Alright! So, I meant to get this chapter done and posted much sooner than this, but external factors interfered a bit- the weekend I planned on completely finishing and doing the whole posting ended up being a family trip to a music festival for a good few days... This chapter also didn't want to get written in some spots, so if there's some awkward moments or such, you get why. Anyways...

Read on!

"Steve?"

Steve startled and closed his sketchbook to hide the drawing he had been working on when he heard the subject of his sketch calling his name.

"Oh. Here you are," Adrian glanced around at the decorations of the room he had commandeered for himself. Of course, that wasn't obvious, the main room just looked like a lounge.

"Yes? Were you looking for me? Is something wrong?"

"Yeah…"

Steve immediately stood up dropping his sketchbook. As he bent down to pick it up he quickly asked, "Does the team need to be assembled?"

Bending down at the same time and blushing as Steve's hand brushed his, Adrian lightly calmed the man as he passed him the sketchbook, "No, what's got you so jumpy?"

"Just… a little tense. What's wrong then that required me?"

"I think we should talk."

Steve's eyes widened in shock a moment before he cleared his throat, "About?"

"This problem between us."

"Between us?"

Adrian glared at the man skeptically, "You know… The discomfort you seem to be in whenever I make an appearance. The avoiding me. Me going invisible just so you don't feel uncomfortable? That problem. Why are you so repulsed by me? Was it something I did?"

Steve's eyes again widened as he quickly processed what Adrian just said. 'He made himself invisible to prevent my discomfort? He's noticed my tenseness? I thought I was hiding it well. Though I guess my avoidance of him probably made him more intent on observing me when he has found me.' Out loud Steve quietly muttered, "I had no idea."

"Yeah well," Adrian rubbed the back of his neck, "But what was it? Was it my comments around Zac Efron definitely being hot but not my type of guy? Or was it my joking flirting with Tony? I've only flirted because he starts it! Wait… Do you have a problem with me being gay?"

Steve thought back to what he was talking about, he remembered the conversation that the comments came about in…

Steve shook his head as he stepped into the communal area Tony had set up for the group, he could here Tony and Natasha fervently discussing something at the table, but he didn't quite hear exactly what yet. He sat down at the table that was already set for everyone who was currently residing in the tower. They ate in the communal area since it's where Tony set up the kitchen and dining area Adrian requested and Steve could smell something delicious cooking.

"So you're telling me you'd rather get laid once with Lady Gaga than marry Taylor Swift?"

Steve raised a brow at Tony's statement, especially considering his incredulous voice.

"Yes. If I had to pick between the two. Lady Gaga seems like she would be much more interesting in bed. Are you telling me you'd rather marry Taylor Swift? You, a playboy bachelor?"

"It'd mean more chances with her in bed. Besides, I wouldn't be permanently married to her. I'd love to have a song written about me."

"So you'd pump and dump her? Well, don't let Pepper here you say that."

"Of course, she'd probably try to behead me with one of her portfolios."

Steve startled when the most arousing laugh he'd ever heard came from beside him where Adrian was setting some food on the table, "More like she'd have JARVIS lock you out of your workshop."

Tony held his hand to his chest as he gasped in mock-offense, "She'd never!"

Adrian had just shaken his head before asking, "What were you two discussing anyways?"

"Well, we were talking about celebrities and suddenly came upon the question of if we would rather get laid with Lady Gaga or marry Taylor Swift," Natasha told him.

"Okay…" Adrian just glanced away obviously disinclined to say either was a good option.

Tony chose that moment to notice the food, "Finally! I was drooling worse than a saint bernard at the smell."

Adrian smiled, "It's nothing elaborate, just a simple chicken parmesan and some garlic breadsticks. Would anyone like a drink other than water though?"

Tony gave no answer other than to stick a forkful of the food into his mouth and groaned at the delicious taste.

"I'll take that as a 'no' for Tony, for now."

"Can you get me a glass of that Merlot you bought a few days ago?"

"Certainly, Nat."

Steve watched as he poured some of the red wine into a glass for her before pouring one for him. He paused before raising a questioning brow at Steve with the bottle in hand, which he followed by pouring another glass at the man's nod.

"Back to the previous conversation, we haven't even brought up any male celebrities," Tony said with a small smirk.

"Indeed. I hadn't expected you to be up to it however."

"Well, when a partner is good at pleasuring, it doesn't quite matter what tools they use," he followed this with a conspiratorial wink.

"...Alright. Well, I would be down to clown with Zac Efron, but I think I'd offer up Reynolds as the marriage option," Natasha offered.

"Really? That's who you default to?"

"What's wrong with that? Ryan Reynolds is entertaining and Zac Efron is certainly hot. Not really my type of guy though," Everyone glanced at Adrian in surprise at his sudden add to the conversation.

"Now that's something I'm curious about."

"What do you mean, Nat?"

"What's your type?"

Steve shook his head knowing what she was probably thinking. She had barely started trying to hook him up with various women despite any protests he had. He was just thankful it was only a couple every once in a while that she mentioned. Too bad she didn't realize that, despite his attempts to do otherwise, that he wanted to date Adrian. No, he shouldn't think about that.

"Well… I know I like caring, passionate guys who would be able to cherish me and be cherished by me, more toned and muscular, and lighter shades of hair… I like a man who has some scruff and hair or can vary between that and clean-shaven. Close to my height, but not shorter than me… Blue eyes I could get lost in like the sky. Honestly, despite my orientation, I have some more old-fashioned views. I wouldn't want to be intimate unless I knew for sure they would stay with me and I could trust them with my life beyond a doubt; and where I'm from, that's not as difficult to figure out. Beyond that, I want someone who will treat me as an equal and communicate with me. Lord knows how irritating it is for me when people fail to communicate with me on things and I find out about plans last minute or something… Obviously, my type would be someone dedicated, not only to me, but to many different things in life. Lastly, my type includes those I can share some art-time with or such things like reading, cuddling, or movies…"

Steve started when he realized that Adrian had greatly described him and shifted slightly in discomfort. His feelings were possibly returned? That just makes things more difficult!

Natasha, surprisingly didn't quite make the connection Steve did, but she did notice his shifting in discomfort. Her eyes narrowed at his response, 'Probably thinking I'm being homophobic about Adrian,' Steve thought.

Steve jolted out of the memory as Adrian coughed to get his attention, "Well? Is my sexuality a problem?"

"What? No!"

"Then why is it that you continue to be so stand-offish and tense whenever I interact with you?"

"I…"

"You aren't gonna tell me, are you?"

Steve just looked at Adrian, speechless.

"You know what? Fine. I thought that maybe you'd communicate with me like I wanted, but no. Go on. Continue with your. Your. YOUR WAYS! And I'll be waiting here. In my rooms... For you. Get out."

Steve paled as he realized that Adrian just said the small lounge area he had been coming to every few days for an hour or so to rest, read, or sketch was actually part of the man's rooms (No wonder he had found it so comforting and alluring). He was too distracted by that fact that he didn't catch the sobbed 'you'. At Adrian's firm order though, he stood and allowed Adrian to push him out until Adrian was staring glumly from the door he had open.

Before he could open his mouth to say anything, Adrian interrupted, "When you are ready to communicate and try to be at least cordial instead of the frost king, I'll be here. Now, go!" His order was emphasized with the door being slammed.

Steve stared, shocked at the sudden turn of events. He was just going to leave when the door opened momentarily. Steve's sketchpad hitting him in his face cut off anything he was going to say. He picked it up off the floor and took off down the hall.

"What's with the door slamming?"

Steve paused at Agent Romanoff's inquiry, "Nothing of you concern."

"Your face says otherwise."

"Well, just a little talk between Adrian and I didn't go down very well."

"Meaning?" the deadly assassin crossed her arms.

"Adrian came looking for me to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room whenever he and I have interacted. He had noticed that I get a bit tense and such around him."

"It's not very hard to notice."

"Oh. Well, I found out he had been going around hidden so as to not cause me discomfort. The problem began when he asked me why I was acting stand-offish. He asked me what he did that made me repulsed by him. He went so far as to ask if it was because he had shown his… orientation."

"Is it? After all, you are from a time where homosexuality wasn't accepted at all. It's not hard to see that as a possible influence."

"Well, I guess one could say that it technically is why, but not exactly because he's gay."

Natasha's brow shot up, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't even explain to him before he got upset that I wasn't answering and kicked me out of his rooms. What makes you think I'll tell you?"

"You were in his rooms?"

"I didn't know. I had only gone into the lounge area of his rooms. I just liked it and hadn't thought it part of anyone's rooms," Steve rubbed the back of his neck. Natasha's brow resumed it's arched position yet again.

"Well, you better figure things out. Too much internal conflict would be detrimental to the group. Not only that, Adrian seems like he could make a disagreement rather... painful for the instigators."

Steve nodded tiredly, he'd just have to get used to having forbidden fruit dangling in front of him, "Do you have anything to report?"

"No."

"Then I'll be on my way," Steve stepped past the spy and headed to the gym Tony had started getting installed. It wasn't quite finished, but he had seen some punching bags in passing.

Adrian glared at his hands as he worked some glass through them absentmindedly. He was thinking about Steve again, who seemed to be uncomfortable with him even though they were supposed to be soul mates. How was he supposed to focus on figuring things out when he couldn't even stop his mind from wandering back to the same thing?

'Maybe think about where he's coming from? After all, he is from a time where any sort of homosexuality was viewed very negatively. Plus, he doesn't even know if views of 'homosexuality' have gotten any better.'

"What? Who said that?" Adrian glanced around the room. His brow furrowed further when he saw no one there.

'Me.'

"Kendra?"

'Yep. You might not want to talk out loud to me though. After all, talking to a nonexistent person isn't well looked upon.'

'How are you…'

'Communicating with you? Good question. I'm not quite sure myself I should have been fully merged with you, but I have a theory.'

Adrian raised a brow and waited a moment for her to elaborate. When nothing came from her he rumbled, 'Well?'

'Oh! Sorry. I think it's likely because you need guidance and concentrated my knowledge and such into a focus point in your mind. I'm not actually Kendra, rather, I am merely her knowledge and personality overlaying a memory of her. Specifically her voice at the moment.'

'Are you going to keep referring to… Her as her? I don't know how to phrase that. I guess "Are you going to keep referring to yourself as her?" might work, but if what you are saying is true than that wouldn't necessarily make full sense…'

'How about we move on?' Kendra's memory said quickly to stop Adrian's rapid thoughts.

'Sure, what did you mean earlier?'

'You mean when I was telling you to look at things from his perspective?'

'Yeah… I hadn't thought of that. Which is strange. I usually try to think of things from the differing sides' perspectives when there's conflicts.'

'I'm not surprised. You are still recovering from your Dimensional traveling. Plus, there's the vast amount of knowledge, experience, and other things being shoved into your brain. On top of all that, you fought in a battle using abilities you only barely started working with and kept it up to the point of needing to take a break. You aren't an invincible "Mary Jane," you know. You can tire using your abilities if you use too much too fast. Although, you may be able to work to increase your energy limits by exercising and working your body to increase stamina and your endurance. You aren't invincible either. You need to work on protecting yourself while you use other abilities, which will further stress your body if you use up too much energy. Again, I recommend the exercising.'

'Okay,' Adrian's mental voice sighed, 'I'll take your hint and try running a few miles if you so wish.'

'Good. Anyways, all those memories and knowledge need to be processed and with the energy drop and travel, your brain is just starting on continuing the processing again. Not being yourself fully is to be expected, nor will you ever go back to being the same person as you were before.'

'Really?'

'Are you really surprised? You've had countless numbers of personalities and experiences crammed into your head. That will obviously change your personality, reactions, reflexes, and outlook on life.'

'I had thought about that, but wasn't sure I wanted it to happen. I was actually focusing on keeping my personality intact.'

Adrian flinched as he heard the Kendra voice screech, 'What! Adrian! No wonder why those memories are all foggy. You're attempting to keep your pre-absorption mind? That's making your brain attempt to lock away all your experiences and memories. Adrian, in trying to keep yourself- you're losing yourself! You can't let your desire to keep up your former self prevent you from achieving who you were meant to be!'

'Kendra, almost my whole life before I came here was miserable. I had no one. Yes, I had people who considered me their friend and I had some spontaneous moments of happiness and laughter that were oh so fleeting in a void, but they didn't even know anything about me. Heck, not a single one of them even thought of me possibly being gayer than a rainbow, no one noticed when I wasn't myself. I was alone in the worst way- surrounded yet isolated. I actually tried, you know that? I might not have been here if it hadn't been for someone I've never even met in person.

There were so many things for mental health- even a whole organization created in my own school. No one noticed that they were pushing someone with abhorrent mental health to the brink and even the starter of the organization flat out ignored my existence. And yet, I made it. I may have had to use some heavy acting skills and unhealthy amounts of reading, insane jabbering to myself, and watching videos online and movies on repeat, but I'm here and I'm stronger for it. Eventually, I had actually made something of myself. I… was finding myself and it was a good person I was moulding out of sadness and loneliness. I guess this is just another step. I wasn't even close to whole before I got here, I just wanted to hang on to the good of the past that I had found in books and all the other things I immersed myself in. I didn't want to keep hold of anything else. Now... Foggy, my memories of things are foggy,' Adrian's voice cut off in a sob. He smiled slightly to himself as he continued molding the glass in his hands and felt Kendra trying to comfort him.

'Well, Adrian, you just need to stop trying to hang onto those things alone and things should get better. Meditate a bit and organize your mind, it should help you fortify yourself against mental attacks- whether from yourself or others. Accepting the memories and everything should allow you to keep those things in mind and solidify them to the point of being almost impossible to manipulate. Though, you may want to figure out how to hide some of your memories and knowledge. You know very well who will eventually try to mess with your mind,' Kendra intoned wisely.

Adrian nodded and started developing a plan to fit meditation into his daily schedule- maybe for thirty minutes before he makes breakfast for everyone? Or it could be before he goes to sleep, even though that only occurs every three days or so depending on how much he expends himself.

He also thought more on the problem of Steve. He normally wasn't so obnoxious in showing his sexuality- he's used to gay guys using him as a prime example of straight guys funnily enough- but he was just trying to get it across to Steve that he was interested. Probably could've been done a bit better though. It's true, he did come from an unfortunately prejudiced time. Not to say the world is no longer prejudiced, but things are getting better.

'OH! I just remembered!' Adrian jumped at the shout from the Kendra voice in his head.

'Do you mind telling me why you needed to give me a headache?'

'Sorry…' the voice sounded sufficiently sheepish, 'It's just that I recalled what I didn't tell you about since you had touched me before I could. Those tests I did? Well, interesting results. You have some differences compared to the average human. They include: an advanced metabolism, mass energy ecto-discharge, anomalous blood, and… the capability of masculus praegnatus. If that's what it'd be called. I'm not the best with Latin.'

'And what does any of that mean?'

'You digest things quickly and also have mass amounts of energy as a result. You can also move a good bit faster than normal people. Not quite Quicksilver speeds, but faster. The discharge grants you the ability to manipulate differing energies and such like atomic particles, which allows you to manipulate elements as you've already experimented with. Takes a lot of energy though when done for a long time. The blood is probably because of some of your metamorphing abilities. The last, I just tried to give a more scientific name, using some poor latin, for male pregnancy.'

Adrian sputtered, 'What?!'

'It's why I had quickly told you to use protection. Given your shapeshifting, your body has the capabilities to gestate and naturally give birth. Or have a C-section depending on what form you choose to deliver in.'

'That's… a lot to process…But I'll meditate on that as well, I guess? Anything else? Or can I go back to thinking of how to figure out plans for the future?" When there was no response he nodded and developed an outline plan for some of his goals. With the starting plans of his new insert to his routine formulated Adrian stood, quickly moulding the glass into a simple sphere and cooling it. Besides, it was almost dinner time, and cooking helped his stress and such. Knowing the others' somewhat lacking skill in cooking, they wouldn't have any food being prepared. Instead there would be some such order of take-out on the way. He headed to the kitchen, he'd make something quick and easy.

Steve sighed as he rested his head against the shower wall. He'd spent the last half hour punching multiple punching bags. Tony probably wouldn't be happy that he'd broken a few things, but it's not like he meant to. He just forgets his strength in the moment when he lets his stresses, frustration, and anger out in his work outs. He shook his head as he realized he was starting to drift to thinking about Adrian again. Things shouldn't be happening. He shouldn't be attracted to someone who's the same sex as him! But he still couldn't find it within himself to stop thinking about the handsome man who constantly was so tempting when he's busy concentrating on art and bites his lips or gracefully moving about the kitchen as he prepares food with a smile on his face that pulls at his heart. He toweled off, not realizing that he had already slipped into thinking about Adrian.

"Supper!" Steve started at the knocking Adrian made on his door. He headed out and again caught Natasha and Tony speaking.

"Do you think there's something going on between Capsicle and Adrian?"

Natasha stared at Tony as he asked the question. It's even more apparent that Steve needs to get over whatever's giving him problems with Adrian if even Tony noticed. Natasha was about to answer when Adrian showed up with the food and she spotted Steve entering. Her mouth snapped shut.

"Here you guys go! I made some spaghetti and meatballs. I made the sauce with some tomatoes and herbs from the garden. I had to use up the garlic bread in the freezer though since they should be used before I actually make some."

All was silent a moment as Adrian, despite how everyone said he didn't have to do it, dished up everyone's food. Adrian left a plate for the person who he knew would soon be coming with the smell. Steve gulped as Adrian's gaze landed on him, expecting a hard, angry glare, but was instead shocked when a soft gaze was what he got with a small nod.

"I smell something delicious!" Clint crowed as he crawled out of a nearby vent.

"It's as good as it smells," Tony smirked before taking a loud bite of his garlic bread.

Adrian smiled at the archer as he sat down and the others engaged in conversation, before turning to the man who had been silent since he sat down at the table, "Something on the mind Bruce?"

"It's fine. Just feels off sometimes being here when I recall my years on the run."

"That's understandable. Feel free to come talk to me though if you need someone to talk to."

The doctor smiled at the offer, "Thanks. I'll keep it in mind."

Adrian simply winked before turning to Steve, "Steve?"

"Yes, Adrian?" Steve internally panicked as he realized everyone else turned their attention onto them despite continuing their conversations. He didn't know what Adrian wanted, but was hesitant to expect any good considering how their last conversation went.

He didn't have to worry as much as all Adrian had to say was, "Can we talk later?"

He gave an internal sigh of relief before nodding. His heart skipped a beat at the smile Adrian gave him.

It was a few moments before he realized what he had agreed to. That's when the panic set in.

Boom! Done! There's the chapter for y'all! So, question of the day: What do ya guys think of this seemingly rocky start to Steve and Adrian's relationship? Certainly Steve won't let his doubts and fear get to him, will he? I guess we'll have to wait and see. Need to set up some filler though too... Can't just assume that the group were blatantly accepted into the group, can we? Well, I have plenty of ideas for what to do for this to continue and eventually be finished... At that point- who knows what will happen? *smirks* Let's just say that I've had much inspiration and some brain child's come about... However, now's not the time to speak of such things. Give feedback in reviews (it's certainly appreciated!), favorite or follow! I appreciate the people who like my work enough to do so.

Rock on my fellow gals and guys!