Chapter 11

{Unexpected}


Feeling the restrictive material of his uniform cling to his muscles, Steve concentrated on the tension building in his chest. With measure of control, he breathed in the cool air condition air wavering from the vent; searching for calm to moderate the pain that consumed his well-built frame. Wasting no time, he quickly discarded the top into the hamper as he passed the bathroom in fervent and determined steps; the aches and kinks of regressing muscles that generated from hard and relentless mission needed to absorb the pelting heat of water raining over his polished skin glazed with exhaustion and smears of blood. Pain had gripped his bones. Not to mention, that his unkempt ashen-blond hair felt greasy to the felt displaced in the walls of his impermanent home.

Each night felt like another sacrifice, giving himself away to the call of duty and keeping the mantle of Captain America alive...It wasn't an easy life to endure, he couldn't pick himself up and move on, shoving every shred of guilt deep into his core. The hard choices he made defined his life—the enhance serum that he willingly accepted to become infused within his blood turned him into an indomitable and skillful combatant, his body matured into an modern aged Adonis and his vitality was molded into human perfection, ageless and fierce, but his heart was scarred within every layer that had lost faith in humanity, mistrusting everyone and living on the knife edge that balanced the fundamentals of reason and deception.

Now, Steve was soldier without a home, family and promise. His world eclipsed into a shade of darkness, and there was no light piercing through it.

Carting his fingers though the disheveled locks, Steve exhaled shakily, trying to process his thoughts and disciplined all the torrents of raging emotions. He had endured immense levels of pain within the last 48 hours of holding up crumbling walls, flying into smashed vehicles and tasting the blood that pumped in his veins. After returning to Stark Tower, Steve chose to leave his aggression behind in the locker room, and give his body a chance to reclaim some form of repose and properly heal before going out back into the field.

Before he stepped into the shower stall, Steve placed the Stark phone on the ledge of the vanity; pressing the replay button of his playlist that Tony had personally downloaded for while under the supervision of Pepper—the song of choice was from back in his halcyon war days when he was huddled inside a tent with the Howling Commando's, Bucky would always sit on a whiskey crate with his rifle against his knee, his brown hair rakish with tresses on his broad forehead and pale blue eyes brightly observant to the unseen dangers hidden in the thickness of the forest. He would play with his dog tags, while the curve edge of his lip hugged a cigarette.

Those were good and unforgettable memories that could never become enshrouded from his heart.

He curved his lips into a content smile, remembering how Gabe Jones would sit in the middle of the tent on a bucket, adjusting his radio to different and poplar songs (Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To, I Don't Want to Walk Without You) that were broadcast from the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress that thundered pass their camp during those dearly afternoon hours of staring into the grayness of rain and waiting to be called back into the natural zone.

The soldiers of the 107th unit cherished the simple things like music and pieces of chocolate as rewards for their unknown victories; the ones that would never be written or told in history documentaries-each song that played against the echoes of heavy artillery and the rumbling engines of the heavy bombers gave each of them a sense of peace and remembrance of what home felt like before the shadow of war.

Holding his lips into a broaden smile at those fond memories, Steve waited for the song to load while he stripped his under shirt off, allowing his bare pectorals, oblique's and the sculpt of his V shaped torso to breathe as sweat cooled over planes of compacted muscles that had been straining for the last three hours. There was evidence of the battle still visible on his skin, minor gashes and blemished. It was nothing that the regenerative components of the serum couldn't dissolve while he slept off his regressed emotions.

After fully stripping out of his uniform, the battle worn captain turned up the volume on the phone, and lumbered to the stall, opening the glass door, twisting the knob, within seconds gushing hot water poured out and he was inhaling the froths of steam, and yet he felt cold reproach vacancy sear inside his chest. Almost like an incompleteness of an uncommitted and grieved desire he had forced onto himself.

...Don't be late...

Every chance Steve had to rebuild a stable promise, faltered when images of the beautiful and steadfast Peggy Carter invade his mind. He couldn't escape from the unsettling regrets of allowing his love...best girl...to dance with another partner at the Stork Club. It was unthinkable to picture, clawing against his heart, and making all emotions run a glacial course in his veins.

The anguish navigated him back to the torrential moment of listening to Peggy's urging voice fade into crackles of static on the Valkyrie'sradio as he released his gloved hands on the steering controls, and spearhead into the beds of ice. The benumbing water gushed inside the cockpit, engulfing him into the depths as he struggled to breathe out her name for one last time, before his tears froze and heart beat slowed as he sunk into the fathoms of his icy grave. Alone and forgotten to rebuilding world—just a memory frozen in time.

...Never lose who you are...And who you are meant to become...

Regardless, on how much Steve tried to adapt, the heartache still grew constant and desperation eventfully seized him to the point he felt torn into separate halves of his existence.

Closing his eyes, Steve fought against the unhinged urges to crash onto his knees, to fully surrender his heart, spirit and soul to past; he gripped his fingers over the cool edge of the vanity, his muscles strained against the resistance spiking through his bones and the pain still resided within every fiber of his body. It was stabbing thrall utter discomfort; persisting when he drifted back into the realms of memory.

Gathering his stern composure; Steve screwed his eyelids shut, releasing uneven pants of breath, the phantom anguish of his heartache crawled through his veins, merging into the marrow of his bones. Steve tried to face his demons -violent and maniacal cascades of reserved memories and condemning decisions he made to assure that light would spear through the chaotic, dark palls of HYDRA.

He leaned into the vanity. The bathroom spun. Everything was revolving into unsettled haze of red, and his heart squeezed unevenly into a sharp clench. He couldn't tolerate with this torturous lapse consuming him; he needed to search for release. Instead, Steve had closed the doors and isolated himself, masking his pain from the rest of the Avengers, including Natasha.

He didn't deserve her concealed values towards him, she was a woman of many fallacious lies, torment and also a hardcore killer trained not to harbor emotions. Clint Barton was the only man she trusted, the one that didn't pull the trigger and retire her from the service of the KGB. The archer gave her a chance of purpose, and reached the part of heart that wasn't damaged by scars. They formed a bond of preservation with each other, treating their lives missions and collecting pieces of their shady pasts, if one of them got shot, the other would bandage the wound and finish the job, without dismissing their concern emotions.

Steve understood that Natasha and he were on different sides of a fractured world, and the gap would keep on building if he fully disarmed himself for her to infiltrate his guarded secrets -the ones he kept locked within an uncompromising area of his uncertain soul. The recurring flashbacks of nightmares that plagued his mind when he drove his raging fists into the punching bag at the old gym; ripping the restrictive chain off the support beam and making grains of sand leak through the gauged holes that were created by the his tainted fury. Tonight, he had measured amounts of livid anger flooding in his veins, so much trepidation weighting him down, and so much guilt drowning him.

He trusted Natasha as an alliance for recon and extraction missions; but nothing seemed to become stable enough to put his faith into her hands. There were a number of enemies out here, waiting in their ambiance of patience to strike him into the heart by harming people he loved. He couldn't risk that chance of allowing his partner serve as a target because of his faults that needed reckoning by his own defeat-his own high cost of surrendering every fiber of himself in order to prevent Natasha from tasting his mistakes.

Steve was on the razors' edge of becoming an emotional wreck; it was unbound emotions that churned in his stomach, forcing him to taste the bile rising up his raw throat—he had known for a few months that everything would bled out of him during when he inexplicably reentered the labyrinth of his mind; he couldn't function without tasting the salty trek of his tears melt against his taunt lips; he felt the slashing blades of ice carve into his exposed and battle torn skin.

Unabated pain started to intermix with the pulses of intense energy. The unnerving sense of putting faith into his new team was hard for him to cope with; they weren't the Howling Commandos, just rookies—misguided amateurs with untamed power and not enough discipline to structure balance of choice and will. He wanted to remove himself from their fundamental world, since nothing felt real enough for him to grasp onto.

Steve didn't belong under Fury's imposing, authoritative shadow of compromise. He refused to become an expandable soldier of SHEILD's interest—an unwilling asset hired to finish deceptive missions in order to secure cores of tampered secrets downloaded on another form of new technology. He needed a purpose to regain stability. It was meaningless for him to dwell into, he was a veteran soldier who never returned home and never embraced the love from his right partner; everything had been stolen from him—years and moments of importance forever lost because he kept on fighting until the plane crashed into the arctic water along with HYDRA's weapons of mass destruction.

When he awoke as the ice thawed out of his body and heartbeat was restored—his eyes still held the tears of his losses and within days Steve learned how to adapt, starting from the beginning of the road he was taking. In some ways it felt like a cursive life, everyone he knew from the past was either six feet under or residing in nursing home. There was no more turning way, Steve chose his solo path and carried out his promise that he made to good friend and he couldn't betray that pledge.

After relieving the pain in the stillness of the bathroom, he lumbered back to the shower, and then he gripped his fingers over the steel edge of the foggy glass door; suddenly an urgent rapping sound echoed through his apartment. Sensing a feverish prick of dread in his veins, Steve was quick to respond, turning off the water and grabbing a pair of jeans, hurrying to slide the denim over his muscled legs before pulling on a gray shirt that covered the considerable amount of bruises gathered on his sculpted torso.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he managed to call out, with an irritable edge in his baritone, pacing down the hallway, passed the living room and halted in front of the locked down. His large hand reluctantly twiddled over the chain; lock, and brow furrowed into a debatable crease; he wasn't expecting anyone. "Hold on a sec," he added; speaking with an undertone of his inviting Brooklyn accent; using time to catch a deep breath, and summed his defenses while turning the knob. He stepped back utterly stunned at the taunting vision of Natasha slanting her lithe, curvaceous body against the stairway rail, unruly scarlet locks framed over her vibrant alabaster features, and she stared at his dumbfound and slightly affronted expression with a dangerous glint flaring in her teal irises. It was an elusive look that gave him the impression that she meant business.

"Agent Romanoff," he addressed her, with an authority in his low voice, his deadpan stare of azure locked onto her full irresistible lips painted with a tempestuous shade of red. Narrowing his gaze involuntarily to the floor, Steve felt rife with curious on the reason she came to visit him during the late hours of the evening. She never intruded his personal space, unless she required something from him. "What are doing here, Natasha?" he asked in almost a strained breath, intently searching in her alluring obscured eyes; he wasn't going to allow her to claim him into her tangled web of lies.

"Relax, Steve," she eased with a shrug, pulling her lips into a faint smirk, catching the old tune of a song replaying through his dim lightened apartment, it was easy for detect that he was entirely alone, and judging by the staleness of dried blood wavering from his massive form, she knew that he hadn't showered. Looking his shoulder, Natasha settled her gaze directly at a platter of untouched strawberry cheese cake on the counter top. "I'm not here to invade your privacy, although, it does look like you need company."

Feeling no sense of denying the emptiness he tried to bury, Steve accepted the offer that plainly seeped from her coaxing lips. He sheepishly grinned back at her, his azure irises bright and welcoming, as he noticed her eyes drifting back to the dessert that he had bought from a local bakery across from his gym. "You know what; I do need someone to share a piece of this cake I recently bought. It's a pretty expensive cake..." He leveled his agreeable stare with her; rapid surges of impulse rushed through his bloodstream, his lips pressed into a timid grimace. "...would you be interested, Agent Romanoff?"

The semblance of the cunning and unbreakable Black Widow was slipping, his invitation became envisage for her to respond, in a faltering pace of her heart, Natasha darted her wary eyes to the stairway, fighting against the urge to run, but then she considered the circumstances of spending time with benevolent and powerful the super-soldier, she never felt the effortless attachments of an amity between someone other than Clint. It was new and alarming for her to seize, but maybe also a daring risk that could lead into something pure. "Do you trust me enough to enter your place, I could be armed, Rogers?"

"Well, I do know how to dismantle a gun, Natasha" he said evenly, with an unguarded stare, and removed himself from the doorway, gesturing her with a tentative smile to enter his impermanent home. When she briskly clicked her spiked boots across the scuffed floor, he thoughtfully caught a glimpse of her pistol strapped at her hip. "Besides you're not the first dame...I mean...beautiful woman...who shot a few rounds at me."

Natasha mirrored his boyish confident expression, with a dicey smirk, pinning her eyes on his shield prompt against the couch, and then shifted her gaze at his lustrous, honest blue eyes, knowing that he was taking a gamble with her. "Do you need a knife to cut into the cake?"

In that moment, Steve became lost within the depth of her teal eyes, and smirked at her scheming words. "No, I think I've got it covered..."

Natasha inched a purposeful step closer; her sensuous lips aligning with the center of his solid pectorals, and his idled hand was almost breadth away from grasping her wrist to pull her into deep, breathless kiss. He respected her boundaries, and didn't let his thoughts dwell too much on that untamed desire. After all, Natasha was armed with more than her armory of weapons hidden underneath her leather jacket.

Pulling himself back away from the shadows of the doorway, Steve regarded her with his unyielding blue embers, and she silently observed his unspoken eagerness. They both craved something far more indulging than cream cheese with glazed strawberries; but for tonight both the soldier and the spy decided to value the other's sudden need for solidarity to the unpredictable world they both had fallen into as equal fighters of their own liberation.


A/N: I want to say thank you to everyone who follows and enjoys this little Romangers tale. Also Unbroken chapter 6 will be updated this weekend, sorry for the delay, but I lost a huge chunk of the first part and I have to rewrite it all over again. Enjoy and keep this ship alive.