Chaos Incarnate

The glares and whispers were more consistent, glancing blows against his back. If John knew, he didn’t say anything, but you noticed, developing a finely tuned radar for these interactions. You learned to smile back, sometimes like a maniac, trying to kill them with kindness, or at least inspire enough shame to make them turn away and mind their business.

For two highly public, highly visible superheroes, the Bronx Zoo was a gift. With the right amalgamation of hats, sunglasses and oversized clothing, the two of you blended right in. It was bliss—a perfect, crisp autumn Tuesday, no field trips swarming the paths, just partial cloud cover, sweater temps, softly falling leaves and a three PM sea lion feeding you were absolutely not going to miss.

“Oh my God!” you squealed, consulting the fold out pamphlet you had nabbed at the front gates. “There are baby lemurs, John. Twins. We have to see them. I have to know their names. I have to know everything about them.”

Hands in his pockets, John snorted, eyes sweeping the path ahead. His expression did not say: I am enjoying this relaxing weekday outing. It said: we are right out in the open, and the enemy has the advantage.

The enemy, in this case, being any tourists nosy enough to look closely at your faces, and perhaps the sheep chewing nothing beyond the fence to your left.

You glanced up at him, veering closer, letting your arm brush against him as you walked through the children’s zoo section. Everything smelled like hay and manure, and underneath that the smoky tang of distant, burning leaves. You almost had the path to yourselves, just a few stragglers with their cameras out, but nobody was paying attention to the two of you.

It was pretty damn romantic.

Or at least, it should’ve been. You reached for John’s forearm, feeling the subsequent flinch in your bones. Huh. Okay. You did some unnecessary math, just because you were feeling masochistic, and yep, confirmed, this was definitely your seventh official date. You drew in on yourself, attaching your focus to the pamphlet again, pretending to need it as a guide to get you to the Madagascar! exhibit and those baby lemurs you were desperate to clap eyes on.

Pouring over past outings, you realized he had never tried to hold your hand in public. Or kiss you. Or sling his arm over your shoulders.

Nothing.

John stayed quiet, still in hypervigilance as he eyed every person that passed, perhaps trying to calculate how likely they were to recognize him, then how likely they were to antagonize. And his hands stayed firmly, obstinately in his pockets, like his fingers would shrivel up and fall off if they felt the warmth of the sun.

It wasn’t like he was a prude. He was old-fashioned about some things, but not everything. He had trusted you to stitch up a cut over his eye in the field. If you used his shower in the morning, there was a strong possibility he could get in right behind you, never shy about his body or yours. In fact, just that morning you had woken up to his dick twitching against your butt, a few hungry groans against your ear later and he was so far inside you it made your teeth ache.

It wasn’t like you were trying to stick your tongue down his throat in front of the hissing cockroaches. You just wanted to hold hands, feel like a couple and not a dirty secret.

You raked your eyes over him. Wondering. Worried.

A fractured piece of your self-image insisted he was ashamed, that you weren’t pretty enough to be on the former Captain America’s arm, and that John was too afraid or too embarrassed to say as much. By the time you were planted in front of the lemur habitat, that one cancerous cell of a thought had metastasized into a mini crisis.

The air around the habitat was intensely humid and everything smelled vegetal, like you had been transported to another world. Your hands were wet with sweat, your chest tight with anxiety. You looked down at your baggy sweatshirt and old jeans and silently scolded yourself for not making more of an effort. But that was the point! You were both trying to go unnoticed, committed to just enjoying each other and the day without worrying about every fucking random—

“Hey. Baby.” John nudged you with his elbow, a boyish smile brightening his face as he leaned closer and pointed at a trio of small brown shapes in the trees. Collared lemurs. “Think I spotted them. Shit, they’re cute.”

You were spiraling down to hell, but the sight of the furry little guys clinging to their mom did distract. But only a little. You perked your head up, pinching out a grimace masquerading as something brighter. John’s expression faltered, brow furrowing; he glanced back toward the animals, leaning in closer.

“Here’s how we’ll do it: I’ll fake a heart attack, that should give you plenty of time to get in there and grab them, but then it’s every man for himself,” he teased, straightening up, putting his god damn hand back in his god damn pocket. John swiveled away from the lemurs, studying you with new interest. “It was a joke.”

“I know.”

“What happened to: I have to know everything about them?”

You looked down at your feet, then at the nearest pocket on his jeans, heart hammering, stomach churning. “Why won’t you hold my hand?”

John froze, eyes scanning the path behind you, but you were utterly alone, just the lemurs for company.

You showed him your empty palm. John rolled his neck, teeth grinding. Suddenly, he couldn’t meet your gaze.

“It’s just…a thing,” he said, coughing up the words like they were broken glass.

“It’s important to me.” You didn’t tell him all of the other horrible shit slamming around in your head. There was a mature way to do this, if only you could keep your fucking cool. “I want to feel like I’m your partner. Like you want me.”

John’s eyes snapped to yours, opening wider. “What? I do want you, isn’t that obvious, I—”

“You want me,” you said slowly. “Just not out in the open where someone might see.”

He finally took his hands out of his pants, scrubbing them down his face, clawing his fingers through his beard. He looked to the lemurs for help, but they just stared back, riveted to this drama unfolding on their doorstep.

“That’s right.” Quiet. Rasped. You could feel individual cracks splintering across your heart. You could not believe you were going to break up with John Walker at the zoo of all fucking places. John stumbled forward, grunting, like some invisible person was shaking the rest of the statement out of him. “For your sake.”

Oh.

He took off his baseball cap, readjusted it, paced three steps away from you then came back, scuffing the toe of his boot against the decorative paving. “I know what they’ll say about you, because they said it about me. I can’t…do that to you. I won’t. Jesus Christ, baby, I’m not ashamed of you I’m ashamed of me. It’s just easier this way,” he trailed off, hanging his head, finding a whisper of pride and raising it again to stare resolutely at you. “For everyone.”

“Not for me,” you said, closing the gap, taking his hands. His shook exactly once before knitting into yours. “Was that so hard?”

A smile flickered, then vanished. “Yeah, actually.”

“Even in front of the lemurs?” you asked, leaning into him, going onto your toes to plant a soft kiss on his chin. His face turned ghostly pale, eyes on the horizon again as if a thousand paparazzi lay in wait to capture the moment and dissect it mercilessly the next day.

“The lemurs aren’t so bad,” John said, drawing in a deep breath. “I’m not good at this.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t always like this.”

“John--”

“I’m going to be bad at it for a long time.”

“That’s okay.” You kissed him again, this time on the cheek. Letting go of his right hand, you swung back to stand on his left side, hands clasped. His chest was pumping like this was the lion exhibit and you were on the wrong side of the glass.

After a while, his posture relaxed. A family wandered into the area; John tensed again, bracing. They offered polite smiles, then moved on. He groaned and shook his head.

“I can take it.” You bumped your hip against his.

He nodded.

No, he had to be sure.

“Remember that time I told Bucky to punch me in the stomach as hard as he could and he did and I barfed everywhere?”

John squeezed his eyes shut, wrestling back a bark of laughter. “Jesus, what were you thinking?”

“I was trying to show off.”

“I don’t know what it says about me that it worked.”

You rested your head on his shoulder, absorbing the nervous flutter in his muscles. “And that time half my suit burned off because the techs got the flame-retardant chemical ratio wrong and I flashed all of the photographers outside that exploding building?”

John’s blue eyes brightened as they landed on your face, then slid down to your breasts and back up. “Yes. I remember that. Vividly.”

“They had to censor it in the newspaper,” you sighed, pursing your lips. “And I survived it. I survived most of my naked tit being shared around on the Internet, I’ll survive whatever inane bullshit someone wants to write about you, about us.” You turned to face him fully again, resting your free hand on his chest. “They can’t make me hate you. I’ve seen your scars.”

His ears slid back, the cocky, teasing John you knew so well returning with a crooked smirk. “You’ve seen a lot more than that.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” He kissed your forehead, lingering. “Maybe we should practice now. With the lemurs.”

His left hand slipped out of your grasp, smoothing over your waist to your hip, then lower, goosing your ass so hard you shrieked and dodged into him.

“Jonathan. There are children present.”

He waved to the twin babies in the trees, who were chewing furiously and seemingly pretty bored with your PDA now that the drama was over. “Sorry! Can’t help it. Have you seen her?”

“Oh my God,” you moaned, dropping your forehead against his chest, knowing then that you had created a monster.

“This is nice,” he added, hand curved around your butt.

You jerked your head back, glaring up at him, squinting.

John lifted his brows in mock innocence. “Careful what you wish for.”

But there was laughter further up the path, and John got in one quick squeeze on your cheek before hastily letting go, reaching for your hand and wrapping it up in his.

Three middle school age kids careened down the trail, outpacing their parents to hunt for lemurs with their sticky fingers against the barrier. The one on the right, closest to you and John, was wearing a Captain America sweatshirt. You felt John’s demeanor change as he noticed it, too, a tremor passing through him like he had been electrocuted just by glimpsing the symbol.

You gazed at John, steady, never loosening the pressure of your hold on his hand. “That kid doesn’t know it,” you said in a whisper, “but he’s safer because you’re here, because you’re an Avenger.”

John didn’t nod, but he didn’t flinch either. “Maybe we hold off on the lemur heist.”

“For now.”

“We’re practically saints,” he sighed.

It didn’t happen all at once, but it did happen.

A week later, John took you out for ice cream, giving in to your demands despite it being probably unseasonable for frozen treats. You insisted such things were year-round, and anyway, rules were meant to be bent and sometimes broken.

Halfway there, he reached for your hand.

You cozied up next to him, greedy for his heat, your collar up against the slicing autumn wind.

“I forgot what it felt like,” he murmured, thoughtful, half to you, half to himself, “to just be a human being in public.”

“Maybe you’re human, but I’m about to go ape on this ice cream, baby.”

John humored you with a groaning laugh. Later, when you had, in fact, gone ape on your double stacked cone, and you were sitting side by side on a graffitied bench watching the world go by, John leaned down to kiss a smudge of cold sugar off your cheek.

“Had something there,” he said, cheeks bright red as he leaned back, hand on your thigh. You had never seen an ice cream cone disappear so fast; his had lasted all of thirty seconds.

“Uh-huh.”

“No, you did.”

“Likely story, now the evidence is gone, mm? Convenient.”

John sighed and settled back against the bench, ankle bouncing where it rested on his knee. “Punishment should fit the crime.”

“Oh, it will,” you said, giving your ice-cream a slow, torturous lick, giving him a show. John’s hand spasmed on your thigh, his eyes suddenly several shades darker. “I saw the way you ate that cone, Walker. I’m full of ideas now.”