Forge Your Armor in the Fire
by Sandrine Shaw
"Come on, Cap. We gotta keep moving."
Rumlow's voice is calm and assured, all STRIKE team leader. It gives Steve flashbacks of how it used to be, back before Project Insight and the reveal of the Hydra infiltration, when they were out on missions, fighting together. It's disconcerting, but also oddly comforting – which, in turn, only makes Steve more uneasy, because of all the things that should comfort him, being half-led, half-carried through the rubble of the Avengers Tower by a man who once pointed a weapon right at his heart and pulled the trigger is not one of them.
There's also the fact that Rumlow has a gun and he doesn't. Right now, he's keeping it trained on shadows and smoke, making sure the path down to the underground garage is clear, but there's no telling how long it'll take until he turns it on Steve instead.
He tries to straighten himself and support his own weight, tries to feel less helpless and convince himself that he can take Rumlow, if (when) push comes to shove. Almost instantly, his leg buckles and the dizziness hits him between the eyes like a well-placed blow.
Rumlow tightens his grip. "Whoa, easy there." He almost sounds concerned, but then he adds, "If you're fainting, I'm gonna leave you behind. There's no way I'm carrying your dead weight out of here."
Grinding his teeth, Steve resigns himself to the fact that, for now, he's at the other man's dubious mercy. Between the attack on the Tower, being buried under debris with a pillar smashing his right side, heavy stone shattering bones and grinding flesh, and being saved by Brock Rumlow, the day couldn't really get much worse. He tries to breathe through the pain and quietly takes stock.
His leg is broken in at least three places.
His insides are slowly patching themselves together.
The others are gone. Best case scenario, they needed to run and thought he was dead, leaving him behind. Worst case scenario, they didn't make it. He tries not to think about that. He can't think about that, banishing the thought to the furthest corner of his mind where it lies in wait like a hungry predator ready to pounce.
Whoever, whatever, attacked them is still out there. He can hear it even from down here – people shouting and explosions and high-pitched, utterly inhuman shrieks. He wants to rush out and help, wants to save people, but how can he do that when he can't even stand on two legs unsupported, when he has no weapon and no one to rely on but a man he knows he can't trust? Steve hasn't felt so utterly alone and helpless since he was a skinny kid in Brooklyn, taking on bullies twice his size and taking a beating every other day, before he met Bucky.
There's something about watching Rumlow short-wire Steve's bike that sets Steve on edge and makes the quiet rage inside him rise up like a storm.
"Look, Rumlow, I don't know what your plan is, but if you think that just because you pulled me out from under a pile of stones, I'm gonna get on a bike with you and follow you out there, you're mistaken. The only reason you're not locked up is because whatever hit us smashed that glass box of yours. You can't make me come with you. Just because I can't use my leg doesn't mean I'm not able to snap your neck if you try anything."
He doesn't know what he expects. A fight, probably. Quick fists, angry words, a gun to his face.
Rumlow doesn't even react. He continues working on the bike as if Steve hadn't spoken at all, as if the threat of violence wasn't hanging in the air like a storm cloud.
The engine roars, coming to life under Rumlow's hands, and he brushes himself off and stands, looking at Steve at last. "I'm not making you do shit. You wanna stay here? Be my guest. Maybe you're lucky and your buddies will come back. Or maybe whatever comes through this door next is one of those things that attacked us."
The way he says it, the barest hint of absolute horror flashing on his face just for a second before it's gone, suggests that he's actually laid eyes on their enemy. Steve wants to ask, but before he can, Rumlow continues, "I don't really give a fuck what you do. Me, I'm gonna take that bike of yours and I'm outta here, with or without you. The thing is, you and I both know that we're each other's best bet at survival right now. You don't have to like it. I sure as hell don't, but that's how it is."
"Right. How do I know you're not just trying to finish the job?"
To his credit, Rumlow doesn't pretend to misunderstand him. He shrugs. "The job was finished. I was paid to kill Captain America and I did. Not my problem if you don't stay dead, big guy." His nonchalance is as infuriating as it was when Steve first confronted him in his cell, after he came back. Rumlow talks about assassination the same way other people talk about accounting, like it's nothing to get worked up about, like just because it didn't take means Steve should just get over it.
Rumlow gets on the bike and turns to him, a crooked smirk twisting his face that suggests he knows exactly the kind of moral turmoil Steve is facing. That's half the problem, of course: Rumlow knows Steve too well, and Steve in turn doesn't know him at all, only knows what Rumlow allowed him to see before the double-cross, and there's no telling how much of that was an act.
"What's it gonna be? You coming or not?" he asks.
And God damn him, but Steve climbs on behind Rumlow, swallowing both the pain and his pride and holding on for dear life as Rumlow speeds them through the chaos and the destruction.
They pull to a stop at a remote farmhouse outside the city. It looks like it's been standing abandoned for years, but the purposeful way Rumlow steered him here suggests that they've not found this place by chance.
"Who lives here?" Steve asks when Rumlow stops the bike and the engine dies down.
"No one. There should be food and weapons though. We're probably okay here until you've healed enough to get back out there."
The implication of Rumlow's words stops Steve cold. "This is a Hydra safe house."
Rumlow shrugs. "Sure. What of it?"
"You're expecting me to stay here when any minute one of your fellow Neo-Nazi pals can walk in to this place and —"
He's cut off before he can work himself up into a rant. "Look, Rogers. It's pretty easy. I don't trust anyone right now beyond our dysfunctional little team of two so I'm going to put a bullet through whoever will show their face in the doorway, and I don't give a fuck whether they're Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D. or little green men from Mars. Are we safe here? Hell, no. But we're sure a lot safer than anywhere out there."
Intellectually it makes sense, but that doesn't mean that Steve likes it. "I think I'd feel safer facing whatever's out there than stuck in a Hydra house with you."
"Trust me, you wouldn't say that if you'd seen those things."
Rumlow approaches the door and takes out his gun. When he unlocks the safety, Steve can't contain a visceral reaction. His flinch is minuscule, but enough for Rumlow to notice. The grin he receives in response is the sort that makes Steve want to punch Rumlow in the face. Then again, all of Rumlow's expressions have that effect on him lately.
"Aw, don't look like that, Cap. That stuff used to get you all hot and bothered. Remember that day at the shooting range?"
Steve flushes.
Of course he remembers. Remembers the dull pain when his knees hit the floor, the smell of oil in his nose and the sharp taste in his mouth when his lips wrapped around the barrel of Rumlow's Glock. Rumlow's voice, low and pleased and husky with arousal. "Come on, take it all. You can do better than that. You'd let me fuck your mouth with my gun and love it, wouldn't you?" Remembers how Rumlow opened his fly and replaced cool metal with warm flesh, choking Steve with the cock until it made his eyes tear up, and that was all it took for Steve to come so hard that he almost blacked out.
The memory hits him in a tidal wave of shame and arousal, sending a hot flush to his cheeks.
"Yeah, well, I guess that was before you put a round of bullets in my chest. Funny how that puts things into perspective." He tries very hard to sound cool and unforgiving, entirely unruffled, and he thinks he succeeds reasonably well considering that he knows fuck all about perspective. Rumlow betrayed him and tried to kill him at least twice, but he also saved his life a bunch of times, most recently a couple of hours ago in the wreckage of the Tower. Rumlow may act like none of that means shit – "This ain't personal, Cap" and all that crap, like it's all the same to him – but Steve can't operate like that.
Stacy, Tony's therapist who had a crack at Rumlow in the first couple of months of his containment, told Steve that it wasn't like Rumlow had been brainwashed, he just had an askew belief system and an unhealthy ability to compartmentalize.
"In his mind, liking you personally and trying to kill you because he hates what you stand for aren't mutually exclusive," she said. The way she looked at Steve made him think she was gauging his reaction, stealthily profiling him.
Her appraisal unnerved him, which was the only possible explanation for why he found himself blurting out, "I was sleeping with him. Before, I mean. Before I found out that he was Hydra."
Stacy got that intense, narrow-eyed look that made her look like a snake ready to strike. "Really? It's interesting, because he never mentioned that. Neither to me nor to Bucky, not even when he was trying his best to scandalize me and make Bucky angry, and he had to know that this would have been the perfect shortcut to get there. It was effectively counterproductive for him not to disclose that information. And yet he kept it a secret. Why do you think this is?"
Steve hadn't had an answer to that. But then, he never claimed to understand how the insides of Rumlow's mind worked.
The house is — cozy, for the lack of a better word. Steve imagines that, before it became a Hydra hide-out, people used to live their lives here. It's easy enough to envision children playing by the old stove, a pretty young woman bringing out dinner with a smile on her face, an old man sitting on the rocking chair smoking a pipe. That's all long gone, though, and whoever once owned this place has likely been dead and buried for decades.
After checking for intruders and being satisfied that the place is empty, Rumlow unceremoniously deposits Steve on the ratty old couch and throws some canned peaches his way before disappearing into the bathroom.
Steve is moderately hungry, but he sets the food aside and checks his leg first, peeling away the sticky, blood-drenched denim. It's worse than he imagined, an open fracture that will need to be set if he wants to have any chance that it'll mend itself, even with his accelerated healing helping things along.
"Hey, Rumlow, do you have a first aid kit somewhere around here?" he calls out through the open door after the hissing sounds of the shower stops.
When Rumlow sees the wound, he whistles low. "Nice one. They got you good, didn't they?" His tone is almost appreciative and the way he eyes the bloody bone sticking out of torn flesh is utterly devoid of sympathy. It shouldn't feel comforting, but Steve doesn't think he could handle pity from Rumlow, so he'd rather take the casual reminder of the man's latent sadism.
Still, when he brings the first aid kit and crouches down next to Steve to inspect the wound, his touch is gentle. Steve wants to shrug him off and fix the injury himself, but he's mesmerized by the strange dichotomy of how Rumlow clearly gets some satisfaction from Steve's pain but at the same time actively helps to ease it.
"This is gonna hurt," he warns before he sets the bone, and Steve can't quite stifle the wry chuckle, the painkillers he took starting to set in, making him feel light-headed and a little dopey.
"Don't even pretend you're not enjoying it. We both know getting the chance to inflict some pain is the only reason you're playing Nurse Nightingale." It's not an accusation. It should be, but it's not.
Rumlow's grin is sharp. "Never claimed otherwise," he snipes and flexes his fingers, snapping the bone back into place. Steve cries out in agony so sharp that it makes his vision turn black at the edges.
When he catches his breath and the dizziness subsides, he finds Rumlow staring intently at him, drinking in his pain. His hand rests forgotten on the wound, bloody and slippery and warm – neither comforting nor hurting, just there, and Steve knows that if he shakes it off and pulls away, the moment will be gone and reality will set back in. Today's attack, his lack of trust in Rumlow, the uncertain fates of everyone he cares for. It'll all come crashing down on him before long, and the only thing he can do is keep it out for just a little longer.
The scar tissue on Rumlow's face is rough under the pads of Steve's finger.
"The fuck are you doing?" Rumlow startles and spits the words like poison, but he doesn't twist away from Steve's touch.
"Hell if I know."
"Look, Cap, I saved your life at the Tower because I stand a better chance against whatever the fuck's out there with you than without you, but this doesn't change anything. This isn't a fucking love story. Don't think that because you turn those baby blues on me and touch me like you don't care that there's nothing left of my face, I'll turn into one of your loyal little do-gooders fighting the good fight."
Steve rolls his eyes at him. "Jesus, Rumlow, did you always like to hear yourself talk so much or is that a new thing?" And because there's no one who brings out his mean side quite like Brock Rumlow does, he adds, "Habit you picked up during those months S.H.I.E.L.D left you all alone in a glass box with no one but yourself for company?"
He's not a fool. He doesn't believe for a second that he'll be able to charm Rumlow into changing sides. And even if he were deluded enough to think that he could, that sort of manipulation isn't his style.
But underneath the uniform and the mythos of the star-spangled hero, he's just a guy. Separated from his friends and allies, injured and vulnerable, coming down from an adrenaline high with no one for company but a man who used to make him come so hard he blacked out. He doesn't trust Rumlow, he sure as hell doesn't like Rumlow, but that doesn't change the fact that he wants him – still, despite everything, and it's harder to fight it when Rumlow just saved his life and is standing right in front of him, less than an arm's reach away, with no plexiglass wall between them.
There are no ulterior motives when he tangles his hands in the shower-wet dark waves of Rumlow's hair, or when he pulls him in to smash their mouths together. It's just been too long since he felt the blissful oblivion of good sex, and if he can't let himself have this on the brink of Armageddon, then when?
Rumlow pushes him away, but not before kissing back so hard he draws blood, painting his lips crimson. His pupils are dilated. "Did you hear a fucking word of what I just said?"
Steve quirks a bitter half-smile that's not much of a smile at all. "Sure. You're a bad guy. This doesn't change anything. Nothing personal, right?" He lifts an eyebrow. "Come on, Rumlow, you really gonna turn down the chance to fuck me because you think I have delusions about setting you on the righteous path of redemption? What, you have moral qualms about using me like that? That's sweet."
Rumlow's nostrils flare, and Steve isn't sure if it's anger or lust or some unholy combination of both.
"I'd forgotten what an asshole you could be." There's something almost like appreciation in his voice, but Steve doesn't get the chance to focus on it because Rumlow has found the fading bruise at his side where the pillar crushed him. Rumlow presses into it with his fingers, warm, dull pain spreading through his torso like a wildfire. "Well, fuck you."
Breathless, Steve chuckles. "That's the idea, son."
The thing about Steve's self-destructive urges is: they never last for long, and when they're gone, all that remains is the sick, tight feeling in the pit of his stomach, like the cramps he used to suffer when he was a teenager.
He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and watches as his breath fogs the glass, obscuring the pale pink bite-mark Rumlow left on his shoulder and the quickly fading bruises on his neck. It would be easier if he really did believe that he could sway the other man's loyalties, if it had been about fixing something, if he'd been a little more calculating, a little less needy.
He rubs his eyes tiredly. Get your shit together, he thinks. The others are out there somewhere – he has to believe that, can't let himself imagine the alternative – and they might need him. He can wallow in self-loathing later on.
When he comes out of the bathroom, Rumlow is sitting at the table, cleaning weapons. There's a strange kind of beauty in his rhythm, in the way his hands linger on the black steel with more gentleness than they took with Steve's body.
Rumlow spares him a brief glance and scoffs. "Already regretting it, are you? Don't say I didn't warn you, Cap."
He shrugs. "You should know by now I don't care much for warnings."
"Better to regret it later than to miss out and always wonder what it would have been like, huh?"
Steve never actually thought of it that way but it's an idea he can get behind. There's so many things he missed out on before the ice, before the serum, before the war, and the ugly, hollow regret of something you never tried is worse than any guilt he ever felt about anything he did. He wonders if Rumlow is just a little too good at reading him, or if it's the same for him, if that was the reason he started this thing with Steve in the first place.
He hobbles over to the table and pulls out a chair, sitting down opposite Rumlow. The leg feels better already, pain dull and achey rather than burning white-hot, and the ache in his side has become a low background noise Steve can easily ignore. He reaches for one of the disassembled guns and starts to put it together, acutely aware of Rumlow's eyes on him.
Neither of them says a word.
Later, in the dark, Steve stretching out on the lumpy bed while Rumlow stands watch at the window, Rumlow talks about what he saw at the Tower.
"I've never seen anything like it," he says, and something in his voice chills Steve to the bone. For a guy like Rumlow to be afraid, it takes a lot. "You and I have very different ideas of what the world should be like, Cap, but if those things have their way, there's no world left for any of us. Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D, your precious freedom, the order I think we need, all those lofty ideologies – they mean fuck all without anyone to impose them on."
"We've overcome worse. As a species, we're fairly resilient." Steve wishes he felt the strength of his convictions, that it was more than clinging to hope when there's little else left.
Rumlow turns to him. "Jesus, Steve. Don't you ever get fucking tired of keeping that up? That unfailing, bottomless hope that everything will turn out alright in the end? Thought we robbed you of your illusions after the mess with your boy Barnes, but here you are, sprouting inspirational bullshit like you don't know that life isn't fucking fair and good doesn't conquer evil and no one fucking gets what they deserve."
There's a part of Steve that wants to retaliate with a cutting remark of his own, to hiss at Rumlow for daring to bring Bucky into this, get mad because he's not the naive idiot Rumlow seems to think he is. He's had plenty of first-hand experience of how awful people are, how shitty life gets – he doesn't need Brock fucking Rumlow to remind him and paint his awful acts as a favor he did to strip Steve of his misconceptions.
But Rumlow sounds bone tired and wrecked, like he's at the end of his rope, and Steve can't help noticing that it's the first time since he's known him that he's actually called him by his given name rather than a half-friendly, half-taunting nickname or the biting 'Rogers'. Perhaps it's the right moment to push back now, when Rumlow is already slipping, just to see what's hiding beneath when the surface is cracking, but that's not who Steve is.
"You should get some rest. I'll stay up for a bit."
He half-expects Rumlow to argue, but he doesn't. The bed dips when he lies down next to Steve, and not five minutes later, he's out like a light. Steve stares at the ceiling and tries not to let his thoughts wander to what's out there or how his friends are doing or about the man softly snoring beside him. It doesn't leave much to think about.
His leg takes five days to heal enough that Rumlow deems it safe to hit the road. Steve had been getting antsy for a day and a half before that, arguing that he was fine.
"No way, Cap," Rumlow spat, kicking his foot against Steve's wound with less viciousness than Steve expected from him. It was still enough for the leg to give out from under him, leaving him in an embarrassing heap on the floor. "You wanna go on a suicide mission, be my guest, but you're not taking me with you."
"I didn't know you cared," Steve said through gritted teeth, riding out the pain.
Even with his face as damaged as it was, Rumlow's smile was disarming.
"I don't," he said, but he offered Steve a hand at the same time, and Steve didn't know anymore where truth ended and denial began and if the lies they told each other were better or worse than the lies they told themselves.
Thirty-six hours later, they're outside for the first time, riding Steve's bike through a deserted wasteland littered with dead bodies.
In an old-fashioned diner at a reststop, even Rumlow looks freaked out at the scene in front of him. "Jesus Christ, what a fucking bloodbath." He spits on the floor in disgust and keeps his gun ready, in case anything in there is going to come at them.
Steve frowns. Something pricks at the back of his neck, and he isn't sure what unsettles him more are the monsters hiding out there in the darkness or the one at his side.
"Let's fill up the bike, find some food and get moving," he suggests.
From the pay phone in the corner, he tries to reach Tony or Fury through a secure channel, but all he gets is static.
Rumlow sends a nasty little smirk his way. "Looks like your buddies aren't waiting round for your call. If they're even still alive." He lets out a short burst of laughter. "Imagine this, Cap, we could be the last human survivors. Maybe everyone else is already dead. Wouldn't that take the fucking cake?"
Steve grinds his teeth and forces himself not to reply.
They keep fighting about where to go.
Steve wants to return to Manhattan, to the Tower. See if Tony or the others have returned, or at the very least left a clue where they might have gone. Rumlow wants to continue up North, stay away from civilization, test the waters and see what's it like out there before returning to what they know to be a battle zone.
If Steve grudgingly agrees, it's only because he knows he's not back to one hundred percent yet. Hell, he's barely at fifty. He could still take Rumlow. Could probably hold out against a couple of those beasts too, maybe even a dozen of them – but super soldier or not, he's not gonna win this war on his own.
The thing is: neither of them is a strategist. They're both weapons, as much as Steve hates to acknowledge it. Deadly, precise, loaded, used to being pointed at each other, and rather useless with no one taking aim.
They're not the last people alive on earth.
Forty miles outside Springfield, a bunch of rough-looking crooks try to take their guns and Steve's bike. Predictably, it doesn't end too well for them.
Rumlow casually points his gun at the head of one of their unconscious attackers – must be one of Steve's, because they're the only ones still alive – and Steve steps in and pulls the barrel of Rumlow's weapon up before he can take the shot.
"We're not doing this."
"Okay, big guy, whatever you say." For a moment, Steve thinks he's won this battle, relieved that for once Rumlow is not making things more difficult than they have to be. But then he leans in, continuing in a conversational tone, "But if he and his buddies wake up and come across some nice, friendly family and decide they'll have some fun with them on top of taking their meager belongings and leaving them to die, that's on you, yeah?"
Then let's tie them up and lock them in somewhere, Steve wants to say, but that's bullshit. There's no convenient prison with a warden anywhere nearby. They'd either starve to death or they'd be fodder for the creatures. Either way, it would be just as sure a death sentence as putting a bullet through their heads.
Letting go of Rumlow's gun, Steve turns and walks away, trying not to flinch at the sound of shots tearing through the silence.
A deserted little motel in Maine, and Steve remembers those Steven King novels that Clint made him read. Whatever they're up against would fit right into those stories, he thinks, while helping Rumlow barricade the door and the window.
"I can take first watch," Steve offers. He's bone tired, too, but he doesn't think he can sleep just yet, and without the serum running through his veins, Rumlow probably needs rest more badly than Steve does.
He seems to have other ideas. Rumlow unceremoniously steps into Steve's personal space and shoves him backwards, practically manhandling him until the back of Steve's knees hit the edge of the bed.
Had Steve stood his ground, Rumlow couldn't move him an inch, not without using excessive force and weapons, but he tells himself that he's too tired to struggle, too surprised by the sudden assault. The truth is, he used to like it when Rumlow shoved him around, back before, and just because he now knows that Rumlow's an enemy, those desires don't just get turned off like a light switch.
Steve lets himself be pushed, lying back and watching with hooded eyes as Rumlow strips.
"You gonna let me do all the work?" Rumlow raises an eyebrow, the charred skin of his face moving along with it. Steve shamelessly lets his eyes trail over him, down his body: ruined skin and bulging muscles, bloody-knuckled fingers lazily fisting his cock.
Steve offers an idle shrug. "Since when do you have any complaints about being in charge?"
It earns him a wicked grin. "Wasn't complaining, was I?" Rumlow steps closer and deftly pops the buttons of Steve's jeans, his fingers brushing over the half-hard cock straining Steve's boxer shorts in a touch just a little too deliberately teasing to be accidental.
He climbs on the bed, straddling Steve, brushing his fingers against Steve's lips – lightly at first, then with purpose. "Get them nice and wet, will you?"
Steve complies, his mouth falling open, letting Rumlow's large, callused digits push inside. He wraps his tongue around them, sucking greedily, tasting metal and gun oil and stale sweat. Rumlow's eyes are fixed on his lips, pupils blown wide. "Fuck, Cap, that mouth of yours." He pushes in deeper, watching Steve choke on his fingers, eyes tearing up when Rumlow doesn't withdraw his hand for a long moment. When he pulls them out, deliberately spreading Steve's spit along his lower lip, Steve gasps for air.
He doesn't realize that the prep isn't for him, that he's not the one getting fucked tonight, until Rumlow pulls his hand away and reaches back behind himself with spit-slick fingers. The way Rumlow's face scrunches up when he breaches himself, the flare of his nostrils and the discomfortpainlustpleasure flashing in his eyes hits Steve like a stun baton slamming against his solar plexus.
By the time Rumlow sinks down on Steve's cock – too fast with too little slick and too much friction – Steve's already half crazy with want. He groans and squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that he sees colors dancing in the blackness.
Rumlow leans forward to lick into Steve's mouth, greedy and nasty and barely what you can call a kiss, and the way his movement changes the angle and makes Steve shift inside of him tears a breathy moan from both their throats.
Hips involuntarily jerking upwards, Steve pushes deeper into him, making Rumlow's breath stutter. He does it again, deliberately this time, and Rumlow arches his back like an oversized cat.
"Fuck," he breathes, and he sounds almost delirious. "I missed this."
Steve wants to snark back that Rumlow can't have missed this, exactly, not when they've never done it quite like this before, with Rumlow on top and riding him, but he knows what the other man means. He should probably let it rest, because there's a time and a place, and a hair's breadth away from orgasm is not the right moment for this sort of argument. Or maybe it's precisely it.
"Yeah? Well, how about the next time you have a gun trained on me, you remember that before you pull the trigger."
He forestalls whatever Rumlow might have had to say to that by claiming the other man's mouth once more, kissing him deeply while rotating his hips just so that he keeps a steady pressure on Rumlow's prostate, again and again, until the muscles around him clench tightly as Rumlow's orgasm hits him and he comes in warm stripes across Steve's stomach and chest.
Steve is still achingly, unbearably hard, beyond frustration when Rumlow won't let him thrust up for friction.
Watching him with half-lidded, calculating eyes, Rumlow slides his fingers through the sticky mess on Steve's stomach, gathering up the liquid before it dries. He pushes them between Steve's lips harshly, feeding Steve his come, not letting go until they're clean and Steve has swallowed it all. He dimly registers the unpleasant taste, too bitter and salty, repulsively cold, but it's more like an afterthought, fading under the intensity of Rumlow's stare and the insistence of his fingers relentlessly fucking into Steve's mouth again. It's that bit – the implied humiliation, the obvious show of dominance, the way those dark eyes are drinking it all in – rather than the way Rumlow keeps grinding down on his aching cock tortuously slowly that ultimately pushes Steve over the edge.
Afterwards, Rumlow unceremoniously rolls off him, the two of them catching their breaths lying side by side on their backs. Steve feels floaty and sated, riding the endorphin high and enjoying it while it lasts. Predictably, it's not for long.
Rumlow's tone is almost conversational when he brings it up. "I can't believe you were trying to appeal to my conscience while you were balls deep inside of me." He could be amused or put out, it's hard to tell. For all Steve knows, he may well be furious with cold anger he's hiding behind the nonchalant exterior.
"I wasn't exactly appealing to your conscience," Steve counters, aiming for reasonable. "I didn't tell you to be a better person. I just pointed out that if I'm dead, we can't have sex. Even your Hydra-warped logic should understand that part."
To his surprise, Rumlow snorts out something that sounds like aborted laughter. "Gotta say, Cap, that's a surprisingly underhanded argument, coming from you."
Steve wants to continue the banter, wants to say something along the lines of being willing to play Rumlow's game if he wants to get through to him, but he knows it would only end in an argument before long. Because despite the playfulness of the exchange, Steve is serious. There's bound to be a point where Rumlow will shut him down with the old 'This doesn't change anything', and maybe that's true or maybe it isn't – either way, it's not something Rumlow is going to budge from just like that, if at all.
On day eleven, near the Canadian border, Steve goes through his daily routine of finding a working telephone and trying to reach the others, and for the first time, the line crackles to life.
"A bit busy here," Tony says with familiar irritation in his voice, and in the background the sounds of gunfire and shouting paint the picture of an explosive fight.
Steve leans his forehead against the receiver, momentarily overwhelmed by emotions. "You're okay," he whispers, more to himself than to Tony, just because he needs to say it out loud before he can believe that it's true.
"Well, 'okay' is not the term I'd – Wait, Steve? Is that you? We thought you were –" He doesn't finish the thought, but the way his voice cracks makes it obvious what he was going to say.
"I'm fine. It's... a long story. Are the others okay?" He doesn't breathe until Tony confirms that the team are all alive and accounted for.
"Where are you? I'm coming to you," he says, hastily scribbling down the coordinates Tony gives him.
When he gets off the phone, Rumlow is leaning in the doorway, watching him with an inscrutable expression. "I take it your merry band of misfits is alright?" He doesn't sound happy, like he would have preferred to hear that the Avengers were out for the count, possibly permanently. Steve wants to believe that it's because Rumlow doesn't like the idea of their little road trip coming to an end, but it's more likely just old resentments setting in. Perhaps it's both, but right now Steve is too dizzy with relief to make time for examining Rumlow's emotions.
He shrugs. "They're fine. They're outside D.C, trying to figure out how to stop those things. We're not that easy to kill. You of all people should know that."
"Right." The grin Rumlow throws his way looks more like a grimace. "Guess we're heading back to D.C. then."
On the way down South, Steve lays eyes on one of the creatures for the first time.
Rumlow's account of what he witnessed at the Tower was chilling, but it's nothing compared to actually seeing one of those things attack, larger than life and like a horribly realistic computer-generated monster from a horror movie. And it's just a single one, not a whole flock of them. It seems to be injured, too, oozing a black blood-like liquid.
They're at a gas station, refilling the bike's tank and stocking up on food when it appears out of nowhere, towering over the building like a giant.
Steve shouts a warning to Rumlow, who's crouching next to the bike and clearly hasn't spotted the threat yet, but it's already too late and the creature lashes out, its tentacle-like arm unwrapping like a whip and throwing Rumlow a good thirty feet backwards. He lands harshly on the asphalt, back-first, and the creature approaches him. Steve waits for Rumlow to get up and get his gun, empty a round of bullets into the thing's head, but he just lies there, unmoving, and the sick feeling that settles in Steve's stomach builds and builds.
He surges forward, placing himself between Rumlow and his attacker, drawing its attention away from the man on the ground.
It hisses and jumps at him and Steve's hand immediately goes to his back where his shield used to be before he remembers that he doesn't have it, that it's still somewhere in the ruins of the Tower, buried too deep underneath rubble and asphalt to be recovered easily. Losing precious seconds reaching for a weapon that's not there, he's not quick enough to pull his gun, and all he can do when the creature comes at him is meet it with equal force, putting all his strength behind his fist and hitting it hard on the side where the black ooze is dripping out. With a howl, it goes down, and that's all it takes for Steve to pull his gun and shoot once, twice, three, four times until it doesn't move anymore.
Bending over, he puts his hands on his knees and breathes through the rush of adrenaline. When he turns around to Rumlow, he's relieved to find him sitting up, surveying the scene warily. His eyes flicker from Steve to the dead creature and back again.
"Why the fuck did you do that?" It's fascinating how even sprawled on the ground and reeling from the beating he took, Rumlow still doesn't lose the attitude.
Steve sighs and straightens his shoulders. He has an inkling where this conversation is going, and he already hates it. Of course, gratitude would have been too much to hope for. "Because it was going to kill you. You're welcome, by the way."
"Maybe you should have let it."
"What happened to 'we're each other's best bet at survival'?" Throwing Rumlow's own words back in his face, Steve raises a challenging eyebrow.
"That was when you had a broken leg and couldn't take three steps on your own. We both know you don't need me now," Rumlow argues. Any other guy, and that kind of talk would come off as self-depreciating, potentially suicidal, the implication of 'I'm not worth you risking your life for me'. Instead, Rumlow makes it sound like an accusation, like Steve is too stupid to understand the reality of who they are and what this is. It gets under Steve's skin, which is probably half the reason they're having this argument in the first place.
"If you really think that means I'm going to just stand by and watch you die, you obviously don't know me at all."
Rumlow doesn't bother to get up, leaning back on his hands and offering a nasty smile. "You never learn, Cap, do you? What do you think is going to happen when this is over and it'll be you and me on opposite sides again?"
Steve's jaw sets. He's getting tired of Rumlow's poorly veiled attempts to save him from himself, the assumptions that Steve doesn't understand or refuses to believe that fighting together against a common enemy won't fundamentally change what Rumlow believes and stands for, however misguided. "What that happens," he says measuredly, taking care to say 'when' and not 'if', "I will stop you. Same as always."
Rumlow still looks like he wants to argue, but Steve cuts him off before he can get a word in. "You got a lucky shot in once, Rumlow, and even that wasn't enough to stop me. Maybe you're the one who doesn't learn from his mistakes."
Two can play this game. He offers Rumlow a hand to help him up, for the sole reason that he knows precisely how much Rumlow will resent the gesture.
Rumlow gets edgier the closer they get to D.C., and Steve can't exactly blame him. They should be discussing what's going to happen when they find the others, but it's clearly not a discussion either of them is keen on, so they ignore it and pretend it'll somehow solve itself.
When he thought of how the reunion would go, Steve imagined tense stand-offs in the middle of a bare conference room in an underground bunker, having to step between Rumlow and Bucky to stop them from tearing each other to shreds.
It doesn't come to that. Instead, they arrive to find the Avengers locked in a fight, and unlike the encounter at the gas station, this time Rumlow is ready. He pushes off the bike and pulls out his gun in a seamless motion. Even though he's in plain-clothes, no armor or mask, he's suddenly all Crossbones, unflappable and imposing, firing at the creatures descending all around them. For a moment, all Steve can do is stare at how complete the transformation is and wonder what it means that Rumlow hadn't deemed it necessary to bring out this side of him even once since he pulled Steve from the Tower. Then something next to him explodes, and Steve shakes off the thought, joining the battle.
There's a moment Steve remembers later, when he sees Rumlow pointing his gun in Bucky's direction and cold dread threatens to swallow him whole. He's locked in a struggle with one of the creatures and too far away to reach them, helpless to watch Rumlow pull the trigger. He shouts, and both their heads snap towards him.
Behind Bucky, one of the creatures goes down, Rumlow's bullet slamming it right through his eye.
Rumlow raises an eyebrow at Steve, his expression sardonic, like he knew exactly what Steve was thinking, and his mouth curves into a grin.
Afterwards, surrounded by dead, black-glazed monsters, Bucky hugs Steve hard enough that he feels the crunch of his bones, Bucky's metal arm a comforting pressure around his ribcage. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Tony strut around in his suit, visor open and clearly in the middle of an agitated conversation over the comms. Behind them, he can feel Rumlow's stare burning into his back.
"I'm so glad you're okay. When we couldn't find you at the Tower, they said you probably didn't make it, but I knew you weren't that easy to kill." The confidence in Bucky's voice shames Steve, because there was a stretch of time, alone on the road with Rumlow, when he truly believed the others were dead.
"Is everyone else okay?" Tony said they were, before, but that was days ago and Steve needs the reassurance.
"Few scratches here and there. Falcon got a nasty scar on his shoulder and Nat broke her wrist, but we all live to fight another day." Bucky cracks a smile, but when he looks Steve up and down, taking stock of potential injuries, there's no humor in his eyes. "How did you even get out of the Tower? We searched for hours after the attack and when we finally left, the place was a ruin."
Steve sighs and scratches his neck. "It's a long story." One he'll have to tell, eventually, he's sure, but maybe not just now. "I had help."
He turns around to where he knows Rumlow was standing barely a minute ago, but he's gone. So is Steve's bike. He curses softly under his breath.
"You didn't really expect him to stick around and wait until we locked him up again, did you?" There's curiosity in Bucky's gaze, and for a moment Steve thinks he detects an undercurrent of pity and feels his hackles instantly rising before he realizes that he's probably projecting. It's not Bucky; he's the one who's feeling pathetically sorry for himself.
Pushing the emotion down, Steve takes a long, hard breath to steady himself. This alliance was always going to be a temporary one. He's known that from the start, and anything else would have been a flight of fancy.
In the end, defeating the creatures is easier than Steve – any of them, really – expected it to be. They take a dead one back to the lab in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s temporary makeshift headquarters, and the scientists take it apart, studying its biological make-up and fixing a neurotoxin that effectively kills them while being perfectly harmless to any humans who are exposed to it.
At least, that's the sales pitch. Steve has witnessed the uglier side of science one time too many to fully trust that it's actually safe and won't have any long-term side effects, but it's all they have, and as far as eradicating the creatures goes, it works like a charm.
No one knows where they came from. If they were aliens or an experiment gone wrong, or if they were something some crazy guy deliberately cooked up in a lab somewhere.
Nat shrugs, a little lopsided with one of her shoulders wrapped in the sling that stabilizes her arm. "For all we know, it's Hydra's latest scheme."
Steve frowns. He remembers Rumlow's stark terror, that first night, and what he told him in the darkness of the safe house. "Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D, all those lofty ideologies – they mean fuck all without anyone to impose them on." "I don't know. Doesn't seem their M.O. to try and extinguish the human race." They've seen the first victim counts, nothing but tentative estimations so far, but it's bad. It could have been a lot worse, though, if the attacks had lasted more than the three weeks they did.
Bucky knows Steve a little too well, easily guessing at his reasoning and poking holes in his theory. "Rumlow doesn't stand for Hydra as a whole, Steve. He's a sociopathic asshole who believes some twisted crap, but just because he's sane enough to realize those creatures are bad news doesn't mean Hydra doesn't have someone a hell of a lot crazier cooped up somewhere who thinks killing off two-thirds of humankind and enslaving the rest after conveniently coming to their rescue is a solid strategy to achieve world domination."
His fist – the left one – clenches with a metallic creak, and Steve abruptly feels a wave of guilt, along with the conviction that, whether or not they are responsible for this recent crisis, Hydra is capable of anything.
"You're right. I'm sorry."
He isn't sure what exactly he's apologizing for, but he's fairly sure it's not just his comment about Hydra's likely lack of involvement.
Bucky shakes his head, smiling like he understands. Perhaps he does. "Don't be. Your capability to believe the best in everyone is what makes you you."
Epilogue
When he returns to the safe house where he and Rumlow hid out while he recuperated, Steve isn't surprised to find it torched to the ground. He crouches down and touches his hand to the blackened remains, the sharp smell of charred wood and burnt plastic hitting his nose. The earth is clammy and cold, but the smell is still strong. It can't have been too long since the fire. Steve can't help wondering if there's something symbolic about it, if Rumlow burning the house down is supposed to send a message – but then, he doesn't really think that Rumlow's the kind of guy concerned with pretty metaphors. It's more likely that he wanted to wipe his traces and it was just the fastest, easiest way.
"What would you have done if you'd found him?" Bucky asks.
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it," Steve tells him. It's a lie. He's thought about it a lot, he just hasn't found an answer yet, one that bridges the gap between what he should do and what he wants to do, between hopes and expectations.
"Maybe you should think about it before you go after him." Bucky's tone is a little sharper than usual, but the advice is genuine. "Look, Stevie, no one knows better than me that you're not good at the whole lack of closure thing, but maybe this once it would be best to just let him disappear and not try and track him down."
"Maybe."
Steve stands and brushes the ashes from his uniform. They leave grey stains that only get broader when he tries to rub them out.
There's a part of him that wants to go after Rumlow, despite what Bucky said, but there's no use. If Rumlow doesn't want to be found, he'll go off the map and disappear like a ghost, like a phantom in the dark. There's no point trying to track him down. But one thing Steve is sure of: their paths will cross again before long.
End.