Steve sighed and shut his eyes as he sank gratefully into the Jacuzzi sprawled across one of the uppermost floors of the Tower. One by one, he focused on his many clusters of muscles bunched and barbed with tension from the day's regimen and let the powerful jets beat them into submission.
"Hey there, babydoll," purred a familiar, confident voice.
Steve looked up to find Barnes shucking off his shirt.
Steve felt his face flush—which he would blame on the piping hot water, fiery tendrils of steam, and his unfortunate Irish complexion—and muttered, "Told you not to call me that. Save it for the broads."
Buck, ever dashing and plenty rugged, shrugged and slid into the water beside him.
Steve stiffened in spite of the steady, massaging streams. The tub was enormous. Stark typically spent his summer nights throwing lavish, drunken parties in here. But this weekend, he chose to use his yacht. Why did Buck have to go and sit so dang close when the rest of the seats lay open for the claiming?
"You sure got some great tits," Barnes smoldered, stretching out his arms along the Jacuzzi's lacquered marble ledge, his ravenous attention suddenly glued to Steve's admittedly large pectorals. His flesh arm waited directly behind Steve's shoulder blades.
Steve's face plunged into an accusing frown. Before he could stop himself, Steve had his arm across his chest, turning the self-conscious gesture into a scratch for his shoulder.
Bucky threw back his head and laughed with abandon. "Shoot, Rogers. Don't blow your wig. You're redder than a Christmas candy apple. I was just funning." He nudged him.
Leveling him with an incredulous glare, Steve scooted aside, putting a safer distance between them.
It wasn't fair.
Buck knew how Steve felt about him. Pined after him. Admired him. Hell, Barnes had his V Card. And he'd never let Steve forget it since his memories, and insufferably arrogant personality, returned. Christmas Eve on the front lines. They had taken to sharing at cot at base camp, usually in their birthday suits, which shared heat the best. Germany was bitter cold. And Buck was drunk.
"You know, if you ever outgrow the hyper-modest thing… I'd be first in line to titty fuck you." Barnes flashed a devilish grin and threw him a lewd wink.
Steve nearly came unglued. That long, snowy night hadn't meant squat to Barnes. Steve would never let on how much the opposite rang true for him. He swiftly reached over to clock Buck in the arm, but Buck's mech arm had him by the wrist in a flash and hauled him back making puzzle pieces of their legs.
"You don't gotta be so shy around me."
"You're still a jerk." A cad, really. Scoundrel. Rascal.
"You're still a punk. And a tease."
Steve balked. "A what?!"
"A tease. You can't just whip those out and expect me not to ogle."
"Buck, jeez!" Steve chided. "I'm a fella. You've got 'um too. Go ogle your own."
To Steve's naked horror, Buck reached up and gave his right pec a squeeze. "Look at the sheen on that honker." He beamed like the damned Cheshire cat.
Red spilled down from Steve's neck. He could have died. Biting back a moan, he tightened his jaw and tried to shrug out of Buck's grasp. "Not here. Someone's gonna see."
"And record it, I hope. Let 'um." He smacked Steve's thigh. "Pretty keen on those drumsticks, too."
"Pretty keen on busting your smug mug."
Buck loosed a low whistle above the pulsing jets. "When did you get so feisty?" His eyes acquired that smoldering look Buck was too good at giving.
Steve gulped, somehow misplacing his anger in the frothing, foaming, churning whirl of white water.
"Just relax, doll," Barnes coaxed, his flesh hand sneaking beneath the surface to find not Steve's ire, but his inner thigh. Buck leaned in and turned Steve to putty with one brush of his scruff against Steve's thick neck.
In the next instant, Steve groaned, painfully hard and too long celibate. He relied predominantly on his exercises to relieve the need for this kind of thing. Hands above the sheets and all...
"You know I'll take good care of you," Buck growled out huskily. "Nat don't care."
Damn him.
Just before Buck's hand slid high enough, Steve ripped away from him, panting and bothered to bursting. "I gotta go… fold… dishes…" Before Buck could finish snorting and drag him back into his embrace and lock him there, Steve sloshed his way out of the tub, seized his towel from the tub-side lounge chair, and made a beeline for the showers.
He'd need it icy as the Arctic to take the edge off.
Hands splayed on the chilly, tiled wall, Steve stood under the stream, violent shivers nearly folding him in two. The gym's communal shower had been closest. He wasn't about to chance running into poor, innocent Wanda in the elevator with a tent pitched in his trunks. Steam still rolled off him in ribbons—reminders of what he could have had and turned down. He couldn't think of Buck's chiseled, meaty features. Or his cavalier swagger. Or his molten, dreamy eyes…
The cold water had just become alarmingly bearable when—"Captain," a reverent baritone greeted.
Steve snapped to attention and he whipped his head leftward to see Thor take the faucet next to him. He angled away, but not quick enough for Thor's keen blues not to notice his predicament.
"Have I interrupted something? How uncouth of me. I had a late sparring session with Vision."
"No," he mumbled. "It's fine. Just… rinsing off."
"Forgive my boldness, but I was beginning to think you had been relieved of your hammer during the transformation procedure." He outright grinned.
Bristling, Steve rolled his eyes and bit back a retort he didn't mean.
Why were his sexual exploits, or lack thereof, the business of anyone but himself? The blow to his pride had incensed him enough that he had begun to wilt and would have regained full control, had a broad, warm body not suddenly solidified behind him. Steve had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from tumbling over.
"I have offended you," Thor graveled into his ear, his alarmingly deft hand too swiftly clasping Steve around the base of his… 'hammer'.
A garbled noise twisted out from Steve's throat, warmth white hot enough to completely negate the glacial deluge surging through him, even before Thor adjusted the temperature. Breathless, Steve nearly collapsed against the wall, sure his skin would have hissed against the freezing stone.
"Forgive me. It is unhealthy to leave yourself wanting for so long," Thor reprimanded.
Steve could feel the god's hips against his backend, sense his nipples against his back, and feel a rock solid unspeakable thing throb against the joining of his—!
"Allow me to relieve you." One slow stroke had Steve raging at full mast.
Feebly, Steve clasped Thor's wrist and his mammoth hand stilled in response.
"There is no shame in this," Thor promised against the shell of his ear. "Let it go. You have led us well. Good leadership should be rewarded. I require nothing in return."
The hand that Steve kept against the wall bit leathery fingertips into the tile. He could feel his pulse in his throat. Struggling not to tremble, he eased up on his grip around Thor's thick wrist. That hand, blessedly, began to move again. Steve bit down on his lip to trap whatever cursed sounds yearned to come screaming out of his mouth right where they belonged.
But when Thor reminded him of the sinfully effective weak spot that was his neck, a long sigh came tearing through his ivory barrier.
Thor's unoccupied hand splayed over Steve's abdomen and traveled upward, close to reducing Steve to sobs when he found one of his embarrassingly erect nipples and rubbed—tugged—it between his fingers. Steve whimpered pathetically. That hand stole its way higher… until it gently closed around his throat.
For the first time in decades, Steve found himself verily helpless, Thor's masterful hands paving the sweetest level of heaven.
Impending release climbed his spine too quickly and with such force that he couldn't have held it back with Hoover Dam. The blinding explosion of ecstasy rocketed through his every fiber. When sentience returned to him, he found Thor's arm draped around his waist, his knees having buckled in the final moments. Steve's chest heaved. As the high ebbed and fortitude returned to Steve's legs, socially instilled guilt descended on him, too.
Thor said nothing. He just held Steve in place against him. And—an unexpected balm though it was—it helped.
"Thank you," Steve rasped at last.
Thor beamed brashly from over his shoulder. And Steve wanted to pop him in the mouth. But instead, he gave the man's comparably brawny arm an affectionate squeeze.
He'd sleep like a baby tonight.
I'm baaaaaaaack. *wicked grin*