened for the preemptive sorrow.

“Something up?” John asked; he couldn’t help himself.

Bucky didn’t look uneasy or tortured in the way a man delivering bad news ought to. He crossed his arms, looking John up and down. “With you, maybe. What’s going on? Yelena said you were sweating yourself to death in a bucket of cookies.”

“She’s exaggerating.”

“Okay.”

John sighed and avoided Bucky’s eyes. “She hasn’t checked in with me.”

Bucky snorted like that wasn’t a fucking disaster, like it wasn’t killing John hour by hour.

“Yeah, I know, man, because she can’t.”

The world brightened at the edges, just briefly. John’s shoulders lowered, his hand landing on the doorway as he leaned out. “What?”

“She said she told you. No comms. No cell. Totally dark. This guy she’s taking in has a crack surveillance team. She’s been instructed not to touch her phone until the job’s done.”

John froze, brain revving into overdrive as he meticulously replayed every conversation the two of you had before the mission. And then he got there—he was face down in your neck, breathing you in one last time, committing the feel of your body squished against his to memory, and you were combing his hair back with your fingers, telling him something, but he was distracted by all the god damned what ifs clogging his brain, he couldn’t hear it—

“Shit,” John whispered. “I, uh…” There was no excuse, just a tense silence between the two men.

“She’s fine, John. We have eyes on her.”

“Great. Good.”

“Yeah.” Bucky gave him a strange look, then patted his shoulder, turning to go. “Anything changes, you’re the first to know.”

You couldn’t say what you were expecting when you unlocked your phone after three days of crawling through vents and crouching inside of shipping containers, but it wasn’t this.

Six missed texts from John.

The first one felt like divine intervention, exactly what you needed after a brutally lonely three days--John Walker’s first official sexy mirror pic, and all for you. He looked delicious in his little shorts. Huge chest. Grabbable waist. Biceps you could just bite. And had, actually, on many occasions. You fiddled with the lucky charm around your neck. Shit, it was getting awfully hot in the cockpit.

You sat back in your leather seat on the jet, strapped in, wondering what else he had in store for you with the rest of the messages, then watched as John’s mental health deteriorated in front of your eyes, and with timestamps.

Can you check in with me, please?

Baby. I need you to message me.

Do you want me to beg?

Is that what this is?

Disregard.

That hanging Disregard at the end was the funniest one, but only until you let yourself consider how miserable he must have been to say the other stuff. His temper sometimes got the better of him when he couldn’t find the words for his hurt. Anger was easier. Anger was comfortable.

You waited until you had cleared international airspace to message back.

I’m on my way home. Are you okay?

John’s text bubbles popped up almost immediately. Your heart clenched. It would be easy to give him shit, but not when he was this dredged in his feelings. It had taken you getting shot and almost dying for him to soften up enough to admit he wanted something more than a toxically competitive friendship. Every bit of emotional ground you gained with him was a hard-won thing. But you had been so clear about the no contact parameters, unless…

You sighed. Oh, John.

He wasn’t listening that night, was he? He couldn’t hear you, not when he was busy drowning.

His text came through.

Better now.

Then: I’ll meet you in the med bay.

You smiled down at your phone. We should leave that to the professionals.

Sure. I get you after. Six hours, beautiful.

The nurses made him wait outside in the lobby. Even with the tinted privacy glass of the exam room, you could feel him out there, pacing like a caged panther. You followed the light in front of you with your eyes, dutifully going through the steps demanded of you. There was a gunpowder burn on your right hand. A bullet had grazed your cheek, leaving behind a straight, shallow cut. Your wounds were cleaned and disinfected, but none of them needed bandaging.

You were checked over from top to bottom. After, the nurses gathered up your clothes for the laundry service. You gathered the Bears sweatshirt onto your lap, holding on.

“Not this,” you told them. “This one comes with me.”

They gave you a pair of plain sweats to wear. You took a deep breath at the door, not sure what state you would find him in. The pacing had gotten louder and faster as you cleared concussion protocol. While the picture of him was memorable and you were grateful for it, the other messages were concerning, to say the least.

The door clicked open. John pulled up short, turning back toward you with an audible huff. You didn’t get a word out before you were in his arms, crushed in a warm, muscular vice. He cupped the back of your head, nose tight to your jugular.

“John, honey,” you murmured. “I can’t breathe.”

“Shit. Sorry.” He set you down on the ground, took your hand, kissed it. His eyes, wide and blue and buzzing, searched your face. “I’m sure you’re beat.”

Which meant sleep. Which meant the bedroom. He walked you there, never letting go of you, hand threaded through yours or around your waist. You could feel him working up to an apology, a confession, and it made your neck itch.

You were tired, but sleep was the furthest thing from your mind.

“John,” you said, as soon as the door closed, cutting off whatever he had prepared to say. “What happened?”

He strode to the center of the room, hands on hips. “Yeah. I…uh, I lost it.”

“I can see that.”

“That day you left? I didn’t have my head screwed on straight, and I…missed the part where you couldn’t have your phone with you.” John glanced at you, sheepish, head hung. “Not sure I can explain the picture.”

You smiled, arms crossed as you watched him from the door. “Try.”

John studied the carpet between you, eyes scanning like he was reading the inside of his mind. “My shrink would call it self-soothing behavior through attention seeking.”

Okay. That was something. That was progress. You took a tiny step toward him. “You wanted my attention and when you didn’t get it you started crashing out?”

“Yes.” He breathed it out like poisoned air.

“And instead of asking someone for clarification on the mission protocols you decided I was ignoring you and punishing you?”

John rocked onto his toes, staring up helplessly at the ceiling. “Yep. Yes.”

“Why would I do that?” you asked, approaching like he was a cornered bear.

He pushed his hands through his hair, leaving it a frazzled mess. “Because I guess I’m waiting for you to agree with the rest of the world. That I’m…that I’m a fuck up. That I can be discarded.” His hands folded in front of his face, knees bending inward. “Fuck.”

You went to him, tried to peel his hands back but he wouldn’t budge. But he did lean into you, shuddering when you slid your arms around his neck.

“And then the first thing you say is are you okay,” he whispered, tears shredding the back half. “You’re the one in danger, and you’re worried about me, you’re the…you’re the…”

“I had everything to come back for,” you told him, kissing what you could of his face behind his hands. “So I did. And if I had my phone on me, I would’ve sent you the nastiest photo, baby, you can’t even imagine…”

John’s tears broke apart into unsteady laughter. He finally let his hands fall away, then used them to take you by the waist, gathering you to the bed, pulling you onto his lap. “I don’t know,” he murmured, wiping blindly at his face. “I can imagine quite a bit.”

You settled your head onto his shoulder, humming softly at the comfort of his big hand moving up and down your back. “Thank you for my picture, John. I will not be disregarding it."

He groaned deep in his chest.

“You can’t take it back, Walker. It’s already saved.”

John kissed your forehead, and you could feel the beginnings of a smile.

“And maybe I do want you to beg.”

His hand stilled on your back, face shifting until he could see you there tucked against his shoulder. “Oh yeah? For what?”

“For whatever you want, for whatever would make you feel better right now.”

John lifted you easily off his lap, depositing you on the bed before swiveling to push your legs apart and crawl between them. The mattress springs shrieked. Your hands fell on his shoulders as soon as they were close enough to touch. John’s eyes brightened at the sight of his sweatshirt hugging your body. He lifted it inch by inch, kissing his way up your stomach, sighing when you arched and your hands tightened on his shoulders.

“Please, beautiful,” he said, nosing up the fabric until it bunched around your chest. His breath skittered across the tender skin of your ribs, his wet kisses working the sweater higher until he could lick and suck the warm, swelling curve of your breast. “Please, please delete that god damned picture…”

You snorted, swatting his nose. “No.”

“Please,” John drew out the word, eyebrows rising as he kissed back down your body, hooking his fingers in the loose waistband of your sweats and easing them over your hips. His big baby blues were imploring as he scraped his nails lightly down your abdomen, catching the top of your panties and dragging. “I’ll kiss this pretty pussy so sweet, baby. You’ll forget all about that picture, I promise.”

You let him think you were considering it, closing your eyes and moaning as he mouthed lower, pulling on the fabric of your panties until the wet suction gave and he could lay eyes on you. He kissed up and down the damp seam of your sex, just teasing, just admiring.

“I’ll turn you inside out tonight,” he added, licking you gently to sweeten the pot. “Make you forget everything but my name, make those little toes curl…”

“Mm…” You blinked slowly, smiling down at him. “No.”

John groaned, flattening himself on top of you. Even so, you could hear his resigned chuckle as he gave it against your thigh.

“No, John,” you repeated, taking a handful of his hair, pulling until he had no choice but to look up with his exaggerated pout. Poor baby. “It’s mine forever,” you told him. “Just like you.”