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Lust
“I can’t wait to get you home so I can thank you properly,” Steve murmured, barely audible over the cheering crowd. His hand, which had been resting chastely in the small of Sam’s back, dropped to cup his ass.
Sam tried to keep a straight face as he said out of the corner of his mouth, “There are cameras all around us.” He absolutely did not lean into Steve’s touch, or in any way, encourage this inappropriate behavior. Certainly not appropriate at an Avengers Day parade in Fucksville, Idaho, which he and Steve had somehow been dragged into as the Avenger representatives of choice.
“Do you think the reporters would be interested in what I’m saying to you right now?” Steve asked, amusement apparent in his low tone.
Sam waved at the Boy Scouts troop skipping past, leading the way in front of their parade float done up to look like Iron Man.
“I think they might care a bit,” Sam murmured. “They’re always interested in what Captain America has to say.”
Steve’s hand swept up to clasp Sam’s hip. “I’d love to give an interview about fucking you,” he said in a perfectly conversational tone.
Sam bit his lip and stared out at the crowd.
“An expose of sorts,” he continued, “a slow, thorough, lust-filled play-by-play of what I do to Sam Wilson to tell him how thankful I am for his heroics.”
Sam pressed his lips together, willed his face to stay impassive. Honestly, it wasn’t so much the words Steve was saying as the way he was saying them. The guy had a preternatural ability to make dirty talk sound conversational, conversational talk absolutely sinful.
Sam bought himself some time to come up with a response by taking a gulp from his novelty Avengers Day water bottle. He nodded at a firefighter on top of a huge Captain America float going by with girls in USO costumes kicking their legs up over their heads in the truck bed. He offered the water bottle to Steve, but Steve smirked and shook his head.
“I’d tell them how much I like thanking you,” he continued, leaning close to Sam’s ear like he was telling him a secret, like they weren’t standing on a stage nodding and smiling at parade goers like a bunch of pageant queens. “Or maybe I’d tell them what it’s like when you’re thanking me. If these good Idahoans really wanted to show their appreciation for our years saving the world, they’d just let me take you back to the hotel so we could have our own little day of thanks.” He dragged his hand up and down Sam’s side slowly, igniting blooms of heat that spread like wildfire across Sam’s skin. “I’d thank you again and again and again. I’d thank you up against a wall, in the shower, on the floor.”
Sam tried to adjust his stance without being totally obvious.
“I’d thank you all night,” Steve murmured, his hand coming up to pinch Sam’s nipple in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instant.
“You are such an asshole,” Sam hissed.
Steve grinned. “Do you want to hold the shield?” And he had the audacity to ask it the way some very helpful, kind person might ask if he needed a sweater.
Sam yanked the shield away from Steve. “I should punch you right in your pretty face.”
Steve tilted his head. “You’re sounding very underappreciated, Sam. Maybe I need to thank you right here on this stage.”
Love
“I missed you,” Steve said when Sam dropped into the seat across from him on the jet. “We shouldn’t let Fury put us on different ops.”
Sam looked at the bruises on Steve’s cheekbone and neck and the cast on his left leg and snorted. “I did just fine on my own. What’d you do this time? Jump out of a helicopter into a pit of robots?”
“Hi, Steve. I see you’re hurt, Steve. Glad you’re okay, Steve. I love you, Steve.”
Sam sighed and said in a monotone, “Hi, you’re hurt. Glad you’re okay. Love you. Now, what dumb thing did you do to break your leg? And don’t make me ask Rhodey, because he’ll tell me and he won’t leave out any of your stupidity. He likes me more than you.”
Steve frowned. “When I was imagining our reunion from the cold comfort of a hospital bed in northern China, you were a lot nicer than this.”
Sam shrugged and waited for Steve’s explanation. Steve instead glanced over at Nat, who was strapped into her seat with her headphones in. He waved his hand to catch her attention. “Looks like you were right about him. I’ll pay up when we touch down state side.”
Natasha smirked at Sam. “Steve said you’d be too swept up that he was okay to be mad that he’d done something reckless.”
“Shows how much he knows,” Sam said. His eyes raked over Steve’s profile, his broad shoulders, the clumsy cast that forced his leg to sit forward at a 45 degree angle.
Steve turned away from Natasha and smiled at Sam. “What can I say? I guess I’m just not as good when you’re not around.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I was there when you broke your collarbone,” he pointed out.
“I was distracted by the guy with the AK47 pointed at your chest,” Steve said. “It’s a catch-22, babe. When you’re with me, I worry. When you’re away, I pine.” He clutched his hand to his heart.
Sam shook his head, refusing to be entertained by Steve’s antics. He looked out the window as the jet taxied toward the take-off site.
“You’ve never had a broken leg,” he said after the jet was airborne. “How long before it heals?”
“Two weeks, tops. Snapped the femur clean in half.”
“You sound pretty cheerful,” Sam pointed out.
“I’m reunited with my favorite person in the world. Why shouldn’t I be cheerful?”
Sam shook his head again, but this time he couldn’t help the way his lips curved into a smile.
“And it wasn’t a pit of robots,” Steve added, “thank you very much. Fucking Crossbones teamed up with a mutant – name unknown – with super-duper uber strength and she may have tossed me through a couple buildings.”
“So you’re saying it could have been a lot worse?” Sam said.
Steve shrugged. “I’m saying that when the alternate universe She-Hulk was trying to tear my spine out of my ass, I was thinking about you and how much I love you.”
“Not the best time to be thinking that.”
Steve smiled. “Can I help when an overwhelming rush of love for you is going to cloud my mind? You’re a menace, Sam Wilson. An absolute menace.”
Sam grinned back at his boyfriend, charmed in spite of himself. “The mouth on you, Steve Rogers.”
“Is going to make me throw up,” Natasha said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I’m gonna go make up an excuse with Rhodey about why I should be in the cockpit with him instead of back here.”
Steve barely acknowledged Natasha’s departure, his face an almost literal heart-eyes emoji for Sam. “It’s not just near-death experiences,” he continued. “That make me think about you and how perfect you are. At the grocery store, buying stamps, changing a lightbulb. You’re my heart, babe.”
Sam ducked his head, still shy after the last two years of these kinds of declarations from Steve. “You’re such a sap,” he murmured.
Steve laughed. “What can I say? I love you, Sam.”
Home.
“I’m sorry, man. I fell asleep.” Sam rubbed his bleary eyes, careful not to pull his contact lens out in the process. He tried to remember what had been happening prior to his unscheduled nap as his mind un-fogged. Steve had wanted him to watch some shark documentary with him.
It was their first weekend home together in months and they’d talked a big game about everything they were going to do to each other. Okay, Steve had talked a big game and Sam had smiled and said, “You think so?”
But they’d taken one look at their long abandoned sofa and Steve had said, “Nat’s been bugging me to watch this movie about great whites for a while,” and they’d changed into sweats and t-shirts and Sam had wiggled under Steve’s arm and hadn’t stayed awake long enough to see the opening title screen. He’d only woken up because the DVD menu music was on an annoying repeat loop now that the movie was over.
Steve smiled down at him. “I didn’t last much longer than you. Didn’t realize how tired I was.” He rubbed his eyes and then pushed his fingers through his hair.
Sam sat up a little so all his weight wasn’t on Steve. “I’ve missed this, though. You and me. Just chillin.”
Steve smirked—as he often did when Sam used any language too far removed from the 1940s. “Now that we’re all well-rested and ‘chilled’, I can make sweet, sweet love to you.”
Sam grinned. Somehow, Steve had managed to sound both perfectly heartfelt and mocking in the same breath. “You really are the most—”
“Handsome? Insatiable? Perfect?”
Sam rolled his eyes and sat all the way up. “I dunno. Weren’t 40s men supposed to be all repressed and shit?”
Steve grinned. “I guess I didn’t get the memo about that.” He slung an arm around Sam’s shoulder. “Besides, I woke up in the future and suddenly I could love exactly who the fuck I wanted. Why wouldn’t I be loud about that?”
Sam leaned up to kiss Steve’s chin. “Do you always have to be so damn sincere? You know that’s my weakness.”
Steve hauled Sam into his lap with an ease that never failed to thrill Sam. “You’re my weakness,” he said. “You’re my strength. You’re my home.” He punctuated each of these declarations with a kiss.
Sam groaned and dropped his face into the crook of Steve’s neck. “See, you can’t say shit like that. Anything I say after that will just sound stupid.”
“Then don’t say anything,” Steve said. His hot hands slid up the back of Sam’s t-shirt. “No one has to talk in this next part."